Materialism,Spending, and Affect: An Event-Sampling Study of Marketplace Behavior and Its Affective Costs

Research on materialism has burgeoned in the last two decades, yet little is known about how people higher versus lower in this consumer values orientation differ in their day-to-day spending habits and in their emotional reactions to spending on purchases. The present study used an event-sampling method over a 3-week period to address these questions in a community adult sample. Results showed that over the course of the sampling period, high materialists made more discretionary purchases and spent more money on necessity purchases than did those lower in materialism, even though their incomes did not differ. Despite higher levels of spending, high materialists experienced a “letdown” after spending, as they reported more post-purchase unpleasant affect than did low materialists. This result was not moderated by level of dispositional unpleasant affect, purchase type, or purchase amounts.     

A seven year follow-up of treating rumination with dietary satiation

”Fred“, a man with profound mental retardation who was 24 years old at the beginning of this study, was referred for treatment of rumination. A number of minimally restrictive interventions, including administration of Zantac, extra fluids, and delivery of peanut butter after meals, had been used without success. In April of 1989 Fred began a satiation diet with ad libitum access to starchy foods or to fruits and vegetables, in addition to his regular meals. His baseline weight was 82 pounds and he ruminated during 58% of 10 s intervals measured during 20 min post-meal observations. During the first month of the satiation diet, Fred's ruminating declined to 6% of measured intervals, he consumed a mean of 163 fluid ounces of extra food per day, and his weight increased to 90 pounds. After 4 months' treatment, Fred's ruminating had declined to zero, his food consumption had stabilized at approximately 65 extra ounces of food per day, and his weight had stabilized at about 120 pounds. Starting in August 1990, in an effort to minimize weight gain, extra food was limited to 50% of Fred's ad libitum food consumption (averaged over the previous 6 weeks). Fred's weight gradually declined to about 100 pounds with zero rumination over the next two years. In August 1992 Fred's ruminating accelerated to 17% of intervals and he was again offered ad libitum food access. Over the next 7 months, rumination declined to zero and his weight increased slightly to about 105 pounds. This study shows that rumination that had not responded to less restrictive procedures was suppressed for 7 years via dietary satiation. Although dietary satiation is not without some risk, Fred has suffered no adverse effects from the procedure, other than gaining approximately one-third of his baseline weight. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Special perspective: An immodest proposal: should treating mental health professionals be barred from testifying about their patients?

Notwithstanding ethical rules that address therapeutic and forensic role conflicts for psychologists and psychiatrists, overzealous patient advocacy by therapists, tightened reimbursement for therapy, and a growth market for forensic psychology and psychiatry, have led many therapists to appear willingly as forensic experts on behalf of their patients. Existing ethical rules, as well as other proposed approaches to address this problem, assume that it can be resolved by modest changes in existing practice that permit therapists to testify as long as their testimony avoids psycholegal opinions. This essay questions whether these modest changes can adequately address this problem and advances consideration of a more radical proposal to address this problem, prohibiting therapists from testifying about their patients. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visual attention and academic performance in children with developmental disabilities and behavioural attention deficits

Despite well‐documented attention deficits in children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), distinctions across types of attention problems and their association with academic attainment has not been fully explored. This study examines visual attention capacities and inattentive/hyperactive behaviours in 77 children aged 4 to 11 years with IDD and elevated behavioural attention difficulties. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 23), Down syndrome (DS; n = 22), and non‐specific intellectual disability (NSID; n = 32) completed computerized visual search and vigilance paradigms. In addition, parents and teachers completed rating scales of inattention and hyperactivity. Concurrent associations between attention abilities and early literacy and numeracy skills were also examined. Children completed measures of receptive vocabulary, phonological abilities and cardinality skills. As expected, the results indicated that all groups had relatively comparable levels of inattentive/hyperactive behaviours as rated by parents and teachers. However, the extent of visual attention deficits varied as a result of group; namely children with DS had poorer visual search and vigilance abilities than children with ASD and NSID. Further, significant associations between visual attention difficulties and poorer literacy and numeracy skills were observed, regardless of group. Collectively the findings demonstrate that in children with IDD who present with homogenous behavioural attention difficulties, at the cognitive level, subtle profiles of attentional problems can be delineated.     

Risk communication of terrorist acts, natural disasters, and criminal violence: comparing the processes of understanding and responding

Risk communication is an important vehicle for the scientific understanding of the perception of and response to various kinds of threats. The present study provides apparently the first empirical attempt to compare perceptions, decision‐making, and anticipated action in response to threats of three kinds: natural disaster, violent crime, and terrorism. A total of 258 college undergraduates were surveyed using a vignette‐based, 2 × 2 × 3 between‐subjects design that systematically manipulated threat imminence (high vs. low), risk level (high vs. low), and nature of the threat (natural disaster vs. crime vs. terrorism). There were substantial differences in participants' perceptions and reported actions in response to natural disaster, relative to the other domains of risk, under conditions of high risk. The risk of natural disaster was more likely to lead participants to report that they would change their daily activities and to relocate. It was also more likely than terrorism to lead to action securing the home. It appears that the mechanisms for perception, decision‐making, and action in response to threats cannot be generalized in a straightforward way across these domains of threat. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relationship between Religiosity and Drug Use among “At Risk” Women

This study focuses on the interplay between religiosity and drug use in a sample of 250 adult women from the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area who were interviewed between August 1997 and August 2000. The research addresses two principal questions: (1) Is there a relationship between the level of religiosity and the amount of illegal drug use reported? (2) If so, is this relationship maintained in multivariate analysis when the effects of other potentially relevant factors like demographic characteristics, childhood maltreatment experiences, psychosocial traits, and substance user-related measures are taken into account? We found that religiosity is related to the amount of drugs women used. Four variables were retained in the final multivariate drug use prediction model: religiosity, coping with everyday stresses, number of family members who are substance abusers, and amount of oral sex. Greater amounts of drugs were used by women who were less religious, less capable of coping with stress, had more drug-abusing family members, and reported having more oral sex. Together, these items explained nearly one-fifth of the variance in the dependent variable. The implications for substance abuse prevention and intervention efforts are discussed.     

Making e‐working work

It is estimated that by 2010 there will be 20 million full‐ and part‐time telecommuters working in the United States. The purpose of this article is to assist employment counselors in their work with organizations in implementing e‐worker programs as well as in their counseling of e‐workers. The authors define e‐worker, summarize the growth of e‐worker programs, outline benefits and drawbacks to teleworking, discuss critical elements of a successful teleworker program, and elaborate on potential strategies for becoming a successful e‐worker.