The Development and Validation of the Multicomponent AIDS Phobia Scale

The development, reliability, and validity of a new instrument, the Multicomponent AIDS Phobia Scale (MAPS), is described. Based on a sample of 181 university students, the results indicate that the MAPS has strong internal consistency and moderate test-retest reliability. In addition, an assessment of concurrent and discriminant validity indicates statistically significant correlations with other self-report measures of anxiety, hypochondriasis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and fear of AIDS. The results of a factor analysis indicate that the scale consists of two factors: Fear of Infection and Fear of Others/Avoidance. Although further research with the MAPS in a clinical population is warranted to investigate the generalizability of this study's results, the instrument appears to be a reliable and valid measure of AIDS Phobia and may prove useful for improving clinical assessment and documenting treatment outcome.     

Person perception and the bounded rationality of social judgment

In this article, we develop a bounded rationality view of the relation between person perception and social behavior. Two theses of this approach are that behaviors vary in their significance to observers, and that observers pursue bounded rather than global utility in forming personality impressions. Observers are expected to be sensitive to targets' overall behavioral tendencies and to the variability of their behavior across situations, but both sensitivities are bounded, being greater for behaviors that directly affect observers' outcomes. In two investigations involving extensive hourly and 6-s observations, we examined the bounded utility of people's impressions of personality, demonstrating how impression accuracy is linked to the significance of behaviors. Observers were sensitive to the organization of aggressive behaviors, but less sensitive to the organization of withdrawn behaviors, even when the consistency of those behaviors was comparable. The results clarify the relation between people's inferential shortcomings in laboratory paradigms and the bounded utility of person perception in the natural environment.     

Lexical decision in sentences: Effects of syntactic structure

A lexical decision paradigm was used to examine syntactic influence on word recognition in sentences. Initial fragments of sentences were presented visually (CRT display) one word at a time (at reading speeds), from left to right. The string terminated with the appearance of a lexical decision target. The grammatical structure of the incomplete sentence affected lexical decision reaction time (RT). In Experiment 1, modal verb contexts followed by main verb targets and preposition contexts followed by noun targets produced lower RTs than did the opposite pairings (i.e., modal/noun and preposition/verb). In Experiment 2, transitive verb contexts followed by noun targets and subject noun phrase contexts followed by verb targets yielded lower RTs than did the opposite pairings. Similar contrasts for adjective targets did not yield comparable effects in Experiment 2, but did when the adjective was the head of a predictable phrase (Experiment 4). In Experiment 3, noun targets yielded lower RTs than did verb targets after contexts of a transitive verb followed by a prepositional phrase. An account of these effects is offered in terms of parsing constraints on phrasal categories.     

Treating animals as ends

Conclusion Starting with a moral theory famous for being antagonistic toward animal rights, I have argued that we do have direct duties toward some animals, specifically those animals most closely related to human beings, whose behavior is reasonably interpreted as the result of conscious choice. Like animal rights views, the Kantian view escapes the intuitive counter-examples leveled at simple versions of utilitarianism. It rules out causing pain to the protected animals and also rules out killing them painlessly. But the Kantian view does not rule out painless experimentation at the cost of ruling out even harmless observation of animals. Nor is it restricted to a doctrine of negative obligations. The Kantian view forbids actions we intuitively think are wrong, allows those we think are permissible, and enjoins those we think are praiseworthy.     

If “Boys Will Be Boys,” Then Girls Will Be Victims? A Meta-Analytic Review of the Research That Relates Masculine Ideology to Sexual Aggression

In feminist sociocultural models of rape, extreme adherence to the masculine gender role is implicated in the perpetuation of sexual assault against women in that it encourages men to be dominant and aggressive, and it teaches that women are inferior to men and are sometimes worthy of victimization. Many researchers have linked components of masculine ideology to self-reports of past sexual aggression or future likelihood to rape. Thirty-nine effect sizes were examined in this meta-analysis across 11 different measures of masculine ideology to determine how strongly each index of masculine ideology was associated with sexual aggression. Although 10 of the 11 effect sizes were statistically significant, the 2 largest effects were for Malamuth's construct of “hostile masculinity” (e.g., Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss, & Tanaka, 1991) and Mosher's construct of “hypermasculinity” (e.g., Mosher & Sirkin, 1984), both of which measure multiple components of masculine ideology including acceptance of aggression against women and negative, hostile beliefs about women. The next strongest relationships concerned measures of agreement that men are dominant over women and measures of hostility toward women. Scores on general measures of gender-role adherence, such as the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974), were not strong predictors of sexual aggression. Sociocultural models that link patriarchal masculine id eology and situational factors to sexual aggression should prove most predictive in future research.     

