Students’ Perceptions of Sexual Harassment: Is It Harassment Only If the Offender Is a Man and the Victim Is a Woman?

The present study investigated 3 potential sources of variability in university students' perceptions of sexual harassment in hypothetical professor-student scenarios: raters'gender, gender of the professor and student, and rater' own sexual harassment. Participants were most likely to identify the interactions as harassment when they involved a male offender and a female victim. They were less likely to label the behaviors as harassment when they occurred between members of the same gender or between a female professor and a male student. Women were more open to viewing the scenarios as harassment and men were unlikely to view the interactions between a female professor and a male student as harassment. Personal history of sexual harassment did not influence participants' perceptions.     

Spiritual and Religious Competencies: A National Survey of CACREP‐Accredited Programs

In this study of 94 Counsel for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)‐accredited counselor education programs, 69% of respondents reported their programs addressed spiritual and religious issues; however, only 46% of CACREP liaisons perceived themselves as prepared or very prepared to integrate material related to spirituality and religion in counseling into their teaching and supervision activities. In addition, only 28% of respondents viewed their colleagues as similarly capable of addressing these issues as a component of counselor preparation. The authors discuss implications for training and practice.     

Terrorists and Democrats: Individual Reactions to International Attacks

Three experiments conducted in 1997 and 1998 explored individual responses to reported fictitious international conflict involving the United States and other nations. Participants escalated the conflictual level of their responses to repeated attacks. In Experiment 1, escalation of conflict was greater in response to terrorist attacks than to military ones. In Experiment 2, after the initial attacks, men were more conflictual in responding to terrorist attacks by a democratic nation than by a nondemocratic nation, whereas the opposite pattern was found for women. In Experiment 3, participants responded with a higher level of conflict to terrorist attacks on military targets than to attacks on cultural/educational targets. Participants with greater personality dominance showed steeper escalation of conflict in their responses across successive attacks. These results are interpreted within the framework of an image theory of international relations and an expansion of the democratic peace hypothesis.     

Global inhibition and midcourse corrections in speeded aiming

When some perceptual-motor relationships are reversed, participants might adopt a global inhibition strategy that replaces all normal movements with reversed movements. In two experiments, participants practiced moving a cursor from a start position to target locations. In a perceptual-motor reversal condition, in which horizontal but not vertical movements were reversed, participants were trained to move only to certain locations. Testing involved moving to all locations under the same reversal condition. Training on a subset of locations yielded partial transfer to untrained locations. These results support a global inhibition hypothesis modified to include both midcourse corrective movements and training specificity.     

Finding groups using model-based cluster analysis: heterogeneous emotional self-regulatory processes and heavy alcohol use risk

Model-based cluster analysis is a new clustering procedure to investigate population heterogeneity utilizing finite mixture multivariate normal densities. It is an inferentially based, statistically principled procedure that allows comparison of nonnested models using the Bayesian information criterion to compare multiple models and identify the optimum number of clusters. The current study clustered 36 young men and women on the basis of their baseline heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), chronic alcohol use, and reasons for drinking. Two cluster groups were identified and labeled the high alcohol risk and normative groups. Compared to the normative group, individuals in the high alcohol risk group had higher levels of alcohol use and more strongly endorsed disinhibition and suppression reasons for use. The high alcohol risk group showed significant HRV changes in response to positive and negative emotional and appetitive picture cues, compared to neutral cues. In contrast, the normative group showed a significant HRV change only to negative cues. Findings suggest that individuals with autonomic self-regulatory difficulties may be more susceptible to heavy alcohol use and use of alcohol for emotional regulation.     

A mental practice superiority effect: less retroactive interference and more transfer than physical practice

Two experiments explored the benefits to retention and transfer conferred by mental practice. During familiarization, participants typed 4-digit numbers and took an immediate typing test on both old and new numbers. Participants then typed old 4-digit numbers, either physically or mentally, with either a different response configuration or the opposite hand from that used during familiarization. On a delayed test, participants physically typed both old and new numbers with the same response configuration and hand used during familiarization. Mental practice led to less retroactive interference and more transfer than did physical practice, supporting the hypothesis that mental practice strengthens an abstract representation that does not involve specific effectors.     

Cognitive complications moderate the speed‐accuracy tradeoff in data entry: a cognitive antidote to inhibition

Three experiments explored a speed‐accuracy tradeoff reflecting decreasing response times (RTs) and increasing errors across trials in a data entry task. In Experiment 1, cognitive and motoric stressors were independently added to data entry, with the combination of stressors yielding the greatest decline in accuracy across blocks. Experiment 2 compared mental multiplication and simple data entry and manipulated the provision of feedback. Accuracy improved with both mental multiplication and feedback. Experiment 3 varied only the concluding keystroke; this extra requirement led to overall improvements in accuracy. In each experiment, RTs improved across trials. These results suggest that cognitive complications can serve as antidotes to inhibitory effects and can overcome the decline in accuracy due to continuous work on data entry. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of memory set size and information structure on learning and retention

Two experiments examined the effects of memory set size and information structure on learning and retention. Participants learned 48 (small set) or 144 (large set) facts about individuals, and were tested over 48 facts. The test facts included either 4 facts about 12 individuals (12-person condition) or 12 facts about 4 individuals (4-person condition). During learning, there was an advantage for the small-set group in the 4-person condition, but a disadvantage in the 12-person condition. During testing, there was an advantage for the 4-person condition relative to the 12-person condition for the small-set group, even when the conditions were equated in terms of name exposure. The results support a mental model account of memory representation and retrieval.