A Person‐Centered Perspective on Multidimensional Perfectionism in Canadian and Chinese University Students: A Multigroup Latent Profile Analysis

This study investigated the generalizability of the tripartite model of perfectionism across Canadian and Chinese university students. Using latent profile analysis and indicators of perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns, and neuroticism in both groups, the authors derived a 3‐profile solution: adaptive perfectionists, maladaptive perfectionists, and nonperfectionists. Furthermore, multigroup latent profile analysis supported the construct equivalence of the 3‐profile solution across groups. Results further suggested that a greater proportion of Chinese students could be classified as adaptive perfectionists. Este estudio investigó la generalizabilidad del modelo tripartito de perfeccionismo entre estudiantes universitarios canadienses y chinos. Usando un análisis de perfil latente e indicadores de esfuerzos perfeccionistas, preocupaciones perfeccionistas y neuroticismo en ambos grupos, los autores desarrollaron una solución de 3 perfiles: perfeccionistas adaptados, perfeccionistas inadaptados y no perfeccionistas. Además, el análisis de perfil latente multigrupo confirmó la equivalencia de constructo de la solución de 3 perfiles en estos grupos. Los resultados sugieren también que una mayor proporción de estudiantes chinos podría clasificarse como perfeccionistas adaptados.     

Public Attitudes on the Ethics of Deceptively Planting False Memories to Motivate Healthy Behavior

Researchers have proposed that planting false memories could have positive behavioral consequences. The idea of deceptively planting ‘beneficial’ false memories outside of the laboratory raises important ethical questions, but how might the general public appraise this moral dilemma? In two studies, participants from the USA and UK read about a fictional ‘false‐memory therapy’ that led people to adopt healthy behaviors. Participants then reported their attitudes toward the acceptability of this therapy, via scale‐rating (both studies) and open‐text (study 2) responses. The data revealed highly divergent responses to this contentious issue, ranging from abject horror to unqualified enthusiasm. Moreover, the responses shed light on conditions that participants believed would make the therapy less or more ethical. Whether or not deceptively planting memories outside the lab could ever be justifiable, these studies add valuable evidence to scientific and societal debates on neuroethics, whose relevance to memory science is increasingly acute. Copyright © 2016 The Authors Applied Cognitive Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Greater response cardinality indirectly reduces confidence

Koriat's Self-Consistency Model of subjective confidence proposes that the consistency and accessibility with which a response is retrieved are cues to confidence in the accuracy of that response. The Self-Consistency Model, however, has only been assessed using two-alternative forced-choice questions. Consideration of open-ended questions suggested that response cardinality—the number of unique response options that might come to mind—should directly reduce response consistency, and thus indirectly reduce confidence. Australian undergraduate students (N?=?389) completed a 20-item open-ended general-knowledge test with confidence ratings attached to each answer. Replicating previous Self-Consistency Model findings, but in an open-ended format for the first time, consistency and accessibility were independent positive predictors of confidence, though the prediction of accessibility did not reach statistical significance. Extending the model, the number of unique responses given by participants, a measure of response cardinality, was found to be a strong negative predictor of consistency and indirect negative predictor of confidence. Implications of the results therefore include the use of simple strategies such as prompting or providing varying numbers of response options as potentially effective for manipulating cardinality and thus confidence.     

Validation of the Empathy Quotient in Mainland China

This research aimed to validate a simplified Chinese version of the Empathy Quotient (EQ; 60 items) for use with Mainland Chinese people. The original English version of the EQ was translated into simplified Chinese. Through an online survey, 588 Mainland Chinese participants completed the EQ and 3 other questionnaires: the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS–20). Thirty-five participants completed retesting of the EQ 3 to 4 weeks later. Sex differences on the EQ scores and psychometric properties of the EQ items were examined. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that an EQ 15-item structural model fitted the data quite well. Self-report empathy, as assessed by the current simplified Chinese version of the EQ, appeared to relate to participants' autistic and alexithymic traits but not sex.     

Truthlikeness and the Lottery Paradox via the Preface Paradox

In a 2017 AJP paper, Cevolani and Schurz (C&S) propose a novel solution to the Preface Paradox that appeals to the notion of expected truthlikeness. This discussion note extends and analyses their approach by applying it to the related Lottery Paradox.     

Valuing the future: a MADA example involving nuclear waste storage

Intertemporal decision making involves decisions that have consequences that span several periods of time and often extend far into the future. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and highlight the differences associated with different evaluation methods designed to cope with the long-term impacts of a decision including discounting. The concepts and ideas are illustrated in the context of a decision about a nuclear waste facility. We show how applying different discounting methodologies can greatly affect the decision made, especially over long time periods. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From landsmanshaften to vinkln: Mediating community among Yiddish speakers in America

Vinkln (“corners”) in America have spread since the 1970s as an organizational strategy by Yiddish-speaking, non-pietistic, East European Jewish immigrants, many of whom have a Holocaust experience. The vinkln provide a privatized, immersive experience for Yiddish language and culture as a way to offer community identity to Yiddish speakers within the wider Jewish community. They arose out of landsmanschaften, or “hometown associations,” in the early twentieth century, but the vinkln function to ritually reproduce culture rather than offer mutual aid based on old-country affiliation. Although secularized, the organized social structure and performed communication of the vinkln invoke rituals and roles of Jewish religious services from traditional community experience. They displace old-country affiliations with pronounced loyalties to Israel and America, although the location of Yiddish in performance is often centered in Poland. The vinkln mediate community by suggesting cultural reproduction even as the bonds of language and society among Yiddish speakers are weakening. Its symbols and associations are restricted to an elderly age cohort, and therefore not likely to perpetuate the very culture that its organizers purport to preserve. It is differentiated from other structures of Yiddish conservation and appreciation such as Internet networks and community center conversation groups. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Normativity à la Mode

This paper sets out to raise questions about the metaphor of the spaceof reasons. It argues that a proper appreciation of Wittgensteinundermines the metaphysical or dualistic way of taking the metaphor thatis supposed to prevent the naturalization of reason.