Giving from a distance: Putting the charitable organization at the center of the donation appeal

Past research has shown repeatedly that people prefer donating to a single identified human victim rather than to unidentified or abstract donation targets. In the current research we show results countering the identifiable victim effect, wherein people prefer to donate to charitable organizations rather than to an identifiable victim. In a series of five studies, we manipulate temporal and social distance, examine a variety of donation targets, and measure intention to donate time or money as well as actual donations of money. We show that people are more willing to donate to a charitable organization when they are temporally or socially distant from the population in need. Willingness to donate to a specific person in need is higher when donors are temporally or socially close to the donation target. Furthermore, we demonstrate that (a) empathy mediates donations to a single victim, yet does not mediate donations to charitable organizations; (b) that donation giving to charitable organizations is unique and is not similar to donations to a group of victims. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The seven sins of consumer psychology

Consumer psychology faces serious issues of internal and external relevance. Most of these issues originate in seven fundamental problems with the way consumer psychologists plan and conduct their research—problems that could be called “the seven sins of consumer psychology.” These seven “sins” are (1) a narrow conception of the scope of consumer behavior research; (2) adoption of a narrow set of theoretical lenses; (3) adherence to a narrow epistemology of consumer research; (4) an almost exclusive emphasis on psychological processes as opposed to psychological content; (5) a strong tendency to overgeneralize from finite empirical results, both as authors and as reviewers; (6) a predisposition to design studies based on methodological convenience rather than on substantive considerations; and (7) a pervasive confusion between “theories of studies” and studies of theories. Addressing these problems (“atoning for these sins”) would greatly enhance the relevance of the field. However, this may require a substantial rebalancing of the field's incentives to reward actual research impact rather than sheer number of publications in major journals.     

Assessing the role of spatial engagement and disengagement of attention in anxiety-linked attentional bias: a critique of current paradigms and suggestions for future research directions

A considerable volume of research has demonstrated an anxiety-linked attentional bias characterized by selective processing of threat stimuli. The last decade has seen growing interest in identifying the precise attentional mechanisms which underlie such selective processing to advance both theoretical and etiological models of anxiety. This research has particularly focused on the roles of spatial engagement and disengagement of attention. The relative contribution of these attentional components to selective processing of threat in anxious individuals remains unclear however. Moreover, we argue here that many of the tasks employed to examine these mechanisms, may not be capable of indexing the attentional processes that they claim to measure. In this article, we provide a methodological review, critically evaluating the adequacy of previous tasks employed to measure biased attentional engagement and disengagement. Based on a number of concerns raised about the ability of such tasks to differentiate these component attentional processes, we detail three task criteria that we believe are essential to be confident that a task will accurately index biased attentional engagement with, and disengagement from threat in anxious participants.     

The Differential Effects of Negative Affectivity on Measures of Well-being versus Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment

This paper reports an empirical study of the self-reported psychological strain, ill-health, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of 2450 public sector employees located in Western Australia. The framework used to predict these variables is a demands, supports-constraints framework. The key theoretical issue explored is the differential roles of negative affectivity in predicting the outcomes from this framework. Four different pathways are explored which are taken from Moyle ( Journal of Organizational Behaviour , 16 (1995), 647-668). Multiple regression methods are used to control for negative affectivity and other effects such as curvilinear relationships. The results show that negative affectivity has a variety of effects on both health and job attitude variables but the effects are much larger for the health variables. The conclusion recommends that, in studies that rely on all self-report data, the various possible effects of personality variables such as negative affectivity should be explored in preference to ignoring them.     

Posthuman Pleasures: Transcending the Human-Machine Boundary

Abstract

Today, technology affects us in a variety of ways: it helps to bridge great distances, it opens up new possibilities for communication, and it allows us to see our world in ever-new perspectives. Technology also increasingly permeates bodily boundaries, both on a physical level (or in "real" life) as well as on an imaginary level (or in narratives that deal with the relation between body and technology). An important aspect of these already implemented technologies or future visions of the interaction between human bodies and technology is the enhancement of sexuality through technological appliances or even its replacement by other forms of "fusion" between human beings. This paper focuses on how sciencefiction narratives and posthuman philosophy imagine the transformation of today's messy and wet "body-sex" into "future-sex" arguing that in fact the body is not made redundant in these visions, but rather changed and "queered" through its interaction with technology.     

