Ambient Temperature and Violent Crime1

Baron and Ransberger (1978) argue that civil violence increases as temperature rises into the mid 80s, and then decreases as temperatures rise further. Two experiments test this hypothesis using data on temperature and the incidence of crime for summer months in two midwestern cities. The crime data were divided into violent and nonviolent crimes, and then correlated with the maximum, minimum, and average temperatures, and several humidity measures. Violent crime correlated significantly with temperature; nonviolent crime did not. This relationship was linear in the first study, but curvilinear in the second. Inspection of the data suggests that the incidence of aggressive behavior (i.e., violent crime) does not drop off in the mid-80s as laboratory findings and Baron and Ransberger's results would suggest, but continues to increase as temperatures rise into the 90s. The mean incidence of violent crime was higher for days in the 90s than for days in the 80s. A hypothesis for resolving this contradiction between real world and laboratory findings is discussed.     

The influence of parents and family context on children's involvement in household tasks

To determine the relative impact of a number of family variables on children's performance of gender-typed household tasks, this study took account of the gender of the child, the gender of a sibling within the same age range (8–14 years), whether a first or second child and three parental variables: the degree of encouragement given to perform masculineand femininetasks, parental involvement in the same tasks, and parents' general egalitarianism. The sample consisted of 191 white, mainly Anglo Australian two-parent families, with the two oldest children in a boy—boy, girl—girl, boy—girl, or girl—boy sequence. To check on the robustness of effects, measures were taken on two occasions, on average 16 months apart. Among the family context variables, the gender of the child was the strongest contributing variable, with girls doing more feminine tasks than boys and boys doing more masculine tasks than girls. There was limited support for the proposition that first children do more housework than second children of the same gender, while the results for gender of sibling were small and inconsistent. Among the parental variables, encouragement had strong positive effects for feminine tasks (i.e., more encouragement by parents corresponded to more involvement by children). In contrast, parental involvement in the same tasks (modeling) and parental egalitarianism predicted only the performance of masculine tasks, and the direction of the effects was mostly negative (e.g., the more a father was involved in masculine tasks, the less a child did of those tasks). The results point to involvement in gender-typed activities being influenced by multiple factors, with parental encouragement and gender of child being most prominent among these. They also point to the value of sampling on more than one occasion and of considering separately the performance of feminine and masculine tasks. This research was financially supported by the Australian Research Council. We are happy to acknowledge that support, together with the essential assistance of the Department of Education and the many parents and children who participated in the study.     

Some deterministic models of concept identification

It is shown that deterministic models can compete effectively with stochastic models in summarizing concept identification behavior. Three groups of deterministic models are examined. Examination of individual learners' trial by trial behavior in a concept experiment shows: (1) One person exhibited behavior consistent with a Hypothesis Permutation (HP) model despite being a nonlearner who showed no evidence of improvement over a period of 24 trials. However, when all 50 persons studied in each of two treatment groups were examined, only 22 members of one group and 10 of the other showed no inconsistencies with deterministic local consistency assumptions. (2) Certain deterministic computer programs could find at least one satisfactory order for predicting all responses by 18 of the 22 consistent solvers and 6 of the 10 consistent solvers, respectively, in the two groups just mentioned. For these 24 persons, then, a less restrictive deterministic model is adequate than for the others. (3) Those 38 original members of the first treatment group who met a stringent learning criterion were compared with respect to predictions generated by stochastic and mathematized deterministic models. One deterministic model (RSS-U 9-state) is in some respects the best of the models examined, but this success is a partial reflection of estimating eight parameters from the data.     

Claremont Purpose Scale: A Measure that Assesses the Three Dimensions of Purpose among Adolescents

The 12-item Claremont Purpose Scale (CPS) was designed for use with adolescents, and it gauges all three dimensions of the purpose construct, including goal-directedness, personal meaning, and a beyond-the-self orientation. Repeated administration reveals promising psychometric properties. For instance, the CPS demonstrates excellent internal consistency (α = .916?.935) and convergent validity. In exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, items fell onto the three dimensions, and the measure accounted for variance on indicators of a beyond-the-self orientation above and beyond the PIL. In addition to discussing the measure’s creation and validation, suggested uses of the CPS are also addressed.     

The Person in Distress: On the Biosocial Dynamics of Adaptation

Abstract

The application of Motivational Interviewing (MI) principles in Modified Interpersonal Group Therapy (MIGT) addresses two gaps in the literature. First, it explicitly extends MIGT to non-abstinent, addicted patients who are in the precontemplative and contemplative stages of change in contrast to most MIGT models where abstinence is usually required. Second, it provides a novel, process-oriented group intervention for MI, in contrast to current applications of group-based MI which are more structured in their format. The main modification in technique was to prioritize the horizontal exploration of substance use disclosures with a focus on the here-and-now experience of disclosure and the interpersonal impact on the group, in order to: 1) encourage members to openly discuss their ambivalence and shifting motivational states, 2) harness the evocative impact of substance use disclosures between members to elicit change talk (self-motivational statements), and 3) selectively reinforce change talk when it emerges from these exchanges. The authors illustrate these concepts with a case report of an open-ended MIGT group with comorbid mental illness and addiction.     

