Ideology,moral reframing,and persuasion in the context of COVID-19 vaccines

A possible strategy for circumventing vaccine hesitancy and increasing support for vaccines is moral reframing. Moral Foundations Theory suggests messages framed using individuating foundations should be more persuasive to liberals, while messages framed using binding foundations should be more persuasive to conservatives. In an experiment, we investigated the role of political ideology and moral reframing in persuading college students to support mandating COVID-19 vaccination on university campuses. We tested harm-framed and loyalty-framed interventions to persuade liberals and conservatives, respectively. Results indicated that overall conservatives were less persuaded than liberals. Liberals were more persuaded by a harm-framed than loyalty-framed message when measuring ideology categorically (but not continuously). There were no differences in persuasion among conservatives. With further research, moral reframing could be effective in increasing support for vaccines and mandatory vaccinations.     

Sex roles and friendship patterns

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among sex, sex role orientation, and friendship. Based on the Bem Sex Role Inventory, 164 participants were categorized as either androgynous (17 males; 29 females), traditional (36 males; 39 females), or undifferentiated (26 males; 17 females) in their sex role orientation. Participants reported the number of close male and female friends, and responded to several questionnaires: interpersonal trust of male and female friends, communal and exchange orientations, affective and activity attributes associated with male and female friends, loneliness, and friendship satisfaction. Results indicate that close friends tended to be same sex, even though females had more close friends overall than did the males. Androgyny was related to characteristics that enhance the development and maintenance of close friendships, such as a communal orientation and positive conceptions of friends, while the undifferentiated orientation was related to less relationship enhancing orientations and a less rewarding interpersonal milieu. The study confirms that sex and sex role orientation are important factors in both quantitative and qualitative aspects of friendship during young adulthood.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual convention of the Southwestern Psychological Association, Houston, Texas, April 13, 1989. We appreciate the extensive help of an anonymous reviewer on earlier versions of this paper.     

A Playroom Observation Procedure to Assess Children with Mental Retardation and ADHD

Forty-two children (ages 6 to 12 years old) with moderate mental retardation to borderline intellectual functioning were studied in a laboratory playroom setting to determine whether children identified as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) or controls differed on activity and attentional measures. Children with ADHD were further divided into ADHD + conduct problems (ADHD + CD) and ADHD-only subgroups (with an ADHD-combined group comprising children of both subgroups). An interval recording system was used to code observations of independent play and a restricted academic task. Results indicated that the ADHD-combined group was significantly more vocal and engaged in a significantly greater number of toy changes than controls during independent play. Significant group differences were also noted during the restricted academic task, with the ADHD-combined and ADHD + CD groups more off-task and engaging in a greater number of toy touches than controls. Discriminant analyses found independent play measures to predict group membership in 70 percent of cases (ADHD-combined vs. controls), but in only 64 percent of cases using measures from the restricted academic task. No significant findings resulted when the ADHD subjects were further divided into two subgroups. Despite some inconsistent findings, such laboratory-based observations may be of value in the diagnosis of ADHD in children with moderate mental retardation to borderline intellectual functioning.     

Mill's Fallacies: Theory and Examples

In noting contemporary neglect of Mill's work on fallacy, Hansen and Pinto say that his account is tied more closely to scientific methodology than to problems of public discourse and everyday argumentation. This paper re-examines Mill's fallacies from a rhetorical perspective, assessing the extent to which his examples – drawn from the domains of popular superstition, science, philosophy, and public discussion – fit his theoretical structure. In articulating the relationship between Mill's philosophical assumptions and the discursive practices of the fields from which he draws his examples, it will suggest the ambiguities in Mill's mentalistic, rationalistic, inductivist approach and the inescapable rhetoricity of his examples.     

Disputing clients' irrational beliefs

This paper describes and illustrates a conceptual framework developed to assist novice REBT therapists with enlarging their disputational repertoire. First, four disputational strategies are described and illustrated. Then four disputational styles of presenting the strategies to the client are also described and illustrated. Then the disputational strategies and the disputational styles are combined within a conceptual framework to assist the developing REBT therapist in generating a variety of disputes for a single IB. Finally, the conceptual framework is applied to the IB of the case of Karen from Dryden and Digiuseppe'sPrimer on Rational Emotive Therapy to yield thirty-two separate disputes (sixteen disputes for the premise of the IB, and sixteen disputes for the derivative) of the IB.     

Bibliography of literature pertaining to the onset,development, and treatment of stuttering during the preschool years

This bibliography consists of clinical, experimental, and theoretical papers pertaining to the onset, development, and treatment of stuttering in children five- years old and younger. It is a downward extension of Silverman, F.H., Bibliography of literature pertaining to stuttering in elementary-school children, Journal of Fluency Disorders, 1978, 3, 87–102.     

“Honey,Won't You Please Stay Home”

The mass return to campus by the mature woman has become commonplace at colleges and universities across the country. According to the Bureau of the Census, almost 800,000 adults 35 years of age and over were enrolled in or attending college in October 1972 and “over half (53 percent) were women” (Young 1973, p. 39), the overwhelming majority of whom were going to college part-time. Many of these women find that their decision to return to school after an extended interruption of their formal education is both serious and significant, changing not only their own values, perceptions, and self-images but also giving rise to stress and change in their relationships with their families. The 1973 report of the National Advisory Council on Extension and Continuing Education concludes with the statement, “Perhaps most importantly, continuing education programs for women have revitalized the idea that the most important kind of learning results in changes in life styles and in self-image and often requires long and difficult struggle” (Mulligan 1973, p. 17). These changes and the consequent long and difficult struggle often prove to be disturbing, disrupting, disabling, or even disastrous.     

Evaluating Equating Transformations in IRT Observed-Score and Kernel Equating Methods

Test equating is a statistical procedure to ensure that scores from different test forms can be used interchangeably. There are several methodologies available to perform equating, some of which are based on the Classical Test Theory (CTT) framework and others are based on the Item Response Theory (IRT) framework. This article compares equating transformations originated from three different frameworks, namely IRT Observed-Score Equating (IRTOSE), Kernel Equating (KE), and IRT Kernel Equating (IRTKE). The comparisons were made under different data-generating scenarios, which include the development of a novel data-generation procedure that allows the simulation of test data without relying on IRT parameters while still providing control over some test score properties such as distribution skewness and item difficulty. Our results suggest that IRT methods tend to provide better results than KE even when the data are not generated from IRT processes. KE might be able to provide satisfactory results if a proper pre-smoothing solution can be found, while also being much faster than IRT methods. For daily applications, we recommend observing the sensibility of the results to the equating method, minding the importance of good model fit and meeting the assumptions of the framework.