Should President Clinton be prosecuted for perjury? The effects of preference for consistency, self-esteem, and political party affiliation

Conducted in the fall of 2000, this study investigates personality and social variables that should predict attitudes regarding the desirability of prosecuting President Clinton for perjury following the expiration of his term (in January of 2001). Prosecution was favored by High Preference for Consistency (PFC) more than Low PFC individuals, by High Self-Esteem more than Low Self-Esteem individuals, and by Republicans more than Democrats. In addition, PFC and Party Affiliation interacted: High PFCs wanted Clinton prosecuted regardless of Party Affiliation, but Low PFCs desired prosecution strongly only if they were Republicans. Overall, the results are consistent with the general self-theory principle that human beings tend to adopt attitudes and positions that restore, maintain, or enhance self-esteem.     

Functional analysis skills training for residential caregivers

Functional analysis is the most effective assessment for identifying the maintaining contingencies of aberrant behavior. However, it is suggested that functional analyses are not conducted regularly due to the level of skill required. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to assess if four residential caregivers, with limited experience with applied behavior analysis, could be trained to implement the standard analog functional analysis conditions. The training consisted of a lecture, written information, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. Results showed that all participants attained percentage correct responding scores above 95% on three consecutive trials following training. One caregiver showed positive generalization of skills to the assessment of another behavioral topography. The result of this study provides further evidence that lay individuals can be trained to assist in conducting functional analyses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religious and National Identity after the Belfast Good Friday Agreement

National and religious identification processes can be seen as the basis of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and over the course of the conflict preferred social and political identities became increasingly oppositional and entrenched. This paper reviews this evidence using population-level studies of self-categorized national and religious identity. In an attempt to explore the bases of these identities, two interrelated qualitative studies examining the constructions of national and religious identification are reported. The findings presented suggest the continuing predominance of national and religious identities that have generally been constructed as opposing. Evidence of complete overlap of the identities is evidenced in conflation of religion and nationality in adolescents' essays. Theoretical sampling of adults living on the border between Northern Ireland, the republic of Ireland, and those in mixed marriages highlight the strategic use of national and religious identities that may act to support divisions in post-Agreement Northern Ireland.     

Fear and the amygdala: manipulation of awareness generates differential cerebral responses to phobic and fear-relevant (but nonfeared) stimuli

Rapid response to danger holds an evolutionary advantage. In this positron emission tomography study, phobics were exposed to masked visual stimuli with timings that either allowed awareness or not of either phobic, fear-relevant (e.g., spiders to snake phobics), or neutral images. When the timing did not permit awareness, the amygdala responded to both phobic and fear-relevant stimuli. With time for more elaborate processing, phobic stimuli resulted in an addition of an affective processing network to the amygdala activity, whereas no activity was found in response to fear-relevant stimuli. Also, right prefrontal areas appeared deactivated, comparing aware phobic and fear-relevant conditions. Thus, a shift from top-down control to an affectively driven system optimized for speed was observed in phobic relative to fear-relevant aware processing.     

Prior knowledge and subtyping effects in children's category learning

Two experiments examined how 5- and 10-year-old children revise their category representations when exposed to exemplars that are congruent or incongruent with existing knowledge. During training children were presented with exemplars containing features that were congruent or incongruent with children's social stereotypes together with a stereotype-neutral feature. In the knowledge-subtyping condition this neutral feature predicted the stereotype-congruence of the other features. In the knowledge-standard condition the neutral feature was uncorrelated with stereotype-congruence. At test children made judgements about feature co-occurrence within the learned category. In each experiment these judgements were influenced by both stereotypical beliefs and exemplar observation. Stereotypical beliefs, however, had a greater influence on co-occurrence judgements in the knowledge-subtyping than in the standard conditions. In Experiment 2 these effects were shown to generalize to judgements about features that were not presented during training. These results challenge current models of knowledge-based categorization by showing that exemplar structure determines whether novel exemplar features are incorporated into category representations.     

Tridimensional personality traits of college student marijuana users

The present study examined the possibility that marijuana use among college students might be associated with particular personality traits. College student volunteers (N = 176) were administered the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire and a drug-use questionnaire. Analysis of variance showed that the mean score on Novelty Seeking was significantly higher and on Persistence significantly lower among lifetime marijuana users than among nonmarijuana using peers. Programs for prevention among college students may be enhanced by approaches tailored to individuals scoring high on Novelty Seeking and low on Persistence.