Search

The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler (Journal of Philosophy 97:55–81, 2000), (Gendler, in: Nichols (ed) The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), (Gendler & Liao, in: Gibson, Carroll (eds) The routledge companion to philosophy of literature, Routledge, New York, 2016), according to which imaginative resistance mainly concerns evaluative scenarios, presenting deviant moral attitudes. The second account examined is that of Kim et al. (in: Cova, Réhault (eds) Advances in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, Bloomsbury, London, 2018), who insisted on the link between imaginative resistance on the one hand and counterfactual and counterdescriptive scenarios on the other. In the light of both theories, this paper discusses the importance of addressing the problem of imaginative resistance in the scientific enterprise in the light of some mechanisms of embodied simulation, based on the activity of mirror neurons and investigated within the framework of the Embodied Simulation Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quiet ego interprets the self and others by balancing concerns for their welfare and cultivating their growth (Bauer and Wayment, in: Wayment, Bauer (eds) Transcending self-interest: psychological explorations of the quiet ego, American Psychological Association Books, Washington, DC, 2008). A growing body of research shows that the Quiet Ego Scale (QES; Wayment et al. in J Happiness Stud 16:999–1033, 2015a, Front Psychol 6:1–11, 2015b) relates to numerous measures of human flourishing. The present three studies of college students and adults situate the quiet ego within a framework of value orientation and actualization that organizes constructs of human flourishing in terms of motives (including moral motives), well-being (as hedonic satisfaction and eudaimonic meaningfulness, including moral fulfillment), and wisdom (Bauer in The transformative self: personal growth, narrative identity, and the good life, Oxford University Press, New York, 2021). Results from samples of college students and adults suggest that the QES corresponds to: (1) mainly humanistic and eudaimonic (including moral) motives; (2) hedonic and especially eudaimonic well-being (including moral fulfillment); and (3) motives, well-being, and wisdom independently. The discussion considers the quiet ego in terms of Epicurean ataraxia and Buddhist upekkha, a model of a good life that, like the quiet ego, emphasizes equanimity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In politeness research and other areas, scholars use a range of metaphorical expressions involving the term face, as in "lose face", "threaten face" and "save face", drawing upon Goffman's paper "On face-work" (Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon Books), often through Brown and Levinson's influential theory of politeness (Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The present paper argues that the interactional processes referred to by such expressions are of at least two kinds, here labeled "Observed-Behavior (OB) face-processes" and "Expressed-Attitude (EA) face-processes". X's OB face loss occurs when others negatively evaluate X on the basis of her behavior; X's EA face loss occurs when others convey to X that they do not have the same values as her ("positive face") or act in a way that impedes her freedom ("negative face"). Ten differences between OB and EA face-processes are set out. These differences are not acknowledged in the literature, which, as shown in this paper, leads to much ambiguity and confusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Oxford has produced many distinguished economists their subject remained peripheral even though there was a professor of political economy from 1825 and a Diploma in Economics from 1903, and when the new degree Philosophy Politics and Economics (PPE or "Modern Greats") came in 1920 economics had to be studied along with the other two disciplines. The author of this fascinating book describes it as (xiii) a monograph that develops an argument about how, and why, the discipline of economics emerged in the early twentieth century as a university science, but along the way it demonstrates that this was no logical, determinate path with a pregiven outcome. Constructing economic science: the invention of a discipline 1850-1950: by Keith Tribe, Oxford University Press, New York, 2022, xiv + 425 pp., £64, ISBN 9780190491741. [Extracted from the article]

Eucken and his colleagues believed that in an "exchange economy" the problem of maintaining competition and guaranteeing the openness of markets was ongoing and needed safeguarding by a strong state authority. A number of critical works have been published in recent years blaming "neoliberalism" for excessive deregulation and tax cuts, rising inequality, and rule by unaccountable elites. If, as the author argues, Ordoliberalism is an older political economy, why did he not provide a brief discussion pre-First World War German political economy, which clearly shaped the Ordoliberals?. [Extracted from the article]

