Performance of british university psychology departments as measured by number of publications in BPS journals

The aim of this investigation was to gauge the comparative research performance of university departments of psychology in Britain. The performance indicator was the number of publications per departmental staff member in the journals of the British Psychological Society (BPS) during the seven-year period 1983–1989. The contents of these journals were thoroughly searched, and articles written by members of university psychology departments in Britain were counted. The number of publications of each psychology department was divided by the size of the department in the corresponding year and the resulting annual figures were summed to determine the number of publications in BPS journals per departmental staff member over the seven-year period. These research performance figures correlated significantly with an earlier measure of departmental research performance based on publications in the seven European psychological journals with the highest citations per published article and with recent performance indicators based on other criteria     

Searching high and low: domestic dogs’ understanding of solidity

Animal Cognition - Physical reasoning appears central to understanding how the world works, suggesting adaptive function across the animal kingdom. However, conclusive evidence for inferential...     

Bringing together humanistic and intergroup perspectives to build a model of internalisation of normative social harmdoing

This article introduces a model of the internalisation of normative social harmdoing: the MINSOH. This model seeks to explain how group members internalise harmful social norms such that they personally endorse their groups' normative actions. To this aim, the MINSOH integrates two divergent yet complementary theoretical perspectives: self-determination theory and the social identity approach. These perspectives differ in their basic assumptions about the possibility for harm to become internalised, yet when integrated, they provide a powerful account of how harmdoing can become internalised. The MINSOH proposes specific conditions under which harmful normative actions become accepted by group members. This article outlines multiple self-determined motivations for harmdoing and discrete group processes that enable harmdoing to be internalised and autonomously enacted, and reviews factors that facilitate (i.e., strong/unique/comparative social identification; endorsement of ideological justifications) and block the internalisation process (presence of multiple identities/diverging norms; inclusive superordinate identity). Directions for future research are then discussed.     

The Language of Creativity: Evidence from Humans and Large Language Models

Recent developments in computerized scoring via semantic distance have provided automated assessments of verbal creativity. Here, we extend past work, applying computational linguistic approaches to characterize salient features of creative text. We hypothesize that, in addition to semantic diversity, the degree to which a story includes perceptual details, thus transporting the reader to another time and place, would be predictive of creativity. Additionally, we explore the use of generative language models to supplement human data collection and examine the extent to which machine-generated stories can mimic human creativity. We collect 600 short stories from human participants and GPT-3, subsequently randomized and assessed on their creative quality. Results indicate that the presence of perceptual details, in conjunction with semantic diversity, is highly predictive of creativity. These results were replicated in an independent sample of stories (n = 120) generated by GPT-4. We do not observe a significant difference between human and AI-generated stories in terms of creativity ratings, and we also observe positive correlations between human and AI assessments of creativity. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Sociomoral reasoning,perceptions of parenting and self‐reported delinquency in adolescents

This study considers the relationships between perceived parenting, sociomoral reasoning, and self‐reported delinquency in a sample of high school adolescents. Correlational analysis revealed that moral reasoning was associated with a consistent disciplinary style. Self‐reported delinquency was positively related to a number of the parenting variables but negatively correlated with moral reasoning. Separate analysis for males and females showed similar patterns for self‐reported delinquency, with the exception that moral reasoning was negatively correlated with attachment and supervision among females. The most significant predictors of delinquency scores were parenting variables, with moral reasoning also playing a role for males. A factor analysis of the perceived parenting measure revealed two factors. The first factor reflected a warm, inductive and involved style of parenting with the second reflecting a parenting style characterized by physical punishment. Self‐reported delinquency was negatively significantly associated with Factor 1, and positively related to Factor 2. There were also differences in the self‐reported delinquency scores of the top and bottom quartiles of Factor 1 scores. These support the conclusion that a parental style that is perceived to be warm, involved and inductive is associated with lower levels of delinquency in adolescence. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relative influence of facial neoteny and waist-to-hip ratio on judgements of female attractiveness and fecundity

Numerous studies have demonstrated that waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) affects perceptions of female physical attractiveness and fecundity. This study tested the assumption that facial attractiveness explained more variance in overall ratings and fecundity than WHR, when the latter is manipulated within the normal range (0.67 - 0.85). One hundred and sixty-one participants (mean age = 21.5) rated the attractiveness, youthfulness, fertility, healthiness and likelihood of being pregnant for 27 photographs of three females in which facial attractiveness in terms of neoteny (three levels) and WHR (three levels) had been systematically digitally manipulated. Facial attractiveness exerted a significant influence on judgements of attractiveness, youthfulness, fertility and healthiness, whereas WHR only affected likelihood of being pregnant. Results are interpreted in terms of neotenous facial attractiveness providing potential mates with information concerning phenotypic and genetic quality.     

Does Barbie make girls want to be thin? The effect of experimental exposure to images of dolls on the body image of 5- to 8-year-old girls

The ubiquitous Barbie doll was examined in the present study as a possible cause for young girls' body dissatisfaction. A total of 162 girls, from age 5 to age 8, were exposed to images of either Barbie dolls, Emme dolls (U.S. size 16), or no dolls (baseline control) and then completed assessments of body image. Girls exposed to Barbie reported lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body shape than girls in the other exposure conditions. However, this immediate negative impact of Barbie doll was no longer evident in the oldest girls. These findings imply that, even if dolls cease to function as aspirational role models for older girls, early exposure to dolls epitomizing an unrealistically thin body ideal may damage girls' body image, which would contribute to an increased risk of disordered eating and weight cycling.