Terrorism as Collective Communication: The Collective Communication Model of Terrorism (CCMT)

This paper proposes that the psychological and behavioral effects of terrorist threat can be understood as a collective communication process that occurs between terrorists and their potential victims. Based on classic communication theory, terrorists are regarded as the senders of a specific collective message (such as ‘stop oppressing our culture’); a terrorist incident as the collective message itself (through its performance, modality and targets); and the potential victims as its collective receivers (who interpret the intention of the attack as a function of their pre-existing attributes, such as traits or salient social identities). The perception of terrorism as a dynamic and interactive process between collective senders, messages and receivers opens new theoretical perspectives regarding whether (a) terrorism can be successful in reaching its collective aim; (b) if it is interpreted as rational or irrational; and (c) how to counteract the vicious, cyclical relationship between terrorism and counter-terrorism. Previous findings on the psychology of terrorism can be organized within this theoretical framework, and the psychological impact of varying attributes of the perpetrators (senders), incident (message), and the reactions of the potential victims (receivers) systematically investigated. A series of self-conducted studies are also reviewed and found to provide direct support for the collective communication model of terrorism.     

Fit of Political Skill to the Work Context: A Two‐Study Investigation

A two‐study investigation was designed to examine the role of job type (i.e. fit of political skill to work context) as a contextual moderator of the political skill–job performance relationship. Specifically, it was hypothesised that political skill operates most effectively in enterprising job contexts, and thus is most predictive of job performance in such contexts, but political skill would demonstrate no relationship with job performance in job contexts that did not emphasise interpersonal interaction and effectiveness. In Study 1, enterprising job demands interacted with political skill to affect job performance. That is, political skill positively and significantly predicted job performance in enterprising job contexts, as hypothesised. Study 2 selected one specific job context (i.e. insurance sales) high in enterprising job demands, and hypothesised that political skill would significantly predict objective measures of insurance sales (i.e. sales volume, performance‐based income, performance‐based commission rate, and performance‐based status). The results demonstrated significant predictive effects of political skill (i.e. beyond age, sex, education level, tenure on the job, and experience in sales) on all four measures of sales performance. Contributions and implications of this research, strengths and limitations, and directions for future study are discussed.     

Cognitive Performance as a Function of Sex and Handedness: An Evaluation of the Levy Hypothesis

Investigated incidence of left-handedness and non-right-handedness in a sample of 9th-grade students (n=313). In comparison, incidence among undergraduates is underestimated. Gitld were not significantly more right-handed than boys in the 9th grade sample but were significantly (p<01) more right-handed than boys in a sample of math students, grades 9-11 (n = 1097). Handedness did not affect math achievement (Test of Academic Progress), verbal (Quick Word Test) or spatial (Space Relations Test of the Differential Aptitude Test) performance in the 9th (n = 108) or 10th (n = 75) grade students, for 11th grade students (n = 98) a significant sex-by-handedness-by-measures (verbal-spatial) interaction was found (p<05). Results did not support the hypothesis of Levy's that left-handedness decreases spatial performance and benefits verbal performance, nor did the results support the further hypothesis that the cognitive pattern of higher verbal than spatial performance often considered characteristic of females can be attributed to more bilateral cerebral verbal function in females as in left-handers.     

Lexical leverage: category knowledge boosts real‐time novel word recognition in 2‐year‐olds

Recent research suggests that infants tend to add words to their vocabulary that are semantically related to other known words, though it is not clear why this pattern emerges. In this paper, we explore whether infants leverage their existing vocabulary and semantic knowledge when interpreting novel label–object mappings in real time. We initially identified categorical domains for which individual 24‐month‐old infants have relatively higher and lower levels of knowledge, irrespective of overall vocabulary size. Next, we taught infants novel words in these higher and lower knowledge domains and then asked if their subsequent real‐time recognition of these items varied as a function of their category knowledge. While our participants successfully acquired the novel label–object mappings in our task, there were important differences in the way infants recognized these words in real time. Namely, infants showed more robust recognition of high (vs. low) domain knowledge words. These findings suggest that dense semantic structure facilitates early word learning and real‐time novel word recognition.     

“Seeing the Life”: Redefining Self-Worth and Family Roles Among Iraqi Refugee Families Resettled in the United States

Social and geographic displacement is a global phenomenon that precipitates novel stressors and disruptions that intersect with long-standing familial and social roles. Among the displaced are war-torn Iraqi refugee families, who must address these new obstacles in unconventional ways. This study explores how such disruptions have influenced associations between gender and apparent self-worth experienced by Iraqi refugee families upon relocation to the USA. Further, the psychosocial mechanisms requisite of any novel approach to a new social construct are explored and reveal that production in the family is at the core of instability and shifting power dynamics during resettlement, preventing family members from “seeing the life” in the USA that they had envisioned prior to immigration. Over 200 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Iraqi participants and mental health providers were conducted over the course of the study, which demonstrate a plasticity among social roles in the family and community that transcends the notion of a simple role reversal, and illustrate the complex positionalities that families under stress must approximate during such physical and social displacement.