Job-seeking behavior: A segment of vocational development

This paper reports two companion studies which establish that there is a significant relationship between an individual's personality characteristics and his pattern of job-seeking behavior. Individuals who are tough-minded, independent and nonneurotic had specified job goals and self-actualized behavior. They were highly successful in obtaining jobs. Individuals who were sensitive, dependent and neurotic had vague goals and passive behavior. They failed to get jobs. Individuals who exhibited a mixture of the cited characteristics and behavior were also exploring career options. They had a modicum of success in obtaining jobs. Job-seeking behavior as a process of vocational development is discussed.     

Seventh-grade students at-risk for school failure

This study was designed to assess the effects of failure on the subsequent test performance in school of young adolescents. Fifty-one seventh-grade students, identified as at-risk for future school failure, were compared to 51 randomly selected classmates on individually administered measures of intelligence, self-concept, problem-solving ability, coping ability, attribution, and locus of control. Teachers' ratings, mathematics ability, and grades of the two groups were also compared. Students with a history of school failure, although of normal intelligence, were found to be significantly less intellectually, academically, and affectively competent than their more successful peers and were rated by their teachers as significantly less able to deal adaptively with normal school stress. A discriminant analysis separated the groups with 93% accuracy. On two equivalent mathematics tests, one given under relaxed conditions, and the other under normal school test-like conditions, approximately thirty percent of both the at-risk and the otherwise normal students got lower scores when they thought they were taking a test. Implications of these results for the understanding and remediation of stress-depressed school performance are discussed.     

THOUGHTS ON THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF RELIGION AND THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF ARCHETYPAL EXPERIENCE

Abstract. There is good reason to suppose that religious belief and ritual are manifestations of the archetypal blueprint for human existence encoded in the genetic structure of our species. As a consequence, religion has become a focus of study for psychobiologists and neuroscientists. However, scientific explanations of religious experience do not "explain away" such experience nor are they substitutes for the experience itself. On the contrary, scientific discoveries may be seen as corroboration of religious insights into the unus mundus , the essential oneness of all experience, which links human nature with the nature of the cosmos.     

Parent Involvement Project

This article describes a project designed to provide assistance to parents of exceptional children in western Pennsylvania. The format for eight parent sessions is presented.     

Be yourself,believe in yourself,and be happy: Self‐efficacy as a mediator between personality factors and subjective well‐being

Strobel, M., Tumasjan, A. & Spörrle, M. (2011). Be yourself, believe in yourself, and be happy: Self‐efficacy as a mediator between personality factors and subjective well‐being. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 43–48. Research has shown close connections between personality and subjective well‐being (SWB), suggesting that personality traits predispose individuals to experience different levels of SWB. Moreover, numerous studies have shown that self‐efficacy is related to both personality factors and SWB. Extending previous research, we show that general self‐efficacy functionally connects personality factors and two components of SWB (life satisfaction and subjective happiness). Our results demonstrate the mediating role of self‐efficacy in linking personality factors and SWB. Consistent with our expectations, the influence of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness on life satisfaction was mediated by self‐efficacy. Furthermore, self‐efficacy mediated the influence of openness and conscientiousness, but not that of neuroticism and extraversion, on subjective happiness. Results highlight the importance of cognitive beliefs in functionally linking personality traits and SWB.     

Individual differences in sensitivity to reward and punishment predict moral judgment

Dual process models of moral judgment propose that such judgments are produced by interacting neural systems: a controlled cognitive system and an automatic affective system. Individual differences in moral judgment may therefore arise from variation in cognitive control ability and/or from variation in affective sensitivity. Previous research indicates that individual differences in cognitive control, indexed by working memory capacity, predict moral judgment (Moore, Clark, & Kane, 2008). Here we replicate group level findings from Moore et al. (2008) and demonstrate that individual differences in sensitivity to reward and punishment are strong predictors of moral judgment. Higher reward sensitivity positively correlates with willingness to sacrifice one life to save multiple others and moderates the impact of self-interest on participants’ judgments. Higher punishment sensitivity negatively correlates with willingness to kill, particularly when negative affective information is present. These results help to revise current dual process models of moral judgment.     

Sex and Punishment: An Examination of Sexual Consequences and the Sexual Double Standard in Teen Programming

A content analysis was conducted to examine sexual consequences on teen programming. The sample consisted of prime-time television dramas that featured characters between the ages of 12 and 22 years. Two major goals guided the study. First, the types of sexual consequences in teen programming were investigated. Results showed that emotional and social consequences far outnumbered physical consequences. Second, the portrayal of the sexual double standard was investigated. Negative consequences were more common in scenes in which female characters initiated sexual activities than in scenes in which male characters initiated sexual activities. Implications for future content analyses and media-effects research are discussed.     

Creating Greener Citizens: Political Liberalism and a Robust Environmental Education

Proponents of environmentalist views often urge the teaching of such views and the inculcation of ‘green’ values within the educational curriculum of schools as a key component of achieving their ends. It might seem that modern versions of political morality that refuse to take a stance on controversial questions—religious, ethical, philosophical—or eschew appeal to perfectionist doctrines, such as Rawlsian political liberalism, are beset by a particularly acute difficulty in this regard. To the extent that environmentalist views embody claims about ethical matters such as how individuals should live their lives, they fall foul of this version of political morality. This article evaluates the resources available to political liberalism to respond to the challenge of bringing the teaching of green values and virtues within the national curriculum. It argues that environmental concerns differ in morally important ways from other ethical, philosophical, and religious views that are typically off-limits to political liberalism. Much that passes as green ideals are not simply a conception of the good life in the manner that religious views, for example, are. Rather, many environmental goods are crucial to the realisation of socioeconomic justice and therefore escape the requirement of state neutrality on endorsing the truth or importance of their role. A minimal political liberal education includes teaching about justice-based concerns as part of a compulsory national curriculum.     

What is terrorism and can psychology do anything to prevent it?

Terrorism has a long history, which continues to unfold, and takes many forms. Notwithstanding these facts, there is no generally accepted definition of terrorism. I set forth the definitional issues that underlie the current debate about terrorism. By comparing terrorism with various forms of violence, I argue that it is plausible to construe terrorism as crime and, in support of this, I demonstrate why terrorism cannot be morally justified. Next, I cluster various immediate and long-term approaches intended to prevent terrorism, highlighting psychologically based strategies, such as behavioral profiling, teaching tolerance and citizenship, modifying media images of terrorism, and building peace. In order to understand and respond more effectively to 21st-century terrorism, I advocate adoption of a multidisciplinary, contextually sensitive approach.     

Effort in isometric muscular contractions related to force level and duration

The degree of perceived force involved in squeezing a handgrip dynamometer is shown to grow as a power function of the force of isometric contraction and also as a power function of the duration of the squeeze. The exponent for force turns out to be more than twice that for duration. These two power functions are able to predict measurements of muscle endurance, i.e., of the maximum length of time that contraction of any constant level of force can be sustained.