Mediating Effects of Material Payment,Social Reinforcement,and Familiarity on Foot-in-the-Door Phenomena in Thailand

Material payment, social reinforcement, and familiarity were examined as possible mediating variables in the foot-in-the-door technique in the Thai society. Female college students in Thailand were randomly assigned to one of the eight possible combinations of the above three variables (e.g., material payment-social reinforcement-familiarity; no material payment-social reinforcement-familiarity; material payment-no social reinforcement-familiarity). At first contact, subjects were asked to respond to a 10-item checklist regarding environmental concerns. Four days later the same subjects were asked to travel a few miles from the college to plant trees as part of an environmental enhancement project. Verbal compliance (agreeing to go) and behavioral compliance (showing up at the appointed time and place for transportation to the planting site) were assessed and analyzed according to the experimental condition to which each subject was assigned. Social reinforcement significantly affected both verbal and behavioral compliance, whereas neither material payment nor familiarity affected either verbal or behavioral compliance. Social reinforcement was concluded to be a mediating variable in the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.     

Relation of personality characteristics and color preferences

150 students responded to the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule and ranked color plates from the Luscher Color Test. Regression analysis yielded no relationship of predictive significance between the two sets of variables. An ancillary analysis using sets of random numbers in place of the color preference data yielded results basically similar to those produced in the earlier analysis. Males and females rank ordered the colors identically except for yellow, which was significantly more preferred by males than females.     

Quantitative depictions of threatening phenomena in news reports. The scary world of frequency data

Two experiments addressed the question of whether news reports depicting base‐rate data indicative of increasing population size over time would assuage the apprehension and victimization risk associated with another news story depicting frequency increases in a threatening phenomenon during the same time period. Men exposed to the population data manifested lower levels of apprehension and victimization risk than men not exposed to such data, but women showed no reduction in either apprehension and victimization risk than men not exposed to such data, but women showed no reduction in either apprehension or victimization risk after exposure to population data. This interaction was replicated in both experiments. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the same interaction can be produced using base‐rate data other than that depicting population increases over time and that the effects of the base‐rate stories are not merely a product of distraction from the threatening story. Differences in apprehension levels, information processing styles, mathematical problems solving skill, and sex role response sets were considered as alternative explanations for the interaction.     

Internalization

Abstract

By Sunday 31 August 1997 news of the Princess's death had reached Brive-La-Gaillard, South Western France. Expressions of curiosity, horror, shock, sadness for her two sons, anger and cynicism, among other sentiments, passed up and down the corridors of the auto-train bound for Calais. Any doubts as to whether this was mere rumour mongering were quickly scuppered as every newspaper at Calais station vanished from the shelves. Even then, the sense that there was something that could not be missed was compelling, enough so for me to buy one too. People could be seen poring over their newspapers, sharing ideas about her untimely death and trying, it seemed, to grasp at some meaning that might explain such a shocking event. The phrase ‘a senseless tragedy’ I felt summed up this death, as it does for many deaths that are unexpected, shocking and apparently meaningless.     

A psychodynamic approach to suicide: a critical and selective review

This paper begins by critically exploring Freudian and post-Freudian understandings of suicide, although due to limitations of space it is not comprehensive. Several examples drawn from clinical practice are then considered in relation to the theoretical ideas previously discussed. The paper then moves on to reconsider psychodynamic approaches to suicidal clients from a Levinasian ethical position. The possibility that suicide may be a logical part of what it is to be human, rather than an indication of mental illness, is advanced.