Emigration and community

In this paper I consider Gillian Brock’s and Michael Blake’s discussion of emigration in Debating Brain Drain in relation to the particular case of South Africa, and explore whether skilled white people have a duty to remain in the country. Focusing on the role of community in this debate, I argue that communities and allegiances in South Africa are still too divided and antagonistic for them to play the duty-grounding role that Brock requires.     

To what degree do situational influences explain spontaneous helping behaviour? A meta-analysis

Prosocial behaviour is an interdisciplinary topic, involving psychologists, philosophers, and educators. Based on experimental helping research, some moral philosophers have claimed that helping behaviour is entirely situationally determined. The dominance of situational factor experimentation gives the appearance that situational factors alone can explain helping behaviour. This meta-analysis investigated situational explanations of helping behaviour with 286 effects and 46,705 participants from experimental studies with non-manipulation control groups, and observed unilateral adult behavioural helping. Results indicated expected group differences in helping behaviour frequency among help encouraging or help discouraging experimental conditions and no-manipulation control conditions. Helping behaviour was also frequent in help discouraging and control conditions and far from universal in help encouraging conditions. Because helping occurred in control groups, situational factors cannot explain all observed helping. Because helping was not universal in help encouraging conditions, it raises the question of individual differences in responsiveness to helping cues.     

Effects of Participation in a First Women's Studies Course on Collective Self‐Esteem,Gender‐Related Attitudes,and Emotional Well‐Being1

We studied the psychological sequelae of participation in a first women's studies course. It was hypothesized that this course would impact women's social identities (collective self‐esteem, CSE) and attitudes about gender (sexist and feminist beliefs). Further, we hypothesized that more liberal attitudes about gender would enhance mood, whereas awareness of devaluation (public CSE) would reduce mood. Female students enrolled in Psychology of Women (n= 55) and Introductory Psychology (n= 41) provided data at the beginning and end of an academic semester. As predicted, Psychology of Women students endorsed significantly more liberal attitudes about gender and awareness of devaluation over the course of the semester. Further, acceptance of feminist attitudes buffered against anxiety, whereas awareness of devaluation increased anxiety. The net effect was a nonsignificant change in anxiety for Psychology of Women students over time.     

A systematic review of the evidence base for Schema Therapy

Schema Therapy is becoming an increasingly popular psychological model for working with individuals who have a variety of mental health and personality difficulties. The aim of this review is to look at the current evidence base for Schema Therapy and highlight directions for further research. A systematic search of the literature was conducted up until January 2011. All studies that had clinically tested the efficacy of Schema Therapy as described by Jeffrey Young (1994 and 2003) were considered. These studies underwent detailed quality assessments based on Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN-50) culminating in 12 studies being included in the review. The culminative message (both from the popularity of this model and the medium-to-large effect sizes) is of a theory that has already demonstrated clinically effective outcomes in a small number of studies and that would benefit from ongoing research and development with complex client groups. It is imperative that psychological practice be guided by high-quality research that demonstrates efficacious, evidence-based interventions. It is therefore recommended that researchers and clinicians working with Schema Therapy seek to build on these positive outcomes and further demonstrate the clinical effectiveness of this model through ongoing research.     

Hidden struggles of fieldwork: Exploring the role and use of field diaries

Many methodological and ethical accounts of fieldwork become sanitised and smoothed over particularly because they tend to be written several months after the fieldwork has taken place. They often lose the immediacy and emotional impact of the fieldwork, which is why a field diary can be essential. But why do we tend to keep our field diaries to ourselves? Why are we so apprehensive about being open and honest, revealing direct extracts from our field diaries? This paper explores the role and use of field diaries (as opposed to field notes based on observations) in relation to the often hidden struggles of fieldwork. It argues that guilt, apprehension, fears and worries are legitimate, common and even useful experiences of fieldwork. Key issues which emerge in the field diary extracts from my research in rural Bolivia include practical difficulties, emotional and intellectual concerns, and feelings of cultural and academic guilt. It is based on a follow-up study with participants from my PhD research ten years previously. This paper contributes to methodological debates by exploring how we might use field diaries more explicitly to examine the ways our personal challenges and emotions impact on the research process and outcome.     

When can an object feel heavier than itself? Perceived heaviness of a wielded object depends on grasp position

Perceived heaviness is a function of how an object resists being moved, and such resistance is determined by object mass and the distribution of that mass relative to the wrist. Whereas mass is independent of grasp position on an object, distribution of mass relative to the wrist is not. Therefore, perceived heaviness should vary with grasp position. Blindfolded participants wielded internally weighted cylindrical objects while grasping them at different distances from the centre of mass. They rated how heavy each object felt at each location relative to a standard object. The results show that objects felt heavier as they were grasped farther from the centre of mass, highlighting the role of the touch system in controlling movement.     

Considering her circumstances: how ethnicity and cultural relativist arguments affect sexual harassment judgments by undergraduate and community mock jurors

Most research on sexual harassment has involved undergraduate students and European Americans, whose perspectives may not be representative of the broader population. This study investigated whether judgments of a sexual harassment trial vary by plaintiff ethnicity (European American or Latin American), type of sample (undergraduates or community members) and mock juror ethnicity (European American or Latin American). We also tested the effects of a cultural relativist argument about Latin American cultural values influencing the plaintiff. Results indicated that community and Latin American mock jurors rendered more pro-plaintiff verdicts, particularly when the case did not include a cultural relativist argument. Although the cultural relativist argument did not affect undergraduates' judgments, it caused a backlash among community members, leading to more pro-defendant verdicts. Judgments across type of sample and mock juror ethnicity were partially mediated by self-referencing and hostile sexism; affiliation with Latin American culture also predicted judgments of the Latina American plaintiff.     

Perceptual comparisons with laterally presented pictures and environmental sounds

Two experiments studied perceptual comparisons with cues that vary in one of four ways (picture, sound, spoken word, or printed word) and with targets that are either pictures or environmental sounds. The basic question probed whether modality or differences in format were factors that would influence picture and sound perception. Also of interest were cue effect differences when targets are presented on either the right or left side. Students responded to a same-different reaction time task that entailed matching cue-target pairs to determine whether the successive stimulus events represented features drawn from the same basic item. Cue type influenced reaction times to pictures and environmental sounds, but the effects were qualified by response type and with picture targets by presentation side. These results provide some additional evidence of processing asymmetry when pictures are directed to either the right or left hemisphere, as well as for some asymmetries in cross-modality cuing. Implications of these findings for theories of multisensory processing and models of object recognition are discussed.     

What is the deficit in phonological processing deficits: auditory sensitivity, masking, or category formation?

Although children with language impairments, including those associated with reading, usually demonstrate deficits in phonological processing, there is minimal agreement as to the source of those deficits. This study examined two problems hypothesized to be possible sources: either poor auditory sensitivity to speech-relevant acoustic properties, mainly formant transitions, or enhanced masking of those properties. Adults and 8-year-olds with and without phonological processing deficits (PPD) participated. Children with PPD demonstrated weaker abilities than children with typical language development (TLD) in reading, sentence recall, and phonological awareness. Dependent measures were word recognition, discrimination of spectral glides, and phonetic judgments based on spectral and temporal cues. All tasks were conducted in quiet and in noise. Children with PPD showed neither poorer auditory sensitivity nor greater masking than adults and children with TLD, but they did demonstrate an unanticipated deficit in category formation for nonspeech sounds. These results suggest that these children may have an underlying deficit in perceptually organizing sensory information to form coherent categories.