The psychological impacts of global climate change

An appreciation of the psychological impacts of global climate change entails recognizing the complexity and multiple meanings associated with climate change; situating impacts within other social, technological, and ecological transitions; and recognizing mediators and moderators of impacts. This article describes three classes of psychological impacts: direct (e.g., acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment); indirect (e.g., threats to emotional well-being based on observation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks); and psychosocial (e.g., chronic social and community effects of heat, drought, migrations, and climate-related conflicts, and postdisaster adjustment). Responses include providing psychological interventions in the wake of acute impacts and reducing the vulnerabilities contributing to their severity; promoting emotional resiliency and empowerment in the context of indirect impacts; and acting at systems and policy levels to address broad psychosocial impacts. The challenge of climate change calls for increased ecological literacy, a widened ethical responsibility, investigations into a range of psychological and social adaptations, and an allocation of resources and training to improve psychologists' competency in addressing climate change-related impacts.     

No good deed goes unquestioned: Cynical reconstruals maintain belief in the power of self-interest

In four studies, we examined how people maintain beliefs that self-interest is a strong determinant of behavior, even in the face of disconfirming evidence. People reflecting on selfless behavior tend to reconstrue it in terms of self-interested motives, but do not similarly scrutinize selfish behaviors for selfless motives. Study 1 found that people react to new information that selfless behavior is common by interpreting it as more reflective of self-interest. Studies 2a and 2b, applying a Bayesian analysis, demonstrated that people see “too much” self-interest in seemingly selfless actions, given their prior beliefs, but see the predicted amount of self-interest in seemingly selfish actions. This demonstrates that people do not possess internally consistent belief systems, but rather undue cynicism. In Study 3, participants read about real philanthropists whose acts of generosity had been heralded by major news outlets. As participants spent more time considering why such philanthropy was performed, they formed more cynical impressions of the philanthropists' motives. Beyond offering insight into why belief in the norm of self-interest persists, these studies introduce a novel route by which beliefs resist disconfirmation.     

The influence of confidence on associations among personal attitudes, perceived injunctive norms, and alcohol consumption

Social norms theories hold that perceptions of the degree of approval for a behavior have a strong influence on one's private attitudes and public behavior. In particular, being more approving of drinking and perceiving peers as more approving of drinking, are strongly associated with one's own drinking. However, previous research has not considered that students may vary considerably in the confidence in their estimates of peer approval and in the confidence in their estimates of their own approval of drinking. The present research was designed to evaluate confidence as a moderator of associations among perceived injunctive norms, own attitudes, and drinking. We expected perceived injunctive norms and own attitudes would be more strongly associated with drinking among students who felt more confident in their estimates of peer approval and own attitudes. We were also interested in whether this might differ by gender. Injunctive norms and self-reported alcohol consumption were measured in a sample of 708 college students. Findings from negative binomial regression analyses supported moderation hypotheses for confidence and perceived injunction norms but not for personal attitudes. Thus, perceived injunctive norms were more strongly associated with own drinking among students who felt more confident in their estimates of friends' approval of drinking. A three-way interaction further revealed that this was primarily true among women. Implications for norms and peer influence theories as well as interventions are discussed.     

Something new under the Sun: forty years of philosophy of religion, with a special look at process philosophy

Looking back over the last 40 years of work in the philosophy of religion provides a fascinating vantage point from which to assess the state of the discipline today. I describe central features of American philosophy of religion in 1970 and reconstruct the last 40 years as a progression through four main stages. This analysis offers an overarching framework from which to examine the major contributions and debates of process philosophy of religion during the same period. The major thinkers, topics, positions, and controversies are presented, analyzed, and critiqued. In the concluding section I offer a critical appraisal of the state of the field today based on the results of these historical analyses.     

From reorienting of attention to biased competition: Evidence from hemifield effects

When a distractor was presented simultaneously with or directly following a target, it produced more interference when it was presented in the same visual hemifield as the target than when it was presented in the opposite visual field. This result is interpreted in terms of biased competition; there is more competition between stimuli when they are presented in the same visual field, rather than in opposite visual fields. However, when the distractor was presented 125 msec or more prior to the target, this pattern was reversed. In those cases, there was more distractor interference when target and distractor were presented in opposite visual fields. This can be explained by assuming that attention was captured by the distractor, and that there was an additional cost of reorienting to a location in the opposite visual field.     

