Contexts and experimentalism in the psychology of Gabriele Buccola (1875-1885)

Gabriele Buccola, since his untimely death, often has been mentioned as the first Italian psychologist who developed a strict program of laboratory research. Buccola, a Sicilian of Albanian ancestry, is a "case" in the history of Italian psychology. A self-taught positivist, he established a relation with the major representatives of the European positivism. Kraepelin mentions him as one of the precursors of his project of applying experimental psychology to psychopathology. Buccola actually carried out research on the psychological, chemical-biological, and psychopathological "modifiers" of reaction times, following an experimental program dealing mainly with the differential study both of basic and superior psychological processes, with mental hygiene ends. Historians of psychology agree in considering Buccola the first Italian laboratory psychologist to plan a program of research that was close to European psychological experimentalism.The present article, starting from an outline of Buccola's role in the rising Italian scientific psychology, recontextualizes his experimentalism in an international sphere. This operation, which is carried out through a careful survey of Buccola's entire production-both theoretical and more properly scientific-is based on the search of the Darwinian, Spencerian, and Haeckelian evolutionist themes emerging from Buccola's program of research-a program that was influenced by the variegated European experimental panorama and characterized by the vision of science as a knowledge capable of transforming the nature of man and of society.     

Stereotype threat: the moderating role of Locus of Control beliefs

The goal of the present study was to test the moderating role of Locus of Control beliefs on performance deficits typically associated with stereotype threat. The results from Experiment 1 were consistent with predictions. First, consistent with the Stereotype Threat model, participants showed a decrease in performance when the task was perceived as a potential test of the in‐group's negative stereotype (lacking logical mathematical intelligence in the case of women and lacking social intelligence in the case of men). Most important, participants' Locus of Control beliefs were found to moderate participants' vulnerability to stereotype threat: individuals with an Internal Locus of Control, although generally performing better, showed a sharper decrease in the stereotype threat condition compared to individuals with External Locus of Control beliefs. Experiment 2 replicated the results from Experiment 1. Findings are discussed in relation to the psychological characteristics of Internal Locus of Control that may render individuals more vulnerable to the negative effects of stereotype threat. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Depression and Anxiety in Roman Catholic Secular Clergy

A nationally selected random sample of Roman Catholic secular priests was investigated using the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form Y. Additionally, a Self-Report Inventory requested information regarding participants' demographics as well as four categories of predictor variables (i.e., Vocational Satisfaction, Social Support, Spiritual Activities, Physical Environment) potentially associated with depression and anxiety. The study yielded a return rate of 64%. Secular clergy reported significantly greater depression and anxiety (both state and trait) than are reported in the general population. Low Vocational Satisfaction was found to be predictive of depression as well as both state and trait anxiety. Additionally, low Social Support was found to be predictive of state and trait anxiety. When the significant predictor variables were conceptually collapsed, it appeared that both people and place were significantly related to Roman Catholic secular priests' experience of depression and anxiety.     

Fer cryin' out loud — There is a sex difference

Self-reported crying behavior of 307 female and 285 male university students was studied. Female subjects reported crying significantly more frequently and intensely than did male subjects. In all six interpersonal situations female subjects indicated greater likelihood of crying than did male subjects. Significantly more females than males indicated they would cry in 17 of 20 stimulus situations. Where there were significant sex differences in reporting of postcrying affect, a higher percentage of females than of males indicated that they experienced the feelings described. The sample, with few exceptions, viewed females as crying more frequently than males. Despite these sex differences, many evidences of similarity between the sexes in crying behavior were found.An earlier version of this article was presented at the Western Psychological Association Meetings in San Diego, April 1979.     

