Servicescapes: The role that place plays in stay‐at‐home mothers’ lives

Over the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to gender‐related consumption behaviour. However, a relative gap in our knowledge still exists when it comes to understanding the changes that occur as a result of motherhood and how this may influence their interactions in the retail environment. The purpose of this article is to explore stay‐at‐home mothers’ experiences in the servicescape to gain a better understanding of how they associate with servicescapes during this transitional period, how they use retail space to suit their needs, and how they use retail space to negotiate their role as a stay‐at‐home mother. Five stay‐at‐home mothers with children younger than 5 years were provided with disposable cameras and asked to photograph servicescapes that they visited regularly. Over a 1‐year period, they were interviewed several times, and photo‐elicitation techniques were used throughout the interviewing process. The results of this study suggest that when consumers undergo role or identity changes, certain places can be used to smooth this process. Not only can the retail environment be used as a coping mechanism for stay‐at‐home mothers, it can also be viewed as a “second place” as opposed to a “third place”, thus enabling isolated consumers to feel connected with the outside world. Last, this study highlights the temporal dimensions of place. Throughout one's lifetime, one will form attachments to and patronise different places, which will evolve and change as individuals, accordingly, take on different roles and identities. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information theoretical approaches to chick-a-dee calls of Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis)

One aim of this study was to apply information theoretical analyses to understanding the structural complexity of chick-a-dee calls of Carolina chickadees, Poecile carolinensis. A second aim of this study was to compare this structural complexity to that of the calls of black-capped chickadees, P. atricapillus, described in an earlier published report (Hailman, Ficken, & Ficken, 1985). Chick-a-dee calls were recorded from Carolina chickadees in a naturalistic observation study in eastern Tennessee. Calls were analyzed using approaches from information theory, including transition probability matrices, Zipf's rules, entropies, and information coding capacities of calls and notes of calls. As described for black-capped chickadees, calls of Carolina chickadees exhibited considerable structural complexity. Most results suggested that the call of Carolina chickadees is more structurally complex than that of black-capped chickadees. These findings add support to the growing literature on the complexity of this call system in Paridae species. Furthermore, these results point to the feasibility of detailed cross-species comparative analyses that may allow strong testing of hypotheses regarding signal evolution.     

The reciprocal link between multiculturalism and perspective-taking: How ideological and self-regulatory approaches to managing diversity reinforce each other

Five experiments tested the hypothesis that there is a bi-directional link between ideological (multiculturalism and color-blindness) and self-regulatory (perspective-taking and stereotype-suppression) approaches to managing diversity. A first set of experiments found that exposure to multiculturalism facilitated perceptual and conceptual forms of perspective-taking. Specifically, a multicultural ideology prime strengthened motivations to engage in perspective-taking (Experiment 1) and led participants to adopt spontaneously an outgroup target's visual perspective (Experiment 2) and to recognize that an outgroup target did not possess their privileged knowledge (Experiment 3), as compared with a color-blind ideology prime or baseline condition. A second set of experiments documented the reciprocal relationship: Actively considering an outgroup member's perspective strengthened both deliberate (Experiment 4) and automatic (Experiment 5) positivity toward multiculturalism relative to color-blindness. These findings suggest that ideological and self-regulatory approaches to diversity management are intimately connected and can reinforce each other.     

A randomized wait-list controlled analysis of the implementation integrity of team-initiated problem solving processes

Members of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) teams from 34 elementary schools participated in a Team-Initiated Problem Solving (TIPS) Workshop and follow-up technical assistance. Within the context of a randomized wait-list controlled trial, team members who were the first recipients of the TIPS intervention demonstrated greater implementation integrity in using the problem-solving processes during their team meetings than did members of PBIS Teams in the Wait-List Control group. The success of TIPS at improving implementation integrity of the problem-solving processes is encouraging and suggests the value of conducting additional research focused on determining whether there is a functional relation between use of these problem-solving processes and actual resolution of targeted student academic and social problems.     