Incidental environmental anchors

Three studies examined whether potential anchor values that are incidentally present in the environment can affect a person's numerical estimates. In Study 1, estimates of an athlete's performance were influenced by the number on his jersey. In Study 2, estimates of the proportion of sales in the domestic market were influenced by a product's model number. In Study 3, participants' estimates of how much they would spend at a restaurant were influenced by whether the restaurant was named “Studio 17” or “Studio 97.” These effects were not qualified by participants' expertise in the relevant domain (Study 1) or by their ability to subsequently recall the anchor value (Study 3). These findings document the existence of a new form of “basic anchoring” and suggest that not all basic anchoring effects are as fragile as the existing anchoring literature suggests. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motivation and memory in zebra finch (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Taeniopygia guttata</Emphasis>) foraging behavior

Remembering combinations of information such as what resources have been seen in which locations could play an important role in enhancing individual survival through increased foraging success. To date, there have been relatively few investigations of avian memory involving more than one category of information. This study explored zebra finches’ (Taeniopygia guttata) capacity to recall two categories in combination, namely food-type and spatial location. Birds were trained to remove variously weighted flaps to find two types of food hidden beneath. Memory for food-types and locations was assessed by pre-feeding the birds to satiety on and devaluing one food-type, and then testing the birds’ efficiency at finding the non-devalued food. When allowed one trial to learn locations of two food rewards that were hidden beneath lightly weighted flaps, birds performed better than chance at locating a food reward. However, they did not preferentially search for the non pre-fed food, suggesting that they were unable to recall both food type and location in combination. Zebra finches made fewer errors when tested on the one-trial task using more heavily weighted flaps than with lightly weighted flaps; there was equivocal evidence that they remembered which food type was hidden where on this task. When given repeated exposures to the locations of the two food rewards, finches located a food reward more accurately than on the one-trial tasks, and were also more likely to recall the locations of the different food types. In this foraging paradigm, experience and motivation may have influenced the birds’ performance.     

Initial Reliability and Validity of the Life Satisfaction Scale for Problem Youth in a Sample of Drug Abusing and Conduct Disordered Youth

Responses to Life Satisfaction Scale for Problem Youth (LSSPY) items were examined in a sample of 193 substance abusing and conduct disordered adolescents. In responding to the LSSPY, youth endorse their percentage of happiness (0 to 100%) in twelve domains (i.e., friendships, family, school, employment/work, fun activities, appearance, sex life/dating, use of drugs, use of alcohol, money/material possessions, transportation, control of one's life). Results indicated that the LSSPY yielded three factor structures (i.e., Social Satisfaction, External Obligations Satisfaction, Substance Use Satisfaction), demonstrated good initial psychometric properties, and appears to be a useful instrument in the evaluation of treatment outcome in problem youth. Males were more satisfied in the Social and External Obligations domains than females, although no gender differences were indicated in Substance Use Satisfaction. Caucasian, African-American, and Hispanic youths responded to LSSPY items similarly. Future directions are discussed in light of these results.     

A Cognitive Model of Customer‐Based Brand Equity for Frequently Purchased Products: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Results

The main purpose of this research is to identify the underlying cognitive structure of brand equity. Existing research on brand equity is used to identify 4 cognitive “components” of customer‐based brand equity. These are labeled as global brand attitude, strength of preference, brand knowledge, and brand heuristic. A conceptual framework of how these components (or subconstructs) are interrelated is proposed and empirically tested using data from 2 frequently purchased product categories. Covariance structure modeling is used as the analysis methodology. The results indicate that all the identified cognitive components are important determinants of customer‐based brand equity. Specifically, the brand heuristic component serves as an important mediator in 2 “cognitive chains” that link global brand attitude to brand knowledge and global brand attitude to strength of preference, respectively. The study findings have important implications for designing equity maintenance strategies for frequently purchased products.     

Body Image Concerns and Contingent Self-Esteem in Male and Female College Students

Body dissatisfaction in females, and to a lesser extent males, is associated with low self-esteem, depression, and eating disorders. This research examined gender as a moderator of the association between contingent self-esteem and body image concerns, including weight and muscularity. Participants included 359 (59.1% female) heavy drinking first-year U.S. undergraduate students who completed a survey assessing health-related risk behaviors. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to examine relations among gender, contingent self-esteem, and body image. Females reported higher levels of contingent self-esteem and greater concerns about their weight, although males reported a greater drive for muscularity. The relationship between contingent self-esteem and weight concerns was stronger among females, and for males, greater contingent self-esteem was associated with a greater drive for muscularity.