Multimodal communication and spatial binding in pied currawongs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Strepera graculina</Emphasis>)

To make accurate assessments about their environment, animals must integrate a variety of sensory cues into a single unified percept. The effects of redundant multimodal signaling may be equivalent to the responses elicited by each individual cue, or enhanced when cues are combined. Binding of two seemingly coupled cues can persist despite small spatial and temporal discrepancies in signal presentation, a phenomenon termed the ventriloquist effect. Our study had two aims: first, to test the cognitive ability of a territorial, forest-dwelling bird to bind two spatially disparate cues; and second, to define the processing of the acoustic and visual cues as having either equivalent or enhanced effects when presented together. We broadcasted pied currawong (Strepera graculina) vocalizations alone or in the presence of a model currawong situated either adjacent to, or far away from a speaker, to free-living currawongs. The number of locomotive events and the average standard deviation in the distance from the speaker maintained by the focal currawong were greater in response to "far" than "close" treatments. Additionally, the average standard deviation of the distance to speaker for the uni-modal, speaker only treatment was similar to "far" responses. These findings support our hypothesis that currawongs cognitively bind two stimuli in close spatial proximity. In nature, this would result in an enhanced level of response toward territorial intruders. Our study was novel in its attempt to assess cognitive processes involved in the integration of spatially disparate bimodal signaling events in free-living birds.     

The role of the self in mindblindness in autism

Since its inception the 'mindblindness' theory of autism has greatly furthered our understanding of the core social-communication impairments in autism spectrum conditions (ASC). However, one of the more subtle issues within the theory that needs to be elaborated is the role of the 'self'. In this article, we expand on mindblindness in ASC by addressing topics related to the self and its central role in the social world and then review recent research in ASC that has yielded important insights by contrasting processes relating to both self and other. We suggest that new discoveries lie ahead in understanding how self and other are interrelated and/or distinct, and how understanding atypical self-referential and social-cognitive mechanisms may lead to novel ideas as to how to facilitate social-communicative abilities in ASC.     

The concept of personality in 19th-century French and 20th-century American psychology

Since the 1920s, the road to the acknowledgement of personality psychology as a field of scientific psychology that has individuality as its object began with the founding of the discipline by Gordon W. Allport. Historians of psychology have made serious attempts to reconstruct the cultural, political, institutional, and chronological beginnings of this field in America in the 20th century. In this literature, however, an important European tradition of psychological studies of personality that developed in France in the 2nd half of the 19th century has been overlooked. The aim of this article is to cast some light on this unexplored tradition of psychological personality studies and to discuss its influence on the development of the scientific study of personality in the United States.     

On the evolution of sport

Sports have received little attention from evolutionary biologists. I argue that sport began as a way for men to develop the skills needed in primitive hunting and warfare, then developed to act primarily as a lek where athletes display and male spectators evaluate the qualities of potential allies and rivals. This hypothesis predicts that (1) the most popular modern male sports require the skills needed for success in male-male physical competition and primitive hunting and warfare; (2) champion male athletes obtain high status and thereby reproductive opportunities in ways that parallel those gained by successful primitive hunters and warriors; (3) men pay closer attention than do women to male sports so they can evaluate potential allies and rivals; and (4) male sports became culturally more important when opportunities to evaluate potential allies and rivals declined as both the survival importance of hunting and the proportion of men who experience combat decreased. The characteristics of primitive and modern sports are more consistent with these predictions than those generated by intersexual sexual selection theories of sport.     

Sex-role and opposite-sex interpersonal attraction

Androgynous, traditional, and undifferentiated male and female subjects indicated their attraction to three opposite-sex strangers who were described as having an androgynous, traditional, and undifferentiated sex-role. Subjects' ability to describe the sex-roles of the strangers was also measured. Androgynous strangers were most preferred, undifferentiated strangers least preferred. The least preferred undifferentiated strangers' sex-role was most accurately described. Subjects were least successful in describing the androgynous sex-role.     

Modelling Trends in Ordered Correspondence Analysis Using Orthogonal Polynomials

The core of the paper consists of the treatment of two special decompositions for correspondence analysis of two-way ordered contingency tables: the bivariate moment decomposition and the hybrid decomposition, both using orthogonal polynomials rather than the commonly used singular vectors. To this end, we will detail and explain the basic characteristics of a particular set of orthogonal polynomials, called Emerson polynomials. It is shown that such polynomials, when used as bases for the row and/or column spaces, can enhance the interpretations via linear, quadratic and higher-order moments of the ordered categories. To aid such interpretations, we propose a new type of graphical display—the polynomial biplot.