Personal space invasions in the lavatory: suggestive evidence for arousal.

The hypothesis that personal space invasions produce arousal was investigated in a field experiment. A men's lavatory provided a setting where norms for privacy were salient, where personal space invasions could occur in the case of men urinating, where the opportunity for compensatory responses to invasion were minimal, and where proximity-induced arousal could be measured. Research on micturation indicates that social stressors inhibit relaxation of the external urethral sphincter, which would delay the onset of micturation, and that they increase intravesical pressure, which would shorten the duration of micturation once begun. Sixty lavatory users were randomly assigned to one of three levels of interpersonal distance and their micturation times were recorded. In a three-urinal lavatory, a confederate stood immediately adjacent to a subject, one urinal removed, or was absent. Paralleling the results of a correlational pilot study, close interpersonal distances increased the delay of onset and decreased the persistence of micturation. These findings provide objective evidence that personal space invasions produce physiological changes associated with arousal.     

Pseudo-Subjectivity in Counseling

Leaders in the field of counseling have stressed an integration of objective and subjective attitudes as being essential to the counselor. Yet, a review of the literature concerning the ideal characteristics of counselors shows a heavy emphasis on subjective traits, such as warmth, acceptance, and understanding. The authors are critical of such an overemphasis and point to studies of effective people which demonstrate the importance of objective traits and attitudes as well. A recommendation is made for the recognition of individual differences in the selection of counselors and for the strengthening of objective attitudes and skills in the training of counselors.     

Forms of social awareness and helping

People encounter situations from different forms of awareness; that is, they can attend to different focal topics (e.g., self, other person, or other person's situation) from different perspectives (e.g., the self's viewpoint, the other person's viewpoint). Two studies assessed whether brief interactions would produce different forms of social awareness, whether the form of awareness would persist to a subsequent interaction, and whether it would influence helping in that encounter. Pedestrians on a city sidewalk were induced to become self-focused (experimenter took their picture), become other-focused (they took experimenter's picture), or empathically adopt the perspective of another person (they advised experimenter where to take a picture). In Study 1, subjects were interviewed after leaving the experimenter. First- and third-person pronoun use and self-ratings suggested that subjects had different forms of awareness. In Study 2, pedestrians participated in one of the same three interaction conditions or a control noninteraction condition and subsequently encountered a confederate in need of help. Subjects in the self-focused and empathic condition helped more than subjects in the other-focused or control condition. Results suggest that forms of awareness created in a brief interaction do persist to subsequent interactions and influence helping. Other variables may influence helping by altering forms of social awareness.     

Steven Wear,Informed Consent: Patient Autonomy and Clinician Beneficence Within Health Care

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Factors Influencing Women Over 40 Years to Take Precautions Against Cervical Cancer

This study investigated whether the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Health Belief Model (HBM) would predict older women's intention to have regular Pap smear tests. The sample was a group of 144 women aged 40 years and over. Results showed that each model was a significant predictor of intention. Results also indicated that for some women the sex of the doctor was a significant factor in their decision to have a Pap test. Interview data indicated that some general practitioners did not believe it was necessary for older women to have a regular Pap test. These findings have application in planning health education campaigns.     

WINDSORT: A fully automated technique for collecting sort data for multidimensional scaling analysis

WINDSORT is a microcomputer program that uses an automated sorting procedure to collect the preprocess proximity data commonly analyzed using multidimensional scaling. The traditional manual sorting task is less tedious, more enjoyable, and far easier for subjects to perform than the tasks that are used in alternative data-collection techniques. However, complete automation of the sorting task has not previously been fully successful WINDSORT uses a form of the hierarchical sorting technique which is reputed to yield richer data than single-sort techniques A maximum of 45 stimuli can be scaled using WINDSORT. Resulting output includes dissimilarity matrices which are ready to analyze using MDS.     

Data-Driven Belief Revision in Children and Adults

The ability to use numerical evidence to revise beliefs about the physical world is an essential component of scientific reasoning that begins to develop in middle childhood. In 2 studies, we explored how data variability and consistency with participants’ initial beliefs about causal factors associated with pendulums affected their ability to revise those beliefs. Children (9–11 years old) and college-aged adults ran experiments in which they generated, recorded, and interpreted data so as to identify factors that might affect the period of a pendulum. In Study 1, several children and most adults used observed evidence to revise their initial understanding, but participants were more likely to change incorrect noncausal beliefs to causal beliefs than the reverse. In Study 2, we oriented participants toward either an “engineering” goal (to get an effect) or a “science” goal (to discover the causal structure of the domain) and presented them with variable data about potentially causal factors. Science goals produced more belief revision than engineering goals. Numerical data, when presented in context, with appropriate structure, can help children and adults reexamine their beliefs and initiate and support the process of conceptual change and robust scientific thinking.     

The Southeast Asian Regional Conference on Scientific and Applied Psychology: Mumbai

Mumbai was the venue for the Southeast Asian Regional Conference on Scientific and Applied Psychology, which was held from 17–20 December 2001. This major event was organized by the Bombay Psychological Association (BPA), the Department of Psychology of SNDT Women's University in Mumbai, and the University of Mumbai's Department of Applied Psychology. It was sponsored by the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS), and the International Association for Cross Cultural Psychology (IACCP). With a view not only of strengthening the interface of the science and practice of psychology but also of stimulating the development of professional psychology, the Conference was an outstanding success as evidenced by the depth and quality of its scientific program and its wide attendance.     

What's really wrong with Laudan's normative naturalism

The article presents a critical discussion of Larry Laudan's naturalistic metamethodological theory known as normative naturalism (NN). I examine the strongest extant objection to NN, and, with reference to ideas in Freedman ( Philosophy of Science , 66 (Proceedings), pp. S526-S537, 1999), show how NN survives it. I then go on to outline two problems that really do compromise NN. The first revolves around Laudan's conception of the relationship between scientific values and the history of science. Laudan argues we can make sense of progress in science without seeing great scientists in the past as having held the cognitive values and methodological rules we hold today as important for science. I argue this is extremely implausible, and moreover that Laudan must see our values today as justified by reference to the values of past scientists if he is to avoid a pernicious form of relativism. The second problem with NN is that its conception of methodological rules--as hypothetical imperatives linking cognitive means to ends--is untenable. Such rules would not be needed in a scientific community; moreover it is doubtful whether they should class as rules at all. I conclude by suggesting that the distinction between cognitive means and ends which undergirds Laudan's view is intuitively not well founded, and in any case does not provide sufficient materials for a viable normative naturalized epistemology.