Policy bundling to overcome loss aversion: A method for improving legislative outcomes

Policies that would create net benefits for society that contain salient costs frequently lack enough support for enactment because losses loom larger than gains. To address this consequence of loss aversion, we propose a policy-bundling technique in which related bills involving both losses and gains are combined to offset separate bills’ costs while preserving their net benefits. We argue this method can transform unpopular individual pieces of legislation, which would lack the support for implementation, into more popular policies. Study 1 confirms that bundling increases support for bills with costs and benefits and that bundled legislation is valued more than the sum of its parts. Study 2 shows this finding stems from a diminished focus on losses and heightened focus on gains. Study 3 extends our findings to policies involving costs and benefits of the same type (e.g., lives) generated by different sources (e.g., food vs. fire safety).     

Dementia has a categorical, not dimensional, latent structure

Recently, Walters ("Dementia: Continuum or distinct entity?", Psychology and Aging, 2010, 25, 534-544) published a taxometric study suggesting a dimensional latent structure for the construct of dementia. However, because that study did not conceptualize dementia according to accepted conventions (i.e., there were no measures of cognitive change or independent functioning), its results may represent a false negative error caused by insufficient content coverage. We replicated Walters, and we used the same taxometric methods and the same data source-but with indicators of cognitive change and functional independence. Our results support a categorical interpretation of dementia; whereas Walters' results suggest that cognitive ability, rather than dementia, is dimensional in nature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Children's use of semantic organizational strategies is mediated by working memory capacity

In adults, the ability to apply semantic grouping strategies has been found to depend on working memory. To investigate this relation in children, two sort-recall tasks (one without and one with a grouping instruction) were administered to 6–12-year-olds. The role of working memory was examined by means of mediation analyses and by assessing whether children who successfully used the semantic grouping strategy had higher working memory capacity than did children who did not show such strategy use. Only children aged 8–12 were able to successfully use semantic grouping strategies (and 8–9-year-olds only after instruction), while strategy use was absent in 6–7-year-olds. Both types of analysis involving working memory suggested that, also in children, working memory (and not short-term memory) mediates the development of successful use of the semantic grouping strategy during both encoding and retrieval.     

'Please don't put the whole dang thing out there!': a discursive analysis of internet discussions around infant feeding

The promotion of breastfeeding is an important focus of intervention for professionals working to improve infant health outcomes. Literature in this area focuses largely on 'choices' and 'barriers to breastfeeding'. It is our argument, however, that women's cultural context plays a key role in infant feeding 'choices'. In this article, we explore contested representations of infant feeding and infant feeding choices in public debates conducted on a large British parenting website. To sample dominant representations of infant feeding circulating in UK culture, two threads were chosen from the debating board of a busy online parenting community (105 and 99 individual posts, respectively). Participants on the threads were largely women. A feminist informed Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to deconstruct the intersecting constructions of gender, childhood and motherhood implicit in public discussions about infant feeding choices. We identify dominant constructions of women who breastfeed or bottle feed, social representations of both forms of infant feeding, and explore the relationship between constructions of infant feeding choices and constructions of 'good' or 'bad' motherhood. This analysis functions to trouble the individualist assumptions underpinning the notion of infant feeding 'choices', considering the cultural context within which British mothers 'choose' how to feed their babies.     

Content of maternal open-ended questions and statements in reminiscing with their 4-year-olds: links with independence and interdependence orientation in European contexts

Mother's open-ended questions and elaborative statements during reminiscing were analysed for their content (child agency, co-agency, non-social, and social context) in three cultural contexts. Participants were 115 mothers and their 4-year-old children: 35 dyads from Berlin, Germany, 42 from Stockholm, Sweden, and 38 from Tallinn, Estonia. Across samples the most prominent content was talk about non-social context followed by co-agency and child agency. Tallinn mothers asked the children to talk about themselves, and Berlin mothers asked the children to talk about themselves together with other people, more frequently than they talked about these contents themselves. The content was related to the cultural orientations of mothers assessed through questionnaires: the Berlin mothers whose independence/ interdependence ratio was higher talked less about other people and asked the children fewer questions about other people; the Stockholm mothers with a higher independence/interdependence ratio talked more about child agency. In Tallinn both correlations existed on a trend level. The results are discussed in the light of common conversational practices and mothers' orientation to independence and interdependence in these cultural contexts.     

