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The article announces that the 2012 Fulker Award has been given to three researchers including Mark Adams, James King, and Alex Weiss for their paper "The majority of genetic variation in Orangutan personality and subjective well-being is non-additive" from the Behavior Genetics Association.

The growing availability of high-dimensional data sets offers behavioral scientists an unprecedented opportunity to integrate the information hidden in the novel types of data (e.g., genetic data, social media data, and GPS tracks, etc.,) and thereby obtain a more detailed and comprehensive view towards their research questions. In the context of clustering, analyzing the large volume of variables could potentially result in an accurate estimation or a novel discovery of underlying subgroups. However, a unique challenge is that the high-dimensional data sets likely involve a significant amount of irrelevant variables. These irrelevant variables do not contribute to the separation of clusters and they may mask cluster partitions. The current paper addresses this challenge by introducing a new clustering algorithm, called Cardinality K-means or CKM, and by proposing a novel model selection strategy. CKM is able to perform simultaneous clustering and variable selection with high stability. In two simulation studies and an empirical demonstration with genetic data, CKM consistently outperformed competing methods in terms of recovering cluster partitions and identifying signaling variables. Meanwhile, our novel model selection strategy determines the number of clusters based on a subset of variables that are most likely to be signaling variables. Through a simulation study, this strategy was found to result in a more accurate estimation of the number of clusters compared to the conventional strategy that utilizes the full set of variables. Our proposed CKM algorithm, together with the novel model selection strategy, has been implemented in a freely accessible R package. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the comments of the editor for the journal "Human Studies." This special issue began with an idea proposed by George Psathas over lunch an intentionally open and broad call for papers to all contributors, editors and friends of "Human Studies." The present volume displays the many different ways that call was answered. As a sociologist have generally found it advisable to reject what in traditional academic circles is called interdisciplinary but in practice seems a way for one discipline to steal, and often distort in the process, ideas from other disciplines and claim them as their own. When, for instance, sociologists make use of psychological theories to explain children, rather than displaying interdisciplinarianism, they, from perspective, simply fill in gaps neglected by sociologists by stuffing in handy ideas from psychology, doing justice to neither.

The paper reconsiders the problem of whether traditional economics constitutes or comprises rational choice theory in the sense of a comprehensive economic model of and approach to human action and society. Rational choice theorists in economics as well as sociology and beyond claim that their theory and approach is founded in, derived from and justified by classical and neoclassical economics, especially its major figures. This reconsideration casts strong doubt on such claims to "rational choice" traditional economics. It argues and shows that both classical political economy and neoclassical economics essentially is or has no rational choice theory. This applies to virtually all the major economics classics and neoclassics, with some exceptions among their lesser counterparts. The paper aims to contribute to understand better the origins and rationale or lack thereof of rational choice theory and the economic approach to behavior and their implications for its sociological version. The rationale/benefit of this analysis and its finding for contemporary sociologists is three-fold. The first relating to rational choice sociologists is showing that classical/neoclassical economics is not rational choice theory and does not represent their theoretical foundation and precursor. The second pertaining to economic sociologists is demonstrating that conventional economics has elements of economic sociology, especially more than of rational choice theory. The third concerning other sociologists is to make them more familiar with the original ideas of conventional economics as distinct from their interpretations by contemporary economist pursuing the economic approach and rational choice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles published in a special edition of the "Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings," published on June 2004. Articles' consonance with the goals of the Association of Medical School Psychologists; Discussion of priorities in health professions training and psychology’s contributions in academic health centers (AHC) and medical school settings; Educational priorities in the AHC environment and their effect on psychology training.; Contributions of psychologists in the dynamic interplay between research, clinical practice,and health policy; Describes the evolution of a career as a medical school psychologist; Issues of administration and governance of psychology in AHC and medical schools.

The article deals with some of the social problems and with some possibilities to apply the experimental method in the social sciences more effectively than has been done in the past. As the concept of experiment has different meanings it seems useful first to specify what will be understood by an experiment in this paper. If a researcher actually manipulates all the variables the effect of which he tries to find out--the independent variables--or if the independent variables are not manipulated (in so-called natural experiments), and if the researcher eliminates the different effects of all other variables of his test populations. According to the definition of experiment in this paper it is not necessary that the relation between the dependent and independent variable is a "causal" one--whatever may be understood by this concept. Speaking of the "effect" of the "independent" variable means that if the value of one variable changes, the value of at least one other variable changes too.