We develop new techniques involving group symmetries and complex analysis to obtain exact solutions for the transition probabilities of the M/M/1/k queueing process. These methods are based on the underlying Markovian structure of these random processes and do not involve any generating functions, Laplace transforms, or advanced special functions. Our techniques exploit the intrinsic group symmetries for both the state spaces and the matrix generators of the Markov processes related to the M/M/1/k queue. These results complement and extend the previous transient solutions given by Takács (Introduction to the theory of queues. University texts in the mathematical sciences, Oxford University Press, New York, 1962). Much of the inspiration for this work comes from viewing this queueing process as a fundamental Markovian model for the dynamics of a bike sharing station. The exact transient analysis for a related stopped version of this process can be used to address fundamental decision-making issues for managing bike-sharing services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the theory of Macdonald [ Symmetric functions and Hall polynomials , The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995], Gordon [Bull. London Math. Soc. 35 (2003), pp. 321–336] showed that the graded characters of the simple modules for the restricted rational Cherednik algebra by Etingof and Ginzburg [Invent. Math. 147 (2002), pp. 243–348] associated to the symmetric group \mathfrak {S}_n are given by plethystically transformed Macdonald polynomials specialized at q=t. We generalize this to restricted rational Cherednik algebras of wreath product groups C_\ell \wr \mathfrak {S}_n and prove that the corresponding characters are given by a specialization of the wreath Macdonald polynomials defined by Haiman in [ Combinatorics, symmetric functions, and Hilbert schemes , Int. Press, Somerville, MA, 2003, pp. 39–111]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These scripts establish the basis of McCarron's psychobiography of Bob Dylan and help him analyze the major shifts throughout Dylan's life and career. Andrew McCarron's I Light Comes Shining: The Transformations of Bob Dylan i presents an innovative take on Dylan's biography that stands out among a saturated catalog. The "destiny script", which McCarron attributes specifically to Dylan, focuses on Dylan's descriptions of his sense of destiny, identity, and purpose periodically disrupted by a threat that he must overcome. [Extracted from the article]

We enumerate the 15768 perfect groups of order up to 2\cdot 10^6, up to isomorphism, thus also completing the missing cases reported by Holt and Plesken [ Perfect groups , The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, New York, 1989]. The work supplements the by now well-understood computer classifications of solvable groups, illustrating scope and feasibility of the enumeration process for nonsolvable groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse a corpus of 137 texts published between 1888 and 1899. These texts are included in one of the most successful Spanish-language newspapers published in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century: Las Novedades (New York, 1876-1918). In the analysis I will determine the linguistic ideologies and the discursive strategies used for the promotion of Hispanism and Spanish language in a sociopolitical context in which the Spanish hegemony was losing all its power at an international level. Thus, the ideologies found are divided in two different categories: the linguistic ideologies that give the language a cultural value and the linguistic ideologies that make reference to the economic and commercial value of the language. The results obtained from this analysis will contribute to understand the role of Spanish language in the United States. Furthermore, this paper presents an unpublished corpus of clear historiographic interest that contributes to clarify the panorama of Hispanism in a country like the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People are often passionate toward multiple activities in their lives. However, more has been learned about passion toward any single activity than about passion toward multiple activities. Relying on the dualistic model of passion (Vallerand in The psychology of passion: a dualistic model, Oxford University Press, New York, 2015), this research addressed the antecedents and consequences of polyamorous passion. In three pre-registered studies (total N = 1322) and one mini meta-analysis, we found that (a) people tend to report being passionate for between 2 and 4 activities; (b) harmonious passion becomes a less potent predictor of well-being as it is directed toward less-favored activities; (c) harmonious passion does not contribute to the prediction of well-being beyond a second-favorite activity; and (d) openness to experience is a personality trait that is positively associated with the number of passionate activities that people have in their lives. These results contribute to our understanding of who has multiple passions, how many passionate activities people tend to have, and the relationship between polyamorous passion and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maes and Pasotti might have taken the opportunity to contribute to a better understanding of Triffin's view of a polycentric monetary system grounded on the use of supranational currencies issued by regional central banks. Robert Triffin's intellectual heritage rests on one major tenet: namely, that an international monetary and financial system (IMS) based on a single national currency is inherently unstable. This diagnosis - the Triffin dilemma - conferred on Triffin a prominent role in international monetary debates as a policy-oriented economist. [Extracted from the article]

