The varieties of fear

Conclusion I shall conclude with a methodological moral. I have tried to show that there are several fundamentally different kinds of fear. One is a pure propositional attitude, one is partially a bodily state, and one is a relation between a person and a nonpropositional object. Other emotions come in similar varieties, such as hope and happiness, but with significant differences. The state of happiness, for example, does not entail any particular bodily state or feeling. So one lesson is this: it is hard to generalize about the emotions. Further detailed, analytical studies of particular emotions are needed before a general theory of the emotions can be fruitfully attempted.     

The Effects of Flavor-Aversion Learning on Instrumental Performance

Two experiments investigated the role of lithium-mediated environmental conditioning on instrumental performance. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a novel taste consumed in one arm of a T maze prior to lithium-induced toxicosis reduced performance in this environment whereas similar aversions conditioned in the home cage failed to alter maze performance. Experiment 2 showed that maze performance in a straight alleyway was decremented during extinction only in a group that actually traversed the alley prior to drinking saccharin and receiving lithium injections. This demonstrated that the instrumental decrement observed in Experiment 1 was due not only to the presence of an unpalatable flavor in the goalbox during the test.

     

Galef’s Transfer-of-Information Effect Occurs in a Free-Foraging Situation

Galef and his colleagues have repeatedly shown that one rat may transfer information regarding the type of food it has consumed to other conspecifics. Such experiments typically have been conducted in wire-mesh cages or a wooden maze. The present experiments sought to extend this paradigm to the open-field foraging situation having six food patches to choose from. Following interaction with a demonstrator that had consumed either a cocoa or a cinnamon diet, single observers (Experiment 1) were tested in the foraging situation. Food-consumption scores indicated that observers consumed significantly more of their specific demonstrator’s diet than a second diet that was available also. Experiment 2 involved the simultaneous testing of two observers in the foraging laboratory. In Experiment 3 two observers were once again tested, but each had been provided a different food-type message prior to foraging. Positive results, mirroring those of Experiment 1, were obtained in both Experiments 2 and 3. The results of these three experiments underscore the robustness of this phenomenon and its generalizability to other testing conditions.

     

Pretrial Publicity, the Timing of the Trial, and Mock Jurors' Decision Processes

Pretrial publicity and a temporal interval between the news and trial were explored for their effects upon the jury's deliberation process and verdict. Publicity (neutral, negative) and trial timing (immediate, delayed) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design. Twenty 12-person simulated juries were exposed either to neutral or negative publicity and viewed a videotaped criminal trial immediately following news exposure or after a one-week delay between news and trial. Dichotomous pre-and postdeliberation verdicts, probability of guilt scales, trial recall, ratings of companion jurors, perceptions of attorneys, assessments of the news article, and recall of news facts were measured. Deliberations were tape recorded and content analyzed. Juries exposed to neutral and negative publicity did not significantly differ on conviction rate, deliberation length, or on quality of deliberations. Prejudicial news elicited counter remarks about the threatening nature of the publicity to the defendant's right to a fair trial. Individual juror data revealed that while the news manipulation did not significantly affect predeliberation verdicts or attention to trial events, negative news lowered jurors' probability estimates of guilt and facilitated their recall of news facts. A discriminant analysis predicting jury verdict indicated a lack of support for prior research showing damaging effects from prejudicial pretrial publicity. Findings are explored for methodological implications and for usefulness of theoretical notions of reactance, and "sleeper effects".     

Perceptions by the aged of crime, criminals, and the criminal justice system

A general fear of crime victimization led to modified activities in the community and feelings of relative safety in their own area for 132 elderly respondents on a 24-item questionnaire. They held sympathetic views of crime perpetrators as disadvantaged victims of society themselves, but came to the unlikely conclusions that more police control and harsher prison sentences are needed.     

The effect of subject's gender on judgments of similarity and choice of a comparison other

This study examined the implications for social comparison theory of the proposition that women have lower self-confidence than men when there is a socially defined standard of performance. To this end, it was hypothesized that women would judge themselves to be similar to a lower ranked person, whereas men would judge themselves to be similar to a higher ranked person. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that women would choose to see a score lower than their own, whereas men would choose to see a score higher than their own. The results on the measure of similarity indicated that men did judge themselves to be similar to a higher ranked person, whereas women showed no consistent preferences in their judgments of similarity. The results on the choice of a comparison other were not as clear-cut.     

Poisson models for assessing rater agreement in discrete response studies

In this paper we discuss a method for assessing agreement among raters who are scoring the number of times, a specified event occurs. In such cases, it seems reasonable to define agreement in terms of raters' behaviours in correctly identifying responses which have in fact occurred, and in their falsely counting responses which have not. We exploit the discrete nature of the response variable, and examine a class of models for mean response assuming an underlying Poisson distribution. Test statistics are given for deciding on the applicability of the models, and whether there is agreement with respect to correctly detecting responses, as well as with falsely scoring responses.     

Abortion and self-defense

Davis examines a view held in common by those she classifies as "restrictives," "moderates," and "permissives," that the right of self-defense justifies a pregnant woman's seeking an abortion when her life is at risk. While maintaining that abortion to preserve a woman's life is morally defensible, she argues that the doctrine of self-defense has been misapplied because the entitlement to self-defense has been misunderstood, and because the woman-fetus relationship precludes regarding the problem of abortion as simply a balancing of rights. She concludes that the defense of therapeutic abortion is neither straightforward nor unproblematic.     

Maternal and adolescent depressive symptoms and family conflict: An autoregressive cross-lagged examination of competing models in multi-stressed mothers and adolescents

Maternal and adolescent depression are challenges that often co-occur. Many studies have drawn bivariate associations between maternal depressive symptoms, adolescent depressive symptoms, and family conflict, but few have examined reciprocal effects. Even among extant studies, there is a lack of clarity related to directionality of influence. Three competing theoretical models may explain the relationship between maternal depressive symptoms, adolescent depressive symptoms, and family conflict, and these processes may differ by adolescents’ sex. Using three time points of data from 187 diverse mother-adolescent dyads, we fit a taxonomy of autoregressive cross-lagged structural equation models to simultaneously evaluate the competing theoretical models and also examine differences by sex using multiple-group analyses. Results indicate a symptom-driven model whereby adolescent depressive symptoms predicted increases in family conflict. Sex differences were also found. For males, but not females, greater adolescent depressive symptoms predicted subsequent increases in maternal depressive symptoms, which then predicted lower family conflict—possibly indicating maternal disengagement/withdrawal. Our findings suggest addressing adolescent depressive symptoms in order to prevent family conflict and that distinctive targets for the prevention/intervention of family conflict should account for differences by adolescents’ sex.