Auditory induction: Reciprocal changes in alternating sounds

When portions of a sound are replaced by a potential masker, the missing fragments may be perceptually restored, resulting in apparent continuity of the interrupted signal. This phenomenon has been examined extensively by using pulsation threshold, auditory induction, and phonemic restoration paradigms in which two sounds, the inducer and the inducee, are alternated (ABABA ... ), and the conditions required for apparent continuity of the lower amplitude inducee are determined. Previous studies have generally neglected to examine concomitant changes produced in the inducing sound. Results from the present experiments have demonstrated decreases in the loudness of inducers using inducer/inducee pairs consisting of tone/tone and noise/noise, as well as the noise/speech pairs associated with phonemic restorations. Interestingly, reductions in inducer loudness occurred even when the inducee was heard as discontinuous, and these decreases in loudness were accompanied by graded increases in apparent duration of the inducee, contrary to the conventional view of auditory induction as an all-or-none phenomenon. Under some conditions, the reduced loudness of the inducer was coupled with a marked alteration in its timbre. Especially profound changes in the inducer quality occurred when the alternating stimuli were tones having the same frequency and differing only in intensity-it seems that following subtraction of components corresponding to the inducee, an anomalous auditory residue remained that did not correspond to the representation of a tone.     

American and Danish police “dropout” rates: Denmark's force as a case study in high job satisfaction,low stress,and low turnover

An excessive “dropout” rate among police officers—quitting prior to normal retirement—wastes resources and may result in a low level of experience. Denmark's police force appears to be a case study in low turnover and may provide valuable insights. A primarily qualitative analysis contends that factors related to Danish culture and police practices produce relatively low stress and high “need fulfillment” for Danish officers in comparison with their counterparts in typical U.S. police departments—variables previously found related to low turnover. Results of a mail questionnaire show rates of early leaving (prior to retirement) notably lower for the Danish police than for a U.S. national sample of 87 police departments in large cities, and a special subsample of 39 small-city departments in California. Qualifications and implications are discussed.     

Estimating and testing autocorrelation with small samples: A comparison of the c-statistic to a modified estimator

Huitema and McKean (Psychological Bulletin, 110, 291–304, 1991) recently showed, in a Monte-Carlo study, that five conventional estimators of first-order autocorrelation perform poorly for small (< 50) sample sizes. They suggested a modified estimator and a test for autocorrelation. We examine an estimator not considered by Huitema and McKean: the C-statistic (Young, Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 12, 293–300, 1941). A Monte-Carlo study of the small sample properties of the C-statistic shows that it performs as well or better than the modified estimator suggested by Huitema and McKean (1991). The C-statistic is also shown to be closely related to the d-statistic of the widely used Durbin-Watson test.     

Threat and authoritarianism in the United States, 1978-1987

Studies at both the individual and collective levels have implicated threat as an important factor in authoritarianism. As a follow-up to Sales's (1973) study relating behavioral indicators of authoritarianism to levels of social threat, the present research analyzed archival data from the United States for high-threat (1978-1982) and low-threat (1983-1987) periods. Societal measures of most attitude and behavioral components of the authoritarian syndrome significantly decreased between the high-threat and the low-threat periods. These results support the threat-authoritarianism relationship but also suggest a more complicated theoretical model that links perceived social conditions, arousal of authoritarian sentiments, dispositional authoritarianism, and the nature of political appeals--particularly those that engage authoritarian aggression.     

Abortion: identity and loss

The fetus is characterized as a "human organism" which, according to both the "stage" and "process" ontological theories, is a partly but not fully real individual human being. Abortion deprives the fetus of a future full-fledged human life, and this susceptibility to loss entitles it to certain moral rights, though not to the entire range of rights accorded a fully human being. Therefore, as the fetus becomes more fully human, the seriousness of abortion approaches that of infanticide.     

Comparing adolescent positive affect and self-esteem as precursors to adult self-esteem and life satisfaction

Motivation and Emotion - Parents often hope for their children to be happy and to have high self-esteem, but little research has compared how these two constructs are related to long-term...     

Explicating the Openness to Experience Construct and its Subdimensions and Facets in a Work Setting

Recent meta‐analyses (e.g. Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001 ) found openness to experience, a factor in the five‐factor model of personality, to be uncorrelated with job performance. We argue that, among others, insignificant validity is due to the broad and heterogeneous nature of the construct. In line with our hypotheses, we found internal structure of openness to be multidimensional. Further analyses on subdimensional and facet level revealed large differences in criterion‐ and construct‐related validity. It could be demonstrated that a subdimension labeled epistemic curiosity and, especially, the facet openness to ideas, which includes aspects like curiosity, flexibility, willingness to learn, and creativity, are highly relevant for work‐related criteria and so far understudied in organizational research.     

Five Components of a Basic Suicide Syndrome*

ABSTRACT: To the question “Why suicide?” a tentative framework is proposed, taking the form of a syndrome of five components: (a) commitment; (b) rigidity; (c) failure; (d) shame; and (e) isolation. These are quite similar to the conclusions of a study by Dorothy Miller. The syndrome is psychological as well as sociological, deals with the response of the suicider to crisis, and suggests mechanisms lacking in other theoretical frameworks. Quantitative and qualitative data taken from interviews with survivors of well over 100 suiciders support the framework. Also discussed are possible further refinements of the syndrome, its adequacy, and its applications to intervention with suicidal persons.