The school-to-prison pipeline is a theoretical construct that explains how disproportionate discipline and exclusionary punishment of Black and Brown students ultimately pushes youth out of mainstream schools and into the criminal justice system (Basford and Lewis in From education to incarceration: dismantling the school to prison pipeline, Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2018; Heitzeg in Forum Public Pol Online, 2009; Lewis and Basford in Six lenses for anti-oppressive education (counterpoints: studies in the postmodern theory of education), Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2014; Morris and Perry in Soc Probl 63(1):68–86, 2016). While the research has documented the existence of the school-to-prison pipeline and its impact on families, less has been done to study schools that have worked to successfully interrupt the pipeline. The authors respond to this void in the literature by using Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Motivation and personality, Harper, New York, 1987) and Noddings' ethic of care (Caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education, University of California Press, Berkely, 2003) to interpret the successful efforts of one charter high school focused on dropout recovery, specifically targeting youth who have experienced or are at risk for the school-to-prison pipeline. Findings from this case study suggest that the school embodies what we call institutional plasticity through innovative programming, carefully selected and trained staff, a family-like atmosphere, wrap-around services, and flexible planning for intermittent attendance. Implications identify elements of institutional plasticity for consideration in other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our present article, we follow our way of developing mean field type control theory in our earlier works [Bensoussan et al., Mean Field Games and Mean Field Type Control Theory. Springer, New York (2013)], by first introducing the Bellman and then master equations, the system of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) and Fokker-Planck (FP) equations, and then tackling them by looking for the semi-explicit solution for the linear quadratic case, especially with an arbitrary initial distribution; such a problem, being left open for long, has not been specifically dealt with in the earlier literature, such as Bensoussan [Stochastic Control of Partially Observable Systems. Cambridge University Press, (1992)] and Nisio [Stochastic control theory: Dynamic programming principle. Springer (2014)], which only tackled the linear quadratic setting with Gaussian initial distributions. Thanks to the effective mean-field theory, we propose a solution to this long standing problem of the general non-Gaussian case. Besides, our problem considered here can be reduced to the model in Bandini et al. [Stochastic Process. Appl.129 (2019) 674–711], which is fundamentally different from our present proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fourth section, Gamper-Rabindran presents a critical stance on the Trump administration's dismissal, undermining, and rejection of norms of scientific, economic, and legal evaluation for federal policymaking. Gamper-Rabindran's well-established expertise in the economic and social impacts of the American fossil fuel industry uniquely informs her analysis based on peer-reviewed research and contextualized by contemporaneous reporting on the ways in which the administration defied norms of democratic governance. Gamper-Rabindran attempts to maintain a non-partisan approach; however, her research makes irrefutably clear that the Trump administration's actions actively undermined the interests of the public for their personal enrichment, so she ultimately drops this perspective accordingly. [Extracted from the article]

