Psychology and inferences about public policy.

The research literature of psychology may be brought to bear on public policy issues in three ways. First, psychology may be useful in establishing procedures for determining public policy. Second, psychology may be useful in formulating the structure for policy and its implementation. Third, the literature of psychology may be reflected in the actual content of public policy. There are many issues involved in making inferences about public policy from the psychological literature. Among these issues are the generalizability of findings from basic science and problems of overadvocacy on the part of policy consultants. Researchers expect that inferences from the psychological literature would lead to innovations in the policy, but the innovations themselves must be evaluated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural differences and inferences about psychological processes.

Discusses the inadequacy of experimental evidence and logical considerations in current theories of intellectual deficits caused by cultural deprivation. Reports on the presence or absence of competence have been based on noncomparable experimental situations. Deficit interpretations have assumed that absence of performance reflects absence of a particular psychological process. A strategy is proposed which combines usual experimental approaches with ethnographic methods for the study of cognitive processes. (44 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical inferences about depression and physical disability.

Individuals who are physically disabled are often expected to be depressed and to mourn their condition. It is relatively unknown, however, how these expectations influence psychologists' inferences about the emotional status of those who have a physically stigmatizing condition. Sixty-nine doctoral students in the American Psychological Association approved clinical and counseling psychology programs rated their expectations for depression in a person after viewing a videotape of the person in varied conditions of physique and affect. The results indicate that the presence of physical disability did not moderate the assessment of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forming inferences about some intraclass correlation coefficients.

AIthough intraclass correlation coefficients (lCCs) are commonIy used in behavioral measurement, pychometrics, and behavioral genetics, procodures available for forming inferences about ICC are not widely known. Following a review of the distinction between various forms of the ICC, this article presents procedures available for calculating confidence intervals and conducting tests on ICCs developed using data from one-way and two-way random and mixed-efFect analysis of variance models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making inferences about the location of hidden food: Social dog, causal ape.

Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and great apes from the genus Pan were tested on a series of object choice tasks. In each task, the location of hidden food was indicated for subjects by some kind of communicative, behavioral, or physical cue. On the basis of differences in the ecologies of these 2 genera, as well as on previous research, the authors hypothesized that dogs should be especially skillful in using human communicative cues such as the pointing gesture, whereas apes should be especially skillful in using physical, causal cues such as food in a cup making noise when it is shaken. The overall pattern of performance by the 2 genera strongly supported this social-dog, causal-ape hypothesis. This result is discussed in terms of apes' adaptations for complex, extractive foraging and dogs' adaptations, during the domestication process, for cooperative communication with humans. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Method, theory, and drawing inferences.

Responds to the comment by T. A. Brigham (see record 1989-31532-001) criticizing the labeling of correlational studies as experiments in the article by S. J. Lynn and J. W. Rhue (see record 1988-15963-001). The present author considers the labeling question less critical and differs from Brigham on the issue of methods and inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal inferences about communicators and their effect on opinion change.

An attribution analysis of opinion change viewed message persuasiveness as a function of inferred communicator biases. Recipients infer a knowledge bias (KB) by believing that a communicator's knowledge about external reality is nonveridical and a reporting bias (RB) by believing that a communicator's willingness to convey an accurate version of external reality is compromised. In an experiment with 355 undergraduates, KB expectancies were established by portraying a communicator as having a strong commitment to values represented by the probusiness or proenvironment side of a controversial issue and RB expectancies by portraying his audience as having a strong commitment to one or the other side. In all conditions, the communicator advocated the proenvironment position. Therefore, recipients' expectancies were confirmed in the context of a proenvironment communicator and/or audience and disconfirmed in the context of a probusiness communicator and/or audience. Regardless of the type of bias that Ss expected, they were more persuaded and rated the communicator as more unbiased when their expectancies were disconfirmed. Confirmation of expectancies based on RB, but not KB, was associated with inferences of communicator insincerity and manipulativeness. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental styles of talking about the past.