In this paper, we examine the interrelationships among language, culture, and cognition. The central notion that individuals with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds think differently is not far from our everyday experience. If you have had the opportunity to engage in a conversation with a person whose native language is not English, you may have found that communication breaks down at times and that some concepts are not easily translated into another language. Or if you happen to be a fluent bilingual or multilingual, you may agree with those bilinguals or multilinguals who mention that they think differently in each of their language. A number of intriguing questions arise here. Is there a particular style of thinking that is natural for speakers of each language? If so, is it possible for a person to think in a different way, one that is not natural for that individual? Is this style of thinking imparted by the language, the culture, or both? These and lots of other questions have engaged the attention of anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, but the point that we are going to explore is the lexical influences on cognition considering the relationship between language, culture and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper points to two little-discussed interrelated features—among sociologists—about the nature of the lifeworld ( Lebenswelt): that the experience of transcendence is an essential component of human actions, and that lived experience ( Erlebnis) is founded on the non-discursivity of the lifeworld, i.e., the pre-predicative background expectancies from which the discursive arises. I examine the intellectual route of Alfred Schutz who developed his mundane lifeworld theory from appropriating Edmund Husserl’s notions of appresentation and apperception. Harold Garfinkel later extended Schutz’s concept of lifeworld to the empirical investigations of constitutive social orders. By way of conclusion, I warn against a strain of constructionism in sociology, which tends to ignore the two said features of lived experience and inaccurately conceives social realities as essentially the actor’s discursive accomplishments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychologists of the 21st century must be highly skilled and versatile to function effectively in academic health centers (AHCs). Thus, the current paper focuses on the training psychologists receive to prepare them for their diverse roles in AHCs. The paper is framed around the question: Do we need more medical knowledge, basic science and more psychological science? posed to the author by the conference organizers of the 3rd National Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers (APAHC) Conference and is based on the perspective of the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do women and men who have children during graduate school have access to the same institutional resources as non-parents? In the face of two greedy institutions, the academy and parenthood (especially motherhood), do they employ the same sorts of strategies in their quest to attain tenure-track jobs, and are those strategies successful? In this study we use a longitudinal survey of sociology Ph.D.s to investigate the availability and use of three types of resources and strategies during graduate school, and find that they all have important effects on the chances of obtaining a tenure-track position at a research or doctoral university. We find that some institutional resources are not equally distributed in graduate school, with mother's least likely to obtain them, but are significant for attainment of tenure-track positions. Resource-based strategies, including presenting papers and publishing articles while in graduate school, have a positive and significant effect on all groups' attainment of tenure-track positions. Family-based strategies such as child-spacing strategies are also significant; women who have children during graduate school have lower odds of immediately obtaining tenure-track jobs at research and doctoral universities, although access to resources and the ability to use these resources helps significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature in the area of innovation systems (IS) has been growing in importance and the IS approach has become well established. It is widely used in North America, Western Europe and Scandinavia, both in academic contexts and also as a framework or tool for policymaking. This paper examines work by sociologists, historians and others who have attempted to provide new insights into the nature of technology, in order to determine how the new sociology of technology literature--particularly social construction of technology methodologies--can contribute to, and unpack the study of innovation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, behavioral scientists have learned that many findings in the field may not replicate, leading to calls for change in how behavioral research is conducted. Krefeld-Schwalb and Scheibehenne (2023) examine changes in the methodological practices in consumer research between 2008 and 2020. They find that sample sizes have increased and that effect sizes have decreased. In this article, we take these findings as a starting point and reflect on how we can further improve methodological practices in the field. We argue that in order to build a more replicable, rigorous field, we must place effect sizes at the center of scientific reasoning. Specifically, we make four claims about effect sizes that we hope will help consumer researchers plan, conduct, and interpret their research: (1) effect sizes in consumer psychology are small, and that is a natural consequence of the field's maturity; (2) effect sizes need to be contextualized; (3) our samples are still too small to detect the small effects of modern empirical consumer research; and (4) larger samples do not inherently generate smaller effects. It is our hope that the current article increases the field's understanding about effect sizes and motivates researchers to place effect sizes at the center of their scientific reasoning. By thinking carefully about effect sizes, we believe we can collectively improve methodological practices and confidence in the findings of consumer psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophical and empirical moral psychologists claim that emotions are both necessary and sufficient for moral judgment. The aim of this paper is to assess the evidence in favor of both claims and to show how a moderate rationalist position about moral judgment can be defended nonetheless. The experimental evidence for both the necessity- and the sufficiency-thesis concerning the connection between emotional reactions and moral judgment is presented. I argue that a rationalist about moral judgment can be happy to accept the necessity-thesis. My argument draws on the idea that emotions play the same role for moral judgment that perceptions play for ordinary judgments about the external world. I develop a rationalist interpretation of the sufficiency-thesis and show that it can successfully account for the available empirical evidence. The general idea is that the rationalist can accept the claim that emotional reactions are sufficient for moral judgment just in case a subject's emotional reaction towards an action in question causes the judgment in a way that can be reflectively endorsed under conditions of full information and rationality. This idea is spelled out in some detail and it is argued that a moral agent is entitled to her endorsement if the way she arrives at her judgment reliably leads to correct moral beliefs, and that this reliability can be established if the subject's emotional reaction picks up on the morally relevant aspects of the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since social skills are highly significant to the evolutionary success of humans, we should expect these skills to be efficient and reliable. For many Evolutionary Psychologists efficiency entails encapsulation: the only way to get