Predicting Early Sexual Activity with Behavior Problems Exhibited at School Entry and in Early Adolescence

Youth who initiate sexual intercourse in early adolescence (age 11–14) experience multiple risks, including concurrent adjustment problems and unsafe sexual practices. The current study tested two models describing the links between childhood precursors, early adolescent risk factors, and adolescent sexual activity: a cumulative model and a meditational model. A longitudinal sample of 694 boys and girls from four geographical locations was utilized, with data collected from kindergarten through high school. Structural equation models revealed that, irrespective of gender or race, high rates of aggressive disruptive behaviors and attention problems at school entry increased risk for a constellation of problem behaviors in middle school (school maladjustment, antisocial activity, and substance use) which, in turn, promoted the early initiation of sexual activity. Implications are discussed for developmental models of early sexual activity and for prevention programming.

Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: A new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model

Virtual reality technology is argued to be suitable to the simulation study of mass evacuation behavior, because of the practical and ethical constraints in researching this field. This article describes three studies in which a new virtual reality paradigm was used, in which participants had to escape from a burning underground rail station. Study 1 was carried out in an immersion laboratory and demonstrated that collective identification in the crowd was enhanced by the (shared) threat embodied in emergency itself. In Study 2, high-identification participants were more helpful and pushed less than did low-identification participants. In Study 3, identification and group size were experimentally manipulated, and similar results were obtained. These results support a hypothesis according to which (emergent) collective identity motivates solidarity with strangers. It is concluded that the virtual reality technology developed here represents a promising start, although more can be done to embed it in a traditional psychology laboratory setting.     

Pitfalls of Ability Research

Ability research in psychology can be fraught with pitfalls that lead to inappropriate conclusions. We identify several issues that lead to potential misinterpretation of results and suggest corrective solutions. These issues include lack of construct validity of the measures, misinterpretation of correlations and regression weights, lack of statistical power, failure to estimate cross‐validation effects, and misinterpretation of factor analytic results.     

The development of generosity and moral cognition across five cultures

Morality is an evolved aspect of human nature, yet is heavily influenced by cultural environment. This developmental study adopted an integrative approach by combining measures of socioeconomic status (SES), executive function, affective sharing, empathic concern, theory of mind, and moral judgment in predicting sharing behavior in children (N = 999) from the age of 5 to 12 in five large‐scale societies: Canada, China, Turkey, South Africa, and the USA. Results demonstrate that age, gender, SES, culture, and social cognitive mechanisms explain over 20% of the variance worldwide in children's resource allocation. These findings are discussed in reference to standard cultural comparisons (individualist/collectivist), as well as the degree of market integration, and highlight continuities and discontinuities in children's generosity across urban contexts.     

Building and sustaining work engagement – a participatory action intervention to increase work engagement in nursing staff

This study evaluated whether a participatory action research intervention with nursing staff on acute care older people National Health Service wards in the United Kingdom was effective for increasing work engagement. Mediation analyses between job resources (social support, influence in decision-making), job demands, work-related needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness), and work engagement explored the presumed psychological mechanisms underlying the intervention. A non-randomized, matched control group, pretest, post-test design involved three intervention and five control wards. A significant decrease in relatedness, and a borderline significant decrease in competence, was observed in the intervention group compared to the control group, with no effect on work engagement (N = 45). Work-related needs mediated between resources and work engagement, supporting the job demands-resources model and self-determination theory as an underlying explanatory theory. Intervention implementation was difficult, highlighting the need for participant and organizational readiness for change, and strong management support. This is the first known study to apply participatory techniques to increase work engagement in nursing staff and explore the underlying explanatory psychological mechanisms, offering a novel means of taking work engagement research forward. Crucially, it highlights the challenges involved in intervention research and the importance of including evaluations of intervention implementation alongside statistical evaluations to avoid erroneous conclusions.     

Multiple studies and weak evidential defeat

When a study shows statistically significant correlation between an exposure and an outcome, the credence of a real connection between the two increases. Should that credence remain the same when it is discovered that further independent studies between the exposure and other independent outcomes were conducted? Matthew Kotzen argues that it should remain the same, even if the results of those further studies are discovered. However, we argue that it can differ dependent upon the results of the studies.     

Compulsive buying behavior: Re‐evaluating its dimensions and screening

Despite the significant research in the consumer behavior literature on compulsive buying behavior (CBB), there is still no general agreement about the dimensionality or diagnostic screening of the disorder. Previous studies have identified two principal dimensions: compulsivity and impulsivity, although more recent strands of theory characterize CBB with reference to loss of self‐control and behavioral addiction. This study challenges the impulsive–compulsive paradigm by validating a new model with compulsive and self‐control impaired spending dimensions. The model more closely reflects the disorder's ego‐dystonic character, routed in an anxiety‐based reactive mechanism with uncontrollable buying and an inability to rationalize the behavior and its consequences. The study also develops and cross‐validates a new seven‐item CBB screening tool, using a comparative analysis with three existing screeners and an independent sample. The findings indicate that compulsive buying results from both compulsive and self‐control impaired impulsive elements, which are characteristic of behavioral addiction.     

School desegregation and social science research

Research on the effects of school desegregation, once quite common in psychology and related fields, has declined considerably since the mid-1980s. Factors contributing to changes in the quantity and focus of such research since the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision are discussed, with an emphasis on those related to the decline of this research in the last 2 decades. These factors include the nation's retreat from the policy of school desegregation and the associated decline in research funding. Changing perspectives regarding desegregation, the outcomes of desegregation that merit study, and the desirable composition of research teams studying desegregation have also played a role. Demographic changes in our society and its schools that have made salient other research topics and the development of effective research paradigms for studying intergroup relations in the laboratory have also contributed to this decline. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oscillatory motion induces change blindness

Change blindness is the relative inability of normally sighted observers to detect large changes in scenes when the low-level signals associated with those changes are either masked or of extremely low magnitude. Change detection can be inhibited by saccadic eye movements, artificial saccades or blinks, and 'mud splashes'. We now show that change detection is also inhibited by whole image motion in the form of sinusoidal oscillations. The degree of disruption depends upon the frequency of oscillation, which at 3 Hz is equivalent to that produced by artificial blinks. Image motion causes the retinal image to be blurred and this is known to affect object recognition. However, our results are inconsistent with good change detection followed by a delay due to poor recognition of the changing object. Oscillatory motion can induce eye movements that potentially mask or inhibit the low-level signals related to changes in the scene, but we show that eye movements promote rather than inhibit change detection when the image is moving.     

MMPI-2 as a predictor of change in PTSD symptom clusters: a further analysis of the Forbes et al. (2002) data set

In this study, we reanalyzed the Forbes et al. (2002) data set to examine the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) as a differential predictor of change across posttraumatic stress disorder symptom clusters following treatment in 141 Vietnam veterans. A series of partial correlation and linear multivariate regression analyses, controlling for initial symptom severity, identified several scales predictive of symptom change. None of the MMPI-2 scales, however, emerged as predictors of change in reexperiencing symptoms. Social alienation and marital distress were the most potent predictors for avoidance symptoms. Anger, alcohol use, and hypomania were the most potent predictors for the hyperarousal symptoms. Of the personality disorders, borderline personality was the strongest predictor of change in the avoidance and hyperarousal clusters. Further replication of the findings of this article and those reported by Forbes et al. (2002) is required.