Past research indicates that mothers have different styles of reminiscing with their children (e.g., R. Fivush and F. A. Fromhoff, 1988). This study examined fathers' styles of talking about the past as well. Mothers and fathers from 24 2-parent families talked separately with their 3-yr-olds about shared 1-time events. Consistent with previous research on mothers, parents displayed 2 distinct narrative styles. The styles were not associated with gender of parent. However, parents of daughters were generally more elaborative (i.e., they provided more narrative structure and talked longer) than parents of sons. In turn, daughters participated in the conversations to a greater extent than sons, but sons and daughters had similar linguistic skills. Parents do not appear to be basing their narrative styles on the memory or language capabilities of their children. Instead, the practice of reminiscing may be a sex-typed activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Force Four Psychology: Interactionism.

Notes that the three previous major forces setting the direction of applied psychology have been psychoanalytic, behavioral, and humanistic. All of them have been blended to some extent, but all, over time, have retained their basic flavors. The persons today most closely associated with each of the three forces are S. Freud, B. F. Skinner, and A. Maslow, respectively. Behaviorism was an attempt to make psychology more scientific. Humanistic psychology, the third force, is a reaction or really the antithesis to the first two. The current author describes "interactionistic psychology" or "force four psychology" as a possible synthesis of the previous three forces. A working definition of interactionism, taken from a quote by S. Chess (1979), is proposed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aptitude test scores, past performance, and causal attributions about the poorly performing student.

Studied the impact of aptitude test scores and past performance information on causal attributions about a student's poor present performance. 180 graduate students were given questionnaires containing either past performance information alone or past performance information and aptitude scores of a hypothetical student. Responses of 69 students were used in the analysis. Results show that the presence of low aptitude scores led to greater ability attributions regardless of past performance while not affecting effort attributions. The presence of high aptitude scores led to greater effort attributions given poor past performance and a tendency to lesser effort attributions given successful past performance while not affecting ability attributions. Ability attributions also were found to be negatively related to expectancies about the student's future success. Implications of these results for students and educators are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dream interpretation can change beliefs about the past.

Forty-six nonclinical subjects reported on their childhood experiences on two occasions, separated by 3–4 weeks. between these sessions, some subjects were exposed to a 30-min therapy simulation in which their dream material was analyzed by a clinical psychologist. He suggested to subjects that their dreams were indicative of having experienced, before the age of three, certain critical experiences (e.g., being lost in a public place or feeling abandoned by parents). Subjects previously reported that these critical events had not occurred. The brief therapy simulation led them to dramatic shifts in belief that the experiences had occurred. These results show that brief therapy-like interactions can change people's beliefs about the past, and have implications for the power of clinical intervention. Dream interpretation, commonly practiced in psychotherapy to guide patient's understanding of themselves, may have unexpected side effects if it leads to beliefs about the past that may in fact be false. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasoning counterfactually: Making inferences about things that didn't happen.

The authors investigated the relationship between reasoners' understanding of subjunctive conditionals (e.g., if p had happened, then q would have happened) and the inferences they were prepared to endorse. Reasoners who made a counterfactual interpretation of subjunctive statements (i.e., they judged the statement to imply that p and q did not happen) endorsed different inferences than those who did not. Those who made a counterfactual interpretation were more likely to (a)judge the situation in which p and q occurred to be inconsistent with the conditional statement and (b) make negative inferences such as modus tollens (i.e., – q therefore – p ). These findings occurred with familiar and unfamiliar content, affirmative and negative conditionals, and conditional and biconditional relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mistaken inferences.

Responds to P. E. Nathan's (see record 1998-00122-002) comments about the Consumer Reports mental health survey. The present authors contend that Nathan's comments contain serious errors and mistaken assumptions, stemming from a misunderstanding of the incidence rates for seeking professional care among subscribers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and the availability of inferences.