an efficient system is via information encapsulation. But encapsulation reduces reliability in opaque epistemic domains. And the social domain is darkly opaque: people lie and cheat, and deliberately hide their intentions and deceptions. Modest modularity [Currie and Sterelny (2000) Philos Q 50:145–160] attempts to combine efficiency and reliability. Reliability is obtained by placing social skills in un-encapsulated central cognition; efficiency by having the social system sensitive to encapsulated socially tagged cues. In this paper, I argue that this approach fails. I focus on eye-gaze as a plausible example of a socially significant encapsulated cue. I demonstrate contra modest modularity that eye-gaze is subject to influence from central cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by providing the landscape that undergirds the competency-based movement within professional psychology education, training, credentialing, and performance appraisal. Attention is then paid to the relevance of this culture shift for psychologists working as practitioners, educators, researchers, and administrators in AHCs. In this regard, there is an articulation of the essential subcomponents of each of the core foundational and functional competency domains that are salient for AHC psychologists. Implications of the competency-based movement for professional psychologists in AHCs are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behavioral sciences are taught in medical curricula around the world. In the current paper psychologists teaching in medical schools in Australia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States share their experience and reflections. Whilst direct comparisons between countries are not made, the themes that are evident within and between accounts are instructive. As behavioral scientists around the globe are struggling to maintain a presence in medical education many of the reasons behind this are shared, regardless of the country. Challenges discussed include those related to the impact of unrealized potential contributions of psychologists as health care professionals, teaching of behavioral sciences by other professions, domination of the biomedical model without a corresponding recognition of psychology as science, and modern medical pedagogies such as problem-based learning, which favor biomedicine. Systemic and political barriers over which we as a discipline may have little control are also highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  This article takes up the project of studying psychological categories as homologies. Ethologists have numerous theoretical ideas concerning the phylogeny and ontogeny of behavioral homologies. They also have well-developed operational methods for testing behavioral homologies. Many of these theoretical ideas and operational criteria can be applied to psychological homologies. This paper suggests that insights from ethology should be incorporated in adaptationist and functionalist approaches to psychology. Doing so would strengthen those approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the recent Instruction by the Congregation for Catholic Education concerning the criteria for the discernment of vocations with regard to persons with homosexual tendencies has offered a clear direction to bishops and religious superiors in screening candidates, a discussion by psychologists on methods of assessing the presence of such tendencies within individuals is necessary. This paper will review relevant assessment techniques and suggest how psychologists can address this issue in evaluation reports, including making specific recommendations relevant to the issue of homosexual tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finite mixture models have become increasingly prevalent in criminology over the past two decades. Yet there is no consensus about the appropriate criterion for model selection with finite mixture specifications. In this paper, we use simulation evidence to examine model selection criteria. Our focus is on mixture models for event count data like those often encountered in criminology. We use two indices to measure model selection performance. First, we examine how often each criterion chooses the correct specification. Then, we investigate how closely the finite mixture models selected by these criteria approximate the true mixing distribution used to simulate the event count data. We consider three sets of simulations. In the first set, the underlying model is itself a three component Poisson-based finite mixture model. In the two other sets of simulations, the underlying distribution of the Poisson rate parameter follows a continuous distribution. The analysis shows that both AIC and BIC perform well under certain sets of circumstances likely to be encountered by criminologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than half a century the sociologist Robin M. Williams, Jr., has used his consummate analytical and communicative skills to assess and explain the character, quality and contradictions of American culture. His career as a scholar, teacher, editor and leader in our profession, and his extensive writings--especially but not exclusively in the realm of "intergroup relations"--offer a powerful counter to the contention that sociology is moribund, that its practitioners have little of importance to say about the real lives of real people or to contribute to debates over America's unfinished agenda. For students and for younger colleagues in sociology, he is a perfect example of what his one-time teacher, Robert K. Merton, must have had in mind when he first used the expression, "role-model." (See Merton 1981) At once a courtly gentleman with a soft-southern voice and an easy-going manner reminiscent of another time and place, Robin M. Williams, Jr. is also very much the modern social scientist, a hard-driving worldly philosopher with a feisty spirit, an avid curiosity, and a rare gift for demonstrating in word and deed the integration of the Comtean trilogy of theory, research and practice. He is a role model, par excellence. This paper(n1) is an attempt to flesh out this bare-bones description. It is based on interviews with a number of people,(n2) including Williams himself, a reexamination of what he has written over the past 50 years and what some reviewers and critics said about it. Taken as a whole, my biographical and bibliographical inquiry revealed that many of the variables we sociologists are wont to highlight--"nature," "nurture," "membership groups," "reference groups," "time," "place" and "serendipity"--all played their parts in making Williams the man he became and in determining the directions his work would take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of the topics discussed in the September 1, 1999 issue of The American Sociologists concerning diversity and collaboration. Three papers in this issue address the question of diversity within sociology, with attention to both intellectual and social differences. Roger Clark frames his inquiry in dialectical terms that permit consideration of diversity as both problem and solution. Other authors employ descriptive methods to present profiles or snapshots of the current situation. Thus, Jane Lord and Stephen Sanderson examine the theoretical commitments and political orientations of one subgroup in the profession, namely, members of the theory section of the American Sociological Association. Joseph McFalls, Michael Engle and Bernard Gallagher tabulate the social characteristics of sociologists in the contemporary academy. Two other papers in this issue focus on changing patterns of work in sociology and on the experience of an extended career in the field. Nicholas Babchuk, Bruce Keith and George Peters analyze the trend toward increasing collaboration among sociologists and compare it to the situation in several other academic specializations. The voices in this issue offer valuable insights into the profession's past, present and emerging future as we become simultaneously more diverse and yet more collaborative.

