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.     

Familiar idiom comprehension

Sentences containing idioms used either literally or figuratively were presented repeatedly for 100 msec per presentation. Half of the sentences were preceded by a paragraph. The number of presentations required to read the sentences and cued recall of the sentences were recorded. The serial brief presentations method provided predictable and meaningful results. Sentences containing idioms used literally required more presentations than those containing idioms used figuratively. Cued recall was better for idioms used literally than for those used figuratively. These results are interpreted as support for the Idiomatic Processing Model of idiom comprehension, which suggests that the figurative meaning is processed first; only if that one is inappropriate is the literal meaning processed.     

Moral “I”: The Feminist Subject and the Grammar of Self-Reference

Much recent feminist theory tacitly subscribes to some version of what cognitive and evolutionary scientists are successfully undermining as untenably Cartesian, namely, the view that moral agency is achieved through the transcendence of physical causality guaranteed by self-consciousness. Appealing to Wittgenstein's insights concerning self-reference, I argue that abandoning Cartesian dualism implies abandoning neither subject nor moral agency but rather opens up nonandrocentric possibilities unavailable to the traditional model of mind.     

Contributions of a supportive work environment to parents' well-being and orientation to work

Examined the joint and unique contributions of informal social support in the workplace and formal, family-responsive benefits and policies provided by employers to the job-related attitudes and personal well-being of employed parents with a young child. Eighty married men, 169 married women, and 72 single women with a preschool child completed a survey concerning social support from co-workers and supervisor, utilization of family-responsive benefits and policies, readiness to leave the employer for additional benefits, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, role strain, and health symptoms. Among the findings: (a) Fathers and mothers expressed equal levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, but mothers reported more role strain and health symptoms; (b) nearly 48% of married women's organizational commitment was accounted for by measures of support in the workplace; (c) informal social support at work was significantly more important to men's well-being than that of women; and (d) formal, family-responsive policies appeared more consequential for the prediction of women's role strain, perhaps because of women's greater responsibility for adjusting work life to meet the demands of family roles.