Investigated age differences in inference availability and memory using a speeded decision procedure and cued recall. Younger and older adults read passages that directly suggested either a target inference or an incorrect, competing inference before finally supporting the target inference. At critical points in a passage, Ss judged whether each of a series of words, including either the target or competing inference, was consistent with their current interpretation. Although both groups agreed on the final target inference, younger and older adults showed different patterns of inference availability and revision. Older adults showed broader and more sustained activation of alternative interpretations and also showed lower levels of inference recall. These findings are interpretable by a framework that proposes age-related breakdowns in inhibitory mechanisms that control the contents of working memory (L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks, 1988). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

It's OK to ask about past abuse.

Comments on the article by K. Becker-Blease and J. Freyd (see record 2006-03947-003), which addressed the ethics of asking and not asking research subjects about abuse. In their article, they systematically reviewed often-voiced concerns about and objections to asking questions about child maltreatment in survey research. They concluded that by failing to ask about a history of child maltreatment, an important predictor of later-life problems may be overlooked. The current authors discuss the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, which provides strong evidence of the association between early traumatic experiences and some of the major public health problems facing our nation. Results from the ACE study have shown an association between traumatic childhood experiences and a broad range of health outcomes, including liver disease, ischemic heart disease, reproductive health, and mental illness, as well as a variety of health risks such as obesity, smoking, and alcoholism. The associations that these studies showed demonstrate that researchers studying health outcomes who do not ask study subjects about traumatic childhood experiences are overlooking an important risk factor for many of the major health issues of our day. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture and group perception: Dispositional and stereotypic inferences about novel and national groups.

In 3 studies, the authors tested the hypothesis that Chinese participants would view social groups as more entitative than would Americans and, as a result, would be more likely to infer personality traits on the basis of group membership--that is, to stereotype. In Study 1, Chinese participants made stronger stereotypic trait inferences than Americans did on the basis of a target's membership in a fictitious group. Studies 2 and 3 showed that Chinese participants perceived diverse groups as more entitative and attributed more internally consistent dispositions to groups and their members. Guided by culturally based lay theories about the entitative nature of groups, Chinese participants may stereotype more readily than do Americans when group membership is available as a source of dispositional inference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reflections on psychology's past and concerns about its future.

Discusses psychology's progress during the last quarter century and its potential for significant scientific advances in the future. Some reasons underlying the public's current mistrust of psychology are considered; one of these is the tendency for some psychologists to become advocates for particular public policies and/or to misrepresent the contributions psychology can make to the solution of national problems. The dramatic decline in the support of basic research in all fields of science, but particularly in psychology, is examined as it affects the nation's ability to maintain scientific leadership. Finally, some steps are suggested that psychology might take to improve its prospects for the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generic language and speaker confidence guide preschoolers’ inferences about novel animate kinds.

We investigated the influence of speaker certainty on 156 four-year-old children’s sensitivity to generic and nongeneric statements. An inductive inference task was implemented, in which a speaker described a nonobvious property of a novel creature using either a generic or a nongeneric statement. The speaker appeared to be confident, neutral, or uncertain about the information being relayed. Preschoolers were subsequently asked if a second exemplar shared the same property as the first. Preschoolers consistently extended properties to additional exemplars only when properties were described in a generic form by a confident or neutral speaker. If a speaker appeared to be uncertain or if statements were made in a nongeneric form, properties were not consistently extended beyond the first exemplar. The findings demonstrate that children integrate the inductive cues provided by generic language with social cues when reasoning about abstract kinds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactionism in personality from a historical perspective.

Starting from a distinction between 3 different conceptions of human behavior (personologism, situationism, and interactionism) and between 2 different conceptions of the environment (physical vs psychological environment), the present article focuses on the interactionist position, which has been preferred in some recent conceptions of personality. By reviewing different classical theories of psychology, it is argued that the modern interactionist conceptualization is not new in personality psychology. It can be traced back to the works of J. R. Kantor and K. Lewin and is also advocated in many of the succeeding classical works. By reviewing the previous interactionists' conceptions of the environment, it is argued that their emphasis on the psychological environment in explaining person-situation interactions presents the same main thought as that found in the recent cognitively colored interactionism. By reviewing empirical strategies and results within the interactionist framework, it is argued that the inaptness of previous methods has impeded the development of interactionism and explains why it has not had an impact until now. (4 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)