Children as carers: the impact of parental illness and disability on children's caring roles

The nature and extent of young caring in the UK continue to be a feature of a growing number of research programmes motivated by a children and carers' rights philosophy. However, the context in which young caring occurs as a result of parental ill-health or disability can only be fully understood by examining the findings and implications of medical research into parental impairment, and the social movements that have served to re-define the concept of 'disability' in society. This paper examines the arguments put forward by medical researchers, by those proposing a social model of disability and by those who have specifically investigated the conditions and experiences of young carers. It argues that children's caring roles within families where there is parental illness or disability need to be understood not only as a reflection of the nature of the medical condition itself, but as a consequence of complex family, social and economic processes. A 'whole family' approach is proposed, where the needs of children and parents are respected and responded to.     

Overperceiving disease cues: the basic cognition of the behavioral immune system

The behavioral immune system is designed to promote the detection and avoidance of potential sources of disease. Whereas previous studies of the behavioral immune system have provided insight into the types of heuristic cues used to identify disease carriers, the present research provides an understanding of the basic psychological processes involved in the detection of those cues. Across 4 studies, feeling vulnerable to disease, whether that feeling stemmed from dispositional tendencies or situational primes, facilitated a disease overperception bias--a tendency to overperceive people in the environment displaying heuristic disease cues. This disease overperception bias was observed in the outcomes of 2 cognitive processes: categorization and memory. When concerned about disease, participants set a lenient threshold for categorizing targets as displaying heuristic disease cues (e.g., obesity, old age). Additionally, concerns about disease led participants to set a lenient threshold for reporting on a recognition task that they had previously seen individuals displaying those disease cues. The present research provides insight into the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying the operation of the behavioral immune system.     

Evolution and relationship maintenance: Fertility cues lead committed men to devalue relationship alternatives

An evolutionary perspective provides a conceptual framework with which to study adaptive processes that facilitate the maintenance of long-term relationships. One common relationship threat people face involves exposure to tempting relationship alternatives. Desirable relationship alternatives can threaten people's relationship commitment and, consequently, evoke relationship maintenance processes designed to protect people's relationship esteem. The current research examined whether cues of female ovulation–an important reproductive variable–evokes relationship maintenance processes in committed men. Men rated the attractiveness of a normally cycling relationship alternative at various points in her menstrual cycle. Unlike single men, who rated the woman as especially attractive when she was highly fertile, committed men exhibited the opposite pattern, rating her as less attractive during her period of peak fertility. This research illustrates the utility of integrating theories of relationship maintenance with evolutionary psychological theories of mating.     

Justifying Counterproductive Work Behaviors and an Integrity‐based Conditional Reasoning Test: Back to the drawing board?

Conditional reasoning tests (CRT) were proposed as an innovative approach to implicitly measure the rationalizations toward counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) often associated with overt integrity tests. The authors first set out to map a typology of justification mechanisms for general CWB, and to then validate a new integrity‐based CRT in both honest and faking testing conditions. Unfortunately, while demonstrating encouraging construct and criterion validity in the honest testing condition, the test was less resistant to faking than originally anticipated, and ceased to be valid in the faking condition. Overall, the results provide theoretical insight toward understanding how employees justify CWB, but raise concerns regarding the potential operational limitations of at least some CRTs.     

An Elementary Syllabus of Psychological Tests

The purpose of this study was to examine the universality of the “inverse square root law” insofar as it purports to show a constant relationship between emotional involvement and subjectively perceived geographical distance. It was argued that the square root exponent in the “law” was derived from experiments that used a limited range of stimuli (place names). With students as subjects, two experiments were conducted in order to discover the relationship between emotional involvement and subjective distance when both very close and very distant places were considered. It was shown that the inverse square root function was not constant but rather varied with the range of stimuli.     

Life is Good

Abstract

The author inquires into the relation between the production of genetic knowledge on the one hand, and human autonomy and self-determination on the other. He does so by specifying the notions of “genetic test” and “human autonomy”; by discussing the epistemic status of genetic knowledge, given its importance for the clarification of its anthropological and ethical implications; and by inquiring into some ethical implications by investigating the conditions under which genetic knowledge of the individual may justifiably be established. This discussion shows that the autonomy-based right to self-determination as far as gene information is concerned, is fundamental. This has major implications, which the author identifies with regard to the difficult problem of the moral legitimacy of the use of genetic knowledge in the context of insurance policies.