Cross-cultural comparison of drivers’ tendency to commit different aberrant driving behaviours

The first aim of the present study was to identify key items which are rated differently by drivers from Finland, Sweden, Greece and Turkey. The second aim was to examine how these key items relate to drivers’ self-reported accident involvement. Similar comparisons have previously been conducted in Europe but these have only included items classified as violations and errors, but not lapses. A sample of Finnish (N = 200), Swedish (N = 200), Greek (N = 200) and Turkish (N = 200) drivers completed the driver behaviour questionnaire (DBQ) and reported their accident involvement during the previous 3 years. The results showed that nine key items (which drivers from different countries rated differently) could be identified. These items included two aggressive violations, four ordinary violations, three lapses, but no errors. Out of these nine items, five items (Become angered by a certain type of driver and indicate your hostility by whatever means you can, Disregard the speed limit on a motorway, Overtake a slow driver on the inside, Pull out of a junction so far that the driver with right of way has to stop and let you out and Get into the wrong lane approaching a roundabout or a junction) could explain differences in drivers’ self-reported yearly accident involvement when all four countries were taken together. At the same time, none of the items could explain differences in self-reported yearly accident involvement in Finland and Sweden while one of the items (Overtake a slow driver on the inside) could explain differences in self-reported yearly accident involvement in Greece and two of the items (Become angered by a certain type of driver and indicate your hostility by whatever means you can and Disregard the speed limit on a residential road) could explain differences in self-reported yearly accident involvement in Turkey. This shows that different countries have different problems with regard to aberrant driving behaviours which need to be taken into account when promoting traffic safety interventions and the driver behaviour questionnaire (DBQ) can be used to diagnose risk areas and to better inform road safety practitioners within and between countries.     

Control of attention around the fovea.

Three experiments tested young adults' abilities to use size and location cues to find and identify a target letter in a visual field containing 8 to 12 letters. Location cues (relatively near to or far from the fovea) and size cues (relatively large or small) were given before the display. Compared with response times on neutral, no-cue trials, location and size cues produced independent cost and benefit effects. The best fitting quantitative models allow attentional resources to be distributed in ringlike areas varying in distance from the fixation point, within which further selection of items by their relative size is possible.     

Slippery context effect and critical bands.

This article explored the slippery context effect: When Ss judge the loudness of tones that differ in sound frequency as well as intensity, stimulus context (relative intensity levels at the 2 frequencies) can strongly influence the levels that are judged equally loud. It is shown that the size of the slippery context effect depends on the frequency difference between the tones: Small frequency differences (less than a critical bandwidth) produced essentially no slippery effect; much larger differences produced substantial effects. These results are consistent with a model postulating the existence of a central attentional or preattentive "filter-like" process whose weighting coefficients represent the size of the absolute as opposed to the relative (contextual) component of loudness perception and judgment.     

Encouraging People With Mood Disorders to Attend a Self‐Help Group1

Using an intervention based on referent power, self‐help sponsors sought to encourage attendance at self‐help meetings. They encouraged patients with major depression or bipolar disorder to attend self‐help meetings following their hospitalizations. The intervention successfully increased the attendance of the experimental group compared to those in the control group. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Survey return rates as a function of priority versus first-class mailing

Prior research indicates survey procedures that signal significance and individualized mailings have higher response rates. Thus, it was hypothesized that surveys delivered via Priority mail would result in higher return rates than surveys delivered via First-Class. 260 surveys were sent to individuals randomly selected from lists of licensed physical and behavioral healthcare providers in Alaska and New Mexico. Half of the selected individuals were assigned randomly to receive mailings using Priority mail, the other half received First-Class mailings. Return rate was 39% for First-Class and 35% for Priority. Z tests of proportion indicated no statistically significant differences between methods. Given increased costs with no resultant increase in response rate, sending surveys to potential participants via Priority mail does not appear warranted.     

When do victim group members feel a moral obligation to help suffering others?

In four experiments, we assessed when the salience of ingroup historical victimization will encourage a sense of moral obligation to reduce the suffering of others. Historically victimized groups (Jews and women; Experiments 1 and 3) who considered the lessons of the past for their ingroup felt heightened moral obligation to help other non‐adversary victimized groups. However, when the suffering outgroup was an adversary, Jews (Experiment 2) and women (Experiment 4) who focused on the lesson of historical victimization for their ingroup reported lower moral obligation to reduce others' suffering. The lesson focus effect on moral obligation was mediated by benefit finding as well as perceived similarity to the outgroup. Means to facilitate moral obligation, as well as limiting factors, among victimized group members are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social identity and perceptions of torture: It's moral when we do it

Two studies examined the effects of social identity concerns on the moral justification of torture. British and American nationals read a media report concerning the torture of a terrorist suspect that they were led to believe had been perpetrated either by members of their own nation's security services or by another nation's security services. When the torture was perpetrated by the ingroup, participants described it as more morally justified than when the torture was perpetrated by the other nation's security services. This effect was mediated by participants' decreased empathy for the ingroup's torture victim (Study 1), as well as increased victim blame and perceiving the perpetrators as prototypical of their national group (Study 2). We consider how social identity concerns enable moral justification of harm doing.