In respect to ecological psychology processes of attunement and calibration, this critical review focusses on how exploratory behaviors may contribute to skilled perception and action, with particular attention to sport. Based on the theoretical insights of Gibson (The senses considered as perceptual systems, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1966) and Reed (Encountering the world: Toward an ecological psychology, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996), exploratory and performatory actions have been differentiated in numerous experiments to study the perception of opportunities of action. The distinction between exploratory and performatory actions has informed the study of infant behavior in developmental psychology. In the current article, we highlight limitations with this distinction in the study of sports performers. We propose that a dynamic view of exploratory behavior would reveal how individuals develop exploratory activity that generates information about the fit between environmental properties and action capabilities. In this aim, practitioners should: (1) give learners the opportunity to safely develop exploratory behaviors even when they act outside their action boundary; and (2) guide learners to search for more reliable information to develop exploratory behaviors that would enhance the transfer of skills to various performance contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With substance dualism and the existence of God, Swinburne (2004, The Existence of God, Oxford University Press, Oxford) and Moreland (2010, Consciousness and the Existence of God, Routledge, New York) have argued for a very powerful explanatory mechanism that can readily explain several philosophical problems related to consciousness. However, their positions come with presuppositions and ontological commitments which many are not prepared to share. The aim of this paper is to improve on the Swinburne-Moreland argument from consciousness by developing an argument for the existence of God from consciousness without being committed to substance dualism. The argument proceeds by suggesting a solution to the exceptional-point-of-view problem, i.e., the question how it can be explained that there is a conscious being lucky enough to experience the point of view of a relatively tiny brain amidst a giant universe that is indifferent about which physical entities it brings about according to the laws of physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotion regulation entails using specific strategies to manage emotions, impacting on well-being. Research has uncovered important factors that may affect one's use of emotion regulation strategies. Because passionate individuals experience positive and negative emotions while engaging in the activity that they deeply care about (Vallerand in The psychology of passion: a dualistic model, Oxford University Press, New York, 2015), it was proposed that they should be more likely to make use of emotion regulation strategies. Using the Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand et al. in J Personal Soc Psychol 85:756–767, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.756), this research tested an integrated model of passion, emotion regulated strategies, and psychological well-being. Three online studies were conducted. Study 1 (n = 370) used a cross-sectional design in order to explore the relationships between passion, emotion regulation strategies, and well-being in the context of various leisure activities. Using the same design, Study 2 (n = 253) aimed at replicating the findings from Study 1 within the specific context of romantic relationships. Finally, the goal of Study 3 (n = 253) was to replicate the findings from Studies 1 and 2 while using a prospective design. Overall, results from path analyses uncovered that HP was positively associated with cognitive reappraisal whereas OP was positively related to expressive suppression. Cognitive reappraisal was the only strategy positively linked to well-being. Findings underscore the important role of HP in the use of cognitive reappraisal, facilitating well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the dualistic model of passion Vallerand (The psychology of passion: A dualistic model. Oxford University Press, New York, 2015), we examined a hypothesized model whereby harmonious and obsessive passion mediate the relationships of job crafting and leader autonomy support with work engagement and burnout in both Australian and Chinese work samples. Compared with four alternative models, our results supported the hypothesized model as the best fitting model in both samples, showing cross-sample invariance of factor loadings and regression paths. Across both samples, job crafting and leader autonomy support positively predicted harmonious passion, yet exhibited disparate relations with obsessive passion. Both forms of passion positively predicted work engagement, yet only obsessive passion positively predicted burnout. Findings are consistent with the notion that job crafting is an approach that employees use to internalize harmonious and obsessive passions into work identities, which have corresponding and disparate impacts on work engagement and burnout across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, as with "models", the I word i "methodology" was admittedly not in use, nor "method" as its synonym, but, I pace i Walter, issues of method/methodology (in I our i sense) were I central i to the Ricardo-Malthus discussions. Granted, "classical political economy" (as vulgarly described) I is i a "distorting myth" and was I not i a "unified entity"; yet I cannot agree with Walter that "political economy" was simply a non-autonomous subset of politics, certainly not in Ricardo's opinion. Before method and models: The political economy of Malthus and Ricardo: by Ryan Walter, Oxford University Press, New York, 2021, 272 pp., £64, ISBN 978-0-197-60305-5. [Extracted from the article]

The article examines the New York City press' coverage of the United States' acquisition of Mexican territory as a result of the Mexican-American War. Debates over acquisition revolved around the expansion of the Southern U.S. slave system into newly acquired territories. While the Whig Party opposed the war in general and supported deliberate territorial growth, the Democratic Party promoted slavery and rapid expansion.

