The unwary purchaser: consumer psychology and the regulation of commerce in America

Starting in the 1870s, American jurists deciding cases of trademark infringement began advancing arguments that the ordinary purchaser was an unwary one, easily deceived by imitations. Embedded within their legal decisions was a vision of the typical consumers' habitual behavior and cognitive ability. In response to legal critics who argued that the presumed psychology of the consumer was unevenly deployed, applied psychologists developed laboratory-based experiments and scales for determining the likelihood that the "average" purchaser would be confused. Although these psychologists failed in their goal of securing regular legal patronage, this commercial context and the resulting experiments were constitutive of the delineation of "recognition" as a distinct mental process. Furthermore, this case study complicates the scholarly consensus about the role of standardization and personal responsibility in the liberal administration of mass society.     

The eyes and ears of status: how status colors perceptual judgment

To those with high status, abundance is granted. Moving beyond the multitude of objective benefits, the authors explore how status, once conferred, colors the perceptual world people inhabit. In four experiments, participants' status state influenced their judgments of status-relevant features in their environment. Participants in a state of high status reported hearing applause (Experiment 1) and seeing facial expressions (Experiment 2), in reaction to their performance, as louder and more favorable. In addition, expectations of how others will respond--expectations stemming from one's current status state--accounted for this effect (Experiment 3). Finally, differences in judgments between participants experiencing high versus low status were observed only when the target of the evaluation was the self (Experiment 4). These results advance scholars' understanding of the psychological experience of status and contribute to the growing literature on the dominant influence psychological states have on people's judgments of their social world.     

Development and Open Trial of a Depression Preventive Intervention for Adolescents With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at elevated risk for experiencing unipolar depressive symptoms and disorders. The current study describes the development of a behaviorally oriented depression preventive intervention tailored for adolescents with ADHD targeting variables empirically shown to mediate ADHD and depression (i.e., reward responsivity, emotion regulation, and family support). Eight adolescents with a history of ADHD and currently elevated depressive symptoms and their parents participated in an open trial of the Behaviorally Enhancing Adolescents’ Mood (BEAM) program. Adolescents and their parents reported high satisfaction with BEAM. Staff reported BEAM was easy to implement with high adherence. Following BEAM, there were significant reductions in parent-report of adolescents’ depressive symptoms and emotion regulation at posttreatment and the 6-week follow-up and adolescent-report of reward responsivity at posttreatment. Case vignettes are also provided to illustrate implementation of the BEAM program. In spite of the small sample, lack of a control group, and some discrepancies across informants, results overall support the feasibility and acceptability of the BEAM program, and suggest it has promise in reducing depressive symptoms in adolescents with ADHD.     

Assessment and Management of Suicide Risk in Children and Adolescents

This article presents a pragmatic approach to assessing and managing suicide risk in children and adolescents. We first present general recommendations for conducting risk assessments with children and adolescents, followed by an algorithm for designating risk. Risk assessment and designation should be based on both distal (i.e., a prior history of self-harm behaviors) and proximal (i.e., suicide ideation, plans, intent, and preparations) predictors of suicide attempt. We then discuss safety planning as an easy-to-implement approach for intervening and managing suicide risk when working with children and adolescents. We end with a case example illustrating the implementation of risk assessment, risk designation, and safety planning with an adolescent client and her mother.     

Peer Victimization during Middle Childhood as a Marker of Attenuated Risk for Adult Arrest

This longitudinal investigation examined interactions between aggression and peer victimization during middle childhood in the prediction of arrest through the adult years for 388 (198 boys, 190 girls) study participants. As part of an ongoing multisite study (i.e., Child Development Project), peer victimization and aggression were assessed via a peer nomination inventory in middle childhood, and juvenile and adult arrest histories were assessed via a self-report questionnaire as well as review of court records. Early aggression was linked to later arrest but only for those youths who were rarely victimized by peers. Although past investigators have viewed youths who are both aggressive and victimized as a high-risk subgroup, our findings suggest that the psychological and behavioral attributes of these children may mitigate trajectories toward antisocial problems.     

CHRM2, parental monitoring, and adolescent externalizing behavior: evidence for gene-environment interaction

Psychologists, with their long-standing tradition of studying mechanistic processes, can make important contributions to further characterizing the risk associated with genes identified as influencing risk for psychiatric disorders. We report one such effort with respect to CHRM2, which codes for the cholinergic muscarinic 2 receptor and was of interest originally for its association with alcohol dependence. We tested for association between CHRM2 and prospectively measured externalizing behavior in a longitudinal, community-based sample of adolescents, as well as for moderation of this association by parental monitoring. We found evidence for an interaction in which the association between the genotype and externalizing behavior was stronger in environments with lower parental monitoring. There was also suggestion of a crossover effect, in which the genotype associated with the highest levels of externalizing behavior under low parental monitoring had the lowest levels of externalizing behavior at the extreme high end of parental monitoring. The difficulties involved in distinguishing mechanisms of gene-environment interaction are discussed.     

Does Response Evaluation and Decision (RED) Mediate the Relation between Hostile Attributional Style and Antisocial Behavior in Adolescence?

The role of hostile attributional style (HAS) in antisocial development has been well-documented. We analyzed longitudinal data on 585 youths (48% female; 19% ethnic minority) to test the hypothesis that response evaluation and decision (RED) mediates the relation between HAS and antisocial behavior in adolescence. In Grades 10 and 12, adolescent participants and their parents reported participants’ antisocial conduct. In Grade 11, participants were asked to imagine themselves in videotaped ambiguous-provocation scenarios. Segment 1 of each scenario presented an ambiguous provocation, after which participants answered HAS questions. In segment 2, participants were asked to imagine themselves responding aggressively to the provocateur, after which RED was assessed. Structural equation modeling indicated that RED mediates the relation between HAS and subsequent antisocial conduct, controlling for previous misconduct. Findings are consistent with research on the development of executive function processes in adolescence, and suggest that the relation between HAS and RED changes after childhood.