In Search of Causes of Hung Juries

A major problem facing the jury system is the hung jury. Several solutions have been proposed i.e., to minimize the decision rule, to create mixed juries, or to give the jury the 'dynamite' instructions. Nevertheless, no efforts have been made to determine the underlying causes of a hung jury. This paper presents an empirical study of hung versus unanimous juries in terms of the deliberation style and content. It suggests ways of avoiding hung juries.     

All new kids on the block? Impaired holistic processing of personally familiar faces in a kindergarten teacher with acquired prosopagnosia

Acquired prosopagnosia is primarily defined as a defect in recognizing familiar faces. Nonetheless, for practical and methodological reasons, studies of such rare patients typically use pictures of unfamiliar faces. Here, we report an extensive investigation (17 behavioural tasks grouped in nine experiments) with a homogenous set of personally familiar faces in patient PS (Rossion et al., 2003 Rossion, B., Caldara, R., Seghier, M., Schuller, A.-M., Lazeyras, F., &; Mayer, E. (2003). A network of occipito-temporal face-sensitive areas besides the right middle fusiform gyrus is necessary for normal face processing. Brain, 126, 2381–2395. doi: 10.1093/brain/awg241[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. A network of occipito-temporal face-sensitive areas besides the right middle fusiform gyrus is necessary for normal face processing.), a well-documented case of acquired prosopagnosia with intact object recognition. PS’s recognition of the face pictures of 3–4-year-old children of her kindergarten is severely impaired—both in terms of accuracy and speed of recognition—and differs qualitatively from her colleagues’ performance. Relative to these typical individuals, PS relies more on external features, colour and local details of faces. She is also specifically impaired at processing the eye region in two-alternative face matching tasks, as well as in a familiar face recognition task performed both with pre-defined isolated parts and with randomly placed apertures revealing selective parts (“Bubbles”, >20.000 trials) of the personally familiar faces. These observations indicate that the same impairment observed previously with unfamiliar faces for PS and other cases of acquired prosopagnosia is associated with a deficient long-term representation of the eye region. Various manipulations that differentially affect the processing of the eye region suggest that this impairment is a consequence of the inability to represent the multiple parts of the eye region, and of the whole familiar face, as a single unit. This impairment in holistic processing is further evidenced here across different paradigms with composite faces, wholes and parts, and configurally distorted faces, mirroring and strengthening previous observations made with unfamiliar faces in PS and other cases of acquired prosopagnosia. Altogether, these observations suggest that prosopagnosia following brain damage affects unfamiliar and familiar face processing in a qualitatively similar way.     

Exploring the Relationships Between Object Relations/Reality Testing Functioning, Coping Styles, and Somatic Tension

In view of the importance of coping and of the apparent impact of individual differences on coping styles, it seems appropriate to examine relationships of coping with deeper and more complex psychological constructs such as those described in object relations psychology. Discovery of psychological predispositions to coping should have significant implications for both organizational and interpersonal intervention mechanisms. This study examined the relationships among six object relations/reality testing constructs and the coping styles of positive thinking coping, interpersonal coping, avoidance coping, direct action coping, and symptom-management coping, as well as somatic tension. Several significant relationships were evidenced. Implications and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Teachers Coping with the Stress of Classroom Discipline

Of all of the activities that comprise the role of a teacher, classroom discipline is one of the most significant. In selecting an approach to classroom discipline, some teachers experience, and have to deal with, tensions arising from their desire to use educationally justifiable models while still quickly gaining and maintaining order in the classroom. This paper examines teachers' estimations of the stress that arises when they are unable to discipline students as they would ideally prefer. More importantly, the way teachers cope with any stress which does arise is documented using the Coping Scale for Adults. The results indicate that teachers who report more stress are those most interested in empowering their students in the decision making process. Associated with increased concern is a greater use of Worry, Self-Blame, Tension Reduction, Wishful Thinking and Keep to Self. The most concerned teachers also express a greater tendency to get sick as a result of the stress. These data suggest the need for professional development curricula for teachers to assist them in effectively sharing power with students and in reflecting upon a range of more productive coping strategies.     

Tables of d’ for detection and localization

A detection and localization (DAL) procedure (Hershman and Lichtenstein, 1967) is one in which at most one of k noisy observation intervals contains a signal. The observer must detect the signal (if present) and locate it in the proper interval. Tables are given for the extraction of d’ values from the percentage of correct responses made in such experiments.     

God and The Possibility of Random Creation

In this paper I discuss a number of problems associated with the suggestion that it is possible for God to randomly select a possible world for actualization.

The role of in-group identification in infra-humanization

People tend to infra-humanize by attributing more human essence to their in-group than to out-groups. In the present article, we focus on the attribution of primary and secondary emotions to operationalize the human essence. We propose that, in order to infra-humanize, people need to be categorized in meaningful groups. In addition, we argue that what differentiates meaningful from nonmeaningful groups is that the people essentialize, perceiving members of the group as sharing an underlying, common essence. Also, we hypothesize that participants will identify more with their in-group in the case of meaningful groups. Three types of groups were created to manipulate the meaningfulness of the categorization. Participants were either randomly assigned to a group or they chose their group as a function of their preferences for a colour or the type of career they wished to pursue. As expected, infra-humanization occurred only where the categorization's criterion was meaningful. In addition, in-group identification, but not essentialism, mediated the impact of the categorization criteria on the tendency to infra-humanize. Data also showed that infra-humanization is different from classic in-group favouritism. This is because in-group favouritism, but not infra-humanization, was observed in the situation where group membership was based on random assignment. In other words, for infra-humanization to occur mere categorization is not enough; meaningfulness is also needed. For in-group favouritism to arise, the knowledge of being part of a group is a sufficient prerequisite. The discussion focuses on conditions for reducing infra-humanization and on the relationship between in-group favouritism and out-group derogation.     

Categorization and affect: evidence for intra-hemispheric interactions

Both emotional reactivity and categorization have long been studied within the framework of hemispheric asymmetry. However, little attempt has been made to integrate both research areas using any form of neuropsychological research, despite behavioral data suggesting a consistent relationship between affective and categorization processes. The primary goal of the current study was to examine the possibility of a laterally mediated interaction between emotional reactivity and the cognitive process of categorization. Using a split visual fields categorization task combined with affect inducing procedures, we hypothesized that the relationship between state affect and categorization would be dependent on the nature of state affect and on the hemisphere targeted. Results offered support for this hypothesis, showing that state affect related changes in categorization appeared only in the hemisphere commonly associated with both a specific affective state and categorization strategy employed. Findings are discussed in terms of possible evidence for a hemispheric arousal effect underlying the relationship between affect and categorization.     

Psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and performance among Filipino service workers

The present study surveyed 954 employees and their supervisors to determine the relationship of empowerment with job satisfaction and performance in five different service sectors: hotels, food service, banking, call centers, and airlines. Psychological empowerment was positively correlated with both job satisfaction and performance. Although intrinsic motivation was associated with higher levels of empowerment and job satisfaction, contrary to hypothesis, intrinsic motivation did not moderate the relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction and performance. Men reported greater empowerment than women even when job level and performance were controlled for. Cross-industry analyses indicated differences in empowerment across different types of service sectors with employees in call centers reporting less empowerment compared to employees in hotel, airlines, food establishments, and banks.