An ethnic bias in scientific citations

Recent experimental findings of subtle forms of prejudice prompted this search for a similar phenomenon outside the laboratory. In Study 1, with a sample of more than 12 000 citations by North American social scientists, names of both citing and cited authors were classified as Jewish, non Jewish, or other Author's name category was associated with 41 per cent greater odds of citing an author from the same name category Study 2 included over 17 000 citations from a much narrower research domain (prejudice research), and found a similar (40 per cent) surplus in odds of citing an author of the author's own ethnic name category. Further analyses failed to support two hypotheses — differential assortment of researchers by ethnicity to research topics, and selective citation of acquaintances' works — that were plausible alternatives to the hypothesis that the observed citation discrimination revealed implicit (unconsciously operating) prejudicial attitudes. Given the sociopolitically liberal reputation of social scientists (and of prejudice researchers especially), it seems unlikely that the observed bias in citations reflected conscious prejudicial attitudes.     

Hey Buddy,Can You Spare Seventeen Cents? Mindful Persuasion and the Pique Technique1

According to the pique technique, a target is more likely to comply if mindless refusal is disrupted by a strange or unusual request. We demonstrated the use of this technique in two experiments. In Experiment 1, passersby on a local municipal wharf were approached by a confederate panhandler who made either one of two strange requests: “Can you spare 17¢ (or 37¢)?” or made either one of two typical requests “Can you spare a quarter (or any change)?” Subjects in the strange conditions were almost 60% more likely to give money than those receiving the typical plea. In addition, a strange request piqued interest as evidenced by increased verbal inquiries about the request. Experiment 2 replicated the first experiment in a laboratory setting and provides additional evidence (via a cognitive response analysis) that strange requests piqued subjects' interest in the appeal as well as increased liking for the panhandler.     

Who Delivers Justice? Source Perceptions of Procedural Fairness1

Tyler and Bies (1990) argue that how leaders enact and apply formal procedures can affect perceptions of procedural fairness as much as the formal procedures themselves. This study examined directly the extent to which workers see either formal policies and procedures or their supervisors as the source most responsible for the procedural fairness they receive in their performance evaluations. Group differences in these source perceptions between exempt and nonexempt workers were also explored. Results indicate that workers attribute the responsibility for procedural fairness jointly and independently to both their organization's formal policies and procedures and to their supervisors. Results at the group level of analysis indicate that nonexempt workers perceive formal policies and procedures to be more responsible for procedural fairness than do exempt workers. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT MEMORY FOR HAPTICALLY EXPERIENCED TWO-DIMENSIONAL PATTERNS

Abstract— Recent research with visual objects has delineated important representational differences between memory measures that tap identification (implicit tests) and measures that require episodic recognition (explicit tests). We investigated whether these differences reflect a fundamental architecture for the representation of object information in memory. In the present experiment, we contrasted identification and episodic recognition for haptically presented two-dimensional patterns. Haptic identification was not affected by elaborative processing at study, whereas haptic episodic recognition was enhanced by elaborative processing. This finding suggests important similarities in the organization of object information in the visual and haptic modalities.     

Reliability and validity of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire

This study investigates the reliability and validity of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF). The SCSORF and religiosity measures (i.e., Age Universal Religious Orientation Survey, Religious Life Inventory, and the God Control measure from the Belief in Personal Control Scale) were administered to three samples. Results suggest that the SCSORF is both reliable and valid.     

The origins and crisis of Continental philosophy

When contemporary continental philosophy dismisses, with the discourse of post-modernism, the role of origin, teleology, foundation, etc., it is forsaking its own style of thinking and as a consequence is no longer able to discern crises of lived-meaning or to engage in the transformation of historical life. I address this crisis by characterizing continental philosophy as a particular style of thinking, generative thinking. I then examine the meaning and origins of philosophical thinking by drawing, for strategic reasons, on Jacques Derrida's essay Cogito et histoire de la folie. For not only has the very question of origins come under fire through various post-modern readings of Derrida, but Derrida's own point of critique concerning Western Metaphysics depends upon a specific understanding of origin that I call origin-originating. In the final section of this paper. I interpret the crisis within continental philosophy as a forgetting the point of origin-originating within the generative structure of experience.     

Information processing in chronic pain disorder: A preliminary analysis

Researchers have alternately suggested selective attention, impaired stimulus filtering, and affective language deficiency models as accounting for multiple somatic complaints in persons with chronic pain disorder. The purpose of the present study was to establish the comparative usefulness of these three models for explaining somatic focus in a chronic pain population. Nine chronic pain patients evidencing high somatic focus (somatizing chronic pain patients), 10 chronic pain patients evidencing low somatic focus (nonsomatizing chronic pain patients), and 10 healthy control subjects were administered a computerized version of the emotional Stroop test as a test of these models. A total of 105 pain-, depression-, and neutral-content words were used as Stroop test stimuli. Stroop test color-naming response latencies were submitted to a two-way Group × Word Type mixed-model ANOVA, with Word Type as the repeated measure. Results reveal that neither the selective attention model nor the affective language deficiency model adequately explain Stroop test performance in somatizing chronic pain patients. Findings provide tentative support for the impaired stimulus filtering model, with somatizing chronic pain patients evidencing similar Stroop test response delays across all words. These results suggest that chronic pain sufferers misinterpret bodily sensations. Findings are discussed in terms of a bilevel approach for treatment of somatizing chronic pain patients that would include assisting the patient in accurate appraisal and interpretation of physical symptoms.     

Dyadic interactions in accepted and rejected children

Forty same-sex dyads were separated into three groups (accepted, rejected, and mixed status) on the basis of their scores on the likability and rejection scales of the Pupil Evaluation Inventory [Pekarik, E.,et al. (1976).Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 4, 83–97]. These dyads participated in a 10-min videotaped interaction which was separated into three segments: waiting period, cooperative task, and conversational period. Observational recordings of six micro behaviors (talk time, gestures, gaze, smiles, orientation, and laughs), as well as ratings of physical attractiveness and speech volume (loudness) and observational counts of cooperation were obtained from these tapes. These data were subjected to a 2 (sex) × 3 (status) × 3 (segment) MANOVA, with sex and status as between-group factors and segment as a within-group factor. The results indicated a number of significant multivariate effects. Univariate tests for attractiveness, speech volume, and cooperation measures indicated a significant status effect for the variable of intensity. These results are interpreted in terms of the developmental literature on social behavior, as well as the data on face-to-face interactions provided by S. D. Duncan and D. W. Fiske [(1977).Face to face interaction: Research methods, and theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum]. Suggestions for future research are offered.The authors wish to thank the principals, parents and children of Clinton Central Elementary, Frontier Elementary, and Western Elementary Schools for their help and participation in this project. We would also like to express our gratitude to Judith Conger, Patricia Moisan-Thomas, Judith Dygdon, and all other members of the research team who contributed their time and effort to this project.     

Evidence for an abstract lexical representation of word structure

Subjects were required to judge whether a particular visually presented word was a homophone or not. When instructed not to read the word aloud, subjects had difficulty with words whose orthography suggested a morphological structure different from that suggested by their homophones, for example, FINED (homophonic with FIND). There were no major problems encountered when the two members of the homophonic pair had the same morphological structure, for example, KNEAD. When subjects were instructed to read the word aloud before making a decision, however, their performance on the morphologically different items improved markedly. This result suggests, first, that inflected words are represented in the lexicon as stem plus affix and, second, that silent reading involves a more abstract phonological representation than the actual phonetic representation produced by reading aloud.