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A second-order meta-analysis was conducted to assess the implications of using college student subjects in social science research. Four meta-analyses investigating response homogeneity (cumulative N > 650,000) and 30 meta-analyses reporting effect sizes for 65 behavioral or psychological relationships (cumulative N > 350,000) provided comparative data for college student subjects and nonstudent (adult) subjects for the present research. In general, responses of college student subjects were found to be slightly more homogeneous than those of nonstudent subjects. Moreover, effect sizes derived from college student subjects frequently differed from those derived from nonstudent subjects both directionally and in magnitude. Because there was no systematic pattern to the differences observed, caution must be exercised when attempting to extend any relationship found using college student subjects to a nonstudent (adult) population. The results argue in favor of, and emphasize the importance of, replicating research based on college student subjects with nonstudent subjects before attempting any generalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indirect (i.e., structured projective) questioning has been employed frequently in marketing and other social sciences to reduce social desirability bias, that is, systematic error in self-report measures resulting from tie desire of respondents to avoid embarrassment and project a favorable image 10 others. Yet little is known about the validity of indirect questioning in reducing social desirability bias. This article reports on three studies that examine indirect questioning as a technique to reduce social desirability bias on self-report measures. The effects of asking indirect (i.e., structured, projective) questions were compared with direct (i.e., structured, personal) questions. The pattern of results indicates that indirect questioning reduces social desirability bias on variables subject to social influence and has no significant effect on socially neutral variables. The social nature of the differences between direct and indirect questioning groups, and the attribution of an undesirable trait to an out-group but not an in-group target, supports the view that subjects projected their beliefs and evaluations in the indirect response situation. These results are consistent across several product categories and indirect question wordings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tactile behavior is a basic communication form as well as an expression of interpersonal involvement. This article presents three studies offering evidence for the positive role of casual interpersonal touch on consumer behavior. More specifically, it provides initial support for the view that tactile stimulation in various consumer behavior situations enhances the positive feeling for and evaluation of both the external stimuli and the touching source. Further, customers touched by a requester tend to comply more than customers in no-touch conditions. Implications for consumer behavior theory and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of optimum stimulation level (OSL) in exploratory consumer behavior. The concept of OSL and its measurement are discussed, and the literature on exploratory consumer tendencies and their relationship with OSL is reviewed. Hypotheses are developed concerning the relationship between OSL and cognitive responses to ads, ad repetition, information search, variety seeking, decision making under risk, gambling, and innovative behavior, and these hypotheses are investigated in a series of experiments. Four well-known instruments are used to measure people's characteristic preference for stimulation, and OSL is operationalized as a weighted composite of a person's score on these scales. The results of the study indicate that consumers OSL is systematically related to curiosity-motivated consumer behaviors, variety seeking, and risk taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social marketing is the application of marketing theory to social issues. A significant drawback, though, is that practitioners are encouraged to assume high levels of agency among their target audiences, often while developing programmes aimed at very disadvantaged groups. However, some social marketers work openly and collaboratively at neighbourhood level to co-create change with the people who would usually be cast in the much more passive role of an audience. This article describes a project that adopted these principles, working with people in two deprived neighbourhoods to co-create strategies to reduce risky drinking. Locals used alcohol to cope with feelings of being trapped, emotionally and socially isolated with limited access to employment and facilities. A mobile services hub with a street cafe was piloted for 4 days. This project is an example of the potential for overlap between social marketing and community development and suggests that practitioners could learn from each other's expertise. The article concludes with a review of social marketing's role in situations where structural barriers to behaviour change are high, finishing with a call for social marketers and community developers to open themselves to collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social norms are a group-level phenomenon, but past quantitative research has rarely measured them in the aggregate or considered their group-level properties. We used the school-based design of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to measure normative climates regarding teen pregnancy across 75 US high schools. We distinguished between the strength of a school's norm against teen pregnancy and the consensus around that norm. School-level norm strength and dissensus were strongly (r = –0.65) and moderately (r = 0.34) associated with pregnancy prevalence within schools, respectively. Normative climate partially accounted for observed racial differences in school pregnancy prevalence, but norms were a stronger predictor than racial composition. As hypothesized, schools with both a stronger average norm against teen pregnancy and greater consensus around the norm had the lowest pregnancy prevalence. Results highlight the importance of group-level normative processes and of considering the local school environment when designing policies to reduce teen pregnancy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Individuals with antisocial behavior place a great physical and economic burden on society. Deficits in emotional processing have been recognized as a fundamental cause of antisocial behavior. Emerging evidence also highlights a significant contribution of attention allocation deficits to such behavior. A comprehensive literature search identified 12 studies that were eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis, which compared 291 individuals with antisocial problems and 247 controls. Signed Differential Mapping revealed that compared with controls, gray matter volume (GMV) in subjects with antisocial behavior was reduced in the right lentiform nucleus (P < 0.0001), left insula (P = 0.0002) and left frontopolar cortex (FPC) (P = 0.0006), and was increased in the right fusiform gyrus (P < 0.0001), right inferior parietal lobule (P = 0.0003), right superior parietal lobule (P = 0.0004), right cingulate gyrus (P = 0.0004) and the right postcentral gyrus (P = 0.0004). Given the well-known contributions of limbic and paralimbic areas to emotional processing, the observed reductions in GMV in these regions might represent neural correlates of disturbance in emotional processing underlying antisocial behavior. Previous studies have suggested an FPC role in attention allocation during emotional processing. Therefore, GMV deviations in this area may constitute a neural basis of deficits in attention allocation linked with antisocial behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