Theories employed to explain regularities in social behavior often contain reference (explicit or implicit) to the presence of nonlinear and or nonadditive (i e.. multiplicative; relationships among germane variables. While such nonadditive features are theoretically important. the inclusion of quadratic or multiplicative terms in structural equations to model such features can cause significant methodological problems. This paper est]mates a set of equations and formally examines how the inclusion of quadratic terms and multiplicative interaction terms contribute to the level of collinearity or ill-conditioning of the input data matrix and the precision of the parameter estimates. Subsequently we examine how effects of explanatory variables in nonadditive models can be measured and tested for statistical significance. The results indicate that collinearity may not be as big a problem for linear structural social science models as is often believed. Further, although collinearity is increased by adding quadratic and.or multiplicative terms, the effects of the collinearity tend to be localized and entail only variables with a common base. The findings suggest the substantive insight gained from including theoretically appropriate nonlinear and nonadditive term, outweigh the methodological problems they create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textbooks on psychology usually try to give, early in the text, some notion as to what psychology is all about. The concept of behavior is almost never discussed as a problem. It seems to be taken for granted that the reader knows what behavior is. The lack of discussion of the definition of behavior is quite significant. It is apparently taken for granted that there are some types of behavior that can rightfully be delimited as a class corresponding more or less to common-sense notions of psychological functions and phenomena that are implicitly referred to by the writers. The present emphasis on behavior as the subject-matter of psychology may be due partly to the historical domination of behaviorism in American psychology. Psychologists rarely encounter a discussion of the conceptual basis of their science in textbooks. More specialized contemporary works also tend to take the basis for granted. Seldom is it critically discussed just what is taken for granted in establishing psychology as an empirical science. This article is an attempt to contribute to such discussion.