Stress and Student Job Design: Satisfaction, Well-Being, and Performance in University Students

It is imperative that the university environment be supportive and capable of nurturing optimal learning and performance in students. Using job design and work stress theories, the study assessed relationships between psychosocial work characteristics, well-being and satisfaction, and performance in a random sample survey of Australian university students (N = 176). Methodological improvements were a time lag between survey and performance measures, an objective measure of performance, and LISREL structural equation modeling. Results showed high levels of psychological distress and low levels of satisfaction, both linked to high demands combined with low control. In accord with the happy-productive student hypothesis, satisfaction mediated the impact of the work environment on performance. Reengineering the design of the student work environment may therefore improve performance outcomes (student grades) through enhancing satisfaction.     

Contingency awareness in premature infants.

Infants of low birthweight were placed in an artificial contingency situation in which leg movement produced movement of an overhead mobile. When compared with 5 non-contingent controls, these 5 infants showed an increase in frequency of kicks and in the amount of time spent focusing on the mobile.     

Reliability coefficients as a function of individual differences induced by a learning process assuming identical organisms

In this article we show that a particular mathematical learning model, the Bower-Trabasso (1964) concept identification model taken together with an assumption of independence of replicate measurements, implies the existence of substantial and statistically significant performance differences across individuals. The individual differences in turn imply a sizeable reliability coefficient. These results contradict naive intuition, for this model (like many other mathematical models of learning) assumes that all individuals begin the experiment with identical parameter values for the process under study. Thus at least one such model has the characteristic of implying the generation of individual performance differences among originally identical organisms.Examination of data from an experiment by Cotton shows that the Hoyt reliability coefficient under classical test theory, a lower bound for the (composite) reliability of total scores for a series of trials, increases with the number of trials analyzed and exceeds the corresponding theoretical values implied by the Bower-Trabasso model. An experiment by Levine was also analyzed because its use of blank trials between feedback trials permitted direct calculation of composite reliability (or more properly stated composite consistency). For this experiment, the theoretical development just discussed (Case I) was used together with Restle's hypothesis selection model specialized to include a local consistency assumption, the so-called P₂ model of Gregg and Simon (Case II). Moderate conformity of empirical and theoretical reliabilities was found, with discrepancies between observed and predicted values usually being smaller with Case II. However, the Hoyt reliability coefficient is not a lower bound for composite reliability in Case II, because composite reliability is underestimated when identical stimuli are not used for comparable trials.Despite the Bower-Trabasso assumption of no initial differences, it seems reasonable to attribute the difference between predicted and obtained reliabilities to preexisting individual differences. Implications of the tentative conclusion that individual differences in concept identification performance are attributable to a combination of preexisting differences and differences induced in a current task are discussed briefly.     

Psychological predictors of geographical relocation: Case study of a plant shutdown

Although there has been considerable research examining how economic and demographic variables predict geographical mobility, there has been little research examining the efficacy of psychological variables. It was hypothesized that personality characteristics, attitudes, and intentions would predict whether or not blue collar workers relocated with their company following a plant shutdown. Discriminant analysis indicated that a number of these variables significantly predicted relocation after controlling for demographic variables. When the analysis compared relocators with non-relocators who were not eligible for a full pension, a smaller and somewhat different cluster of variables significantly predicted relocation. The results are discussed in terms of introducing psychological variables for predicting geographical mobility.This research was supported in part by a research gift from the Western Electric Foundation.The authors would like to thank Susan Dempsey for her assistance in collecting the data, David Lipsky and Jim Dworkin for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and George Foyo for helping make the study possible.     

Selective exposure to information and cognitive dissonance

Despite numerous attempts, the selective exposure prediction of Festinger's (A theory of cognitive dissonance. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1957) theory of cognitive dissonance has not been consistently demonstrated. In previous studies, this failure can be attributed to design deficiencies, and other related problems. The present study manipulated dissonance by having subjects write a counterattitudinal essay under conditions of high or low choice. Information in the form of pamphlets and discussion groups was offered to the subjects such that they could choose information that was consonant and dissonant with the decision to write the essay. The information was offered either before or after an attitude measure on the essay topic, as the attitude measure could also be a source of dissonance reduction. The results indicate that the high choice manipulation yielded greater attitude change than the low-choice manipulation. High-choice subjects desired consonant information more and dissonant information less than did low-choice subjects. This effect was found for both measures of information desire (pamphlets and discussion groups). Low-choice subjects who received the attitude questionnaire before the information measures wanted information more than if offered the information before the attitude questionnaire, implying a sensitizing effect produced by the attitude questionnaire for the low-choice subjects. The various effects are discussed as providing support for predictions from Festinger's dissonance theory.