Gender Differences and Similarities in Strategies for Managing Conflict with Friends and Romantic Partners

Using hypothetical vignettes, we investigated the extent to which gender differences in conflict-management strategies depended on the relationship context of a same-gender friendship vs. a romantic relationship. Associations between conflict-management strategies, goals and gender-typed traits also were assessed. Men (131) and women (203) undergraduate students (19–25?years) from a state university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States participated. To assess expressive and instrumental personality traits, participants completed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence and Helmreich 1978). Participants also rated their endorsement of communal and agentic goals and strategies for managing hypothetical conflicts presented in the “Peer Conflict Management Questionnaire.” This questionnaire, created for the purposes of this study, consisted of 4 vignettes that portrayed hypothetical conflicts with a friend and a romantic partner. Results showed that women were more likely than men to endorse communal strategies when managing conflict with a same-gender friend, but not with a romantic partner. Women were more likely than men to endorse agentic strategies for managing conflict with a romantic partner, but not with a same-gender friend. For conflicts with a same-gender friend, communal goals, but not expressive traits or gender, predicted communal strategy endorsement. For conflicts with a romantic partner, gender and agentic goals predicted agentic strategies; instrumental traits did not. Implications for understanding consequences of gender-typed relationship processes are discussed. The contextual specificity of gender differences and similarities are emphasized.     

Are the symptoms of cannabis use disorder best accounted for by dimensional, categorical, or factor mixture models? A comparison of male and female young adults

Despite the consensus that criteria for cannabis abuse and dependence and symptoms of withdrawal are best explained by a single latent liability, it remains unknown whether alternative models provide a better explanation of these criteria. A series of latent factor, latent class, and hybrid factor mixture models were fitted to data from 872 recent cannabis users from the Minnesota Twin Family Study who completed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., revised, and 4th ed.) diagnostic criteria for cannabis abuse, dependence, and symptoms of withdrawal. Despite theoretical appeal, results did not support latent class or factor mixture modeling. Instead, symptoms of abuse, dependence, and withdrawal were better summarized by a single latent factor Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) for male and female young adults. An almost 2-fold sex difference in item endorsement was best explained by a single mean difference on the CUD factor, indicating that young men have a greater latent liability toward expressing CUD.     

Peripheral oxytocin administration buffers autonomic but not behavioral responses to environmental stressors in isolated prairie voles

Negative social experiences such as social stressors and isolation influence mental and physical illnesses, including affective disorders and heart disease. Studies focused on socially monogamous prairie voles can provide insight into neurobiological systems that underlie the consequences of negative social interactions. Female prairie voles were exposed to 28 days of social isolation or pairing with a female sibling (control). Voles were administered daily oxytocin [20 μg/50 μl, subcutaneous (sc)] or saline vehicle (50 μl, sc) for 14 days and exposed to two behavioral stressors [elevated plus maze (EPM) and resident-intruder test]. Brain tissue was collected for analysis of central peptide levels in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN). Isolation produced autonomic changes [increased heart rate (HR) and decreased HR variability) during both acute stressors and increased anxiety behaviors in the EPM. Oxytocin injection prevented the autonomic consequences of the acute stressors in isolated prairie voles, but did not affect the behaviors tested under the present conditions. Oxytocin had no effect on the behavioral or autonomic responsiveness in paired prairie voles. Oxytocin injection may exert a beneficial effect on autonomic responses to stressors in isolated animals through increasing the number of oxytocin-containing neurons and decreasing the number of corticotropin-releasing hormone-containing neurons in the PVN. Oxytocinergic mechanisms may serve to compensate for autonomic responses associated with chronic isolation and exposure to both social and non-social acute stressors.     

Barriers to and Motivations for Physician Referral of Patients to Cancer Genetics Clinics

Although it is well known that under-referral of colon cancer patients to cancer genetics clinics is a chronic problem, no study has yet examined why physicians may be ordering testing independently rather than referring patients to cancer genetics clinics. The current study explored variables which may impact a physician’s preference for ordering testing independently or referring patients to outside cancer genetics experts. An online questionnaire, distributed to the membership of the American College of Gastroenterology and the American Society of Colorectal Surgeons, yielded responses from 298 physicians. Motivations to refer to cancer genetics clinics rather than order testing independently included fear of genetic discrimination and a belief that patients benefit from genetic counseling about the risks, benefits and consequences of testing. These results suggest that in order to increase referrals, genetic counselors must educate physicians about the unique benefits patients receive from participating in genetic counseling.