The role of faith in intuition, need for cognition and method of attitude formation in implicit–explicit brand attitude relationship strength

We tested the hypothesis that Faith in Intuition (FI) would moderate implicit–explicit attitude relationship strength for attitudes formed via associative processes, but not propositional processes. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that FI moderated I–E relationship strength for attitudes formed via evaluative conditioning. High FI people had stronger I–E correlations. Experiment 2 showed that FI did not moderate I–E relationship strength for attitudes formed via propositional reasoning. Those low in Need for Cognition (NC), however, showed stronger I–E correlations than those high in NC. The importance of considering trait variables in combination with the method of attitude formation is discussed.     

A simple and effective decision rule for choosing a significance test to protect against non-normality

There is no formal and generally accepted procedure for choosing an appropriate significance test for sample data when the assumption of normality is doubtful. Various tests of normality that have been proposed over the years have been found to have limited usefulness, and sometimes a preliminary test makes the situation worse. The present paper investigates a specific and easily applied rule for choosing between a parametric and non-parametric test, the Student t test and the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test, that does not require a preliminary significance test of normality. Simulations reveal that the rule, which can be applied to sample data automatically by computer software, protects the Type I error rate and increases power for various sample sizes, significance levels, and non-normal distribution shapes. Limitations of the procedure in the case of heterogeneity of variance are discussed.     

A Typology of Youth Participation and Empowerment for Child and Adolescent Health Promotion

Research suggests that increasing egalitarian relations between young people and adults is optimal for healthy development; however, the empirical assessment of shared control in youth–adult partnerships is emerging, and the field still requires careful observation, identification, categorization and labeling. Thus, our objective is to offer a conceptual typology that identifies degrees of youth–adult participation while considering the development potential within each type. We use an empowerment framework, rooted in evidence-based findings, to identify five types of youth participation: (1) Vessel, (2) Symbolic, (3) Pluralistic, (4) Independent and (5) Autonomous. The typology is constructed as a heuristic device to provide researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with a common language for articulating degrees of youth participation for optimal child and adolescent health promotion.     

Responsibility,Reaction, and Value

Many writers accept the following thesis about responsibility: (R) For one to be responsible for something is for one to be such that it is fitting that one be the object of some reactive attitude with respect to that thing. This thesis bears a striking resemblance to a thesis about value that is also accepted by many writers: (V) For something to be good (or neutral, or bad) is for it to be such that it is fitting that it be the object of some pro-attitude (or indifference, or some contra-attitude). V has been the subject of intense debate in recent years, in part because of its incorporation into what has come to be called the “buck-passing” account of value. In particular, V is open to three challenges: that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is good is the fitting object of a pro-attitude; that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is the fitting object of a pro-attitude is good; and that, even if there is a strict equivalence between what is good and what is the fitting object of a pro-attitude, still the former is not to be analyzed in terms of the latter. The resemblance between V and R has not been previously commented on, but, once it is recognized, it is clear that R is open to challenges that resemble those to which V is vulnerable. This paper explores both the challenges to V and the parallel challenges to R and discusses responses that may be given to these challenges. The interrelation between V and R is then examined, and a general lesson is drawn concerning how to adjudicate disputes about the nature of moral responsibility.     

Differentiation in preschooler's categories of emotion

Two studies (N = 68, ages 2;0-3;11; N = 80, ages 2;6-4;11) explore the idea that, rather than starting with a separate mental category for each discrete emotion, children start with two broad categories (positive and negative) and then differentiate within each until adult-like categories form. Children generated emotion labels for (a) facial expressions or (b) stories about an emotion's cause and consequence. Emotions included were happiness, anger, fear, sadness, and disgust. Both conditions yielded the predicted pattern of differentiation. These studies of younger children found the face more powerful in eliciting correct emotion labels than had prior research, which typically relied on older preschoolers.     

Multisource Feedback and Leaders' Goal Performance: Moderating effects of rating purpose,rater perspective,and performance dimension

The main purposes of this study are to examine whether multisource feedback ratings predict leaders' organizational goal performance, and whether the relationships are consistent across the two rating purposes (developmental, administrative), two leadership dimensions behaviors (Consideration, Initiating Structure), and three rating perspectives (supervisor, self, and ‘other’ raters, i.e., peers and subordinates). Leaders (n=396) in a large organization in the transportation industry participated in two multisource feedback programs, the first for developmental purposes and the second 8 months later for administrative purposes. Approximately 1 month later, they were rated by their supervisor on their effectiveness in attaining five organizational performance goals (financial, safety, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, diversity). Results revealed that both developmental ratings and administrative ratings uniquely predicted leaders' goal performance. However, both leadership dimension and rater perspective moderated these relationships. Leadership behaviors associated with Consideration were stronger predictors of goal performance for supervisor ratings, whereas behaviors associated with Initiating Structure were stronger predictors of goal performance for self and other ratings.     

Body—object interaction ratings for 1,618 monosyllabic nouns

Body-object interaction (BOI) assesses the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word’s referent. Recent research has shown that BOI influences visual word recognition processes in such a way that responses to high-BOI words (e.g., couch) are faster and less error prone than responses to low-BOI words (e.g., cliff ). Importantly, the high-BOI words and the low-BOI words that were used in those studies were matched on imageability. In the present study, we collected BOI ratings for a large set of words. BOI ratings, on a 1–7 scale, were obtained for 1,618 monosyllabic nouns. These ratings allowed us to test the generalizability of BOI effects to a large set of items, and they should be useful to researchers who are interested in manipulating or controlling for the effects of BOI. The body-object interaction ratings for this study may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society’s Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Basic Self-Knowledge: Answering Peacocke’s Criticisms of Constitutivism

Constitutivist accounts of self-knowledge argue that a noncontingent, conceptual relation holds between our first-order mental states and our introspective awareness of them. I explicate a constitutivist account of our knowledge of our own beliefs and defend it against criticisms recently raised by Christopher Peacocke. According to Peacocke, constitutivism says that our second-order introspective beliefs are groundless. I show that Peacocke’s arguments apply to reliabilism not to constitutivism per se, and that by adopting a functionalist account of direct accessibility a constitutivist can avoid reliabilism. I then argue that the resulting view is preferable to Peacocke’s own account of self-knowledge.     

On the Fulfillment of Moral Obligation

This paper considers three general views about the nature of moral obligation and three particular answers (with which these views are typically associated) concerning the following question: if on Monday you lend me a book that I promise to return to you by Friday, what precisely is my obligation to you and what constitutes its fulfillment? The example is borrowed from W.D. Ross, who in The Right and the Good proposed what he called the Objective View of obligation, from which he inferred what is here called the First Answer to the question. In Foundations of Ethics Ross repudiated the Objective View in favor of the Subjective View, from which he inferred a Second Answer. In this paper each of the Objective and Subjective Views and the First and Second Answers are rejected in favor of the Prospective View and a Third Answer. The implications of the Prospective View for another question closely related to the original question are then investigated: what precisely is your right regarding my returning the book and what constitutes its satisfaction?