Measuring Behavior 2002 4th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research Amsterdam, The Netherlands 27–30 August 2000

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Measuring Behavior 2002 4th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research Amsterdam, The Netherlands 27–30 August 2000     

The connubial crucible: newlywed years as predictors of marital delight, distress, and divorce

This study showed that couples' newlywed marriages and changes in their union over the first 2 years foreshadow their long-term marital fate after 13 years. Consistent with the enduring dynamics model, differences in the intensity of newlyweds' romance as well as the extent to which they expressed negative feelings toward each other predicted (a) whether or not they were happy 13 years later (among those who stayed married) and (b) how long their marriage lasted prior to separation (for those who divorced). The results provide little support for the idea that emergence of distress (e.g., increasing negativity) early in marriage leads to marital failure but instead show that disillusionment--as reflected in an abatement of love, a decline in overt affection, a lessening of the conviction that one's spouse is responsive, and an increase in ambivalence--distinguishes couples headed for divorce from those who establish a stable marital bond.     

Self-Effacing and Self-Defeating Leadership: Adlai E. Stevenson

Using neo-Freudian analysis, this essay argues that as a child Adlai Stevenson experienced shame, anxiety, and ambivalence about the value and consequences of his initiative and autonomy. He responded with an imaginative coping mechanism, creating an idealized image in which ambition and autonomy were subordinated to duty and service. After a sequence of searing events during the Eriksonian period of identity versus role confusion, he resolved his identity crisis by becoming, in his mind, his idealized image. This conception of Stevenson's character provides a rich explanation of his behavior in the presidential nomination contests of 1952 and 1960.     

How young children spend their time: television and other activities.

Time-use diaries were collected over a 3-year period for 2 cohorts of 2- and 4-year-old children. TV viewing declined with age. Time spent in reading and educational activities increased with age on weekdays but declined on weekends. Time-use patterns were sex-stereotyped, and sex differences increased with age. As individuals' time in educational activities, social interaction, and video games increased, their time watching entertainment TV declined, but time spent playing covaried positively with entertainment TV. Educational TV viewing was not related to time spent in non-TV activities. Maternal education and home environment quality predicted frequent viewing of educational TV programs and infrequent viewing of entertainment TV. The results do not support a simple displacement hypothesis; the relations of TV viewing to other activities depend on the program content, the nature of the competing activity, and the environmental context.     

Referential Attribution

Philosophical Studies -     

Marx and Exploitation

The discussion of the adequacy of Karl Marx's definition of exploitation has paid insufficient attention to a prior question: what is a definition? Once we understand Marx as offering a “reference-fixing definition in a model” we will realise that it is resistant to certain objections. A more general analysis of exploitation is offered here and it is suggested that Marx's own definition is a particular instance of the general analysis which makes a number of controversial moral assumptions.     

Preadolescents' Social Judgments: The Relationship Between Self-Endorsement of Traits and Gender-Related Judgments of Female Peers

The present study investigated therelationship between preadolescents' and earlyadolescents' inferences and judgments of a target girl,their self-endorsement of traditionally feminine andmasculine traits, the gender of the playmates and thegender-typedness of the game. Preadolescents and earlyJewish Israeli adolescents males and females (n = 251)were shown a video film portraying a female targetplaying a feminine, masculine or neutral game witheither boys or girls and then made a variety ofinferences and judgments about the target. The gender ofthe playing partners and the gender-typedness of thegame were found to influence preadolescents'inferences of female targets' traits, roles andoccupations, but not their motivational-emotionaljudgments. Gender differences emerged such that theinferences of boys were more often in accordance withtraditional gender stereotypes. Selfendorsement oftraits did not seem to influence preadolescents'judgments, except in those of the cross-gender children.The results are discussed within the framework of genderschema theories.     

Physicalism, Teleology and the Miraculous Coincidence Problem

I focus on Fodor's model of the relationship between special sciences and basic physics, and on a criticism of this model, that it implies that the causal stability of, e.g., the mental in its production of behaviour is nothing short of a miraculous coincidence. David Papineau and Graham Macdonaldendorse this criticism. But it is far less clear than they assume that Fodor's picture indeed involves coincidences, which in any case their injection of a teleological supplement cannot explain. Papineau's and Macdonald's problem is subtly different from a similar one presented by Adrian Cussins. This is no more effective against Fodor's picture, but the kind of account of the relation between the physical and the psychological which could constitute a solution to Cussins' problem is one which, for independent reasons, a physicalist of Fodor's stripe ought to provide.     

How to Identify Negative Actions with Positive Events

It is often assumed that, while ordinary actions are events, ‘negative actions’ (omissions, refrainments, etc.) are absences of events. I claim that a negative action is an ordinary, ‘positive’ event that plays a certain role. I argue that my approach can answer standard objections to the identity of negative actions and positive events.