INFLUENCING CHILDREN'S PREGAMBLING GAME PLAYING VIA CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION TRAINING

Past research has demonstrated a transformation of stimulus functions under similar conditions using gambling tasks and adults (e.g., Zlomke & Dixon, 2006), and the present study attempted to extend this research. Experimenters exposed 7 children (ages 7 to 10 years) to a simulated board game with concurrently available dice differing only by color. Following initial exposure to the game, participants were trained to discriminate between two contextual cues representing the relational frames of more than and less than. Following the training procedure, experimenters reexposed participants to the simulated board game. Six of the 7 participants demonstrated an increased preference toward the die with the color that had been paired with more than during the conditional discrimination training.     

Status of the provoker,opportunity to retaliate,and interest in video violence

Two hypotheses derived from affect-dependent stimulus arrangement theory [Zillmann D, Bryant J (1985): In: “Selective Exposure to Communication.” Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.] were tested: (1) provoked persons will express less interest in seeing video violence than will those not provoked, unless they anticipate an opportunity to retaliate against their provocateur; and (2) when provoked persons anticipate an opportunity to retaliate against a provocateur who is not high status, they will express greater interest in seeing video violence than will those not provoked. After being provoked or not provoked by a high or low status experimenter, half the 160 male college student participants were led to believe that their evaluation of the experimenter would determine the experimenter's grade for conducting the research, and half were not given any reason to expect an opportunity to evaluate him. Then each man indicated his degree of interest in seeing each of twelve video selections that had been described in brief paragraphs, three each in four content categories: aggressive, humorous, mildly erotic, and neutral. In confirmation of the first hypothesis, provoked subjects who did not anticipate opportunity to retaliate expressed less interest in seeing aggressive material than did those not provoked. In relationship to the second hypothesis, provoked subjects showed the greatest interest in aggressive video material when they anticipated an opportunity to retaliate against a low status provocateur, but their interest was not greater than corresponding nonangered subjects. The effect of provocation upon interest in the other categories of video material was generally in line with what would be predicted from the theory. When there was no anticipated opportunity to retaliate, interest in humorous material was greater in provoked subjects than in those not provoked. In the case of the mildly erotic category of video selections, there was less interest expressed among provoked subjects when they anticipated having a chance to retaliate against a low status experimenter.     

The relation between subjects and their conscious experiences

Philosophical Studies - One of the most poorly understood features of consciousness is the relation between an experience and the subject of the experience. In this paper, I develop an ontology of...     

Neighborhood violent crime and adolescent relationship aggression

Research has shown that neighborhoods play a role in the etiology of violence. However, few adolescent relationship aggression (ARA) studies have objective measures of violent neighborhoods. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of youth, this study examines the association between ARA and local levels of violent crime (measured using geocoded Uniform Crime Report data from each of the youths’ residential neighborhoods). Study analyses are based on survey data from 723 youth (ages 10–18) in current or recent dating relationships (351 males and 372 females) in the Survey on Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV), a national representative household panel survey exploring interpersonal violence and related aggression among adolescents. About 19% of the sample reported ARA victimization in their most recent dating relationship (ARA perpetration was 17%). Neighborhood violent crime in the study (males living in 86.9 and females 99.8) was slightly lower than the national average of 100. With a broad national sample, 40% non-Whites, hypotheses guided by theories of neighborhood influence were tested. The study did not find an association between neighborhood violent crime and ARA victimization and perpetration, controlling for key demographic factors. The results, for a broad range of high- and low-crime neighborhoods, suggest that neighborhood violence does not seem to affect individual rates of ARA. The results suggest the ARA victimization and perpetration are perhaps ubiquitous and found both in low and high violent crime neighborhoods, suggesting that addressing local violent crime rates alone does not seem to be a path to also reducing ARA.     

Public Attitudes about Transgender Participation in Sports: The Roles of Gender,Gender Identity Conformity,and Sports Fandom

Sex Roles - We examine the roles of gender, gender attitudes, and interest in sports on public attitudes about transgender people’s participation in athletics. Using a representative survey...     

Compensating for Innovation: Extreme Product Incongruity Encourages Consumers to Affirm Unrelated Consumption Schemas

New products are often extremely incongruent with expectations. The inability to make sense of these products elevates anxiety and leads to negative evaluations. Although scholars have predominantly focused on combating the negative response to extreme incongruity, we propose that extreme incongruity may have implications that extend beyond the category. We base our predictions on the concept of fluid compensation, which suggests that when people struggle to make sense of something, they will nonconsciously reinforce highly accessible schemas in unrelated domains. Four studies confirm that extreme incongruity encourages fluid compensation, such that it elevates preference for dominant brands (study 1), green consumption (studies 2 and 4), and ethnocentric products (study 3). We isolate the causal role of anxiety using moderation tasks and biometric feedback. Furthermore, we demonstrate that compensation has an immediate dampening effect on arousal intensity. Thus, if consumers can compensate before explicitly evaluating an extremely incongruent product, their evaluations tend not to be negative. Taken together, we document that extreme innovations encourage compensation, and in compensating, consumers can become more receptive to extreme innovations.     

Equity and derogation of those against whom we have aggressed

Casting the classic provocation-retaliation paradigm in an equity framework, we hypothesized that persons realizing their retribution was excessive would derogate their victim, but only when they did not anticipate an opportunity to compensate her. After retaliating against a peer who had harshly evaluated their essays, 40 female undergraduates were informed that either a serious or mild misfortune had recently been suffered by their partner, and were led to believe that at the outset of the experiment they had carelessly overlooked this “mitigating” information. Half the participants anticipated a later opportunity to do a favor for the other woman. Regardless of the severity of the mitigating information the women were more negative in their evaluation of the partner when they did not anticipate a subsequent opportunity to do the partner a favor. The results are discussed in terms of equity restoration in reactions to having aggressed. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.