Mentalist evidentialism vindicated (and a super-blooper epistemic design problem for proper function justification)

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to evidence E is an essential property of B–E; and (iii) mentalist evidentialism is “unmotivated”. I object to each argument. The argument for (i) begs the question. The argument for (ii) suffers from the fact that mentalist evidentialists are not committed to the consequences claimed for them; nevertheless, I show that there is, in the neighborhood, a substantive dispute concerning the nature of doxastic epistemic fittingness. That dispute involves what I call “Necessary Fittingness”, the view that, necessarily, exactly one (at most) doxastic attitude (belief, or disbelief, or suspension of judgment) toward a proposition is epistemically fitting with respect to a person’s total evidence at any time. Reflection on my super-blooper epistemic design counterexamples to Bergmann’s proper function theory reveals both the plausibility of Necessary Fittingness and a good reason to deny (iii). Mentalist evidentialism is thus vindicated against the objections.     

The effects of existential threat on reading comprehension of worldview affirming and disconfirming information

Terror management theory posits that cultural worldviews buffer people from thoughts and concerns about death. In support of this claim, numerous studies have shown that mortality salience (MS) increases an individual's motivation to uphold and defend important cultural worldviews. We hypothesized that the motivation to defend cultural worldviews following MS would also enhance people's ability to comprehend worldview affirming (vs. disconfirming) information. Three studies investigated this possibility. Study 1 showed that MS (vs. control) increased reading comprehension of a pro‐evolution essay among participants with a strongly evolutionist worldview, but decreased reading comprehension among participants with a strongly creationist worldview. With the use of a pro‐creation essay, Study 2 conceptually replicated these effects and demonstrated that the interactive effect of worldview and death anxiety on reading comprehension was mediated by defensive motivation. Study 3 replicated the results of Studies 1 and 2 among participants with a strongly evolutionist worldview, but only when the information in the essay was perceived as veridical. Discussion focused on the specific process through which MS affects reading comprehension of worldview relevant ideas. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is variability in mate choice similar for intelligence and personality traits? Testing a hypothesis about the evolutionary genetics of personality

This study tests the hypothesis presented by Penke, Denissen, and Miller (2007a) that condition-dependent traits, including intelligence, attractiveness, and health, are universally and uniformly preferred as characteristics in a mate relative to traits that are less indicative of condition, including personality traits. We analyzed between-culture mean standard deviations of preference ratings and rankings provided by nearly 10,000 people in 37 cultures for 18 characteristics in a potential mate. Contrary to the hypothesis, preferences for traits indicating agreeableness and conscientiousness were not more variable than preferences for intelligence, and preferences for traits indicating low neuroticism were more uniform than preferences for intelligence. Discussion addresses implications of these results for hypotheses about the evolutionary genetics of intelligence and personality.     

Birth order, sex of child, and perceptions of parental favoritism

Many studies have examined factors that influence discriminative parental solicitude. Sex, birth order, and age of the mother are a few factors demonstrated to influence levels of parental investment (especially as measured by offspring self-report). One indicator of a high level of parental investment is being a parental favorite. Using self-reports from a sample of several hundred young adults, we secured support for two hypotheses related to the influence of birth order and sex on parental favoritism. Fathers are not perceived as having a favorite child more often than are mothers, but are more likely to favor female children than are mothers. Mothers are perceived to be more likely to favor female children in blended sibships. Both mothers and fathers are perceived as favoring genetically-related children. The results also suggest that the birth order of the parental favorite varies with the birth order of the participant. Firstborns and lastborns report a pattern of favoritism that suggests parents favor firstborn and lastborn children. The discussion addresses limitations of the methodology and presents directions for future research.     

Entrepreneurship,professionalism, leadership: A framework and measure for understanding boundaryless careers

We propose a person-centered framework for conceptualizing subjective careers in an increasingly boundaryless work context. Specifically, we argue that entrepreneurship, professionalism, and leadership (EPL) can serve as three key dimensions of subjective career space. We relate this framework to earlier macro-level national and organizational career models proposed by Kanter (1989) and Schein (1978). Our empirical study involving 10,326 Singaporean university students demonstrated that entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career aspirations (including motivations, efficacies, and intentions) can be measured independently, that these career dimensions are independent of vocational interests, and that they are to some degree viewed as competing career alternatives. We also show that EPL motivation profiles can operationalize the boundaryless and protean career concepts. Individuals concurrently high in entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career motivations, and those high in entrepreneurial and leadership motivations are highest in boundaryless and self-directed career attitudes, while those primarily motivated for professional careers hold the most traditional career attitudes. We conclude by discussing the potential of the framework for understanding human resource issues at organizational and national levels and for enhancing the study of entrepreneurship, professionalism, and leadership.