Financial Debt and Suicide in Hong Kong SAR1

The presence of indebtedness is known to be a risk factor that can trigger stressed persons to contemplate suicide. This study compares the profiles of suicides with and without debt problems based on 2002 Coroner's Court death files. The category of men aged 25–39 has seen a 70% increase in suicide rate since 1997, and the number using carbon monoxide poisoning has increased from 1% of the total deaths in 1997 to about 26% of the total deaths in 2002. Suicides associated with debt problems seem to involve fewer mental and physical problems with formal job attachment than do suicides without debt problems. Gambling is a significant contributing factor to unmanageable indebtedness.     

Influence and adjustment goals: sources of cultural differences in ideal affect

Previous studies have found that in American culture high-arousal positive states (HAP) such as excitement are valued more and low-arousal positive states (LAP) such as calm are valued less than they are in Chinese culture. What specific factors account for these differences? The authors predicted that when people and cultures aimed to influence others (i.e., assert personal needs and change others' behaviors to meet those needs), they would value HAP more and LAP less than when they aimed to adjust to others (i.e., suppress personal needs and change their own behaviors to meet others' needs). They test these predictions in 1 survey and 3 experimental studies. The findings suggest that within and across American and Chinese contexts, differences in ideal affect are due to specific interpersonal goals.     

Direct and Indirect Assessment of Gender Role Identification

Differences in gender role identification exist among both men and women. Earlier researchers have developed several instruments to measure the degree to which individuals identify with the masculine or feminine gender role. In the present study we examined a number of these measurement procedures. Undergraduate students (N?=?45) were administered three direct and two indirect measures of gender role identification. In addition, participants were exposed to a psychological stress test that was relatively masculine. Findings reveal that direct and indirect instruments tap different underlying constructs of gender role identification that are nevertheless positively correlated. Furthermore, results suggest that one of the indirect measures, the Gender Implicit Association Test (GIAT), is a promising instrument to provide an estimate of gender role identification. Of all gender role identification measures the GIAT was (a) most sensitive to sex differences and (b) the only significant predictor of systolic blood pressure responses during and after the relatively masculine stress task.     

Planning a reader-oriented strategy for a publishing company: a case study

Scientific research in the sector of press readability and specifically magazines is not particularly extensive. This paper suggests a framework for the development of strategic decisions based on reader satisfaction measurements. The methodology is illustrated through a real-world application, i.e. customer-oriented strategy planning for the leading monthly IT magazine in Greece. This study implements the MUSA (Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis) method to evaluate reader satisfaction, in order to support the editor in making decisions while planning his editorial strategy. Reader satisfaction was analysed based on a tree containing seven main criteria and 32 sub-criteria. Readers proved to be very satisfied and non-demanding, which results in narrower margins for efficient improvement suggestions. However, the evaluation of the MUSA results led to putting forward suggestions that could support the editor in making amendment decisions. Some of these suggestions were successfully implemented within the scope of a new strategy. This revealed the need for two separate editions, an IT magazine for pupils and students as well as an IT magazine focused on women. The decision maker received suggestions on what these new publications' features should be, deriving from the study's quantitative results. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time perception and time perspective differences between adolescents and adults

The present experiment aimed to investigate the differences in time perception and time perspective between subjects representing two developmental stages, namely adolescence and middle adulthood. Twenty Chinese adolescents aged 15–25 and twenty Chinese adults aged 35–55 participated in the study. A time discrimination task and a time reproduction task were implemented to measure the accuracy of their time perception. The Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (Short-Form) was adopted to assess their time orientation. It was found that adolescents performed better than adults in both the time discrimination task and the time reproduction task. Adolescents were able to differentiate different time intervals with greater accuracy and reproduce the target duration more precisely. For the time reproduction task, it was also found that adults tended to overestimate the duration of the target stimuli while adolescents were more likely to underestimate it. As regards time perspective, adults were more future-oriented than adolescents, whereas adolescents were more present-oriented than adults. No significant relationship was found between time perspective and time perception.     

Latent variable models for analyzing children's processing ability

In this paper, we develop a latent processing ability model to analyze the speed of processing ability data. Our approach can not only effectively evaluate the effects of covariates on the latent processing ability, but also estimate the latent trait of each child by calculating its posterior mean. In addition, we derive the correlations structure of latent traits among different age groups. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed model. The results indicated that the estimation of model parameters is satisfactory overall. The method is evaluated using real data from children aged 4–7 years in Changchun, China.     

Agency and the Annunciation

Prior research has revealed that when healthy participants, who are not artists, are asked to draw a person who is performing an action, they are more likely to position the agent on the left and the person or object receiving this action, the patient, on the right. Thus, the goal of this study was to learn whether in works of art, such as those portraying the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin Mary, artists would be more likely to place the angel, who is the agent, on the left of Mary, who is the patient. We found that in our sample of 604 paintings of the Annunciation by different artists that the agent Gabriel is significantly more frequently portrayed to left of Mary. Whereas this result supports the left-agent, right-patient hypothesis, the reason for this spatial bias is not entirely known, but may be related to several factors such as the learned left to right direction of reading/writing in European languages, left-versus right-sided emotional facial expressive asymmetries, a left-sided spatial attentional bias and a spatial motor-action preference of upper extremity for making abductive (left to right) movements when using the right upper extremity. Additionally, biblical explanations and theological principles may have influenced the organization of this scene.