This article discusses the negotiated order approach to organizational analysis in qualitative sociology. The approach represented in the concept of "negotiated order" tends to lead to a focus on the species rather than on the environment. Both, however, need to be embraced, by sociologists as much as by actors. Sociologists turnout to be rather good teachers, or at least rather good at producing appropriate documentary evidence to back up their claims to being good teachers. The author suspects that all studies of the social construction of data have given sociologists an edge in the generation of paper to fit performance indicators. Overall, sociology seems to be around the middle of the research rankings, which is about what would be expected from a discipline that is heavily represented in 1992 universities with a limited research tradition. For a discipline so identified with collectivism, sociologists are remarkable individualists who remain reluctant to learn from their own discipline's work. They know the importance of teamwork in successful organizations and they reject the lessons for their own.

In this paper I describe my experience as a qualitative sociologist on the research staff of a government policymaking agency. Using specific examples from my experience, strategies for survival as a qualitative sociologist in a quantitatively-oriented setting are presented. It is proposed that: 1) qualitative methods need to be promoted as a credible and valuable approach to research and the individual researcher must "sell" him or herself as competent in the use of such methods; 2) social support networks with similarly inclined co-workers and sociologists outside of the workplace need to be developed and maintained and used to enhance the status of qualitative methods and qualitative sociologists; and 3) as is true for all researchers working in a policy making or applied setting, it is necessary to recognize the reticular nature of social research and to demonstrate how qualitative methods generate information that is useful to policy or other applied purposes. By application of this approach in my own workplace, qualitative research methods have become an acceptable and even desirable part of many research projects of the agency and I have been able to continue to practice and to maintain my identity as a qualitative sociologist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting research via the Internet is a formidable and ever-increasingly popular option for behavioral scientists. However, it is widely acknowledged that web-browsers are not optimized for research: In particular, the timing of display changes (e.g., a stimulus appearing on the screen), still leaves room for improvement. So far, the typically recommended best (or least bad) timing method has been a single (RAF) JavaScript function call within which one would give the display command and obtain the time of that display change. In our Study 1, we assessed two alternatives: Calling the RAF twice consecutively, or calling the RAF during a continually ongoing independent loop of recursive RAF calls. While the former has shown little or no improvement as compared to single RAF calls, with the latter we significantly and substantially improved overall precision, and achieved practically faultless precision in most practical cases. Our two basic methods for effecting display changes, plain text change and color filling, proved equally efficient. In Study 2, we reassessed the "RAF loop" timing method with image elements in combination with three different display methods: We found that the precision remained high when using either or changes – while drawing on a element consistently led to comparatively lower precision. We recommend the "RAF loop" display timing method for improved precision in future studies, and or changes when using image stimuli. We publicly share the easy-to-use code for this method, exactly as employed in our studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial productivity increases have been reported when incentives are framed as losses rather than gains. Loss-framed contracts have also been reported to be preferred by workers. The results from our meta-analysis and real-effort experiment challenge these claims. The meta-analysis' summary effect size of loss framing is a 0.16 SD increase in productivity. Whereas the summary effect size in laboratory experiments is a 0.33 SD, the summary effect size from field experiments is 0.02 SD. We detect evidence of publication biases among laboratory experiments. In a new laboratory experiment that addresses prior design weaknesses, we estimate an effect size of 0.12 SD. This result, in combination with the meta-analysis, suggests that the difference between the effect size estimates in laboratory and field experiments does not stem from the limited external validity of laboratory experiments, but may instead stem from a mix of underpowered laboratory designs and publication biases. Moreover, in our experiment, most workers preferred the gain-framed contract and the increase in average productivity is only detectable in the subgroup of workers (~ 20%) who preferred the loss-framed contracts. Based on the results from our experiment and meta-analysis, we believe that behavioral scientists should better assess preferences for loss-framed contracts and the magnitude of their effects on productivity before advocating for greater use of such contracts among private and public sector actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on various associations, agencies and institutions in the field of sociology. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History will hold its 53rd annual meeting on October 3-6, 1968 at the New York Hilton Hotel. The Danish Institute will hold a seminar, "Social Denmark," on social welfare in Copenhagen, August 25-30, 1968. The seminar is intended for persons working in the administrative and practical field of social welfare and will be conducted in English. The Indian Sociological Society held its first conference since 1961 at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, on October 14, 15, and 16, 1967. The Massachusetts Sociological Association was founded by 100 sociologists at Boston College on November 4, 1967 and will serve as a locus for the teaching and research concerns of sociologists throughout the commonwealth and for others seeking advice on community or state-wide problems. The National Institute of Social and Behavioral Science will hold its regular sessions for contributed papers at the 135th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 26-31, 1968 in Dallas, Texas.

