Family support, family income, and happiness: a 10-year perspective.

This study examined the role of 2 central aspects of family life--income and social support--in predicting concurrent happiness and change in happiness among 274 married adults across a 10-year period. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to investigate the relationship between family income and happiness. Income had a small, positive impact on happiness, which diminished as income increased. In contrast, family social support, measured by 3 subscales, Cohesion, Expressiveness, and Conflict, showed a substantial, positive association with concurrent happiness, even after controlling for income. Furthermore, family income moderated the association between family social support and concurrent happiness; family social support was more strongly associated with happiness when family income was low than when family income was high. In addition, change in family social support was positively related to change in happiness, whereas change in family income was unrelated to change in happiness. These findings suggest that happiness can change and underscore the importance of exploring more deeply the role that family relationships play in facilitating such change.     

Making Meaning of the September 11 Attacks: Spanish- and Mandarin-Speaking Focus Groups

This article examines experiences and perceptions related to the September 11, 2001, attacks among members of two immigrant groups (Spanish-speaking and Mandarin-speaking) in New York City. Focus groups were conducted 1–2 years after the attacks. Qualitative analysis was conducted using ATLAS.ti. Three major themes emerged: (a) Immediate Experience of the Attacks, (b) Evolving Psychological Adjustment, and (c) Long-Term Issues of Public Concern. The groups’ discussions diverged with temporal progression across these themes, reflecting increasing congruence with broad conceptualizations of their respective cultures. The findings suggest that, over time, culture increasingly influenced the meaning these people made of the disaster.     

The impact of background musical tempo and timbre congruity upon ad content recall and affective response

This study investigated whether the tempo and timbre of background music influenced responses to radio ads. In Experiment 1 (in addition to a no‐music control condition), slow‐ or fast‐tempo background music was superimposed over the same ad. The slow‐tempo music treatment produced significantly higher levels of ad content recall compared to the fast‐tempo music treatment. Musical presence (slow‐ and fast‐tempo treatments combined vs. no‐music) significantly reduced levels of ad content recall. In Experiment 2, when three versions of digitally produced background music timbres were superimposed over a no‐music version of another ad, results revealed positive main effects of timbre congruity upon recall of ad content and affective responses to the ad. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explanations for positive and negative behavior: the intergroup attribution bias in achieved groups

Previous research into intergroup attribution has addressed mainly the behavior of groups to which members are ascribed (e.g. gender, race). The attribution processes of groups of which membership is achieved (e.g. friendship groups) is less well understood, and the current study sought to address this. Fifty-five undergraduate participants were asked to explain the positive and negative behavior of a member of the in-group and a member of the out-group. As predicted, the participants attributed an in-group member's positive behavior more, and their negative behavior less, to internal, global, and specific causes than they did the corresponding behavior of an out-group member. There was also evidence that the participants employed a strategy of out-group derogation in their attributions: they made a higher intemality rating for an out-group member's negative behavior than they did for that person's positive behavior. It is proposed that the current study's use of achieved groups maximized participants' levels of group identification, and that this in turn motivated behavioral strategies aimed at protecting that identity.     

Gender bias in the evaluation of new age music

Eminent composers in Western European art music continue to be predominantly male and eminence in contemporary pop music is similarly male dominated. One contributing factor may be the continuing under-valuation of women's music. Possible anti-female bias in a contemporary genre was investigated using the Goldberg paradigm to elicit judgments of New Age compositions. Since stronger stereotyping effects occur when information provided about individuals is sparse, fictitious male and female composers were presented either by name only or by name with a brief biography. Evidence for anti-female bias was found in the name-only condition and was stronger when liking for the music was controlled. Other findings were the tendency for females to give higher ratings, and the association of gender differences in liking of the music with ratings of quality in the name-only condition. These results are relevant to the design of formal assessment procedures for musical composition.     

The impact of psychiatric diagnosis and family system relationship on problems identified by families coping with a mentally ill member.

