An investigation of relationships between teachers' ratings of behavior and children's personality traits

This study examined the relationships between teachers' ratings of children's behavior on the Behavior Problem Checklist and children's selfreported personality source traits on ageappropriate Personality Questionnaires. The sample consisted of 254 children from first through eighth grades and 13 teachers in a rural Maine elementary school. Analysis of the data revealed that teachers' ratings and children's self-reports in grades four through six agreed more frequently about problematic behavior than did children's self-reports and teachers self-ratings in grades one through three and seven and eight. In general, the study (1) supported the validity of teacher judgments made with the Behavior Problem Checklist, (2) demonstrated the ckitical need for more than one perspective when identifying and defining maladaptive behaviors potentially indicative of emotional disturbance, and (3) suggested the need to increase the accuracy of teachers' perceptions and evaluations of children's behavior.     

Exposure and response prevention in the natural environment: A comparison with obsessive-compulsive patients

Thirteen obsessive-compulsive clients were treated with different methods of response prevention. Four experimental conditions were obtained through a 2 × 2 factorial design, in which the two main variables were varied: (1) gradual treatment vs flooding; and (2) modeling vs no-modeling. Clients were treated at their homes, three times weekly. Each session lasted 2 hr. Results at the post-test revealed, that modeling was superior to no-modeling (p < 0.05) on avoidance-other compulsions, therapist-rating only. On anxiety-main compulsions, clients rating the gradual method of treatment had been superior to flooding (p < 0.05). No other significant differences were found.     

Passage organization and imposed learning strategies in comprehension and recall of connected discourse

Ninety-nine Ss were assigned randomly to learn a passage comprised of six paragraphs in which the statements were organized by concept name, or concept attribute, or in which the statements were scrambled. Each complete passage contained the same 36 statements. These treatments were orthogonally crossed with instructions to employ a name clustering strategy, an attribute clustering strategy, or a subjectively determined organizing strategy. Three learning trials were administered, each of which was followed by free recall. Passages organized by concept name were found to result in greater recall than passages organized by attributes. The name clustering strategy was more dominant than the attribute clustering strategy, lncongruence between passage organization and advocated clustering strategy resulted in greater recall than did congruency. Implications of these results for cognitive processing of information are discussed     

Hemisphere size asymmetry predicts relative verbal and nonverbal intelligence differently in the sexes: An MRI study of structure—Function relations

Hemispheric size asymmetry differences as assessed from MRIs of 39 healthy college students were correlated with prorated WAIS-R Verbal IQ minus Performance IQ and Vocabulary minus Block Design scores within subjects. In men, a relatively larger left hemisphere predicted better verbal than nonverbal ability, whereas in women a larger left hemisphere predicted relatively better nonverbal than verbal ability. The results were interpreted as providing evidence for sex differences in brain organization.     

Hindsight bias and outcome bias in judging directors’ liability and the role of free will beliefs

Following a corporate disaster such as bankruptcy, people in general and damaged parties, in particular, want to know what happened and whether the company's directors are to blame. The accurate assessment of directors’ liability can be jeopardized by having to judge in hindsight with full knowledge of the adverse outcome. The present study investigates whether professional legal investigators such as judges and lawyers are affected by hindsight bias and outcome bias when evaluating directors’ conduct in a bankruptcy case. Additionally, to advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying these biases, we also examine whether free will beliefs can predict susceptibility to hindsight bias and outcome bias in this context. In two studies (total N = 1,729), we demonstrate that legal professionals tend to judge a director's actions more negatively and perceive bankruptcy as more foreseeable in hindsight than in foresight and that these effects are significantly stronger for those who endorse the notion that humans have free will. This contribution is particularly timely considering the many companies that are currently going bankrupt or are facing bankruptcy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Helping to overcome intervention inertia in bystander’s dilemmas: Behavioral disinhibition can improve the greater good

Conventional wisdom holds that behavioral disinhibition has negative effects on what humans do. Behavioral disinhibition may indeed frequently have negative effects, but in the present paper we reveal some positive consequences as well: the disinhibition hypothesis proposed here states that people may feel inhibited to intervene in situations in which non-intervening bystanders are present and that, therefore, behavioral disinhibition may help to overcome the bystander effect. Findings presented here provide evidence supporting this prediction both inside and outside the psychology laboratory: in both real-life and controlled bystander situations, people were more likely and faster to provide help when (unrelated to the bystander situations) they had (vs. had not) been reminded about having acted with no inhibitions. These findings suggest that, in contrast with what various theories and worldviews dictate, behavioral disinhibition may have positive effects on helping behavior and hence can be conducive for the greater good.     

An affective-experiential perspective on reactions to fair and unfair events: Individual differences in affect intensity moderated by experiential mindsets

The present paper focuses on what psychological processes are driving people’s reactions to fair and unfair events. Specifically, by extending on ideas that people’s reactions to fair and unfair events consist at least partly of affect-related responses, and by adopting the assumption made in cognitive-experiential self-theory that the operation of experiential mindsets is intimately associated with affect-related experiences, we formulate the hypothesis that individual differences in affect intensity will moderate reactions to fair and unfair events. Introducing a novel manipulation of experiential and rationalistic mindsets to the research literature, the findings of two studies indeed reveal that especially for people in experiential (vs. rationalistic) mindsets negative affective reactions to fair and unfair events increase with high (vs. low) scores on affect intensity. Implications for the literature on social justice, experiential mindsets, and affect intensity are discussed.     

Effects of Maternal Depression Symptoms and Alcohol Use Problems on Child Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems

Empirical evidence suggests maternal behavioral health problems are significant predictors of child behavioral health difficulties, but it is unclear of the specific relation of maternal alcohol use problems and depression symptoms with child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. The purpose of the study is to examine the impact of maternal depression symptoms and alcohol use problems on children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior problems over a period of 5 years. Implications for intervention may differ depending on which type of maternal behavioral health concerns predicts which child behavior problem. A total of 1874 families eligible for Early Head Start participated. Maternal depression symptoms and alcohol use problems were assessed when children were in preschool, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems were assessed when children were in fifth grade. Clinical internalizing behavior problems was best predicted by maternal depression symptoms, whereas clinical externalizing behavior problems was best predicted by maternal alcohol use problems. Children were almost twice as likely to have clinical internalizing behavior problems when mothers exhibited very elevated depression symptoms compared to when mothers displayed minimal symptoms. A similar relation was found with maternal alcohol use problems and clinical externalizing behavior problems. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding and treating various kinds of behavioral health concerns in mothers of young children.