Political ideology, exploration of novel stimuli, and attitude formation

In this study, the relations among political ideology, exploratory behavior, and the formation of attitudes toward novel stimuli were explored. Participants played a computer game that required learning whether these stimuli produced positive or negative outcomes. Learning was dependent on participants’ decisions to sample novel stimuli and discover the associated valence. Political ideology correlated with exploration during the game, with conservatives sampling fewer targets than liberals. Moreover, more conservative individuals exhibited a stronger learning asymmetry, such that they learned negative stimuli better than positive. Mediational analyses revealed that the differences in learning were due to the extent of exploratory behavior during the game. Relative to liberals, politically conservative individuals pursued a more avoidant strategy to the game, which led to their development of a more pronounced valence asymmetry in learning and attitude formation.     

The Ontology of Causal Process Theories

There is a widespread belief that the so-called process theories of causation developed by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe have given us an original account of what causation really is. In this paper, I show that this is a misconception. The notion of ??causal process?? does not offer us a new ontological account of causation. I make this argument by explicating the implicit ontological commitments in Salmon and Dowe??s theories. From this, it is clear that Salmon??s Mark Transmission Theory collapses to a counterfactual theory of causation, while the Conserved Quantity Theory collapses to David Fair??s phsyicalist reduction of causation.     

The sense of agency during skill learning in individuals and dyads

The sense of agency has received much attention in the context of individual action but not in the context of joint action. We investigated how the sense of agency developed during individual and dyadic performance while people learned a haptic coordination task. The sense of agency increased with better performance in all groups. Individuals and dyads showed a differential sense of agency after initial task learning, with dyads showing a minimal increase. The sense of agency depended on the context in which the task was first learnt, as transfer from joint to individual performance resulted in an illusory boost in the sense of agency. Whereas the quality of performance related to the sense of agency, the generated forces to achieve the task did not. Our findings are consistent with a predictive model account at the perceptual level, such that the sense of agency relies most strongly on sharable perceptual information.     

Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire (ZKA-PQ) and Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory Revised (TCI-R): a comparative study

The aim of this study was to compare the psychometric properties (normal distribution values, reliabilities and factor structure) of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman-Aluja Personality Questionnaire (ZKA-PQ) and the Temperament and Character Inventory revised (TCI-R). The total sample consisted of 482 subjects (53.1% men and 46.9% women) from diverse age. Results showed somewhat better psychometric properties, like reliability and facet-factor structure, for the ZKA-PQ than the TCI-R. The expected five-factor facet structure of the ZKA-PQ was clear found. However, the seven-factor structure of TCI-R was not clear and it did not show a clear distinction between Temperament and Character factors. When ZKA-PQ and TCI-R variables are analyzed together, the ZKA-PQ factors are related to the Character as well as the Temperament factors. In some cases they represent the opposite poles of ZKA-PQ factors; for example, Neuroticism versus Self-Directiveness and Aggression versus Cooperativeness. Some are directly and highly related to ZKA-PQ factors; for example, Sensation Seeking and Novelty Seeking, Extraversion and Reward Dependence, Neuroticism and Harm Avoidance, and Activity and Persistence.     

The role of subjective group memberships and perceptions of power in industrial conflict

A survey conducted with university academics (N = 187) investigated self‐reported behaviour, explanations, social identification and perceptions of power during a period of industrial disputation. The results point to the importance of subjective experience of group memberships rather than overt group memberships in understanding behaviour and perceptions of power during industrial conflict and demonstrate very little support for the idea that industrial action or inaction reflects coerced behaviour. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Worried and wired: effects of health anxiety on information-seeking and health care utilization behaviors.

Although online health information-seeking has been widely studied and findings suggest a variety of motivations behind an individual's health information-seeking behavior, little is known about how this information influences health utilization behaviors. Thus, the current study investigates the relationship between online health information seeking and health care utilization such as visiting a doctor. Additionally, this project expands the literature by examining the moderating role of health anxiety. Results suggest that an individual's level of health anxiety moderates the relationship between online health information seeking and health care utilization decisions.     

Different parameters support generalization and discrimination learning in Drosophila at the flight simulator

We have used a genetically tractable model system, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study the interdependence between sensory processing and associative processing on learning performance. We investigated the influence of variations in the physical and predictive properties of color stimuli in several different operant-conditioning procedures on the subsequent learning performance. These procedures included context and stimulus generalization as well as color, compound, and conditional discrimination (colors and patterns). A surprisingly complex dependence of the learning performance on the colors' physical and predictive properties emerged, which was clarified by taking into account the fly-subjective perception of the color stimuli. Based on estimates of the stimuli's color and brightness values, we propose that the different tasks are supported by different parameters of the color stimuli; generalization occurs only if the chromaticity is sufficiently similar, whereas discrimination learning relies on brightness differences.     

The medical student experience with disasters and disaster response

Medical students from New York City were integrally involved in the response by health professionals to aid the families of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. The present study was performed to investigate the emotional impact of this involvement on medical students from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. One hundred fifty-seven students responded to a mail survey that explored their personal and professional involvement in the disaster as well as their psychiatric symptoms in the week after the event and at the time of the survey (3.5 months after the event). Findings suggested a differential emotional impact on female students and on students involved in less supervised and more emotionally intense activities. However, involvement in the relief effort, per se, did not contribute to psychiatric symptomatology. It may have been associated with enhanced professional self-esteem among the students. These findings have implications for future planning of psychiatric response to disasters.     

Maternal Intergenerational Transmission of Childhood Multitype Maltreatment

Previous research suggests that child maltreatment is transmitted across familial generations. However, extant studies focused exclusively on single maltreatment subtypes, instead of the more common experience of multitype maltreatment. This limitation is addressed in the first known study to examine the maternal intergenerational transmission of childhood multitype maltreatment among 104 mothers and their children. Findings demonstrated that mothers' childhood multitype maltreatment directly predicted their children's multitype maltreatment, instead of having indirect effects through maternal romantic attachment dimension, intimate partner violence, and psychological distress. Mothers' childhood multitype maltreatment was also related to intimate partner violence and anxious romantic attachment but unrelated to psychological distress. Our findings highlight the need for clinical attention to the long-term generational effects of diverse childhood traumas.     

Grey is a place

Reprinted from the Harvard Library Bulletin, Volume X, Number I (Winter 1936) by permission. © 1956 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.