Communities as conduits of harm: A social identity analysis of appraisal,coping and justice-seeking in response to historic collective victimization

Social identity approach (SIA) research shows that community members often work together to support survivors of collective victimization and rectify social injustices. However, complexities arise when community members have been involved in perpetrating these injustices. While many communities are unaware of their role in fostering victimization, others actively deny their role and responsibility to restore justice. We explore these processes by investigating experiences of community violence and collective justice-seeking among Albanian survivors of dictatorial crimes. Survivors (N = 27) were interviewed, and data were analysed using theoretical thematic analysis guided by the SIA. The analysis reveals the diverse ways communities can become harmful ‘Social Curses’. First, communities in their various forms became effective perpetrators of fear and control (e.g., exclusion and/or withholding ingroup privileges) during the dictatorship because of the close relationship between communities and their members. Second, communities caused harm by refusing to accept responsibility for the crimes, and by undermining attempts at collective action to address injustices. This lack of collective accountability also fosters survivors' feelings of exclusion and undermines their hope for systematic change. Implications for SIA processes relating to health/wellbeing (both Social Cure and Curse) are discussed. We also discuss implications for understanding collective action and victimhood.     

Systematic review of interruption and redirection procedures for autistic individuals

Interruption and redirection (IR) procedures involve systematically disrupting an undesirable behavior and prompting an individual to engage in an alternative behavior. These procedures have been frequently assessed for reducing repetitive behaviors for autistic individuals. The primary purpose of this review was to assess IR interventions to determine whether outcomes vary according to intervention characteristics, dependent variable types, design quality, or publication status. A secondary purpose was to assess the extent to which generalization and maintenance outcomes were measured and whether characteristics of these conditions were related to outcomes. IR interventions were moderately successful for reducing repetitive behaviors but less effective for improving corollary variables such as appropriate vocalizations and functional engagement. Generalization and maintenance outcomes, when measured, were poor. Results indicate the need for alternative or augmentative procedures that focus on engagement in meaningful interactions and activities.     

Knowing things and going places

When I say “I know Sarah,” or “I know Berlin,” what sort of knowledge am I claiming? Such knowledge of a particular is, I claim, not reducible to either propositional knowledge-that or to traditional physical know-how. Mere, bare knowledge by acquaintance also does not capture the kind of knowledge being claimed here. Using knowledge of a place as my central example, I argue that this kind of knowledge-of, or “objectual knowledge” as it is sometimes called, is of a distinctive epistemological sort. It is a genre of inherently first-personal aesthetic knowledge, but it also, like know-how, involves active skill. I end by exploring a couple of classic problems in aesthetic epistemology, applied to the case of knowledge-of as active aesthetic knowledge.     

Six adult male rhesus monkeys did not learn from the choices of a conspecific shown in videos

Animal Cognition - There is substantial evidence of group-specific behaviors in wild animals that are thought to be socially transmitted. Yet experimental studies with monkeys have reported...     

“Sugary drinks” and graphic warning labels: Critique of a recent U.S. study of parents' beverage choices for their children

A laboratory experiment by U.S. public health researchers Hall et al. claimed to demonstrate that a graphic picture-and-text warning label placed on so-called sugary drinks would substantially reduce parents' purchase of them for their children. Hall et al., however, misclassified the alleged “sugary drinks,” omitting those containing natural but equally harmful sugars such as fructose in fruit juice and lactose in milk. They also implied that artificially sweetened “non-sugary” drinks are harmless when available research indicates otherwise. The experiment was further invalidated by the fact that warning labels are illegal in the U.S., and those that Hall et al. used would not be permitted in any case because they partially obscured the manufacturer's brand label. There were many other methodological problems with Hall et al.'s experiment, among them the failure to do what any competent consumer researcher would do—namely ask the parents afterwards why they made the choices that they did.     

Death by 1000 ‘true fans’: Do marketing laws apply to music listening?