People feel bad for inflicting harms upon others; this emotional state is termed interpersonal guilt. In this study, the participant played multiple rounds of a dot-estimation task with anonymous partners while undergoing fMRI. The partner would receive pain stimulation if the partner or the participant or both responded incorrectly; the participant was then given the option to intervene and bear a proportion of pain for the partner. The level of pain voluntarily taken and the activations in anterior middle cingulate cortex (aMCC) and bilateral anterior insula (AI) were higher when the participant was solely responsible for the stimulation (Self_Incorrect) than when both committed an error (Both_Incorrect). Moreover, the gray matter volume in the aMCC predicted the individual’s compensation behavior, measured as the difference between the level of pain taken in the Self_Incorrect and Both_Incorrect conditions. Furthermore, a mediation pathway analysis revealed that activation in a midbrain region mediated the relationship between aMCC activation and the individual’s tendency to compensate. These results demonstrate that the aMCC and the midbrain nucleus not only play an important role in experiencing interpersonal guilt, but also contribute to compensation behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores Pragmatism's potential for transcending the antagonism between positivism and post-positivism, through the work of Morton Kaplan, who combines a Pragmatist theory of knowledge with a systems theory of world politics. A reconstruction of Kaplan's synoptic philosophy shows how Pragmatism can help us move beyond the dual fallacy of truth as correspondence and truth as self-consciousness, to a non-foundationalist epistemology that acknowledges the historicity of knowing without annihilating the realism of the common world we live in. Moving from the realm of knowledge to the realm of judgment, this paper also reconstructs Kaplan's moral analysis, thereby revealing its significance for the discipline's renewed concern for the problems of values and reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Pragmatism's potential for transcending the antagonism between positivism and post-positivism, through the work of Morton Kaplan, who combines a Pragmatist theory of knowledge with a systems theory of world politics. A reconstruction of Kaplan's synoptic philosophy shows how Pragmatism can help us move beyond the dual fallacy of truth as correspondence and truth as self-consciousness, to a non-foundationalist epistemology that acknowledges the historicity of knowing without annihilating the realism of the common world we live in. Moving from the realm of knowledge to the realm of judgment, this paper also reconstructs Kaplan's moral analysis, thereby revealing its significance for the discipline's renewed concern for the problems of values and reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Executive functioning (EF) refers to the set of neurocognitive processes that facilitate novel problem solving, modification of behavior in response to environmental changes, planning and generating strategies for complex actions, and ability to override pre-potent behavioral and emotional responses to engage in goal-directed behavior. To provide an overview of research on individual differences in EF and examine the extent to which these individual differences confer risk and resilience for poor stress regulation. Review of the literature suggests that individual differences in EF are evident at multiple levels of analysis including genotype, endophenotype (e.g., performance on cognitive tasks), and phenotype (e.g., temperament and personality). These individual differences are associated with differential stress exposure, reactivity, recovery, and restorative processes. A theoretical framework that includes individual differences in EF will inform behavioral medicine research on stress risk and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older adults have a reduced capacity to take the perspective of another, and it has been suggested that disinhibition may be one mechanism contributing to this difficulty. To test this possibility, we had behavioral measures that were sensitive to inhibitory failure and to theory of mind (ToM) administered to younger and older adults. One of the measures of ToM directly manipulated inhibitory demands, involving either high or low levels of self-perspective inhibition. The results indicated that older adults were selectively impaired on the high-inhibition condition. Further, of the various aspects of cognitive functioning that we assessed, including memory, mental flexibility, and cognitive speed, only cognitive disinhibition mediated age-related differences in ToM. These results suggest that inhibitory control is an important mediator of ToM in late adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British Association of Social Workers has actively opposed Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). It is the contention of this article that there is a pressing need to interrogate factors which are influencing and driving the ASBO agenda during the period of New Labour in Britain. The discussion begins by referring to the significance of key-words and phrases in social work and social policy. This is followed by an examination of the recent (re)appearance of concern about 'anti-social behaviour'. A critical overview of the White Paper Respect and Responsibility: Taking a Stand against Anti-Social Behaviour (Home Office, 2003a) is then provided. It is then argued that Tony Blair and former home secretary, David Blunkett, played distinctive roles in creating Britain's ASBO politics. This, moreover, is a politics which potentially narrows social work's role and purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the article "The Nature of Slacktivism: How the Social Observability of an Initial Act of Token Support Affects Subsequent Prosocial Action" by Kirk Kristofferson, Katherine White, and John Peloza is presented.