The ethical dilemma (ED) of whether autonomous vehicles (AVs) should protect the passengers or pedestrians when harm is unavoidable has been widely researched and debated. Several behavioral scientists have sought public opinion on this issue, based on the premise that EDs are critical to resolve for AV adoption. However, many scholars and industry participants have downplayed the importance of these edge cases. Policy makers also advocate a focus on higher level ethical principles rather than on a specific solution to EDs. But conspicuously absent from this debate is the view of the consumers or potential adopters, who will be instrumental to the success of AVs. The current research investigated this issue both from a theoretical standpoint and through empirical research. The literature on innovation adoption and risk perception suggests that EDs will be heavily weighted by potential adopters of AVs. Two studies conducted with a broad sample of consumers verified this assertion. The results from these studies showed that people associated EDs with the highest risk and considered EDs as the most important issue to address as compared to the other technical, legal and ethical issues facing AVs. As such, EDs need to be addressed to ensure robustness in the design of AVs and to assure consumers of the safety of this promising technology. Some preliminary evidence is provided about interventions to resolve the social dilemma in EDs and about the ethical preferences of prospective early adopters of AVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are no undebated definitions of "creativity," and any definition will reflect how this rich topic is treated. Nearly 20 years ago I discussed how behavior analysis might contribute—or not—to an understanding of creativity. I revisit this topic, expanding on some issues and reconsidering others. As before, my focus is on scientific and mathematical accomplishments, which, though tied closely to Weisberg's placement of creative achievements in the domains of problem posing and problem solving, places emphasis on the extraordinary and productive giftedness of certain individuals. From the massive empirical, theoretical, and historical literature at least three essential and dynamically interlocking dimensions of their creative achievements emerge: talent, expertise, and motivation. I emphasize "interlocking" because the productive expression of each of these elements depends on the others. The role of behavior analysis in these elements is modest at best. It has nothing to say about talent—and even in some cases might deny its role altogether. As for expertise, with some notable exceptions, behavior analysis has had little to say about the acquisition of truly complex performances; this has been left to other fields. As for motivation, one must go well beyond naïve "pleasure and pain" accounts to more elusive, yet more powerful behavior–consequence relations. Many challenges to understanding remain for all behavioral scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers commentaries on Pate and Kohout’s (2005) report of data from the 1997 and 2003 surveys of psychologists in medical school settings. The commentaries reflect upon the significance of the survey findings and implications for psychology’s role in medical school and academic health science settings. Though the response rate to the survey was disappointing, the data indicate that psychologists are moving up in academic rank, and have made substantial gains in salary. The data also indicate that among psychologists who are medical staff members, who constitute half the 2003 sample, an increasing proportion are functioning autonomously as reflected in gains in the percentage having admitting privileges, staff voting privileges, and authority to write orders. Research continues to be a major focus for psychologists in academic medical centers. Overall, the findings indicate that psychologists can have productive, satisfying careers in medical school/academic health center settings—though there is one troubling sign, a sizeable drop in the number of positions being created for younger, more recently trained psychologists. Methodological enhancements are described that could improve the quality, scope, and usefulness of data from future studies, both for understanding long-term trends and for conducting salary negotiations. High quality data provide a solid foundation for advocating for psychologists’ full participation in the life of medical schools and academic health centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a brief history of the Association of Medical School Psychologists (AMSP) from the Association’s beginning in 1982 to the present day. Prior to 1982, there had been several unsuccessful efforts to form an association that would represent psychologists in academic medical centers. Attempts by psychiatry to limit the growing number and influence of psychologists in medical schools created a sense of threat among psychologists that catalyzed the formation of the Association. Membership was initially restricted to one senior psychologist from each medical school, a restriction that limited AMSP’s development, but AMSP later opened its doors to all academic medical center psychologists. The Association was rebuffed in initial efforts to join the Association of American Medical Colleges, and at a later date, to become a Division of the American Psychological Association (APA). In time, however, AMSP did establish formal ties to both of those organizations, and it has collaborated with APA in important surveys of academic medical center psychologists. Following a period in the late 1990’s when AMSP seemed likely to lose its way, the Association rebounded. AMSP now has an Administrative Director, a stable home base, and revised bylaws that assure greater stability and continuity of leadership. These developments, in conjunction with a strong working relationship with the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, have positioned AMSP to grow and more effectively serve the community of psychologists who work in academic medical centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, behavioral scientists have used the matching law to quantify how animals distribute their choices between multiple options in response to reinforcement they receive. More recently, many reinforcement learning (RL) models have been developed to explain choice by integrating reward feedback over time. Despite reasonable success of RL models in capturing choice on a trial-by-trial basis, these models cannot capture variability in matching behavior. To address this, we developed metrics based on information theory and applied them to choice data from dynamic learning tasks in mice and monkeys. We found that a single entropy-based metric can explain 50% and 41% of variance in matching in mice and monkeys, respectively. We then used limitations of existing RL models in capturing entropy-based metrics to construct more accurate models of choice. Together, our entropy-based metrics provide a model-free tool to predict adaptive choice behavior and reveal underlying neural mechanisms. Animals distribute their choices between alternative options according to relative reinforcement they receive from those options (matching law). Here, the authors propose metrics based on information theory that can predict this global behavioral rule based on local response to reward feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides brief biographical information on child and youth care psychologists and sociologists. Career of Professor James Anglin in child and youth care; Educational and professional background of Doctor Mordecai Arieli; Background of sociologist András Domszky in child and youth welfare; Academic career in psychology of Doctor Anne Frommann.

