Purpose: One of the current interests in developmental psychology is the impact of culture on cognitive development. This paper is built on a study whose purpose was to investigate how Nso people of the North West Region of Cameroon perceive intelligent behaviours in children and the cultural strategies for facilitating these behaviours. The study highlighted how folklore influences the Nso child’s ability to make moral judgements and develop interpersonal skills as forms of intelligent behaviours. Methodology: A concurrent nested mixed research design was used for the study which called for both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, through the use of a questionnaire and interview guide. The sample was composed of 33 children and 35 parents in three villages in Nkum subdivision in Bui division. The qualitative data were analysed using content and narrative analysis. Descriptive statistics were used for quantitative data. Data was presented using tables, charts and conceptual maps. Findings: The following findings showed that by interpreting proverbs and folktales children are encouraged to practice virtues such as respect, honesty and compassion and discouraged from societal vices and equally learned various aspects of interpersonal skills such as Conflict resolution. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study was underpinned by Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory of Cognitive Development (1978), Nsamenang’s Social Ontogenetic Theory (1992), Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983, 1999) and Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (1985). It is recommended that educational programmes should inculcate the teaching and evaluation of native proverbs and folktales. Novels that embody these proverbs and folktales should be taught in schools as a means of preserving ethical values and development of other cognitive skills in child.
{"title":"Africentric Perception of Intelligent Behaviours and the Use of Folklore to Facilitate Moral and Interpersonal Skills in Children","authors":"Lambert Wirdze","doi":"10.47672/ajp.2227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47672/ajp.2227","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose: One of the current interests in developmental psychology is the impact of culture on cognitive development. This paper is built on a study whose purpose was to investigate how Nso people of the North West Region of Cameroon perceive intelligent behaviours in children and the cultural strategies for facilitating these behaviours. The study highlighted how folklore influences the Nso child’s ability to make moral judgements and develop interpersonal skills as forms of intelligent behaviours. \u0000Methodology: A concurrent nested mixed research design was used for the study which called for both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, through the use of a questionnaire and interview guide. The sample was composed of 33 children and 35 parents in three villages in Nkum subdivision in Bui division. The qualitative data were analysed using content and narrative analysis. Descriptive statistics were used for quantitative data. Data was presented using tables, charts and conceptual maps. \u0000Findings: The following findings showed that by interpreting proverbs and folktales children are encouraged to practice virtues such as respect, honesty and compassion and discouraged from societal vices and equally learned various aspects of interpersonal skills such as Conflict resolution. \u0000Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study was underpinned by Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory of Cognitive Development (1978), Nsamenang’s Social Ontogenetic Theory (1992), Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983, 1999) and Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (1985). It is recommended that educational programmes should inculcate the teaching and evaluation of native proverbs and folktales. Novels that embody these proverbs and folktales should be taught in schools as a means of preserving ethical values and development of other cognitive skills in child.","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141801482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Purpose: This paper explores how Police officers in Kenya and elsewhere in the globe play an irreplaceable role of ensuring security, law and order but are exposed to a wide range of potentially psychologically traumatizing events in the course of duty without adequate internal trauma informed support. This trauma potentiates them to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which is associated with many dysfunctional behaviors like assault, homicide and suicide. Materials and Methods: Hermeneutic phenomenology approach is used to collect information from scholarly articles and media reports on the subject of police trauma and internal support. This data is then assessed to generate findings presented in this paper. Thirty case studies of Kenya police perpetrated assault, homicide or suicide are also selected randomly from the media to support the scholarly findings about work related police trauma and internal support. Findings: Kenyan police officers are exposed to traumatic events but police training and culture encourages hardiness, masculinity and repression instead of trauma informed coping. The case studies reveal that traumatized police officers in Kenya develop severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which then presents in various psychological disorders and deviance like assault (14%), murder (30%), suicide (90%) and homicide (17%). Implications to Theory Practice and Policy: Police management should put in place trauma informed curriculum in police training and practice. Psychological and situational mediators should also be established as a priority for trauma prevention, mitigation and stress management. Researchers should go beyond highlighting police psychological morbidity to investigate models and interventions that work to prevent and speedily resolve police trauma.
