Difficulty in evoking odor images: The role of odor naming

Many studies report that people have difficulty in evoking odor images. In this article, we explore whether this results from another commonly observed phenomenon, difficulty in naming odors. In Experiment 1, participants both named and attempted to imagine either odors or their common visual referents. More-difficult-to-name odors were reported as being more difficult to evoke as olfactory images, in comparison with the visual condition. In Experiment 2, participants received training prior to forming odor images and naming the same set of odors. As in Experiment 1, more-difficult-to-name odors were harder to imagine, but participants who had learned the odor names during training were significantly better, by their own report, at imagining many of these stimuli, relative to participants who were either exposed to the odors, exposed to their names, or who received no pretraining. In sum, these experiments suggest that odor naming may account for some of the difficulty reported by participants when attempting to evoke odor images; we discuss an associative basis for this effect.     

Iffy beliefs: Conditional thinking and belief change

The ability to entertain possibilities and draw inferences about them is essential to human intelligence. We examine the hypothesis that conditional if-then statements trigger a mental simulation process in which people suppose the antecedent (if statement) to be true and evaluate the consequent (then statement) in that context. On the assumption that supposing an event to be true increases belief that the event has occurred or will occur, this hypothesis is consistent with the claim that evaluating a conditional will heighten belief in its antecedent more than in its consequent. Two experiments, employing conditionals of the form If animal A has property X, then animal B will have property X, in which X was a property that people could not readily relate to the animals, supported this claim. The effect was stronger following the evaluation of conditionals with dissimilar animal categories.     

The Minority-Majority Conundrum in Northern Ireland: An Orange Order Perspective

Researchers have argued that, depending on the framing of the Northern Ireland conflict, each group could either be a minority or a majority relative to the other. This complicates macrosocial explanations of the conflict which make specific predictions on the basis of minority or majority positions. The present paper argues that this conundrum may have arisen from the inherent variability in microidentity processes that do not fit easily with macroexplanations. In this paper the rhetoric of relative group position is analysed in political speeches delivered by leading members of an influential Protestant institution in Northern Ireland. It is apparent that minority and majority claims are not fixed but are flexibly used to achieve local rhetorical goals. Furthermore, the speeches differ before and after the Good Friday Agreement, with a reactionary "hegemonic" Unionist position giving way to a "majority-rights power sharing" argument and a "pseudo-minority" status giving way to a "disempowered minority" argument. These results suggest a view of the Northern Ireland conflict as a struggle for "symbolic power," i.e., the ability to flexibly define the intergroup situation to the ingroup's advantage.     

试论卫生与法律的关系

卫生是人类重要的社会实践活动。卫生也是保护人体健康的重要社会事业,需要法律的保护和导向。卫生法为卫生发展提供了良好的社会环境,并控制医药卫生无序、失控及异化带来的社会危害性,造福人类,促进经济发展和社会进步。     

Empowerment praxis in community coalitions

Community coalitions address a wide variety of community problems, espousing a community development processes that promotes individual and collective self-determination. They offer a promising venue for the study of empowerment of individuals and organizations. This study utilizes data from members of 35 community coalitions organized for the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems to address the following questions: What individual characteristics are related to the psychological empowerment of coalition members? What organizational characteristics are related to the collective empowering of members? What organization characteristics are related to a coalition being organizationally empowered to succeed in achieving its objectives? At the individual level, psychological empowerment was most strongly related to individuals' participation levels, sense of community, and perceptions of a positive organizational climate. At the group level, the strongest predictors of collective empowering (our operationalization of the empowering organization) were net benefits of participation, commitment, and positive organization climate. Psychological empowerment and positive organizational climate were the two predictors of organizational effectiveness (the empowered organization). Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Absence of a sex difference in algorithms for spatial problem solving

Pairs of stimuli taken from a pscyhometric measure of spatial aptitude were shown to 36 college men and 32 college women. The stimuli in pairs were (a) either identical or mirror images, and (b) presented in orientations that differed by 0–135 deg. Individuals judged, as rapidly as possible, if the stimuli in a pair would be identical or mirror images if presented at the same orientation. Replicating previous work, there was a sex difference in the speed with which problems were solved. Of greater interest was the fact that men and women were quite alike in the frequency with which they used different algorithms to solve the problems. Most individuals solved the problems using an algorithm in which an individual encodes the stimuli in working memory, mentally rotates one stimulus to the orientation of the other, compares both determine if they are identical, and responds. Two variants of this algorithm were also used by some subjects. In one variant, if comparison revealed that the stimuli were dissimilar, individuals did not respond immediately but continued processing until a self- imposed deadline was reached. In another variation, subjects only rotated the comparison stimuli when their orientations exceeded a critical angle.     

Book reviews

Early Behavior: Comparative and Developmental Approaches. Edited by H. W. Stevenson, E. H. Hess, and H. L. Rheingold. London and New York: Wiley. 1967. Pp. xii + 303 75s.

Current Research in Motivation. Edited by Ralph Norman Haber. London and New York: HOlt, Rinehart and Winston. Pp. xii + 800. £5

Language and Thought. Edited by Donald C. Hildum. London: Van Nostrand, Insight Book No. 37. 1967. Pp. vi + 2 00. $1.95. 16s.

Hormones and Behavior. Edited by Richard E. Whelan. London: Van Nostrand. Insight Book No. 39. I967. Pp. vi + 266. $2.95. 24s.