The purpose of this study was to explore how psychiatric diagnosis and family relationships relate to problems identified by participants in three one-day public family psychoeducation workshops for families with a member with a serious mental illness. Workshop participants generated lists of problems they had faced, which were coded into eleven categories. Logistic regression models predicting listing of categories were developed based on ill member (diagnosis, sex, treatment compliance) and family member (sex, age, relationship to the ill member) characteristics. For models predicting content category from ill member characteristics, only denial/noncompliance and interpersonal/social categories were significantly predictive as dependent variables. For models predicting content categories from family member characteristics, only the resources/benefits model was predictive. The significant findings, in conjunction with the important negative results, suggest implications for further development of family intervention models. Building on previous research, groups composed of families coping with more than a single diagnosis and including a variety of family member relationships have the potential to reach consensus on curriculum topics.     

Perceiving patterns in dynamic action sequences: Investigating the processes underpinning stimulus recognition and anticipation skill

We examined whether skilled and less‐skilled participants process dynamic sequences comprised of numerous elements using relational information or specific display features. Moreover, the processes underpinning anticipation and recognition judgments were compared. Participants viewed dynamic film sequences showing multiple display features and anticipated what would happen next. New and previously viewed action sequences were then presented in film or point‐light display format. Participants attempted to recognize previously viewed sequences. Skilled participants demonstrated superior anticipation skill and were more sensitive in discriminating previously viewed and novel clips than their less‐skilled counterparts. Skilled participants fixated more locations than less‐skilled participants, implying that they process dynamic scenes as a series of relations between display features. The patterns of eye fixation measures differed between the anticipation and recognition tasks suggesting that different processes underpin these two types of judgments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Elimination of position-biased responding in individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities

Five individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities participated in paired-stimulus preference assessments during repeated baseline probes. All subjects initially showed a pronounced bias by typically selecting the stimulus placed in either the left or right position. Biased responding for 3 subjects was eliminated when training trials were conducted in which a stimulus of known lesser quality was presented as one of the choices. Reinforcer-quality training was unsuccessful for 2 subjects, as was a condition in which reinforcer magnitude was modified to favor unbiased responding. These subjects' biased responding was eliminated only when a correction procedure (repetition of error trials) was implemented.     

Public Reason, Religious Restraint and Respect

In recent years liberals have had much to say about the kinds of reasons that citizens should offer one another when they engage in public political debates about existing or proposed laws. One of the more notable claims that has been made by a number of prominent liberals is that citizens should not rely on religious reasons alone when persuading one another to support or oppose a given law or policy. Unsurprisingly, this claim is rejected by many religious citizens, including those who are also committed to liberalism. In this paper I revisit that debate and ask whether liberal citizens have a moral obligation not to explain their support for existing or proposed laws on the basis of religious reasons alone. I suggest that for most (ordinary) citizens no such obligation exists and that individuals are entitled to explain their support for a specific law and to persuade others of the merits of that law on the basis of religious reasons alone (though there may be sound prudential reasons for not doing so). My argument is grounded in the claim that in most instances advocating laws on the basis of religious reasons alone is consistent with treating citizens with equal respect. However, I acknowledge an exception to that claim is to be found when using religious reasons to justify a law also implies that the state endorses those reasons. For this reason I argue that there is a moral obligation for some (publicly influential) citizens, and especially those who hold public office, to refrain from explaining their support for existing or proposed laws on the basis of religious reasons. I conclude by suggesting that this understanding of the role of religion in public political discourse and the obligations of liberal citizens is a better reflection of our experience of liberal citizenship than that given in some well-known accounts of liberalism.     

Musical taste,employment, education,and global region

Sociologists have argued that musical taste should vary between social groups, but have not considered whether the effect extends beyond taste into uses of music and also emotional reactions to music. Moreover, previous research has ignored the culture in which participants are located. The present research employed a large sample from five post‐industrial global regions and showed that musical taste differed between regions but not according to education and employment; and that there were three‐way interactions between education, employment, and region in the uses to which participants put music and also their typical emotional reactions. In addition to providing partial support for existing sociological theory, the findings highlight the potential of culture as a variable in future quantitative research on taste.