Rethinking procrastination: positive effects of "active" procrastination behavior on attitudes and performance

Researchers and practitioners have long regarded procrastination as a self-handicapping and dysfunctional behavior. In the present study, the authors proposed that not all procrastination behaviors either are harmful or lead to negative consequences. Specifically, the authors differentiated two types of procrastinators: passive procrastinators versus active procrastinators. Passive procrastinators are procrastinators in the traditional sense. They are paralyzed by their indecision to act and fail to complete tasks on time. In contrast, active procrastinators are a "positive" type of procrastinator. They prefer to work under pressure, and they make deliberate decisions to procrastinate. The present results showed that although active procrastinators procrastinate to the same degree as passive procrastinators, they are more similar to nonprocrastinators than to passive procrastinators in terms of purposive use of time, control of time, self-efficacy belief, coping styles, and outcomes including academic performance. The present findings offer a more sophisticated understanding of procrastination behavior and indicate a need to reevaluate its implications for outcomes of individuals.     

Body Hair Removal: The ‘Mundane’ Production of Normative Femininity

Although womens body hair removal is strongly normative across contemporary Western cultures, only two studies of mundane depilation have been published, and they were based on data from the US (Basow, 1991) and Australia (Tiggemann & Kenyon, 1998), respectively. The present survey, comprised of a sample of 678 women, extends this work. We investigated UK practices, a wider array of body regions and removal methods, and the relationship between depilation and age. Over 99% of participants reported removing some hair, most commonly from the underarms, legs, pubic area, and eyebrows. Shaving and plucking were the most common removal methods. Significant relationships between age and leg, pubic, and facial depilation were found. Results document the normativity of hair removal, and we argue that hair removal is part of the taken-for-granted work of producing an acceptable femininity.     

Preschool language exposure and use: A comparison study of dual-language learners and English monolingual children

This study explored the language experiences of dual language learners (DLL; n = 19) and English monolinguals (EM; n = 13) in preschool classrooms where English is the primary language of instruction and many home languages are present. Using the Language ENvironment Analysis™ system as a primary tool, we quantitatively analysed an average of 34 hours of recordings collected over 5–8 days for each participating child (M_age = 52 months) in six classrooms. Results showed that, during a typical preschool day, DLLs spoke as much as EMs but received less adult talk overall and had more 5-min segments with zero adult–child conversations than their EM peers. Follow-up analyses revealed that teachers generally talked less when children initiated the conversations than when adults initiated the conversations, and this pattern was particularly evident for DLLs. Study implications and future research are discussed.     

Cross-task cross talk in memory and perception

The application of the additive factors method depends on finding factors that selectively influence processing stages. When all the processes for a task are in series, a factor directly influencing a process might change its output and thereby have indirect influence on succeeding processes. We investigate whether such indirect influence is possible between processes associated with different tasks being performed together. In two dual-task memory scanning and arithmetic experiments with digits as the stimuli for both tasks, information relevant for only one of the tasks nonetheless affected performance of the other. When the same digit was relevant for the two tasks, cross-task facilitation and interference were observed in some cases. Displaying the same digit for both tasks led to relatively fast response times, paralleling the effect of flankers in the response competition paradigm. But repetition of digits in memory slowed responses. It is suggested that the need for control processes to keep task information segregated is responsible for the pattern of effects.     

Individual Differences in Attitude-Behavior Consistency: The Prediction of Contraceptive Behavior

A model of individual differences that moderate attitude-behavior consistency was developed and tested in the context of predicting use consistency of the diaphragm. Variables hypothesized to moderate the attitude-behavior relationship included reactions to major life changes, the attitudes and opinions of others, sexual interest, locus of control, and the perceived susceptibility to pregnancy. Attitudes were conceptualized in terms of a Relative Contraceptive Utility (RCU), which was defined as the difference between the attitude toward the diaphragm and the attitude toward becoming pregnant. Women (N = 110) who attended family planning clinics in the New York Qty area and who used the diaphragm for an 8-month period were interviewed in the context of a 3-wave panel design. A threshold function between RCU and behavior was observed, such that when RCU was above an empirically derived cutoff, women tended to use the diaphragm consistently over an 8-month period. For women with RCUs below the cutoff, attitudes were unrelated to behavior. Inconsistency of diaphragm use for these latter women was best predicted by negative reactions to close friends' experiences with the diaphragm, low levels of perceived susceptibility to pregnancy, alcohol consumption, concern about becoming too old to have children, a preference for nonromantic sex, and the partner's unwillingness to refrain from sex if the women was not prepared.     

Incorporating prior biases innetwork models of conceptual rule learning

A series of simulations is reported in which extant formal categorization models are applied to human rule-learning data (Salatas & Bourne, 1974). These data show that there are clear differences in the ease with which humans learn rules, with the conjunctive the easiest and the biconditional the hardest. The original ALCOVE model (an exemplar-based model), a configuralcue model, and two-layer backpropagation models did not fit the rule-learning data. ALCOVE successfully fit the data, however, when prior biases observed in human rule learning were implemented into weights of the network. Thus, current empirical learning models may not fare well in situations in which learners enter the concept-formation situation with preconceived biases regarding the kinds of concepts that are possible, but such biases might nevertheless be captured within these models. By incorporating preexperimental biases, ALCOVE may hold promise as a comprehensive category-learning model.     

Intrinsic Finks and Dispositional/Categorical Distinction

The central theme of this paper is the dispositional/categorical distinction that has been one of the top agendas in contemporary metaphysics. I will first develop from my semantic account of dispositions what I think the correct formulation of the dispositional/categorical distinction in terms of counterfactual conditionals. It will be argued that my formulation does not have the shortcomings that have plagued previously proposed ones. Then I will turn my attention to one of its consequences, the thesis that dispositional properties are not susceptible to intrinsic finks. This thesis was first advanced by me and has ever since stirred up a big controversy, endorsed by some philosophers like Handfield, Bird, and Cohen but rejected by others like Clarke and Fara. Against this background, I will remedy my defense of the impossibility of intrinsically finkable dispositions and then refute some of apparently powerful criticisms of it. And so the upshot is that it is much more reasonable to hold on to the thesis that dispositions are intrinsically unfinkable. This will have the effect of putting the dispositional/categorical distinction on firmer and more secure ground.     

Gender role conflict scale: validation for a sample of gay men and lesbian women

This study tested the oblique four-factor model of the Gender Role Conflict Scale for a sample of gay men and lesbian women residing in the United States. 400 gay men and 292 lesbian women recruited from university and college gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender LISTSERVs participated. The internal consistency reliability of the Gender Role Conflict Scale scores was high, but low means on the expressive dimension of gender role conflict were noted. The results of two separate sets of confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the four-factor model's fit to the data could be enhanced for both groups by applying item parceling to lower the number of indicators per factor, suggesting that the actual structural validity of the Gender Role Conflict Scale may be better than suggested by the reported fit indices.