The More You Ask For,the More You Get: Anchoring in Personal Injury Verdicts

The ‘anchoring and adjustment’ bias was demonstrated in a personal injury case using mock jurors. In Experiment 1, the ad damnum, or requested compensation, was manipulated across participants. In Experiment 2, anchors were operationalized as the strength of the legal evidence. Both monetary and causal anchors systematically influenced judgments of the probability that the defendant caused the plaintiff's injuries, compensation awarded, and perceptions of the litigants. These results indicate that anchoring occurs in legal applications, and that plaintiffs would do well to request large compensation awards. In addition, anchors expressed on one scale affected judgments expressed on another scale. This cross-modality anchoring stands in contrast to previous studies. Finally, these anchoring effects are unlikely to be explained by either demand effects or perceived relevance of the anchor.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Human Information Processing: An Introduction to Psychology. By Peter H. Lindsay and Donald A. Norman . Human Memory: Research and Theory. By L. S. Cermak . Organization of Memory. Edited by Endel Tulving and Wayne Donaldson . Associations or Addresses: a Study in Serial Verbal Learning. By F. J. Strømnes . Verbal Learning Research and the Technology of Written Instruction. Edited by Ernst Z. Rothkopf and Paul E. Johnson . Inhibition and Learning. Edited by R. A. Boakes and M. S. Halliday . Purposive Explanation in Psychology. By Margaret A. Boden . The Double Brain. By S. Dimond . Limbic System Mechanisms and Autonomic Function. Edited by C. H. Hockman . Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology. By K. H. Pribram . Perception in Everyday Life. By S. Howard Bartley . Language and Social Behaviour. By W. P. Robinson . Language Development: Structure and Function. By Philip S. Dale . Language of the Mentally Retarded. Edited by Richard L. Schiefelbusch . Studies in Dyadic Communication. Edited by A. W. Siegman and B. Pope . The Social Animal. By Elliot Aronson . Moral Learning and Development, Theory and Research. By Douglas Graham . The Social Influence Processes. Edited by J. T. Tedeschi . Perception and Cognition: a Cross-Cultural Perspective. By Barbara B. Lloyd . The Psychology of Humor. Edited by J. H. Goldstein and P. E. Mc Ghee . Males and Females. By Corinne Hutt . The Interview: Research on its Anatomy and Structure. By Joseph D. Matarazzo and Arthur N. Wiens . Inquiring Man: the Theory of Personal Constructs. By D. Bannister and Fay Fransella . Change and Continuity in Infancy. By Jerome Kagan . The Psychology of Consciousness. By R. E. Ornstein . Occupational Psychology. By Donald E. Super and Martin J. Bohn , Jr .     

McEwen-Induced Modulation of Endocrine History: A Partial Review

In endless facets of physiology, there are points of homeostatic balance, such that too much or too litttle of something can both be deleterious (i.e., an "inverse U" pattern). This is particularly true when considering glucocorticoids (GCs), the adrenals steroid secreted during stress. In the first part of this paper, I review a number of realms in which a paucity and an excess of GCs are both damaging. Some findings are classical (for example, concerning GC effects upon body weight), while some are quite recent and have considerable implications for both physiology and pathophysiology (for example, inverse U's of GC actions in the realm of immunity and neuronal survival). The second part of the review considers the far thornier issue of how such inverse U's of GC actions are generated on a cellular and molecular level. One solution that has evolved, primarily in the hippocampus within the nervous system, involves the presence of two different types of receptors for GCs within the same cells; so long as the two receptors have very different affinities and mediate opposing effects on some cellular endpoint, an inverse U will emerge. The second solution, found in a number of peripheral tissues, involves GCs having opposing effects on the amount of some signal being generated (e.g., an immune cytokine) and the sensitivity of target tissues to that signal; under conditions that appear to be physiologically relevant, inverse U's emerge from this pattern as well. The final section of this review considers the enormous role played by Bruce McEwen in the emergence of this literature. I suggest that while much of this obviously has to do with the facts that have come from his group, another substantial contribution is from his steadying and supportive personality, the veritable embodiment of homeostatic balance.     

Value-Orientation Analysis: The Adaptation of an Anthropological Model for Counseling Research

This article proposes the adaptation of Florence Kluckhohn's theory of Variation in Value Orientations for use in counseling research. The author summarizes Kluckhohn's theory and presents guidelines for its adaptation.