Induction with cross-classified categories

One of the main functions of categories is to allow inferences about new objects. However, most objects are cross-classified, and it is not known whether and how people combine information from these different categories in making inferences. In six experiments, food categories, which are strongly crossclassified (e.g., a bagel is both a bread and a breakfast food), were studied. For each food, the subjects were told fictitious facts (e.g., 75% of breads are subject to spoilage from Aspergillus molds) about two of the categories to which it belonged and then were asked to make an inference about the food (e.g., how likely is a bagel to be subject to spoilage from Aspergillus molds?). We found no more use of multiple categories in these cases of cross-classification than in ambiguous classification, in which it is uncertain to which category an item belongs. However, some procedural manipulations did markedly increase the use of both categories in inferences, primarily those that focused the subjects’ attention on the critical feature in both categories.     

Evaluating the Interaction Between Self-Leadership and Work Structure in Predicting Job Satisfaction

Recent research in organizational psychology has recognized the value of exploring the person-situation interactional perspective as a determinant of work outcomes. The present field study investigated the interaction between self-leadership and work structure (supervisory structure and job autonomy) and their relation to job satisfaction. Seventy-six employees provided measures of self-leadership, employment characteristics, and job satisfaction. Performance data for participants was also collected from the organization. Satisfaction was higher for employees with high (low) self-leadership who worked in low (high) structure environments. These results suggest that affective response to the job may be influenced by specific combinations of person and situation variables. Implications of the current results with regard to person-environment fit are discussed.     

Recurring themes and images in a series of consecutive REM dreams

A consecutive series of REM dreams were collected from one subject over a period of four nights and examined for recurring themes and images. Analysis suggested a nonrandom pattern of dreaming consistent with the proposition that the themes and images are held as elements in a limited capacity storage system from which they can be recycled. One such system can be described by means of a simple testable mathematical model. Some of the implications of this are discussed.     

Memory and awareness in a patient with multiple personality disorder

We studied an individual with multiple personality disorder in whom each of several personalities claimed to have no direct awareness of the others and to be unable to consciously remember the experiences of other personalities. A broad selection of implicit and explicit memory tests was used to determine the extent to which one personality had access to knowledge acquired by another and the circumstances in which that knowledge would be expressed. The implicit assessment of memory was a necessary but not sufficient condition for demonstrating interpersonality access. The degree of compartmentalization of knowledge in this patient depended largely on whether the interpretation of presented information was likely to differ across personalities.     

Career transitions in times of social change. His and her story

Drawing on data collected from two longitudinal Cohort Studies following the lives of over 20,000 individuals born in the United Kingdom 12 years apart in 1958 and 1970, respectively, this paper examines antecedents and outcomes of educational and occupational aspirations of young men and women, covering the transition from dependent childhood into independent adulthood. Two analytical models, a Social Reproduction Model and a Developmental-Contextual Model are tested to assess the processes by which family background and the wider socio-historical context influence work and family related careers. The findings demonstrate the persistent role of gender, social origin and individual agency processes as well as the influence of a changing socio-historical context on career development. Results are interpreted with regard to biographical agency processes linking individual lives with social contexts across the life course.     

Use of a computer-controlled firearms training simulator in perception response time experiments

This paper describes the use of a custom-configured computer-controlled firearms training simulator to measure perception response (reaction) time (RT) to a stimulus in which the degree of threat presented is a manipulable variable across trials. The computer records the number of frames of videotape traversed between the point of presentation of the threat in the video stimulus and the point at which the subject responds by drawing the firearm. For the purposes of data analysis, these frame-count measures are converted to RT measurements. Example data are presented that capture perception RT at both thedraw-stimulus and thefire-stimulus points in situations for which either only one threat or more than one threat exists. Other elements, such as degree of threat and accuracy of response, provide additional data.     

Globalised Religion?: The ‘parliament of the world's religions’ (Chicago 1993) in theoretical perspective

This paper tests the hypothesis that contemporary global and globalised religion as exemplified in the Chicago ‘Parliament of the World's Religions’ of 1993 may be regarded as a resource which is central, rather than marginal to current human concerns in a threatened world. The paper is structured as follows. First, a short personal narrative gives some sense of what happened at the Parliament, and how this affected one of those present. Second, as a means of conveying the scale of the meeting, a brief content analysis and interpretation of the programme shows how (within certain limits) collaboration was made possible. Third, three insights are drawn from current sociology that facilitate an informed, albeit preliminary, evaluation of the Parliament as emancipatory event. These are: i) recent globalisation theory of the world system (Roland Robertson and Peter Beyer); ii) differentiation in a social reality understood as an “economy of signs and space”; (Scott Lash and John Urry); and in) the search for “meta‐theory”; in the “condition of post‐modernity”; (David Harvey). Fourth, some implications of the analysis and interpretation are drawn out which suggest that religion can be understood as a differentiated global resource, an ambiguous, yet dynamic form of ‘cultural capital’ of vital import in an era of post‐materialist value formation. Fifth, in conclusion, it is argued that thus understood the globalised religion represented by the 1993 ‘Parliament of the World's Religions’ has wider implications for the study of contemporary religion and forms of religiosity. Religion returns from the theoretical and cultural periphery (a marginalisation promoted by traditional secularisation theory) into a close relation to the core issues of our time. This is an optimistic interpretation of an event, the significance of which, in the opinion of this writer, should not be underestimated in the evaluation of religion as global resource.     

The Ethics of Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention Research

There are approximately one million cases oftype 1 diabetes in the US, and the incidenceis increasing worldwide. Given that two-thirdsof cases present in childhood, it is criticalthat prediction and prevention research involvechildren. In this article, I examine whethercurrent research methodologies conform to theethical guidelines enumerated by the NationalCommission for the Protection of Human Subjectsof Biomedical and Behavioral Research, andadopted into the federal regulations thatprotect research subjects. I then offer twopolicy recommendations to help researchersdesign studies that conform to these ethicalrequirements.