{"title":"Trauma and Percieved Internal Support of Police Officers in Kenya","authors":"P. Ndero, Prof. Charles Kimamo, Dr. Lucas Mwaura","doi":"10.47672/ajp.1801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47672/ajp.1801","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose: This paper explores how Police officers in Kenya and elsewhere in the globe play an irreplaceable role of ensuring security, law and order but are exposed to a wide range of potentially psychologically traumatizing events in the course of duty without adequate internal trauma informed support. This trauma potentiates them to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which is associated with many dysfunctional behaviors like assault, homicide and suicide. \u0000Materials and Methods: Hermeneutic phenomenology approach is used to collect information from scholarly articles and media reports on the subject of police trauma and internal support. This data is then assessed to generate findings presented in this paper. Thirty case studies of Kenya police perpetrated assault, homicide or suicide are also selected randomly from the media to support the scholarly findings about work related police trauma and internal support. \u0000Findings: Kenyan police officers are exposed to traumatic events but police training and culture encourages hardiness, masculinity and repression instead of trauma informed coping. The case studies reveal that traumatized police officers in Kenya develop severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which then presents in various psychological disorders and deviance like assault (14%), murder (30%), suicide (90%) and homicide (17%). \u0000Implications to Theory Practice and Policy: Police management should put in place trauma informed curriculum in police training and practice. Psychological and situational mediators should also be established as a priority for trauma prevention, mitigation and stress management. Researchers should go beyond highlighting police psychological morbidity to investigate models and interventions that work to prevent and speedily resolve police trauma. ","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140437771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yimeli Lonpa Mirabelle, Fomba Emmanuel Mbebeb, Angu Roland Nji
Purpose: Entrepreneurial spirit and achievement is often linked to the cultural value of a people and such innovative and economic-driven values have today been perceived as core antecedents of business start-up. The journey from childhood to adulthood also goes with the transition of adolescents to economic independence and often ensured through socialization into work and entrepreneurial-driven cultural values. This study sought to examine the effect of entrepreneurial habits on adolescent socialization into economic independence among the Bamileke of Cameroon. The Social Cognitive Theory of Albert Bandura (1977) provided the theoretical starting point for this study.
Methodology: The study adopted a quantitative design to test the influence of entrepreneurial habits on socialization of adolescents into economic independence. The study site was the Beamlike society of the West Region of Cameroon. With regard to sample, 384 adolescents were recruited from 8 selected villages for the study. Participants were selected using purposive sampling and a questionnaire with determined internal reliability coefficient was used for information gathering. Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics.
Findings: Results show that entrepreneurial habit was able to explain the variations in economic independence at 73.7%. Analysis also suggested that a unit increase in the level of entrepreneurial habit will increase socialization into economic independence at 0.324 units. Furthermore, results confirmed the model as a good fit (F= 1068.761), and consequently, the null hypothesis was rejected.
Recommendations: Therefore, work habit significantly estimated the level of socialization into economic independence of adolescents. Considering that entrepreneurial development is the most important input in the economic development of any society, the objectives of industrial development, balanced regional growth, and generation of employment opportunities should be achievable through entrepreneurial development and this depends on the inculcation entrepreneurial values in young people. Therefore, adolescents should be socialized and guided on how to develop business habits in order to be able to detect opportunities, indulge in business start-up in order to achieve economic independence. The Government strategies of creating job creators should be reinforced at the grass-root and this should build on the creative and innovative values of a people.
{"title":"Entrepreneurial habits and Adolescent Socialization into Economic Independence among the Bamilékés of West Cameroon","authors":"Yimeli Lonpa Mirabelle, Fomba Emmanuel Mbebeb, Angu Roland Nji","doi":"10.47672/ajp.1650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47672/ajp.1650","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose: Entrepreneurial spirit and achievement is often linked to the cultural value of a people and such innovative and economic-driven values have today been perceived as core antecedents of business start-up. The journey from childhood to adulthood also goes with the transition of adolescents to economic independence and often ensured through socialization into work and entrepreneurial-driven cultural values. This study sought to examine the effect of entrepreneurial habits on adolescent socialization into economic independence among the Bamileke of Cameroon. The Social Cognitive Theory of Albert Bandura (1977) provided the theoretical starting point for this study.
 Methodology: The study adopted a quantitative design to test the influence of entrepreneurial habits on socialization of adolescents into economic independence. The study site was the Beamlike society of the West Region of Cameroon. With regard to sample, 384 adolescents were recruited from 8 selected villages for the study. Participants were selected using purposive sampling and a questionnaire with determined internal reliability coefficient was used for information gathering. Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics.
 Findings: Results show that entrepreneurial habit was able to explain the variations in economic independence at 73.7%. Analysis also suggested that a unit increase in the level of entrepreneurial habit will increase socialization into economic independence at 0.324 units. Furthermore, results confirmed the model as a good fit (F= 1068.761), and consequently, the null hypothesis was rejected.