Consumer culture ideals,extrinsic motivations,and well‐being in children

Internalising the consumer culture ideals of materialism and appearance has been shown to be negatively related to adults' well‐being. Similarly, adults who strive towards these ideals for extrinsic reasons, such as to improve their image or status, have been shown to have lower levels of well‐being than those who strive towards them for intrinsic reasons, such as to help others or support healthy relationships. However, to date, there is little evidence that these links exist in children. In the present research, we use new, age‐appropriate scales to test our predictions derived from self‐determination theory that being extrinsically motivated to achieve materialistic and appearance ideals will predict their internalisation, which, in turn, will negatively predict children's well‐being. An initial pilot study found that extrinsic motives were negatively related to well‐being in a sample of 150 children aged 8–11 years but that intrinsic motives were not. In our main study, we modelled materialism and appearance as indicators of a single underlying consumer culture construct, and, in a sample of 160 youths aged 8–15 years, found support for our hypothesis that being extrinsically motivated to achieve these consumer culture ideals predicts their internalisation, which negatively predicts well‐being. We discuss the possible mechanisms involved in these processes and the implications of these findings for future research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Influence of Clinical Experience and Assessment Method on the Evaluation of Child Behavior Change

This research examined how people’s ability to detect behavior change in simulated child targets is affected by their clinical experience and the assessment method they use. When using summary assessment methods that are widely employed in research and clinical practice, both inexperienced and experienced clinical staff detected changes in the overall frequency of targets’ aggressive behavior, but were not uniquely influenced by changes in targets’ reactions to social events. When using contextualized assessment methods that focused on conditional reactions, experienced staff showed greater sensitivity than novices to context-specific changes in targets’ aggressive and prosocial reactions to aversive events. Experienced staff also showed greater sensitivity to context-specific changes in their overall impressions of change, but only for aggression. The findings show how clinically experienced judges become more attuned to if…then… contingencies in children’s social behavior, and how summary assessment methods may hamper the detection of change processes.     

Cognitive Ability Tests and the Situational Interview: A Test of Incremental Validity

This study investigated the validity and incremental validity of a situational interview beyond that of a composite measure of cognitive ability. Forty-seven factory service technicians underwent an interview and took four cognitive ability tests. Supervisors rated the performance of these subjects in a concurrent validation study. The interview was found to be a valid predictor of a supervisor rating of performance (r = 0.32, p < 0.05 uncorrected), however, was unable to show incremental validity over ability tests (Incremental R²= 0.05, n.s.). Limitations of the present study and directions for future research are discussed.     

Maternal posttraumatic stress symptoms and infant emotional reactivity and emotion regulation

The current study examined associations between maternal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and infant emotional reactivity and emotion regulation during the first year of life in a primarily low-income, urban, ethnic/racial minority sample of 52 mother–infant dyads. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing their own trauma exposure history and current PTSD and depressive symptoms and their infants’ temperament when the infants were 6 months old. Dyads participated in the repeated Still-Face Paradigm (SFP-R) when the infants were 6 months old, and infant affective states were coded for each SFP-R episode. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing infant trauma exposure history and infant current emotional and behavioral symptoms when the infants were 13 months old. Maternal PTSD symptoms predicted infants’ emotion regulation at 6 months as assessed by (a) infant ability to recover from distress during the SFP-R and (b) maternal report of infant rate of recovery from distress/arousal in daily life. Maternal PTSD symptoms also predicted maternal report of infant externalizing, internalizing, and dysregulation symptoms at 13 months. Maternal PTSD was not associated with measures of infant emotional reactivity. Neither maternal depressive symptoms nor infant direct exposure to trauma accounted for the associations between maternal PTSD symptoms and infant outcomes. These findings suggest that maternal PTSD is associated with offspring emotion regulation difficulties as early as infancy. Such difficulties may contribute to increased risk of mental health problems among children of mothers with PTSD.     

Performance differences among four organizational commitment profiles

The authors drew from prior research on organizational commitment and from configural organizational theory to propose a framework of affective and continuance commitment profiles. Using cluster analyses, the authors obtained evidence for 4 of these profiles in an energy industry sample (N=970) and a sample of 345 employed college students. The authors labeled the clusters: allied (i.e., moderate affective and continuance commitment), free agents (moderate continuance commitment and low affective commitment), devoted (high affective and continuance commitment), and complacent (moderate affective and low continuance commitment). Using a subset of the employed student sample (n=148), the authors also found that the free agents received significantly poorer supervisor ratings of performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and antisocial behavior than any other group.