You can't always get what you want: educational attainment, agency, and choice

Using educational attainment to indicate socioeconomic status, the authors examined models of agency and effects of choice among European American adults of different educational backgrounds in 3 studies. Whereas college-educated (BA) participants and their preferred cultural products (i.e., rock music lyrics) emphasized expressing uniqueness, controlling environments, and influencing others, less educated (HS) participants and their preferred cultural products (i.e., country music lyrics) emphasized maintaining integrity, adjusting selves, and resisting influence. Reflecting these models of agency, HS and BA participants differently responded to choice in dissonance and reactance paradigms: BA participants liked chosen objects more than unchosen objects, but choice did not affect HS participants' preferences. Results suggest that HS and BA models of agency qualitatively differ, despite overlap between HS and BA worlds.     

Personality patterns of white,black, and Mexican-American patrolmen as measured by the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire

The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire was administered to 461 Los Angeles patrolmen to abtain a normative police profile. Multivariate analysis revealed that the average patrolman appeared brighter, more reserved, dominant, and tough-minded (p less than .001) than the average male. Comparisons were made for 29 black, 33 Mexican-American, and 399 white officers. Mexican-American officers emerged as more conservative and relaxed than whites, while black officers appeared more experimental, analytical, and group-oriented. A comparison with an idependent police sample revealed common traits of self-assurance and conservatism. Results were compared with a social workers' profile and discussed in relation to police officers' actual job activities and community needs.     

A Comparison of Computer-Assisted Psychotherapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Groups

This study is the first independent, randomized controlled study in a clinical setting of a computer-assisted therapy program (Therapeutic Learning Program; TLP) developed to permit individualized therapy in a group setting. This software differs from other computer-assisted approaches in that targets for change are chosen by the patient rather than determined by the software. TLP was compared to a standard cognitive-behavioral treatment in 109 patients with 6-month follow-up. Although both treatments were associated with a significant reduction in symptoms of anxiety and depression at posttreatment and follow-up, no differences were found between treatments with respect to patient-rated satisfaction and effectiveness, clinician ratings of improvement, and scores on measures of anxiety and depression. At treatment midpoint patients tended to give more neutral ratings of satisfaction and treatment effectiveness of the TLP treatment, perhaps suspending judgment about this more novel treatment until its completion. It is concluded that at least one form of computer-assisted psychotherapy is as effective and acceptable to patients in a clinical setting as standard short-term cognitive-behavioral therapy conducted by experienced clinicians.     

The role of psychosocial processes in explaining the gradient between socioeconomic status and health

The gradient between socioeconomic status (SES) and health is well established: Many measures of health show that health increases as SES increases. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are not well understood. Behavioral, cognitive, and affective tendencies that develop in response to the greater psychosocial stress encountered in low-SES environments may partially mediate the impact of SES on health. Although these tendencies might be helpful for coping in the short term, over time they may contribute to the development of allostatic load, which increases vulnerability to disease. Debate remains regarding the direction of causation between SES and health, the impact of income inequality, the interaction of SES with race-ethnicity and gender, and the effects of SES over the life course.     

Developmental and sex-related differences in preschoolers' affective decision making

This study investigated developmental and sex-related differences in affective decision making, using a two-deck version of Children's Gambling Task administered to 3- and 4-year-old children. The main findings were that 4-year-old children displayed better decision-making performance than 3-year-olds. This effect was independent of developmental changes in inductive reasoning, language, and working memory. There were also sex differences in decision-making performance, which were apparent only in 3-year-old children and favored girls. Moreover, age predicted awareness of task and the correlation between the latter and decision-making performance was significant, but only in 4-year-old children. This study thus indicates that there is a remarkable developmental leap in affective decision making, whose effects are apparent around the age of 4, which according to our results, also marks the age when the correlation of declarative knowledge and decision-making performance becomes significant.     

Is there any "free" choice? Self and dissonance in two cultures

Four experiments provided support for the hypothesis that upon making a choice, individuals justify their choice in order to eliminate doubts about culturally sanctioned aspects of the self, namely, competence and efficacy in North America and positive appraisal by other people in Japan. Japanese participants justified their choice (by increasing liking for chosen items and decreasing liking for rejected items) in the standard free-choice dissonance paradigm only when self-relevant others were primed, either by questionnaires (Studies 1-3) or by incidental exposure to schematic faces (Study 4). In the absence of these social cues, Japanese participants showed no dissonance effect. In contrast, European Americans justified their choices regardless of the social-cue manipulations. Implications for cognitive dissonance theory are discussed.