The article presents information about symposium on methodology in qualitative sociology. The symposium presents papers that critically reflects upon the methodological strengths and limitations of works of qualitative sociology. This symposium addresses the concern, shared by quantitative social scientists, general readers, and not a few qualitative sociologists themselves that qualitative sociology lacks methodological rigor and, accordingly, truly reliable or generalizable findings. Some social scientists view qualitative sociology, in no uncertain terms, as methodologically and empirically "soft" and highly subjective, if not completely solipsistic, a characterization that a few qualitative researchers have ironically embraced. At best, according to certain critics, qualitative sociology might generate provisional hypotheses that more rigorous social scientists can then go forth to test and revise, but it cannot itself glean much solid understanding of the social world. or a vast social movement. Qualitative researchers are able to see social settings in much of their richness.

This article features sociologist C. Wright Mills and his works. There seems to be something of a revival of interest at the turn of the century in the work of Mills, who died nearly forty years ago at the early age of forty-five. His two daughters have now published with a major university press a large collection of their father's correspondence and unpublished autobiographical writings, including their own remembrances of him, see "C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings," edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills, with an introduction by Dan Wakefield. The book was launched last fall at the auditorium of the New York Public Library in New York City with a panel of readings and speeches followed by a reception.

In this paper we present the results of a survey administered to a sample of American sociologists which attempted to determine the degree of attention paid to TAS, as compared with the other "core" journals, and to learn about the attitudes of our respondents concerning articles appearing in TAS that deal with the day-to-day affairs of sociology in five key areas. Thus, within the context of a general debate over the merits of navel-gazing for sociology (for example, Gouldner, 1973; Lipset and Ladd, 1973), we assess empirically how American sociologists feel about some aspects of this issue. In this study we have attempted to discover how American sociologists feel on the question of navel-gazing in sociology. The majority stated quite clearly their support for a continuing discussion of issues which relate to the day-to-day workings of sociologists and sociology. Several specific points deserve more than passing mention. First, American sociologists seem to agree that articles on the teaching of sociology and the publication process deserve attention in the pages of TAS. Articles on the distribution of specialties in sociology, prestige ratings of departments, and career mobility of sociologists seem to have less appeal, but we speculate that this is possibly more a reflection of dissatisfaction with the number of these articles than with the type. Second, although this was not emphasized in our questionnaire, some suggestions were made concerning other areas of interest which it was felt deserved attention in TAS. It would seem that a study attempting to define the broad range of issues which interest American sociologists, particularly those that it is felt have not been adequately dealt with in TAS (or in other professional journals), would be useful at this time. Finally, it can be recalled that the impetus for our study derived from a letter from a British sociologist criticizing what he considered to be a preponderance of "bizarre navel-gazing" in TAS.... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on standardized and unstandardized data matrices and tries to find out which type is more appropriate for factor analysis. While the sociological literature has treated the standardization question with regard to regression analysis, it has not considered as carefully the question in terms of factor analysis. This technique is being used with increasing frequency by sociologists, particularly as a method for scaling variables. In lieu of any guidance from the sociological literature, it might be assumed that the case for factor analysis is analogous to that form regression analysis. Factor analysis is essentially placing a set of reference coordinates upon a set of variables and measuring the projection of each variable on the coordinates. In factor analysis it is helpful to consider each variable as a vector and the entire set of variables as a vector space. In order to factor-analyze a vector space there are two major requirements; the vectors must share a common origin and the length of each vector must be known. In the past researchers have been inclined to standardize. The common origin is ordinarily provided by expressing the raw variables as deviation scores by subtracting the variable mean from each variable value.

Noting the emergence of ethnographic or fieldwork methods as the preferred methodology of many researchers in the sociology of deviance, this article focuses on a particular problem which occurs when such methods are adapted to the study of deviant groups, namely the strains that develop in researchers' relationships with professional colleagues and significant others, particularly family and friends, outside of academia. The article is based on the authors' observations of others' reactions to their research on the homosexual or gay subculture, informal conversations with sociologists who have done fieldwork among stigmatized groups, and more general observations of the ways in which sociology is practiced. The authors seek to increase awareness of the problem especially among those who will do similar studies in the future, and to offer practical suggestions that may be employed to reduce the possibility of labeling and its accompanying problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) emerged from a social movement of sociologists who wanted to apply their social science knowledge to a society riddled by cruel inequities. Recently the distinctive mission of SSSP has come under scrutiny. The organization must make some structural innovations to generate fresh and critical approaches to contemporary soda)problems. These innovations would include: restructuring annual meetings to reflect the urgency of social problems; being reflexive about forms of knowledge; increasing the interdisciplinary emphasis of research; promoting activism within society and the social sciences; experitnenting with alternative formats of meetings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents data drawn from a study of university sociologists in order to answer three basic questions which concern the correlation between the quantity and the quality of publications of a sociologist, the effect of the status of the graduate department where the sociologist earned his doctorate on the recognition attributed to his research output, and the relationship between early achievement of quality publications and continued achievement of research in the career of a sociologist. Sociologists of science have been concerned with the relationship between a researcher's number of publications and the merit or excellence of a sociologist's writings. In a number of disciplines, a high to moderate correlation is found between quantity and quality of publications. The population for this study consisted of all persons listed in the American Sociological Association Directory who had received their Ph.D. degrees in sociology between 1954 and 1963 and who were members of United States departments of sociology that offered graduate training. To have included sociologists whose degree dates preceded 1954 might have meant the exclusion of the articles from the quantity index. The upper limit of 1963 was applied since it can be assumed that there is a time lag between the period when a social scientist receives his degree and publishes and between such a publishing period and the time when the work is recognized and/or appropriately cited, as in the measure for quality.

The article presents information on various opportunities for employment. Four year liberal arts college requires sociologist to teach courses in methodology, social theory, anthropology, collective behavior, mass communication; flexible choice of additional courses to make up total load 9-12 credit hours; MA and some teaching experience minimum requirement; salary open depending on qualifications attractive campus. Department in leading eastern liberal arts college with growing program. adding faculty at various levels; 9 hour load or less; PhD; consideration will he given to a range of specialties although interest in methods and deviance in especially sought rank and salary dependent upon qualifications.

Comments on Dr. Ardila's research paper on the training of clinical neuropsychologists. Need for licensed psychologists to provide health care to patients who require the practice of psychology; Analysis of pertinent topics and relevant issues; Implications on studies of neuropsychology.