As emphasised by Brayne time and again throughout the book, data is social and relational; which means that any amount of objectivity, in this case by precision policing or any other big data technique, is bound to be over-ridden by human subjectivities. Sarah Brayne's work on the data-driven policing practices of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), in the USA, is illustrious because of the author's disciplined fieldwork and astute conversation analysis. [Extracted from the article]

The analogy that Rodogno draws between the film's scenario and the humanitarian operations in the aftermath of the World War I (WWI) lasts throughout the book and generates a sophisticated literary standard. "Night on Earth" the title of the book by Davide Rodogno evokes feelings about the tragedies that the human societies underwent in the recent past, although it is an allegorical designation referring to the film by Jim Jarmusch (1991). "Night on Earth" is a timely publication by Rodogno as it scrutinizes on one of the persistent questions of the world politics in modern times: "the refugee question". [Extracted from the article]

This study examines temporal trends, geographic distribution, and demographic correlates of anti-vaccine beliefs on Twitter, 2009–2015. A total of 549,972 tweets were downloaded and coded for the presence of anti-vaccine beliefs through a machine learning algorithm. Tweets with self-disclosed geographic information were resolved and United States Census data were collected for corresponding areas at the micropolitan/metropolitan level. Trends in number of anti-vaccine tweets were examined at the national and state levels over time. A least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression model was used to determine census variables that were correlated with anti-vaccination tweet volume. Fifty percent of our sample of 549,972 tweets collected between 2009 and 2015 contained anti-vaccine beliefs. Anti-vaccine tweet volume increased after vaccine-related news coverage. California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania had anti-vaccination tweet volume that deviated from the national average. Demographic characteristics explained 67% of variance in geographic clustering of anti-vaccine tweets, which were associated with a larger population and higher concentrations of women who recently gave birth, households with high income levels, men aged 40 to 44, and men with minimal college education. Monitoring anti-vaccination beliefs on Twitter can uncover vaccine-related concerns and misconceptions, serve as an indicator of shifts in public opinion, and equip pediatricians to refute anti-vaccine arguments. Real-time interventions are needed to counter anti-vaccination beliefs online. Identifying clusters of anti-vaccination beliefs can help public health professionals disseminate targeted/tailored interventions to geographic locations and demographic sectors of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We assessed news media framing of New York City's proposed regulation to prohibit the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages greater than 16 ounces. Methods. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of print and television news from within and outside New York City media markets. We examined support for and opposition to the portion-size cap in the news coverage from its May 31, 2012, proposal through the appellate court ruling on July 31, 2013. Results. News coverage corresponded to key events in the policy's evolution. Although most stories mentioned obesity as a problem, a larger proportion used opposing frames (84%) than pro-policy frames (36%). Mention of pro-policy frames shifted toward the policy's effect on special populations. The debate's most prominent frame was the opposing frame that the policy was beyond the government's role (69%). Conclusions. News coverage within and outside the New York City media market was more likely to mention arguments in opposition to than in support of the portion-size cap. Understanding how the news media framed this issue provides important insights for advocates interested in advancing similar measures in other jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses news media's coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest movement as expressed in the "New York Times" newspaper. It mentions the publication's lack of report on the movement and substantial misrepresentations contributing to the distrust of the people towards media which led them to alternative sources and social media for information. It also notes the inaccurate characterization of the rally as comprising of frustrated young people despite the fact that it included a diverse assembly of groups reported in the City Room blog.

