The “Big Tent” of Community Psychology: Reactions to Paul Toro’s 2004 Presidential Address

This article summarizes discussions that took place following Paul Toros presidential address for the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA). Toro argued that community psychology and SCRA are big tents. He suggested growth through increasing the involvement of ethnic minorities, community practitioners, international colleagues, students and early career professionals and individuals from allied disciplines. Themes in the discussions included: the founding values of community psychology, diversity, and social action. Those present felt that the field was facing a mid-life crisis and needed to re-establish its identity. Newer professionals looked to their seasoned colleagues to help define and establish that identity, and involve them in the process. Respondents were supportive of increased involvement of individuals from oppressed groups and practitioners in SCRA. Less attention was paid to increasing the role of international colleagues, professionals from allied disciplines, and members of the community.     

The Systematicity of Davidson’s Anti-skeptical Arguments

Topoi - Donald Davidson contributed more deeply to our understanding of language, thought, and reality than perhaps any other recent philosopher. His discussions of skepticism are sometimes seen as...     

Cultural phenomena and the research enterprise: Toward a culturally anchored methodology

Highlights the points at which culture intersects major phases of the research enterprise — problem formulation, population definition, concept and measurement development, research design, methodology, and data analysis — and influences and constrains what researchers deem worthy of investigation and how they interpret what they observe. These ethnocentric biases inhibit the development of a knowledge base for understanding diverse cultural communities. At each step of the research process, the need to carefully examine and expose the underlying cultural assumptions and to generate and develop alternative choices is emphasized. Guidelines are provided to encourage researchers to be aware of and deliberately make choices toward the development of a culturally anchored methodology that balances the demands for rigor and sensitivity.     

Emotion differentiation moderates aggressive tendencies in angry people: A daily diary analysis

Anger is commonly associated with aggression. Inefficient anger-coping strategies increase negative affect and deplete the regulatory resources needed to control aggressive impulses. Factors linked with better emotion regulation may then weaken the relationship between anger and aggression. The current work explored one factor associated with emotion regulation-differentiating one's emotions into discrete categories-that may buffer angry people from aggression. Three diary studies (N = 628) tested the hypothesis that emotion differentiation would weaken the relationship between anger and aggression. In Study 1, participants high in emotion differentiation reported less daily aggressive tendencies when angry, compared to low differentiators. In Study 2, compared to low differentiators, high differentiators reported less frequent provocation in daily life and less daily aggression in response to being provoked and feeling intense anger. Study 3 showed that high daily emotional control mediated the interactive effect of emotion differentiation and anger on aggression. These results highlight the importance of considering how angry people differentiate their emotions in predicting their aggressive responses to anger.     

Interactions between deliberation and delay-discounting in rats

When faced with decisions, rats sometimes pause and look back and forth between possible alternatives, a phenomenon termed vicarious trial and error (VTE). When it was first observed in the 1930s, VTE was theorized to be a mechanism for exploration. Later theories suggested that VTE aided the resolution of sensory or neuroeconomic conflict. In contrast, recent neurophysiological data suggest that VTE reflects a dynamic search and evaluation process. These theories make unique predictions about the timing of VTE on behavioral tasks. We tested these theories of VTE on a T-maze with return rails, where rats were given a choice between a smaller reward available after one delay or a larger reward available after an adjustable delay. Rats showed three clear phases of behavior on this task: investigation, characterized by discovery of task parameters; titration, characterized by iterative adjustment of the delay to a preferred interval; and exploitation, characterized by alternation to hold the delay at the preferred interval. We found that VTE events occurred during adjustment laps more often than during alternation laps. Results were incompatible with theories of VTE as an exploratory behavior, as reflecting sensory conflict, or as a simple neuroeconomic valuation process. Instead, our results were most consistent with VTE as reflecting a search process during deliberative decision making. This pattern of VTE that we observed is reminiscent of current navigational theories proposing a transition from a deliberative to a habitual decision-making mechanism.     

A randomized controlled pilot trial of classroom-based mindfulness meditation compared to an active control condition in sixth-grade children

The current study is a pilot trial to examine the effects of a nonelective, classroom-based, teacher-implemented, mindfulness meditation intervention on standard clinical measures of mental health and affect in middle school children. A total of 101 healthy sixth-grade students (55 boys, 46 girls) were randomized to either an Asian history course with daily mindfulness meditation practice (intervention group) or an African history course with a matched experiential activity (active control group). Self-reported measures included the Youth Self Report (YSR), a modified Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Measure –Revised. Both groups decreased significantly on clinical syndrome subscales and affect but did not differ in the extent of their improvements. Meditators were significantly less likely to develop suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm than controls. These results suggest that mindfulness training may yield both unique and non-specific benefits that are shared by other novel activities.     

Early Positive Information Impacts Final Evaluations: No Deliberation‐Without‐Attention Effect and a Test of a Dynamic Judgment Model

Evaluation judgments were affected by information order and not by subsequent unconscious versus conscious deliberation. In three experiments, we examined the influence of early positive information on final evaluations of four objects. Based on a task analysis, we predicted primacy effects in judgments in a sequential data acquisition task. Thinking periods following presentation were used to manipulate conscious or unconscious processing. In all three studies, we found no effects of thinking manipulations but instead found reliable order effects. We developed and tested an online judgment model on the basis of the belief updating model of Hogarth and Einhorn. The model accounted for large proportion of the individual level variability, and model comparison tests supported the presence of a primacy effect. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of analytic thinking in moral judgements and values

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict that individual differences in analytic thinking will be influential in determining beliefs and values. Along with assessments of cognitive ability and style, religious beliefs, and moral values, participants judged the wrongness of acts considered disgusting and conventionally immoral, but that do not violate care- or fairness-based moral principles. Differences in willingness to engage analytic thinking predicted reduced judgements of wrongness, independent of demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values. Further, we show that those who were higher in cognitive ability were less likely to indicate that purity, patriotism, and respect for traditions and authority are important to their moral thinking. These findings are consistent with a “Reflectionist” view that assumes a role for analytic thought in determining substantive, deeply-held human beliefs and values.