Who’s got the Upper Hand? Hand Holding Behaviors Among Romantic Couples and Families

The hand holding behavior of romantic couples and family dyads (n?=?886) in public locations around Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was observed. Over 90 % of males in heterosexual romantic couples, parents in parent child pairs, and older siblings in child sibling pairs tended to place their hand on top when holding hands, displaying what we consider social dominance. Women holding hands with men in romantic relationships placed their hand under their partner’s hand, and women switched to have their hand on top when holding hands with a child. Results are discussed in relation to social dominance theory and social role theory, along with implications for equality among the sexes.     

The persistent impact of incidental experience

As we perform daily activities—driving to work, unlocking the office door, or grabbing a coffee cup—our actions seem automatic and preprogrammed. Nonetheless, routine, well-practiced behavior is continually modulated by incidental experience: In repetitive experimental tasks, recent (~4) trials reliably influence performance and action choice. Psychological theories downplay the significance of sequential effects, explaining them as rapidly decaying perturbations of behavior, with no long-term consequences. We challenged this traditional perspective in two experiments designed to probe the impact of more distant experience, finding evidence for effects spanning up to a thousand intermediate trials. We present a normative theory in which these persistent effects reflect optimal adaptation to a dynamic environment exhibiting varying rates of change. The theory predicts a heavy-tailed decaying influence of past experience, consistent with our data, and suggests that individual incidental experiences are catalogued in a temporally extended memory utilized in order to optimize subsequent behavior.     

Psychometric Properties of Bully,Fighting, and Victimization Scales Among Clinically Referred Youth

Bullying involvement is a multidimensional issue and a significant concern for school-aged youth. However, research on bullying involvement within clinical samples is limited. The present study examines the psychometric properties of the University of Illinois Bully, Fighting, and Victimization Scales among children and adolescents presenting for mood symptoms at a behavioral health outpatient clinic. Patients (n = 165) with an age range of 8–18 years were included in this investigation. Item frequencies, internal consistency, and construct validity were examined while confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were conducted. Results showed that the scales were low to moderately correlated with each other. Internal consistencies were acceptable for the Bully (α = .70), Fighting (α = .84), and Victimization (α = .88) Scales. Exploratory factor analysis revealed clean three-factor solutions with items loading on their intended factors and with few cross-loadings. Fit of the confirmatory factor analysis was good when items were treated as ordinal and two items were allowed to cross-load on more than one factor. The University of Illinois Bully, Fighting, and Victimization Scales show utility for use with clinically referred youth.     

Reliability, factorial validity, and means on the Kuwait University Anxiety Scale: a UK university sample

A sample of 243 (114 men and 129 women) British university undergraduates (M age=22.5 yr., SD=5.8; M age=22.0 yr., SD=5.7, respectively) completed the English version of the Kuwait University Anxiety Scale. Principal components analysis with the use of parallel analysis and a scree test suggest that in the current sample the items form a single factor and show a coefficient alpha of .92, denoting high internal consistency. No significant mean difference was found by sex. By and large, the Kuwait University Anxiety Scale can be recommended for use in research among college students in the United Kingdom.     

Reducing assaults on an acute psychiatric unit using a token economy: a 2‐year follow‐up

Token economies are an effective way of changing various behaviors including acquiring new skills, reducing undesired behaviors, reducing aggression, increasing treatment compliance, and improving psychiatric unit management. This study examines the long‐term effect of a token economy on an acute care, inpatient psychiatric unit. The two years following the implementation of a unit based token economy are compared with the 12 months prior to implementation. The results show a significant reduction in total assaults as well as fewer staff injuries resulting in loss of time from work. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sex differences in unfamiliar face identification: evidence from matching tasks

Research on sex differences in face recognition has reported mixed results, on balance suggesting an advantage for female observers. However, it is not clear whether this advantage is specific to face processing or reflects a more general superiority effect in episodic memory. The current study therefore examined sex differences with a face-matching task that eliminates memory demands. Across two experiments, female but not male observers showed an own-sex advantage on match trials, in which two pictures have to be identified as the same person. This advantage was present for whole faces and when only the internal or external facial features were shown. Female observers were also more accurate in these three conditions on mismatch encounters, in which two photographs have to be identified as different people, but this reflects a more general effect that is present for male and female faces. These findings converge with claims of a female advantage in face recognition and demonstrate that this effect persists when memory demands are eliminated.     