The advice to musicians and marketers is to focus on what they love: a truism for practitioners is to find 1000 ‘true fans’ and make $100 from each of them (Kelly, 2008. 1000 True fans. The Technium). If this advice is correct, we should see musicians with loyal user bases engaging more with their favourite artists and less with other music, suggesting a narrow targeting strategy would suffice. On the other hand, the established marketing laws indicate that the listeners of very different genres should overlap more than conventional wisdom would suggest, supporting the need for a much broader approach to targeting potential audiences. Given these conflicting views, musicians need to know if they should market to their existing listeners, the listeners of music similar to theirs (i.e., the same genre), or if they should try to reach a much wider audience. We turn to established choice patterns from the marketing literature to address these questions in the music context. This study examines 84,000,000 observations of music listening from 27,000 unique global users between 2013 and 2014 and survey data from 2019 containing music listening from over 1000 representative respondents in the United States. The results show that listening follows the Duplication of Purchase law for genres, artists, albums, and songs, at an annual, 6-months, 3-months, 1-month, and 1-week period, with no indication of partitioned music listening. The implication is that musicians should try to reach all potential listeners, regardless of what they already listen to. These findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge about duplication analyses of various durations, extend the contexts of choice behaviour that exhibit this pattern, and managerially, to knowledge about the extent of potential audiences and ‘share of ear’ competition.     

Premature conclusions about the signal-to-noise ratio in structural equation modeling research: A commentary on Yuan and Fang (2023)

In a recent article published in this journal, Yuan and Fang (British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 2023) suggest comparing structural equation modeling (SEM), also known as covariance-based SEM (CB-SEM), estimated by normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood (NML), to regression analysis with (weighted) composites estimated by least squares (LS) in terms of their signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). They summarize their findings in the statement that “[c]ontrary to the common belief that CB-SEM is the preferred method for the analysis of observational data, this article shows that regression analysis via weighted composites yields parameter estimates with much smaller standard errors, and thus corresponds to greater values of the [SNR].” In our commentary, we show that Yuan and Fang have made several incorrect assumptions and claims. Consequently, we recommend that empirical researchers not base their methodological choice regarding CB-SEM and regression analysis with composites on the findings of Yuan and Fang as these findings are premature and require further research.     

Heterogeneous heterogeneity by default: Testing categorical moderators in mixed-effects meta-analysis

Categorical moderators are often included in mixed-effects meta-analysis to explain heterogeneity in effect sizes. An assumption in tests of categorical moderator effects is that of a constant between-study variance across all levels of the moderator. Although it rarely receives serious thought, there can be statistical ramifications to upholding this assumption. We propose that researchers should instead default to assuming unequal between-study variances when analysing categorical moderators. To achieve this, we suggest using a mixed-effects location-scale model (MELSM) to allow group-specific estimates for the between-study variance. In two extensive simulation studies, we show that in terms of Type I error and statistical power, little is lost by using the MELSM for moderator tests, but there can be serious costs when an equal variance mixed-effects model (MEM) is used. Most notably, in scenarios with balanced sample sizes or equal between-study variance, the Type I error and power rates are nearly identical between the MEM and the MELSM. On the other hand, with imbalanced sample sizes and unequal variances, the Type I error rate under the MEM can be grossly inflated or overly conservative, whereas the MELSM does comparatively well in controlling the Type I error across the majority of cases. A notable exception where the MELSM did not clearly outperform the MEM was in the case of few studies (e.g., 5). With respect to power, the MELSM had similar or higher power than the MEM in conditions where the latter produced non-inflated Type 1 error rates. Together, our results support the idea that assuming unequal between-study variances is preferred as a default strategy when testing categorical moderators.     

Facial comparison behaviour of forensic facial examiners

Facial examiners make visual comparisons of face images to establish the identities of persons in police investigations. This study utilised eye-tracking and an individual differences approach to investigate whether these experts exhibit specialist viewing behaviours during identification, by comparing facial examiners with forensic fingerprint analysts and untrained novices across three tasks. These comprised of face matching under unlimited (Experiment 1) and time-restricted viewing (Experiment 2), and with a feature-comparison protocol derived from examiner casework procedures (Experiment 3). Facial examiners exhibited individual differences in facial comparison accuracy and did not consistently outperform fingerprint analysts and novices. Their behaviour was also marked by similarities to the comparison groups in terms of how faces were viewed, as evidenced from eye movements, and how faces were perceived, based on the made feature judgements and identification decisions. These findings further understanding of how facial comparisons are performed and clarify the nature of examiner expertise.