Changing, priming, and acting on values: Effects via motivational relations in a circular model.

Circular models of values and goals suggest that some motivational aims are consistent with each other, some oppose each other, and others are orthogonal to each other. The present experiments tested this idea explicitly by examining how value confrontation and priming methods influence values and value-consistent behaviors throughout the entire value system. Experiment 1 revealed that change in 1 set of social values causes motivationally compatible values to increase in importance, whereas motivationally incompatible values decrease in importance and orthogonal values remain the same. Experiment 2 found that priming security values reduced the better-than-average effect, but priming stimulation values increased it. Similarly, Experiments 3 and 4 found that priming security values increased cleanliness and decreased curiosity behaviors, whereas priming self-direction values decreased cleanliness and increased curiosity behaviors. Experiment 5 found that priming achievement values increased success at puzzle completion and decreased helpfulness to an experimenter, whereas priming with benevolence values decreased success and increased helpfulness. These results highlight the importance of circular models describing motivational interconnections between values and personal goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applying the value of equality unequally: Effects of value instantiations that vary in typicality.

Across 4 experiments, the authors investigated the role of value instantiation in bridging the gap between abstract social values and behavior in specific situations. They predicted and found that participants engaged in more egalitarian behavior (point allocation using the minimal group paradigm) after contemplating a typical instantiation of the value of equality compared to an atypical instantiation or a control condition that simply made the value salient. This effect occurred when participants generated reasons for valuing equality in the instantiation (Experiment 1) and when participants merely read about hypothetical examples of the instantiation context (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). Results across experiments indicated that the effect of prior instantiations was not mediated by changes in the abstract value; instead, the process of applying the abstract value was crucial (Experiment 4). Together, the experiments show that the process of applying an abstract value to a specific situation can be influenced by seemingly unrelated prior episodes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adjudin, a potential male contraceptive, exerts its effects locally in the seminiferous epithelium of mammalian testes

Adjudin is a derivative of 1H-indazole-3-carboxylic acid that was shown to have potent anti-spermatogenic activity in rats, rabbits, and dogs. It exerts its effects most notably locally in the apical compartment of the seminiferous epithelium, behind the blood-testis barrier, by disrupting adhesion of germ cells, most notably spermatids to the Sertoli cells, thereby inducing release of immature spermatids from the epithelium that leads to infertility. After adjudin is metabolized, the remaining spermatogonial stem cells and spermatogonia repopulate the seminiferous epithelium gradually via spermatogonial self-renewal and differentiation, to be followed by meiosis and spermiogenesis, and thus fertility rebounds. Recent studies in rats have demonstrated unequivocally that the primary and initial cellular target of adjudin in the testis is the apical ectoplasmic specialization, a testis-specific anchoring junction type restricted to the interface between Sertoli cells and elongating spermatids (from step 8 to 19 spermatids). In this review, we highlight some of the recent advances and obstacles regarding the possible use of adjudin as a male contraceptive.