The theory of multiple stupidities: education,technology and organisation in Arabia

Traditional perspectives have envisaged intelligence as one entity dominated by a single set of abilities (i.e. cognitive abilities), whereas modern perspectives have defined intelligence in various shapes (e.g. linguistic, musical and interpersonal intelligences). By the same token, traditional perspectives have examined stupidity as one set of inabilities (i.e. cognitive inabilities). However, it is not clear whether modern perspectives have discussed whether stupidity exists in various forms—in the same way as they have envisaged intelligence. To address this limitation, 257 university members were asked to share what they perceived as being stupid educational and technological practices in their institutions. Analysis of the data suggested three concepts were important to the members: moral, spatial and administrative stupidities. That is, stupidity is perceived to come in the form of failing to meet certain moral, spatial and administrative values. This implies that modern perspectives may conceptualise stupidity differently from traditional perspectives, seeing it as going beyond cognitive inabilities and viewing it as existing in various forms (e.g. moral, spatial and administrative stupidities). Thus, there are multiple stupidities as there are multiple forms of intelligence. A strength of this research is that it views stupidity through an organisational and qualitative lens, although some may traditionally expect such a topic to be examined quantitatively through psychometric and biological approaches.     

Continuance commitment and turnover: Examining the moderating role of negative affectivity and risk aversion

This paper examines the moderating role of negative affectivity and risk aversion in the relationships of two bases of continuance organizational commitment (continuance–sacrifices and continuance–alternatives) to turnover, within a stress–coping perspective. More specifically, we propose that (a) the perspective of leaving is a source of stress for those who stay due to the fear of losing valued advantages (i.e. high continuance–sacrifices commitment) and (b) staying is perceived to be stressful by individuals who remain based on a lack of employment alternatives (i.e. high continuance–alternatives commitment). We argue that these perceptions are magnified by negative affectivity and risk aversion, resulting in individuals who present these traits to use avoidance–withdrawal strategies in coping with these situations. Accordingly, based on a sample of 509 human resource management professionals, we found (a) negative affectivity and risk aversion to strengthen the negative relationship of continuance–sacrifices commitment to turnover and (b) continuance–alternatives commitment to relate positively to turnover among individuals with high negative affectivity. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of how commitment mindsets and personality traits affect turnover decisions.     

Rorschach variables related to blood glucose control in insulin-dependent diabetes patients

In this article, we explored relations between selected Rorschach variables and blood glucose control in Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (IDDM) patients. Three domains of psychological functioning are taken into consideration: emotional distress, coping and problem solving, and cognitive efficiency. Seventy-one IDDM patients (38 men, 33 women; mean age 42.2 +/- 14.9 years) from an outpatient unit took the Rorschach Comprehensive System (Exner, 1986). Nine variables were selected as independent variables. Blood glucose, a dependent variable, was measured by the proportion of glycated hemoglobin. Results of 2 regression analyses show that Y and C' correlate to higher blood glucose. WSum C and the absence of texture related to lower levels of blood glucose. A confounding effect of complications was observed. The findings suggest that emotional factors should be accorded greater attention in behavioral self-regulations in diabetes.     

Martin's Axiom,Omitting Types,and Complete Representations in Algebraic Logic

We give a new characterization of the class of completely representable cylindric algebras of dimension 2 #lt; n w via special neat embeddings. We prove an independence result connecting cylindric algebra to Martin's axiom. Finally we apply our results to finite-variable first order logic showing that Henkin and Orey's omitting types theorem fails for L _n, the first order logic restricted to the first n variables when 2 #lt; n#lt;w. L _n has been recently (and quite extensively) studied as a many-dimensional modal logic.