School Uniforms: A Qualitative Analysis of Aims and Accomplishments at Two Christian Schools

Employing rigorous qualitative research methodology, we studied the implementation of two schools' uniform policies. Their primary intents were to eliminate competition, teach young people to dress appropriately, decrease nonacademic distractions, and lower the parental clothing costs. The young people differed with adults regarding whether or not the objectives relating to competition and distractions were met. Both adults and young people agreed that the goal of learning to dress more appropriately was met, yet they differed on how accomplishment was achieved—and also on how they understood appropriate dress. Data from both schools was generally comparable, with four notable differences.     

Developmental Experiments in Hypnosis

Two-hundred-forty children, including ten boys and girls at each year level from five through sixteen, were selected from the entire public school population of a small city for testing on the Children's Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale. For most of these children, testing was repeated yearly for the next two years. Reliability for the Children's Scale was quite satisfactory for individual prediction. There were absolutely no differences in the hypnotic susceptibility of boys and girls in this sample. Intelligence had only low positive correlations with susceptibility. The correlation of age with susceptibility, measured either cross-sectionally or longitudinally, is positive and significant, but small. Changes in individual performance over time are generally minimal, and hypnotic susceptibility may be considered a relatively stable component of personality structure.     

Sustained Attention and the Type a Behavior Pattern: The Effect of Daydreaming on Performance

The present study examined the ability of Type A and Type B subjects to sustain attention during a 40-min visual vigilance task. It was predicted that Type A subjects would perform better than Type B subjects and that the performance of both groups would be related to the frequency of daydreams during the vigil. Type A subjects outperformed Type B subjects with regard to perceptual sensitivity (A') and number of signal detections. Although both groups reported an increase in the number of their daydreams as the vigil progressed, Type A subjects reported fewer daydreams during each period of watch than did Type B subjects. In addition, an inverse relationship was found between the number of signal detections and the frequency of daydreams.     

Does Television Kill? Testing a Period-Characteristic Model

This study examined whether historical percentages of U.S. households with television predict homicide arrest rates from 1960 through 2000. Controlling for age and birth cohort, increased television penetration 15 years earlier predicted greater arrest rates. This possible effect appeared to decline among older age groups. Two interpretations are discussed. First, increased penetration may have coincided with the causes of crime. Second, television may increase homicide arrests. Also examined is the possible confounding or mediating influence of marriage-divorce ratios and unemployment rates. Controls for these did not eliminate all evidence of a television-arrest rate association.     

Are Pornography Users More Likely to Experience a Romantic Breakup? Evidence from Longitudinal Data

Previous research suggests that pornography use, under certain circumstances, may negatively influence the quality of romantic relationships. Yet we still know relatively little about whether watching pornography is associated with the stability of romantic relationships later on. This study examined whether Americans who use pornography, either at all or more frequently, are more prone to report experiencing a romantic breakup over time. Longitudinal data were taken from the 2006 and 2012 waves of the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study (N = 969). Binary logistic regression analyses demonstrated that Americans who viewed pornography at all in 2006 were nearly twice as likely as those who never viewed pornography to report experiencing a romantic breakup by 2012, even after controlling for relevant factors such as 2006 relationship status and other sociodemographic correlates. This association was considerably stronger for men than for women and for unmarried Americans than for married Americans. Analyses also showed a linear relationship between how frequently Americans viewed pornography in 2006 and their odds of experiencing a breakup by 2012. The findings affirm that earlier pornography use is associated with lower stability within Americans’ romantic relationships, especially for men and the unmarried. Data limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

Empathy, theory of mind, and individual differences in the appropriation bias among 4- and 5-year-olds

Evidence that young children often claim ownership of their partner’s contributions to an earlier collaborative activity, the appropriation bias, has been attributed to shared intentionality (Cognitive Development (1998) 13, 91–108). The current investigation explored this notion by examining individual differences in the bias among 4- and 5-year-olds as a function of empathy and theory of mind. On two occasions, children joined an adult and two dolls (with each doll being operated by one of the humans) in a picture matching board game before being asked to remember who placed each picture. Children showed a robust appropriation bias despite excellent recognition memory for the studied pictures (Study 1) and particularly in relation to the human sources (Study 2). Whereas higher levels of self-reported empathy were associated with a greater frequency of appropriation errors and fewer correct attributions for pictures placed by the adult and her doll partner, the opposite pattern emerged for theory of mind. Moreover, the positive relations between theory of mind and source monitoring accuracy remained robust after controlling for general ability and inhibitory skills. We consider the implications of these findings for understanding the processes driving the appropriation bias.     

Attribution-based motivation treatment efficacy in an online learning environment for students who differ in cognitive elaboration

Attribution-based motivation treatments can boost performance in competitive achievement settings (Perry and Hamm 2017), yet their efficacy relative to mediating processes and affect-based treatments remains largely unexamined. In a two-semester, pre-post, randomized treatment study (n?=?806), attributional retraining (AR) and stress-reduction (SR) treatments were administered in an online learning environment to first-year college students who differed in cognitive elaboration (low, high). Low elaborators who received AR outperformed their SR peers by nearly a letter grade on a class test assessed 5 months post-treatment. Path analysis revealed this AR-performance linkage was mediated by causal attributions, perceived control, and positive and negative achievement emotions in a hypothesized causal sequence. Results advance the literature by showing AR (vs. SR) improved performance indirectly via cognitive and affective process variables specified by Weiner’s (1985a, 2012) attribution theory of motivation and emotion.     

Reframing HIV prevention for gay men in the United States

The HIV epidemic in the United States has affected at least two generations of gay men. Despite numerous efforts to intervene on this public health crisis, HIV infections continue to escalate, especially among young men. This condition is compounded by an ever-growing number of gay men who are aging and living with HIV. We must enact an innovative and proactive vision and framework for HIV prevention that moves us beyond the undertakings rooted in social-cognitive paradigms that have informed this work for the past 25 years. A new framework for HIV prevention must give voice to gay men; must consider the totality of their lives; must delineate the underlying logic, which directs their relation to sex and HIV; and must concurrently respect their diverse life experiences. This approach should be rooted in a biopsychosocial paradigm, should be informed by both theory and practice, and should be directed by three theoretical lenses--a theory of syndemics, developmental theories, and contextual understandings of HIV disease. Taken together, these elements are a call to action for research and practice psychologists who are working to improve the lives of gay men.     

Linking team resources to work-family enrichment and satisfaction

Work-family scholars now recognize the potential positive effects of participation in one life domain (i.e., work or family) on performance in other life domains. We examined how employees might benefit from team resources, which are highly relevant to the modern workplace, in both work and nonwork domains via work-family enrichment. Using the Resource-Gain-Development model (Wayne, Grzywacz, Carlson, & Kacmar, 2007), we explored how team resources contribute to enrichment and resulting project and family satisfaction. Using multilevel structural equation modeling (ML-SEM) to analyze student data (N = 344) across multiple class projects, we demonstrated that individuals with team resources were more likely to experience both work-to-family and family-to-work enrichment. Further, enrichment mediated the relationship between team resources and satisfaction with the originating domain.