No Evidence of Suicide Increase Following Terrorist Attacks in the United States: An Interrupted Time‐Series Analysis of September 11 and Oklahoma City

There is substantial evidence of detrimental psychological sequelae following disasters, including terrorist attacks. The effect of these events on extreme responses such as suicide, however, is unclear. We tested competing hypotheses about such effects by employing autoregressive integrated moving average techniques to model the impact of September 11 and the Oklahoma City bombing on monthly suicide counts at the local, state, and national level. Unlike prior studies that provided conflicting evidence, rigorous time series techniques revealed no support for an increase or decrease in suicides following these events. We conclude that while terrorist attacks produce subsequent psychological morbidity and may affect self and collective efficacy well beyond their immediate impact, these effects are not strong enough to influence levels of suicide mortality.     

What Can the Systems Community Contribute to Ensure the Survival of Civilization

Much of what we need to plan for our survival is already known, but what we know, how we know, and who knows is divided up between disciplines. Thus much of the problem of ensuring our survival is a matter of learning across the disciplines. We identify four modes through which we bring disciplinary knowledge together: the unity of science, integrated assessment, heuristic models, and distributed learning networks. Although none of them are perfect, we can learn how to put our knowledge together across the disciplines much better than we do.     

Cognitive Tendencies in Analogical Forecasting1

This article attempts to identify some cognitive tendencies involved in analogical forecasting of the outcomes of medical treatment. Sixty-one medical doctors were involved in two experimental tasks concerned with prediction of the outcomes of a new medical treatment when the result with a first patient was known to be either negative or positive. The same subjects were also tested by the Short Optimism/Pessimism Questionnaire (SO/PQ) to explore relationships between life attitude and the cognitive tendencies observed in the experiment. The following findings were reported: (1) The first step of forecasting was recognized as a Data Evaluation Process (DEP), where the physician decides if the given data are sufficient to forecast the result of the same treatment with a new patient. (2) Two cognitive tendencies were identified: non-data-suggested tendency—drawing a conclusion opposite to the data given; and data-suggested tendency—drawing an optimistic conclusion when forecasting from “positive” data and a pessimistic conclusion when forecasting from “negative” data. The second tendency appeared to be dominant; however, the “positive” data created a stronger atmosphere to draw conclusions on a negative outcome. (3) It was stated that analogical forecasting involves two integrated processes, i.e., concluding and asserting. If the integration process is not complete, the subject is drawing analogical conclusions with a low confidence. (4) An optimistic life attitude appeared to be an important factor in determining analogical forecasting.     

Career Indecision: A Summary of the Research and Implications for Counselling

The vocationally-indecisive individual presents a major counselling problem. The theory and research behind career indecision is discussed and a counselling approach based on identity formation is outlined. Four identity statuses — Identity Achievements, Foreclosures, Identity Diffusions, and Moratoriums — are described and counselling approaches for each are explored.     

Prophetic visions in 1988: A critical reappraisal

This paper reviews the research into a specific aspect of neardeath experiences (NDEs): the prophetic vision (PV). PVs are subjectively compelling flashforwards of planetary-wide cataclysms and eventual regeneration that sometimes occur during or in the immediate aftermath of an NDE. Previous research has shown that the most frequently mentioned year for the culmination of the geophysical calamities foreseen in PVs was 1988. I argue that PVs should be understood as manifestations of a collective prophetic impulse that historically tends to arise during periods of cultural crisis. PVs are thus expressions of the felt need for cultural renewal and therefore should not be taken literally as prognostic of drastic physical changes on Earth.     

The effects of objectives and constraints on motor control strategy in reciprocal aiming movements

The goal of this study was to examine how the kinematics of reciprocal aiming movements were affected by both the objective of the movement and the constraints operating on that movement. In Experiment 1, the objective of the movement was indirectly manipulated by capitalizing on the fact that subjects determine their own accuracy and speed limits, despite uniform task instructions to move as quickly and accurately as possible. A Fitts' type reciprocal aiming paradigm was employed, in which 69 subjects were asked to move a stylus repetitively between two spatially separated targets. Four target widths were orthogonally combined with four movement amplitudes, resulting in 16 conditions. Movements were made on an X-Y digitizing tablet. Based on the mean variable error produced on both targets, subjects were differentiated post hoc into three movement objective groups: speed, accuracy, and speed-plus-accuracy. Kinematic analyses revealed that the programming and execution of movements were systematically influenced by both the movement objective and the movement constraints. That is, movement time, peak velocity, dwell time, acceleration and deceleration time, normalized acceleration and normalized deceleration varied systematically as a function of both the speed-accuracy movement objective and the movement constraints of target size and movement distance. Moreover, the consequences of changing the constraints of the movement were affected by an interaction with the objective of the movement. In Experiment 2, the objective of the movement was directly manipulated by varying speed and/or accuracy instructions to subjects. The basic results of Experiment 1 were substantiated. Overall, the results were consistent with the view that motor control is dependent upon sensory consequences.