Recent advances in large-scale data storage and processing offer unprecedented opportunities for behavioral scientists to collect and analyze naturalistic data, including from underrepresented groups. Audio data, particularly real-world audio recordings, are of particular interest to behavioral scientists because they provide high-fidelity access to subtle aspects of daily life and social interactions. However, these methodological advances pose novel risks to research participants and communities. In this article, we outline the benefits and challenges associated with collecting, analyzing, and sharing multi-hour audio recording data. Guided by the principles of autonomy, privacy, beneficence, and justice, we propose a set of ethical guidelines for the use of longform audio recordings in behavioral research. This article is also accompanied by an Open Science Framework Ethics Repository that includes informed consent resources such as frequent participant concerns and sample consent forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is to inform persons with chronic health conditions, their family/friends and caregivers, health and mental health providers, and researchers. Using a case study of chronic intractable migraine, we illustrate "Health Co-Inquiry", It involves collaborations between stakeholders in chronic disease management with person-centered orientation, patient activation, evidence-based practice, and multiple methods of inquiry (objective and subjective). This 11-year study (with diprivan, acupuncture, and cross-polarized spectacles as complementary medicine) uses conventional science and Participatory Action Research. It joins stakeholders to build better health outcomes. As behavioral scientists and mental health practitioners, psychologists can promote Health Co-Inquiry, which fully integrates information gathering and care. We make suggestions for all participants, honoring their common purpose, positive outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary on an article about the protection of human subjects in field social science research. The paper raises some important questions regarding limitations place on field researchers in the form of policies concerning the protection of human subjects. Most social scientists would agree that field research strategies occupy an important role in attempts to explain and predict human behavior. The paper does little to enlighten readers about the reality of any such threats by such policies regarding human subjects protection in general, and policies concerning approval of field studies in particular. One common misconception held by many sociologists is that researchers must routinely obtain signed statements of informed consent. Alternatively, the requirement of informed consent may be waived when the existence of a signed consent document would be the only record linking the subject and the research and that the only significant risk would be potential harm resulting from breach of confidentiality. The protection of human subjects is a difficult and complex task. However, the importance of such issue for the discipline requires a careful examination of the facts and acquaintance with various procedures on a first-hand-basis.

The Web is a prominent platform for behavioral experiments, for many reasons (relative simplicity, ubiquity, and accessibility, among others). Over the last few years, many behavioral and social scientists have conducted Internet-based experiments using standard web technologies, both in native JavaScript and using research-oriented frameworks. At the same time, vendors of widely used web browsers have been working hard to improve the performance of their software. However, the goals of browser vendors do not always coincide with behavioral researchers' needs. Whereas vendors want high-performance browsers to respond almost instantly and to trade off accuracy for speed, researchers have the opposite trade-off goal, wanting their browser-based experiments to exactly match the experimental design and procedure. In this article, we review and test some of the best practices suggested by web-browser vendors, based on the features provided by new web standards, in order to optimize animations for browser-based behavioral experiments with high-resolution timing requirements. Using specialized hardware, we conducted four studies to determine the accuracy and precision of two different methods. The results using CSS animations in web browsers (Method 1) with GPU acceleration turned off showed biases that depend on the combination of browser and operating system. The results of tests on the latest versions of GPU-accelerated web browsers showed no frame loss in CSS animations. The same happened in many, but not all, of the tests conducted using requestAnimationFrame (Method 2) instead of CSS animations. Unbeknownst to many researchers, vendors of web browsers implement complex technologies that result in reduced quality of timing. Therefore, behavioral researchers interested in timing-dependent procedures should be cautious when developing browser-based experiments and should test the accuracy and precision of the whole experimental setup (web application, web browser, operating system, and hardware). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within evolutionary biology, life-history theory is used to explain cross-species differences in allocation strategies regarding reproduction, maturation, and survival. Behavioral scientists have recently begun to conceptualize such strategies as a within-species individual characteristic that is predictive of behavior. Although life history theory provides an important framework for behavioral scientists, the psychometric approach to life-history strategy measurement—as operationalized by K-factors—involves conceptual entanglements. We argue that current psychometric approaches attempting to identify K-factors are based on an unwarranted conflation of functional descriptions and proximate mechanisms—a conceptual mix-up that may generate unviable hypotheses and invites misinterpretation of empirical findings. The assumptions underlying generic psychometric methodology do not allow measurement of functionally defined variables; rather these methods are confined to Mayr’s proximate causal realm. We therefore conclude that K-factor scales lack validity, and that life history strategy cannot be identified with psychometrics as usual. To align theory with methodology, suggestions for alternative methods and new avenues are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social sciences are experiencing an anticipatory turn. A core issue of this turn are the so-called 'weak signals'. In order to speak of this type of signals, we must use the distinction between weak and strong. The question may be raised, who handles this distinction? That is, who is the observer? It seems that only two answers are possible: the observer is either outside or inside, i.e., either he is a world-observer, or he is a extra-world-observer. In the latter case, the problem of weak signals disappears; after the fact, everybody is able to say 'I told you!'. In the former case, the system has to face the dilemma of warning signals. As social systems cannot observe themselves from the outside, the issue of weak signals should be explained as the outcome of a self-referential dynamics that finally leads to the paradox of knowing the unknown. In fact, the difference between weak and strong refers not to the future as such (to what is signalized), but to the observing system itself. The main hypothesis of this contribution is that a signal is weak for a lack of redundancy that hinders the system to combine a reference to an environmental event with a concomitant reference to a systemic cognitive map. By means of a system theory of sign, it should be possible to see the difference between weak and strong as an unfolding device for temporal paradoxes arising in social systems, and to support the hypothesis that, since in social systems cognitive maps are contingent on time, signals can be only weak, never strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]