The impact of bundle comparisons on bundle preference

The bundling literature largely holds that a person's reaction to a given product bundle depends only on the characteristics of the products contained in the bundle. This paper, instead, proposes that people evaluate bundles in reference to other bundles that they have seen. Prior research indicates that people are sensitive to a bundle's “attribute inventory” or the aggregate level of comparable attributes possessed by its constituent products. We show that when people evaluate a bundle, they compare the attribute inventories that it offers to those offered by other bundles that they have seen. The resulting compositional comparisons can occur without changes to the products that comprise the target and contextual bundles, vary by attribute comparability and attentional focus, and coexist with (and at times reverse the effects of) well‐established product‐specific context effects, which are determined solely by the products and their attributes.     

A Threatened Identity: The Mental Health Status of Syrian Refugees in Egypt and Its Etiology

This study utilized the development-based trauma framework on identity traumas to study the cumulative effects of trauma on the identities of Syrian refugees. Participants included 196 Syrian refugees residing in Cairo, Egypt (Mean age = 35.99, SD = 11.05). The rate of post-traumatic stress disorder was 33.5%, and the rate of depression was around 30%; the level of comorbidity was high with a high rate of suicidal plans or attempts (13.7%). Analyses indicated that existential annihilation anxieties, moderated by identity salience, mediated the effects of cumulative trauma on mental health. The results confirmed the utility and validity of the identity trauma model and provided evidence of the dire mental health needs of Syrian refugees.     

The promotion of self-forgiveness,responsibility, and willingness to make reparations through a workbook intervention

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a workbook intervention designed to promote self-forgiveness, acceptance of responsibility, and willingness to make amends/reparations in a university student sample. The intervention manual consisted of three parts: (a) promoting prosocial and responsible attitudes, (b) reducing barriers to self-forgiveness, and (c) promoting healthy thinking and behaviors. Outcome measures included acceptance of responsibility, motivation to make reparations, and state and trait self-forgiveness. Measures were administered pre-intervention and immediately post-intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (N = 50) or a control group (N = 43). The control group studied materials for their university courses instead of completing the intervention. Following the intervention, the intervention group had significantly a higher state and dispositional self-forgiveness post-test compared to the control group. Changes in acceptance of responsibility and willingness to make reparations did not reach statistical significance as compared to the control group.     

The Primacy of Discourse in the Study of Gender in Family Therapy

Family therapists and scholars increasingly adopt poststructural and postmodern conceptions of social reality, challenging the notion of stable, universal dynamics within family members and families and favoring a view of reality as produced through social interaction. In the study of gender and diversity, many envision differences as social constructed rather than as “residing” in people or groups. There is a growing interest in discourse or people's everyday use of language and how it may reflect and advance interests of dominant groups in a society. Despite this shift from structures to discourse, therapists struggle to locate the dynamics of power in concrete actions and interactions. By leaving undisturbed the social processes through which gendered and other subjectivities and relations of power are produced, therapists may inadvertently become complicit in the very dynamics of power they seek to undermine. In this article, we argue that discourse analysis can help family therapy scholars and practitioners clarify the link between language and power. We present published examples of discourse analytic studies of gender and sexism and examine the relevance of these ideas for family therapy practice and research.     

Determining the Effectiveness of an Alcohol Intervention Program With Greek College Students

The authors examined the perception of college students from Greek organizations on the effectiveness of an alcohol intervention program that included gender‐specific programming. Significant reductions in risky alcohol use were found in men who attended and evaluated the program as helpful.     

Remembering from any angle: the flexibility of visual perspective during retrieval

When recalling autobiographical memories, individuals often experience visual images associated with the event. These images can be constructed from two different perspectives: first person, in which the event is visualized from the viewpoint experienced at encoding, or third person, in which the event is visualized from an external vantage point. Using a novel technique to measure visual perspective, we examined where the external vantage point is situated in third-person images. Individuals in two studies were asked to recall either 10 or 15 events from their lives and describe the perspectives they experienced. Wide variation in spatial locations was observed within third-person perspectives, with the location of these perspectives relating to the event being recalled. Results suggest remembering from an external viewpoint may be more common than previous studies have demonstrated.     

The institutional review board is an impediment to human research: the result is more animal-based research

Biomedical research today can be generally classified as human-based or nonhuman animal-based, each with separate and distinct review boards that must approve research protocols. Researchers wishing to work with humans or human tissues have become frustrated by the required burdensome approval panel, the Institutional Review Board. However, scientists have found it is much easier to work with the animal-based research review board, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Consequently, animals are used for investigations even when scientists believe these studies should be performed with humans or human tissue. This situation deserves attention from society and more specifically the animal protection and patient advocate communities, as neither patients nor animals are well served by the present situation.     

Coercive and precocious sexuality as a fundamental aspect of psychopathy

Sexual behavior is closely associated with delinquency and crime. Although psychopaths, by definition, have many short-term sexual relationships, it has not been shown that sexuality is a core aspect of psychopathy. A Darwinian view of psychopathy led to the hypothesis that psychopaths have a unique sexuality involving early, frequent, and coercive sex. Our subjects were 512 sex offenders assessed on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R). Five variables reflecting early, frequent, and coercive sex loaded on the same principal component in exploratory factor analysis on a subset of the sample, whereas PCL-R items pertaining to adult sexual behavior did not. Confirmatory factor analysis of the remaining subjects yielded a measurement model containing three inter-correlated factors - the traditional two PCL-R factors, and coercive and precocious sexuality. Taxometric analyses gave evidence of a natural discontinuity underlying coercive and precocious sexuality. Coercive and precocious sexuality yielded statistically significant associations with other study variables predicted by the Darwinian hypothesis. The present findings are consistent with prior empirical findings and support the hypothesis that psychopathy has been a nonpathological, reproductively viable, alternate life history strategy.     

Investigating the effects of tic suppression on premonitory urge ratings in children and adolescents with Tourette's syndrome

Tics represent a complex class of behaviors that have a neurobiological origin and are influenced by factors both internal and external to the individual. One factor that has gained recent attention is the premonitory urge. Contemporary behavioral models suggest that some tics are preceded by aversive somatic urges that increase in severity when tics are suppressed and are attenuated by performance of the tic. It has been proposed that the removal of premonitory urges may strengthen or maintain tics via negative reinforcement. This investigation is the first to empirically evaluate the effect of tic suppression on the premonitory urge phenomenon. Five children and adolescents, ages 8–17 years, participated in the study. Using an ABAB reversal design, tic frequency and subjective premonitory urge ratings were recorded under conditions of free-to-tic baseline (BL) and reinforced tic suppression (differential reinforcement of zero-rate behavior). Results show that four of the five children demonstrated reliable suppression. Of the four children who achieved suppression, three demonstrated a pattern in which subjective urge ratings were higher during suppression than during BL. Results provide preliminary support for the negative reinforcement view of tic function for some children.     

Perfectionism and the five-factor model of personality

In this study of the discriminant, convergent, and incremental validity of the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R), university students completed the APS-R, additional measures of perfectionism, the NEO Five-Factor Inventory-Form S, and measures of self-esteem and depression. The results revealed expected significant, but not completely overlapping, associations between the APS-R Discrepancy subscale scores and the Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM) dimension of Neuroticism, and between the APS-R High Standards and Order subscales and the FFM dimension of Conscientiousness. The incremental validity of APS-R scores over FFM dimensions was supported in analyses of self-esteem but not depression. The implications of these findings for further psychometric and clinical studies of perfectionism and facets of FFM dimensions are discussed.