Are social networking profiles reliable indicators of sensational interests?

Sensational interests are sometimes reported on the personal profiles of social networking web sites such as Facebook. Can these reports be validated against established psychometric tools used by forensic psychologists? Given that web sites and personal profiles can be used as evidence of a person’s ‘character’ in legal contexts, evaluating their reliability and validity is important. This study evaluated the reliability of extracting data from the interests and activities sections of Facebook profiles, linking them to general personality and Sensational Interests Questionnaire (SIQ) scores. Data from 694 user profiles (N = 352 males) were linked to the Big Five personality traits, age, and educational attainment. Three independent raters coded the number of sensational topics reported by a user in each section. In Poisson regression analyses, higher SIQ Violent Occultism scores predicted a larger count of sensational interests, and sensational activities in males only. Higher SIQ Militarism scores predicted a larger number of sensational interests in males, but a smaller number in females. Although the number of sensational interests reported by social networking users on their personal profiles is potentially informative, further research should investigate gender differences, and why females with greater Militarism scores are less likely to report what these specific interests are.     

Are occupational interests hormonally influenced? The 2D:4D-interest nexus

Occupational interests constitute a psychological variable with pronounced sex differences. Whereas males are more interested in things, females primarily take an interest in people. As various studies with mammals and humans documented the role of androgen exposure on sex-typical behavior, we assumed that androgen levels are associated with occupational interests. In our study, we used 2D:4D digit ratio as an indicator of prenatal androgen levels and finger lengths as an indicator of post-pubertal androgen levels. Occupational interests were measured with a standard interest inventory. We hypothesized that finger lengths and ratios indicating high androgen levels are associated with stronger interests in things and weaker interests in people. All measures were gathered using an online interest inventory thereby leading to sufficient statistical power (N = 8646). Results partly confirmed our hypotheses. We found significant correlations between finger lengths and interests in things for males. Moreover, in the case of males we identified significant correlations between finger lengths (positive) as well as digit ratios (negative) with realistic interests and significant correlations between finger lengths (negative) and social interests, which are a marker variable of the people-things dimension.     

Crystallizing enterprising interests among adolescents through a career development program: The role of personality and family background

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a new career development program designed to help adolescents explore their interest in enterprise as a career option. Using a person-oriented approach, pre- and post-test measurements of enterprising interests in an intervention (n = 321) and a control group (n = 302) of adolescents aged 16.5 years on average were compared. As predicted, the frequency of five different patterns of enterprising interest development (stable high, stable low, decreaser, increaser, middle) differed between the two groups, with increasers and decreasers more prevalent in the intervention group. Furthermore, a discriminant function analysis revealed that adolescents in the stable high and increaser groups showed the most entrepreneurial personality profile (e.g., low risk avoidance, high social dominance). Moreover, increasers often had a non-entrepreneurial family background. Results suggest that the new program is a useful tool in supporting adolescents’ exploration of enterprise as future career option.     

Take a Job,Any Job: Exploring the Importance of Matched Interests to Career Paths and Work Satisfaction

Employment counselors often face the conundrum of whether to advise people to take a job or to hold out for something that better matches their interests. This study investigated whether matched interests in an initial job predicted the subsequent career journey of 336 sales engineers and whether this made a difference to longer term work satisfaction and tenure. Results showed that although the first job significantly influenced people's future career journey, personality and job characteristics were likely to be more influential than matched interests in predicting work satisfaction. Thus, people may be better off taking well‐designed jobs than holding out for matched interests.     

Pragmatic Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Intersection of Human Interests

This paper elicits a twentieth-century American story that is deeply rooted in the legacy of American philosophical pragmatism, its impact on a particular school, and its reconstruction of American theology. The paper focuses on three generations of American theologians, and it centers on how these theologians reconstruct theology in light of the science of their day and how they maintain a true plurality of insights about human life in the world. The pragmatic theologian regards the creative exchange between theology and natural science as an opportunity for renewing our understanding of religious life and appreciating the various commitments of scientists and theologians as they meet at the juncture of human interests. The first voice is that of the early Chicago School of Theology represented by Shailer Mathews, Gerald Birney Smith, and George Burman Foster. The second voice is that of Henry Nelson Wieman, a second-generation theologian at Chicago. The final theologian discussed is James M. Gustafson, former Professor of Theological Ethics at Chicago.     

医患关系面临的课题:利益的冲突

我国当前医患间存在利益冲突的现实,并呈现出种种特点。医患间相互戒备的加深和防御性医疗的出现,不利于融洽和互动医患关系的形成,医院在引入市场某些机制和扩展自身财力时,应尽力维护中低收入者的医疗保健权利,损害病人的利益,同时坚持医学伦理学的四项原则,建立相互间的诚信,充分运用社会调节和医疗诉讼的杠杆,实行医务公开,有望调节和平衡这种利益冲突,使医患双方的利益得到合理的归缩。     

Diverse knowledges and competing interests: An essay on socio-technical problem-solving

Solving complex socio-technical problems, this paper claims, involves diverse knowledges (cognitive diversity), competing interests (social diversity), and pragmatism. To explain this view, this paper first explores two different cases: Canadian pulp and paper mill pollution and siting nuclear reactors in seismically sensitive areas of California. Solving such socio-technically complex problems involves cognitive diversity as well as social diversity and pragmatism. Cognitive diversity requires one to not only recognize relevant knowledges but also to assess their validity. Finally, it is suggested, integrating the resultant set of diverse relevant and valid knowledges determines the parameters of the solution space for the problem. The author is a Professor of Philosophy at The University of Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.     

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Five Interest Inventories

This study investigated whether interest inventories that purport to measure the same constructs actually yield scores that correspond. The study examined the empirical relation of scores for similarly and same-named scales on five widely used interest inventories: the Campbell Interest and Skills Survey, the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey-Form DD, the Self-Directed Search, the Strong Interest Inventory-Skills Confidence Edition, and the Revised Unisex Edition of the ACT Interest Inventory. Comparisons were made among scores for (a) vocational interests measured by homogeneous, rationally based scales; (b) occupational interests measured by heterogeneous, criterion-based scales; and (c) self-efficacy for RIASEC tasks. The participants consisted of 80 women and 38 men employed as career counseling practitioners and professors. Results from analyses of multitrait-multimethod matrices indicated that similarly and same-named scales correlated moderately and that, with few exceptions, these matched scales demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity. These conclusions were interpreted by distinguishing between the linguistic explication and operational definition of constructs in theories of vocational and occupational interests. The implications of these interpretations were considered for both the science of vocational psychology and the practice of career counseling. Future research should investigate both the profile validity and the interpretive validity of interest inventories that yield scale scores derived from different scaling strategies.     

A comparison of intervention for problematic speech using reinforcement with and without preferred topics

Previous research has shown that responding to the appropriate and problematic speech of individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities with interested and uninterested listener responses, respectively, can promote more appropriate conversational engagement. However, Fisher et al. (2013) also responded to appropriate speech with access to preferred conversational topics. This study examined the influence of listener interest on the problematic speech of 8 participants and tested the additive effects of (Study 1) and participant preference for (Study 2) delivering preferred topics as reinforcement for appropriate speech. Interventions were equally effective with or without arranging access to preferred topics, but a majority of participants demonstrated a preference for intervention with contingent access to preferred topics. Caregivers and speech‐language pathologists rated the intervention procedures as acceptable and changes in participants' speech satisfactory.