Knowledge in society: anatomy of an emergent field

An emergent social science of knowledge applications, drawing on a substantial multidisciplinary literature published over the past twenty-five years, signals an inversion of typical scholarly reasoning about the knowledge-society nexus. Whereas most scholarly research thus far has concentrated on conditions believed to affect the production of scientific and professional knowledge, we pose a new problematic: What must we examine in order to comprehend and consciously shape applications of scientific and professional knowledge to the manifold problems facing contemporary societies? To date, approaches to this problematic have proceeded on the basis of four broadly accepted if abstract theses about the nature of contemporary knowledge systems: subjectivity, corrigibility, sociality, and complexity. Within the boundaries supplied by these commonly accepted theses are unresolved controversies expressed in competing visions of complexity, alternative perspectives of causation, rival images of progress, and conflicting criteria of application.     

Recurring thoughts on unconscious ego resistances.

Analysis of the unconscious ego resistances is one of those clinical concepts more honored in the breach than in the observance. This same point has been made periodically over the past fifty years. It has not been sufficiently realized that a true psychoanalytic understanding of resistance analysis could only begin with Freud's second theory of anxiety. Freud himself never fully embraced this theory, and clinical contributions since then have varied in their ability to use the techniques inherent in the second theory of anxiety. Recent contributions to the literature have not eliminated the espousal of theories of resistance based on earlier views of anxiety. Reasons cited for this include: the ambiguities in Freud's writing, the direction of the early ego theorists, and proclivities toward deeper interpretations.     

Selecting a best multiattribute alternative with partial information about attribute weights

Use of approximate weights would greatly simplify decision analysis under certainty since detailed weight elicitation could be avoided. This paper examines the degree to which rank order information about weights can be used to identify a best alternative, or falling uniqueness prescribes an easily implemented rule for selecting a ‘best’ alternative. The prescribed rule uses as weights the centroid of the feasible region defined by the rank order information. In conjunction with the rule, the value of the rank order information can be determined using an ‘expected gain from weight precision’ (EGWP) measure, analogous to ‘expected value of perfect information’ in decision analysis under uncertainty.     

Confirming the latent structure and base rate of schizotypy: a taxometric analysis.

Meehl's (1962, 1990) model of schizotypy and the development of schizophrenia implies that the structure of liability for schizophrenia is dichotomous and that a "schizogene" determines membership in a latent class, or taxon (Meehl & Golden, 1982). The authors sought to determine the latent structure and base rate of schizotypy. They applied Meehl's (1973; Meehl & Golden, 1982) MAXCOV-HITMAX taxometric analytic procedures to a subset of items from the Perceptual Aberration Scale (PAS; Chapman, Chapman, & Raulin, 1978), a prominent psychometric index of schizotypy, derived from a randomly ascertained nonclinical university sample (N = 1,093). The results, in accordance with Meehl's conjectures, strongly suggest that schizotypy, as assessed by the PAS, is taxonic at the latent level with a general population taxon base rate of approximately .10.     

Inaccurate reporting and inappropriate variables: a reply to Vecchio's (1990) examination of cognitive resource theory.

In an article in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Vecchio (1990) purported to test cognitive resource theory (Fiedler, 1986; Fiedler & Garcia, 1987). We present evidence that Vecchio's article seriously misrepresented previous work on cognitive resource theory and also contained several flaws in methodology that call into question his conclusions regarding the validity of cognitive resource theory.