In the first half of the twentieth century, parole in the Deep South of the United States was part of a nexus of penal mechanisms providing white employers with a pliant black labour force. By contrast, in New York, which was at the forefront of innovations in parole policy, there was a surprising interracial consensus among white parole administrators and politicians, civil rights activists, and black prisoners themselves that the African American community was integral to parole administration and success. This article explores why different constituencies supported this consensus through debates on parole in the black press and via the desperate, and invariably futile, letters that prisoners wrote to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These sources also indicate that, for black prisoners in New York, African American influence over the parole system was routinely constrained by widespread black poverty, racial segregation, and discrimination in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For 200 years, historians have written that Thomas Jefferson and his fellow patriots brought a second printer into the colony of Virginia so that their radical messages could be heard. By examining newspapers and other evidence from the critical period around the Stamp Act of 1765-66, this article uncovers flaws in that interpretation and attempts a better understanding of what happened and how that influenced the development of a free press. Jefferson was not directly involved in procuring a printer, but new print competition did bring substantial changes to the relationship among the printer, the government, and readers. Broader civic discourse spurred by commercial competition helped to develop new revolutionary ideals, including the concept of a constitutional protection for a free press, which ultimately was expressed in the First Amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports the findings of a visual content analysis of 1305 Iraq War-related photographs appearing in the US press, represented by The New York Times, and the British press, represented by The Guardian. Overall, the two newspapers visually portrayed the Iraq War differently. Further, the more spontaneous or direct coverage of actually ongoing events were rare at best, and were exclusively found in photographs that ran in The Guardian. One aspect of the pictorial coverage, however, seems unprecedented: the emphasis on the human cost of the war focusing on Iraqi civilians. Moreover, images of loss of military life were scarce but still available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James W. Carey was a Shorenstein Center Fellow on leave from his faculty position at Columbia University when he wrote this article in 2003. Carey, who died on May 23, 2006, was a preeminent journalism theorist. He is noted for his "ritual theory" of journalism, which posits that journalism is a type of drama as opposed simply to a means of public communication. Carey joined the Columbia Journalism School's faculty in 1992 after having been professor and dean of the College of Communication at the University of Illinois. Few scholars could match his writing skills and fewer still could match his intellect. All that was combined in a thoroughly decent man who, though teaching in New York City, held tight to a lifelong devotion to the Boston Red Sox. The Shorenstein Center is fortunate to have had him as one of its fellows, and through its Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, to have the honor of publishing one of the last articles he wrote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On December 3, 1847, the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass published the first issue of the North Star in Rochester, New York. This article examines his earliest moments as a journalist by studying the responses of the city's white dailies to his new career and his newspaper in late 1847 and early 1848. The comments of the city's four dailies, along with accounts of a printers' dinner in January 1848 celebrating Benjamin Franklin's birthday, showed respect for Douglass' talents as an editor but wariness over his Garrisonian abolitionism. The stories suggested that a tension existed between the daily journalists' politics and their nascent professionalism and illuminated changes in the craft as it moved from political organs of the early century toward an independent press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined selection effects in newspaper reports about civil disorders in the late 1960s. A comprehensive set of events recorded in newspapers across the United States was compared with the subsets of these events recorded in two national newspapers often used to construct collective event data bases-the New York Times and the Washington Post The results demonstrate that fewer than half of all disorders are covered in these two newspapers combined, and that those reported are selected on the basis of event intensity, distance, event density, city population size, type of actor, and day of the week To demonstrate the effects of these selection patterns on substantive analysis of civil disorder the authors replicated earlier studies using all reported events, and then repeated the analyses using only the events reported in the Times and the Post This procedure showed some substantial differences in results. The implications of these findings for event analyses and for substantive understandings of media selection are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the New York Women's Video Festival from 1972 to 1980. Discussion on its genesis, orientation and transformation; Reception in the mainstream and feminist presses; Significance of the festival.

This study investigated the effects of reading very violent versus mildly violent comic books on the interpretation of ambiguous provocation situations, independent of trait hostility. 119 introductory psychology students read either a violent comic book, Curse of the Spawn, or a mildly violent comic book, Archie & Friends. After reading the comic books, participants read six short stories in which a child caused a negative event to happen to another child, but the intent of the peer causing this negative event was ambiguous. After each story, participants were asked a series of questions about the harmdoer's intent, potential retaliation toward the harm-doer, and about the harmdoer's emotional state. Responses were coded in terms of amount of negative and violent content. Results indicate that those male participants reading the violent comic books responded more negatively on the ambiguous provocation story questions than male participants reading the mildly violent comic books. For females, responding was primarily governed by trait hostility. These data suggest that hostile attributional bias may be influenced by gender, trait hostility, and exposure to violent media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]