Priming family values: How being a parent affects moral evaluations of harmless but offensive acts

In modern liberal societies people are generally reluctant to morally condemn acts that they find personally distasteful so long as those acts are not harmful or unfair to others. However, in providing character education for their children, parents often have to censure harmless but offensive acts. Thus, we hypothesize that the parental role broadens the scope of morality beyond narrow considerations of harm and fairness. To test this idea we asked parents and nonparents to morally evaluate harmless/offensive acts and a control harmful act. We manipulated whether the parental role was primed before they evaluated these acts. Parents and nonparents did not differ in their moral objections to the control act regardless of parental role priming. However, when the parental role was primed parents were more morally opposed to harmless but offensive acts than were nonparents. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the dynamics of moral judgment and the recruitment of parents into moral reform movements.     

Division of Household Labor and Distress: The Role of Perceived Fairness for Employed Mothers

This study used a sample of 121 employed, married (or cohabitating) mothers with a high socioeconomic status (SES) primarily from the Midwest United States to examine the relationship between division of household labor, perceived fairness, and distress. Due to inconsistent findings in prior literature, perceived fairness was examined as both a mediator and moderator between division of household labor and distress. Analyses indicated that perceived fairness played a mediating (but not moderating) role, suggesting that an individual’s perceptions of fairness are one mechanism by which division of household labor influences marital and personal distress in married individuals. Post hoc analyses also indicated that increased marital distress may explain the link between perceived unfairness and personal distress. Although results must be interpreted with caution due to the selectivity of the sample, the present study provides additional support for the importance of perceived fairness in the link between division of household labor and distress.     

CONSTRUCTING AND DERIVING RECIPROCAL TRIGONOMETRIC RELATIONS: A FUNCTIONAL ANALYTIC APPROACH

Participants were pretrained and tested on mutually entailed trigonometric relations and combinatorially entailed relations as they pertained to positive and negative forms of sine, cosine, secant, and cosecant. Experiment 1 focused on training and testing transformations of these mathematical functions in terms of amplitude and frequency followed by tests of novel relations. Experiment 2 addressed training in accordance with frames of coordination (same as) and frames of opposition (reciprocal of) followed by more tests of novel relations. All assessments of derived and novel formula‐to‐graph relations, including reciprocal functions with diversified amplitude and frequency transformations, indicated that all 4 participants demonstrated substantial improvement in their ability to identify increasingly complex trigonometric formula‐to‐graph relations pertaining to same as and reciprocal of to establish mathematically complex repertoires.     

Reduced misinformation effects following saccadic bilateral eye movements

The effects of saccadic bilateral (horizontal) eye movements on memory for a visual event narrative were investigated. In the study phase, participants were exposed to a set of pictures accompanied by a verbal commentary describing the events depicted in the pictures. Next, the participants were asked either misleading or control questions about the depicted event and were then asked to engage in 30s of bilateral vs. vertical vs. no eye movements. Finally, recognition memory was tested using the remember-know procedure. It was found that bilateral eye movements increased true memory for the event, increased recollection, and decreased the magnitude of the misinformation effect. The findings are discussed in terms of source monitoring, dual-process theories of memory and the potential neural foundations of such effects.     

Language‐specific stress perception by 9‐month‐old French and Spanish infants

During the first year of life, infants begin to have difficulties perceiving non‐native vowel and consonant contrasts, thus adapting their perception to the phonetic categories of the target language. In this paper, we examine the perception of a non‐segmental feature, i.e. stress. Previous research with adults has shown that speakers of French (a language with fixed stress) have great difficulties in perceiving stress contrasts ( Dupoux, Pallier, Sebastián & Mehler, 1997 ), whereas speakers of Spanish (a language with lexically contrastive stress) perceive these contrasts as accurately as segmental contrasts. We show that language‐specific differences in the perception of stress likewise arise during the first year of life. Specifically, 9‐month‐old Spanish infants successfully distinguish between stress‐initial and stress‐final pseudo‐words, while French infants of this age show no sign of discrimination. In a second experiment using multiple tokens of a single pseudo‐word, French infants of the same age successfully discriminate between the two stress patterns, showing that they are able to perceive the acoustic correlates of stress. Their failure to discriminate stress patterns in the first experiment thus reflects an inability to process stress at an abstract, phonological level.     

On the relationship between Karen Horney's tripartite neurotic type theory and personality disorder features

[Horney, 1945] and [Horney, 1950] interpersonal theory [Horney, K. (1945). Our inner conflicts. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.; Horney, K. (1950). Neurosis and human growth. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.] postulated that individuals could move toward, move against, and move away from others as manifestations of their character development. In the present studies, it was hypothesized that Horney's tripartite theory might be useful in the elucidation of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders personality disorder features. In the first study, college students (n=198) completed the Coolidge Axis II Inventory [CATI; Coolidge, F. L. (1999), Coolidge Assessment Battery Manual. Port Huron, MI: Sigma Assessment Systems and Coolidge, F. L., & Merwin, M. M. (1992). Reliability and viability of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory: a new inventory for the assessment of personality disorders. Journal of Personality Assessment, 59, 223–238] and Cohen's 1967 35-item test [Cohen, J. B. (1967). An interpersonal orientation to the study of consumer behaviour. Journal of Marketing Research, 4, 270–278] of Horney's three types: Compliant, Aggressive, and Detached. In the second study, another group of college students (n=881) completed the CATI and Coolidge's 57-item test of Horney's three types. Results showed that both scales were reliable, generally similar, and numerous predicted correlational relationships were found. The usefulness of Horney's constructs in the understanding of personality disorders was discussed.     

Reaction time, race, and racism

The claim (Jensen, 1975) that blacks are slower than whites in choice (but not simple) reaction time is examined. It is false. The claim (Jensen, 1985) that Muhammad Ali was shown to have a “very average” reaction time is examined. It is false. The claim (Vernon & Jensen, 1984) that an unpublished technical report showed blacks to be inferior to whites on a relatively content-free mental processing task is examined. It is false. Suggestions are made concerning relevant questions that might be addressed by students of race differences in intelligence.     

Attachment hierarchies in Bangladeshi women in couple-initiated and arranged marriages

Attachment theory posits that in adulthood, romantic partners typically fill the role of primary attachment figure, yet few studies have examined whether these findings hold in cultures that practice arranged marriage or that emphasise collectivistic values and filial piety. In the current study, we compared attachment hierarchies in 116 Bangladeshi women engaged to be married or in the first 3 years of couple-initiated (also known as love) marriages and arranged marriages. Women in couple-initiated marriages reported greater use of their partners for the attachment functions of safe haven and secure base than women in arranged marriages. However, women in both groups were more likely to identify one of their parents than their partner as their primary attachment figure. Although replication is necessary, these findings suggest that partners may not be universally prioritised above parents in the attachment hierarchy and that attachment theory's assumptions of individuation from parents in adulthood may not apply cross-culturally. Findings are discussed in terms of cultural differences from samples previously represented in attachment research, such as kinship structures, the meaning of marriage and filial piety.