Examining mindfulness and psychological inflexibility within the framework of Big Five personality

Psychological inflexibility and mindfulness represent two constructs that have garnered a great deal of interest in recent years as central components in the conceptualization of many new cognitive and behavioral therapies. Nonetheless, though theoretically related, relatively little is known regarding associations between these two constructs and consensus models of trait personality such as the Big Five. The current study therefore aimed to more fully elucidate associations among these three domains within a relatively large, diverse undergraduate sample (N = 429). Mindfulness was negatively associated with Neuroticism and positively associated with Conscientiousness while psychological inflexibility was positively associated with Neuroticism and negatively associated with Conscientiousness. Further, while Conscientiousness evidenced the strongest contribution to mindfulness, Neuroticism evidenced the strongest contribution to psychological inflexibility. Better elucidating how psychological inflexibility and mindfulness differentially relate to Big Five personality traits expands the nomological network surrounding these constructs and begins to reveal common processes underlying psychopathology and health behaviors.     

Parental psychological control dimensions: Connections with Russian preschoolers’ physical and relational aggression

Parental psychological control generally consists of overinvolved/protective and critical/rejecting elements, both being linked to children's psychosocial maladjustment. The critical/rejecting element is multidimensional in nature, and few studies have explored this conceptual fullness. It is possible that some dimensions, if they can be statistically differentiated, are uniquely tied to various child behaviors. This may help resolve some of the inconsistency apparent across studies, such as studies of relational aggression. Accordingly, we examined the association between parental psychological control and childhood physical and relational aggression using a dimensional approach. Participants were 204 Russian preschoolers and their parents. The results revealed that dimensions of psychosocial control (i.e., shaming/disappointment, constraining verbal expressions, invalidating feelings, love withdrawal, and guilt induction) could be statistically differentiated, even though most dimensions tended to be significantly correlated. Furthermore, all dimensions, except for invalidating feelings, were significantly associated with childhood aggression, but predominantly in same-gender parent–child dyads.     

5-13岁儿童对物种起源认知的发展

本研究采用临床访谈法,采用开放式和封闭式问题情境,测查了5-13岁儿童对物种起源认知的发展。结果显示儿童对物种起源的解释越来越符合科学的解释,这种认知发展过程并不是以一种起源认知替代另一种起源认知的过程,而是多种起源认知以某种方式共存于儿童的认知系统中。本研究结果既显示了儿童对物种起源认知发展的跨文化一致性,也体现了不同文化和宗教环境影响下的差异性。     

《中国大学生心理应激量表》的编制

本研究的目的是编制适合中国社会文化特点和大学生使用的心理应激量表,并制订全国大学生常模。通过开放性问卷调查、对大学生心理咨询个案的分析和对高等学校心理咨询教师与专家的访谈以及参考国外同类量表的条目等方式编写条目,通过两次预测筛选、修改并确定量表的项目;在全国采用分层随机采样方式选取182所普通高等学校54708名大学生和研究生进行测试。结果表明,中国大学生心理应激量表具有相当高的重测信度、内部一致性和较高的效标效度。根据常模组测量的结果,给出了85种生活事件和日常琐事的心理影响指数(PII)、心理影响范围和心理影响总量。结论:中国大学生心理应激量表具备令人满意的心理测量学特征,可以被用来评估中国大学生在一段时间内的心理应激水平。     

A HYDRA-LOGICAL APPROACH: ACKNOWLEDGING COMPLEXITY IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION,SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

Scholarship has grown increasingly nuanced in its grappling with the intersections of religion, science, and technology but requires a new paradigm. Contemporary approaches to specific technologies reveal a wide variety of perspectives but remain too often committed to typological classification. To be vigilant of our obligation to understand and reveal, scholars in the study of religion, science, and technology can adopt a hydra-logical stance: we can recognize that there are cultural monsters possessing scientific, technological, and religious heads. These heads may work with a common agenda or they might not. They might disagree, pulling their shared body back and forth in a public commotion that lays waste to their surroundings. They might see past one another or move in tandem—purposively or not. Evaluations of climate response and AI benefit from seeing how the various heads are inseparable: indeed, cutting one off simply promotes the growth of new heads. Methodological and analytical clarity, therefore, emerges in the transition from schemes of classification to the recognition of hydras.