Delinquency in gangs — Selection or socialization?

Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, and Chard-Wierschem's (1993) introduced three models to account for why gangs are associated with high levels of delinquency. Existing research using Thornberry et al.'s (1993) models to explain the gang-delinquency association has been inconclusive. This paper seeks to address this gap in research by incorporating Moffitt's (1993) developmental taxonomy of delinquency within Thornberry et al.'s (1993) explanatory models. A few proposals are put forth in this paper: (1) support for Thornberry et al.'s (1993) models depends on developmental stage of the individual, (2) the selection model explains delinquency of life-course-persistent gang members, while social facilitation model explains delinquency of adolescence-limited gang members, and (3) support for the enhancement model is an artifact of assuming a homogenous gang sample.     

Synaesthesia in a logographic language: the colouring of Chinese characters and Pinyin/Bopomo spellings

Studies of linguistic synaesthesias in English have shown a range of fine-grained language mechanisms governing the associations between colours on the one hand, and graphemes, phonemes and words on the other. However, virtually nothing is known about how synaesthetic colouring might operate in non-alphabetic systems. The current study shows how synaesthetic speakers of Mandarin Chinese come to colour the logographic units of their language. Both native and non-native Chinese speakers experienced synaesthetic colours for characters, and for words spelled in the Chinese spelling systems of Pinyin and Bopomo. We assessed the influences of lexical tone and Pinyin/Bopomo spelling and showed that synaesthetic colours are assigned to Chinese words in a non-random fashion. Our data show that Chinese-speaking synaesthetes with very different native languages can exhibit both differences and similarities in the ways in which they come to colour their Chinese words.     

Kuhnian paradigms as representational spaces: New perspectives on the problems of incommensurability,scientific explanation,and physical necessity

This paper starts with an intuitive notion of representational spaces, which is intended to provide an improved version of Kuhn's concept of paradigms. It then proceeds to study the following topics in terms of this new notion: incommensurability, paradigm change, explanation of anomalies, explanation of regularities, explanation of irregularities, and physical necessity. In the course of the investigation, "representational space" gets clarified and defined. It is envisaged that this new concept should throw light on many issues in the philosophy of science.     

Sex bias in visual images evoked by generics: A new zealand study

Male biases are known to exist in the usage, evaluation, and interpretation of masculine generics. This study explored, by means of a tachistoscope, sex-specific biases in visual images evoked by masculine (All men are created equal, At university a student can study whatever he wants) and feminine (The feminists protested outside the town hall, At university a student can study whatever she wants) generics. Photographs of male and female faces were presented in a deliberately ambiguous (subthreshold) viewing field while maintaining the masculine or feminine generic sentence on constant view. It was predicted and found in a sample of 48 university students that if generics invoked sex-specific images, the images would affect the direction in which the viewer would resolve the ambiguous faces, resulting in more reported male faces in the masculine than in the feminine generic condition.Preparation of this article was supported by a New Zealand Social Sciences Research Fund Committee grant (8632/21/24/8604) to S. H. Ng.     

Big time is not always long: numerical magnitude automatically affects time reproduction

To reproduce the duration of an event precisely, one needs to represent the temporal information without being influenced by other magnitude attributes (e.g., size) of the event. In the present study, however, task-irrelevant numerical magnitude automatically affected participants' reproduction of the duration of a stimulus. In Experiment 1, participants made key-press responses to reproduce the duration of numbers. Reproduced durations were shorter for small numbers (e.g., 1) than for large numbers (e.g., 9). In contrast, in Experiment 2, participants' reproductions of a standard duration were longer when their key-press response was accompanied by visual presentation of a small number than when it was accompanied by presentation of a large number. These results clearly demonstrate that number-time interference extends beyond simple mapping between stimulus categories and response alternatives. The findings support the notion that either a common magnitude representation or closely connected magnitude representations underlie numerical and temporal processing.     

Association Between Proactive Personality and Academic Self–Efficacy

Research about organizations has consistently revealed that proactive personality is a relatively stable disposition and a significant antecedent of self-efficacy, which generates employees’ proactive behavior and thus benefits individuals and firms. Consequently, the present study aimed to examine whether the relationship between proactive personality, a general temperamental tendency, and specific self-efficacy that is focused on certain activities or tasks might emerge across contexts in an education setting with a directional effect. From a sample of 123 students, we employed a longitudinal approach using two waves of surveys to examine the directional relations between students’ proactive personalities and their academic self–efficacy in education. The results showed that students’ proactive personalities at Time 1 predicted change in their academic self–efficacy at Time 2, suggesting a top–down relationship. On the contrary students’ academic self–efficacy at Time 1 could not predict their proactive personalities at Time 2. In short, the directional effect of proactive personality on self–efficacy across contexts was captured in this study. Implications and limitations were discussed.     

Pay It Forward: Gratitude in Social Networks

Based on the framework of the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson in Philos Trans R Soc B Biol Sci 359(1449):1367, 2004a, b), we proposed that the emotion of gratitude generates upstream reciprocity (UR, which is helping an unrelated third party after being helped) by broadening the beneficiary’s perspective toward others and thus making the beneficiary represent the benefactor and newly encountered strangers in the same social category. Furthermore, by inducing one UR after another, gratitude may lead to a chain/network of UR and strengthen the structure of organization. We named the effect the integration function of gratitude and demonstrated it by applying the social network analysis technique to eighteen small groups. Implications of the integration function are discussed in terms of self-identity, social exchange theory, and quality of life.     

Transformational Leadership and Job Involvement: The Moderation of Emotional Contagion

This study examined the moderating effects of emotional contagion, including leaders' emotional contagion and subordinates' emotional susceptibility, on the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates' job involvement. By investigating 210 soldiers from eight companies of the Taiwan Army, a three-way interaction effect was found. For leaders with high emotional contagion, the positive relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates' job involvement was stronger for subordinates' with high (versus low) susceptibility. For leaders with low emotional contagion, no such interaction was found. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research in this area.     

The Influence of Traditional Male Initiation (Lebollo) on School Discipline: Educators’ Perspectives

This study explores the influence of traditional male initiation on school discipline. Eight educators teaching in township schools in Bloemfontein, South Africa, were purposefully selected to take part in a focus-group interview. The results from a content analysis indicate that initiates may exacerbate disciplinary problems at schools and that certain types of misbehavior may be attributed to initiation schools. The study found that initiation schools might perpetuate gender inequalities, patriarchy, gangsterism, and criminality. Recommendations on how to deal with disciplinary problems arising from initiates’ behavior are made.