An Assessment of Romantic Commitment Among Black and White Dating Couples1

The purpose of this study was to test the utility of the Investment Model (Rusbult, 1980) of romantic commitment for black and white dating couples. Twenty black and 20 white college dating couples completed questionnaires measuring the Investment Model components and additional variables. According to the Investment Model, the level of romantic commitment is positively related to relationship satisfaction and positively related to the magnitude of personal investments, but negatively related to the availability of romantic alternatives. We expected the romantic commitment of black couples to differ from that of white couples due to the shortage of available black male partners. The only racial differences to emerge, however, were found in a Race8 Gender interaction: Commitment increased with an increase in satisfaction for white males, but not black males. Gender differences indicated that the Investment Model provided a better account of the commitment of females. We also examined the role of two other factors in the prediction of commitment: perceived physical attractiveness of the partner and concern about AIDS. Both factors were significantly related to commitment for males, but not females, and neither of these factors demonstrated racial differences.     

Declarativeand nondeclarativememory in opposition:When priorevents influence amnesicpatients morethan normal subjects

Amnesic patients and normal subjects read the names of nonfamous persons. Then, after being told that all the names were nonfamous, subjects judged the fame of names on a mixed list of new famous names, old nonfamous names, and new nonfamous names. Finally, they took a recognition memory test involving old and new nonfamous names. In this way, declarative (explicit) memory and nondeclarative (implicit) memory were placed in opposition. That is, recollection that a name had been recently presented (and was therefore nonfamous) opposed the focilitatory effect by which prior presentation ordinarily increases the tendency to judge that name as famous. Normal subjects exhibited good recognition memory and no fame-judgment effect—that is, no difference in fame judgments for new and old nonfamous names. By contrast, for the amnesic patients recognition memory was poor, but astrong fame-judgment effect occurred—that is, amnesic patients judged old nonfamousnames as famous. The results provide additional evidence that the fame-judgment effect is supported fully by nondeclarative (implicit) memory and is independent of the limbic/diencephalicbrain structures damaged in amnesia.     

Cultural Ethnocentrism and Imperialism in Citations of American and Scandinavian Psychological Research

The present study was conducted in order to document the extent to which ethnocentrism and imperialism exist in American and Scandinavian reports of psychological research. Journal citation analyses indicated that articles appearing in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology referenced numerous U.S. resources but also many resources from Europe and other parts of the world. In contrast, articles published in American journals cited a preponderance of U.S. sources and, for the most part, excluded reference to Scandinavian psychological research. These findings were interpreted as indicating the existence of empirical ethnocentrism in U.S. journal citations, and media-based cultural imperialism in Scandinavian reports of psychological research.     

Reconstructive group therapy with HIV-affected people

This paper describes reconstructive group therapy with people affected by AIDS. It begins with the therapeutic need as we defined it in the AIDS-affected community and the practicalities of the group therapies we offered. The reconstructive perspective, based on personal construct theory, is then explored and applied to interpret both the psychosocial functioning of AIDS-affected people and group therapy. The group therapy process is described: client engagement and group beginnings, goals, group rules, leadership roles, group experiments, group issues and endings. Some problems that arose are then identified; and a sample of group process is provided. Finally, the appropriateness of the reconstructive perspective and of group therapy for these clients is discussed, together with the identification of the major ethical issues and some recommendations for its use.     

How the Anthropocene Changes Religious Ethics

Humans are remaking the planet, with the planetary human imprint so profound that all planetary systems are being changed: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and cryosphere (water and ice), the lithosphere (Earth's crust), and the biosphere (the community of life). The changes are so deep and far reaching that a new geological epoch, the first effected by humans, has set in, the Anthropocene. It succeeds the only geological epoch human civilizations have known, the late Holocene. The tattoo of the Holocene, climate stability, is replaced by climate volatility, mass eco-social uncertainty, and extinction. Because the Anthropocene is itself the outcome of cumulative human choices, everything in response also turns on ethics. In this case, that entails rethinking and reforming human responsibility. This essay pursues that, after making the case for climate and the Anthropocene as a new prism for Religious Ethics, one that changes the work of Religious Ethics itself.     

Effect sizes in ANCOVA and difference-in-differences designs

It is common practice in both randomized and quasi-experiments to adjust for baseline characteristics when estimating the average effect of an intervention. The inclusion of a pre-test, for example, can reduce both the standard error of this estimate and—in non-randomized designs—its bias. At the same time, it is also standard to report the effect of an intervention in standardized effect size units, thereby making it comparable to other interventions and studies. Curiously, the estimation of this effect size, including covariate adjustment, has received little attention. In this article, we provide a framework for defining effect sizes in designs with a pre-test (e.g., difference-in-differences and analysis of covariance) and propose estimators of those effect sizes. The estimators and approximations to their sampling distributions are evaluated using a simulation study and then demonstrated using an example from published data.