Genetic basis for male aggression and survivorship in wild house mice (Mus domesticus)

Work on the genetic region of the house mice known as the t-complex has produced the hypothesis that mice heterozygous for t-haplotypes (+/t) may have a selective advantage over wild-type (+/+) males owing to the greater aggressiveness of +/t males. We tested this hypothesis by examining the behavior of +/+ and +/t mice placed in four large outdoor enclosures. We found that +/t males were dominant over +/+ males. Furthermore, in the outdoor enclosures +/t males had higher survivorship than +/+ males, both as adults and juveniles. However, males of the two genotypes did not differ in home range size. We suggest that t-haplotypes may be, in part, maintained in mouse populations because of a selective advantage in heterozygous males. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

The inefficacy objection to consequentialism and the problem with the expected consequences response

Philosophical Studies - Collective action problems lie behind many core issues in ethics and social philosophy—for example, whether an individual is required to vote, whether it is wrong to...     

A confirmatory study of the relations between workplace sexism,sense of belonging,mental health,and job satisfaction among women in male‐dominated industries

The present study investigated the mediating role of sense of belonging in the relations between workplace sexism and (a) mental health and (b) job satisfaction. Participants were 190 women from a large Australian trade union that represented mainly male‐dominated jobs. They completed an online survey that contained measures of sexism, sense of belonging in the industry, mental health, and job satisfaction. As predicted, sense of belonging mediated the associations between organizational sexism and both mental health and job satisfaction. In addition, sense of belonging mediated the association between interpersonal sexism and mental health. These results are discussed in relation to strategies for supporting women and mitigating the effects of sexism in male‐dominated workplaces. The Open Science Framework webpage for this project is at: https://osf.io/a3yqc/ .     

Decreasing influence of arbitrarily applicable verbal relations of recreational gamblers: A randomized controlled trial

Twenty‐one recreational gamblers were randomly assigned to two groups; one group was exposed to a conditional discrimination relational training task to bias choice allocation to a black machine presented concurrently with a red machine, and the other group underwent the same relational training task immediately followed by a defusion procedure, designed to expand upon the relations developed in the initial relational task. Both groups completed a simulated slot‐machine task before and after the relational training task, with or without the defusion procedure. Results showed that 9 of 11 participants in the relational training only group showed an increased bias toward the black machine, compared to only 4 of 10 in the relational training plus defusion group; this latter group also showed greater matched responding. Results suggest that expanding verbal–relational networks may reduce the influence of any single verbal relation on gambling choice behavior.     

Brentano's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Intentionality

Brentano's Thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental is central to analytic philosophy of mind as well as phenomenology. The contemporary discussion assumes that it is a formulation of an analytic definition of the mental. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. According to Brentano, many philosophical concepts can only be elucidated by perceiving their instances because these concepts are abstracted from perception. The concept of the mental is one of these concepts. We need to understand Brentano's Thesis accordingly: It is a piece of advice on how to become introspectively aware of the distinctive feature of mental phenomena. On this understanding of Brentano's Thesis standard objections to it no longer arise.     

Blue is in the Eye of the Beholder: A Cross-Linguistic Study on Color Perception and Memory

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - The linguistic relativity hypothesis states that the language one speaks affects how one thinks. Color categorization across languages has often been studied...     

Are Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs Organized Crime Groups? An Analysis of the Finks MC

Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMCGs) in Australia are subject to over 30 pieces of legislation restricting the movement and association of members. The justification for these acts is the presumption that the OMCG are criminal organizsations. This presumption has not been proven empirically by government agencies nor tested by academic research partly due to the difficulty in obtaining sufficient information. This paper tests the presumption by analyzing the data contained in the Queensland Police Service’s application to the Supreme Court to list the Finks MC, Gold Coast, as a criminal organization.     

Terror in time: extending culturomics to address basic terror management mechanisms

Building on Google's efforts to scan millions of books, this article introduces methodology using a database of annual word frequencies of the 40,000 most frequently occurring words in the American literature between 1800 and 2009. The current paper uses this methodology to replicate and identify terror management processes in historical context. Variation in frequencies of word usage of constructs relevant to terror management theory (e.g. death, worldview, self-esteem, relationships) are investigated over a time period of 209 years. Study 1 corroborated previous TMT findings and demonstrated that word use of constructs related to death and of constructs related to patriotism and romantic relationships significantly co-vary over time. Study 2 showed that the use of the word “death” most strongly co-varies over time with the use of medical constructs, but also co-varies with the use of constructs related to violence, relationships, religion, positive sentiment, and negative sentiment. Study 3 found that a change in the use of death related words is associated with an increase in the use of fear related words, but not in anxiety related words. Results indicate that the described methodology generates valuable insights regarding terror management theory and provide new perspectives for theoretical advances.     

The relationship between self-efficacy,readiness to change,and AUDIT risk levels in a sample of active duty emergency department patients

The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between self-efficacy, readiness to change, and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) risk levels in a sample of active duty drinkers who were seeking care in a military emergency department. Civilian health educators screened participants for alcohol use with the AUDIT and collected sociodemographic, service, and drinking-related cognitions data from active duty patients admitted to an emergency department. A total of 787 active duty military personnel participated in the study. Almost half (48%) drank at least once a week and 32% reported consuming five or more alcoholic drinks during a typical drinking episode. One in five participants reported heavy episodic drinking weekly to almost daily. Results of a multinomial logistic regression model showed that active duty service members with a self-reported diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder since joining the military were more likely to be an at-risk or high/severe risk drinker relative to a low risk drinker. Higher controlled drinking self-efficacy was associated with a decrease in the odds of being either an at-risk or high/severe risk drinker. Increased readiness to reduce drinking was associated with an increase in the odds of being either an at risk or high/severe risk drinker. The results of this research suggest self-efficacy to control one’s heavy drinking as well as readiness to change may be important factors to consider when designing alcohol education programs within the military.     

Designing Translingual Pedagogies: Exploring Pedagogical Translation through a Classroom Teaching Experiment

This study examined how middle-grades language arts teachers learned to integrate a small-group collaborative translation activity into their teaching practice. We discuss what we call pedagogical translation as an emergent social practice, in which translation routines that are familiar to multilingual students may be leveraged toward instructional goals in a mainstream language arts class. The data were drawn from a classroom teaching experiment iteration of a larger design-based research study, whose goal is to create a fully developed instructional protocol useful to all teachers in linguistically diverse language arts classrooms, but especially teachers with limited or emerging proficiencies in languages other than English. We position pedagogical translation as a paradigm case of translingual pedagogy—instructional approaches designed to leverage the full range of emerging bilinguals’ linguistic resources—and we focus our analysis on the agentive participation of teachers as they integrate new translingual routines into their instructional practice. Using a conjecture mapping procedure, we describe the evolution of an instructional theory for how pedagogical translation can be leveraged toward literacy learning objectives. We present qualitative narratives describing how participating teachers made locally situated design choices that meshed new routines with existing instructional practice, documenting trajectories of teacher participation as agentive designers of translingual pedagogy.