 Recommendations: Therefore, work habit significantly estimated the level of socialization into economic independence of adolescents. Considering that entrepreneurial development is the most important input in the economic development of any society, the objectives of industrial development, balanced regional growth, and generation of employment opportunities should be achievable through entrepreneurial development and this depends on the inculcation entrepreneurial values in young people. Therefore, adolescents should be socialized and guided on how to develop business habits in order to be able to detect opportunities, indulge in business start-up in order to achieve economic independence. The Government strategies of creating job creators should be reinforced at the grass-root and this should build on the creative and innovative values of a people.","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136229531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/19398298.136.3.09
Joachim I. Krueger
The specter of mindfulness has been haunting psychological science and its self-help applications. Mindfulness, we are to understand, is a special state in which the mind is gathered up into itself, thereby achieving an autonomous state that is potentially pleasant, probably supportive of subjective well-being and health, and possibly conducive to the cultivation of useful life skills (Bishop et al., 2004). The publication of Jon Kabat-Zinn's (1990) hefty volume Full Catastrophe Living was a watershed event that motivated millions of seekers and healers as well as many academics to embark on a search for this beneficent if elusive mental state. Eric Loucks, a professor in the School of Public Health at Brown University, has developed a course on mindfulness for his students, and he has given a TEDx talk on the matter. He presents his case for the educational use of mindfulness training in The Mindful College Student: How to Succeed, Boost Well-Being & Build the Life You Want at University & Beyond.The contemporary interest in mindfulness continues the old quest for an integration of the philosophy and science of the West with the wisdom of the East (Schopenhauer, 1819; Suzuki & Fromm, 1960; Watts, 1957). These geographic designations have lost much of their acuity, but their echoes remain. Now as then, there is in the West a sense of loss, a mourning for what is magical and mystical. The East still has some of what the Enlightenment has exorcised in the West. Loucks, like Kabat-Zinn, invokes the promise of a synthesis, and the late Thich Nhat Hanh plays the role of patron saint (Bryant, 2022), blessing the Western quest for self-improvement with the effortless Zen of the dharma (e.g., Thich, 1975). Yet, to some Western eyes, an epigraph such as Thich's points to a place where the profound and the nonsensical are one. But okay, it's a Zen thing.Thich's epigram can be found in his preface to Kabat-Zinn's 467-page tome, whose title is surprisingly nondharmaic. As Kabat-Zinn explains, we owe the powerful image of full-catastrophe living to Nikos Kazantzakis and his towering character of Alexis Zorbas, or Αλέξης Ζορμπάς (Kazantzakis, 1946/1952; Krueger, 2015). Reflecting on his bygone family life, Zorbas recalls that yes, he had a wife, a home, children—the full catastrophe! The character of Zorbas is the antithesis to the pensive and Zen-like narrator, a.k.a. “the boss.” Before mindfulness became de rigueur, Kazantzakis experimented with the dialectic of his two characters to explore the interplay of Eastern and Western perspectives. He never achieved a synthesis. Perhaps to his credit he surrendered to a life suspended between the poles of contemplation and action.Kabat-Zinn's project had an immense impact on psychotherapy and on how lay audiences view psychology. It created an industry of mindfulness studies and practices. The initial mission of this project was focused and pragmatic: to help people live with chronic pain and to help the stressed-o
{"title":"A Homecoming for the Wandering Mind","authors":"Joachim I. Krueger","doi":"10.5406/19398298.136.3.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19398298.136.3.09","url":null,"abstract":"The specter of mindfulness has been haunting psychological science and its self-help applications. Mindfulness, we are to understand, is a special state in which the mind is gathered up into itself, thereby achieving an autonomous state that is potentially pleasant, probably supportive of subjective well-being and health, and possibly conducive to the cultivation of useful life skills (Bishop et al., 2004). The publication of Jon Kabat-Zinn's (1990) hefty volume Full Catastrophe Living was a watershed event that motivated millions of seekers and healers as well as many academics to embark on a search for this beneficent if elusive mental state. Eric Loucks, a professor in the School of Public Health at Brown University, has developed a course on mindfulness for his students, and he has given a TEDx talk on the matter. He presents his case for the educational use of mindfulness training in The Mindful College Student: How to Succeed, Boost Well-Being & Build the Life You Want at University & Beyond.The contemporary interest in mindfulness continues the old quest for an integration of the philosophy and science of the West with the wisdom of the East (Schopenhauer, 1819; Suzuki & Fromm, 1960; Watts, 1957). These geographic designations have lost much of their acuity, but their echoes remain. Now as then, there is in the West a sense of loss, a mourning for what is magical and mystical. The East still has some of what the Enlightenment has exorcised in the West. Loucks, like Kabat-Zinn, invokes the promise of a synthesis, and the late Thich Nhat Hanh plays the role of patron saint (Bryant, 2022), blessing the Western quest for self-improvement with the effortless Zen of the dharma (e.g., Thich, 1975). Yet, to some Western eyes, an epigraph such as Thich's points to a place where the profound and the nonsensical are one. But okay, it's a Zen thing.Thich's epigram can be found in his preface to Kabat-Zinn's 467-page tome, whose title is surprisingly nondharmaic. As Kabat-Zinn explains, we owe the powerful image of full-catastrophe living to Nikos Kazantzakis and his towering character of Alexis Zorbas, or Αλέξης Ζορμπάς (Kazantzakis, 1946/1952; Krueger, 2015). Reflecting on his bygone family life, Zorbas recalls that yes, he had a wife, a home, children—the full catastrophe! The character of Zorbas is the antithesis to the pensive and Zen-like narrator, a.k.a. “the boss.” Before mindfulness became de rigueur, Kazantzakis experimented with the dialectic of his two characters to explore the interplay of Eastern and Western perspectives. He never achieved a synthesis. Perhaps to his credit he surrendered to a life suspended between the poles of contemplation and action.Kabat-Zinn's project had an immense impact on psychotherapy and on how lay audiences view psychology. It created an industry of mindfulness studies and practices. The initial mission of this project was focused and pragmatic: to help people live with chronic pain and to help the stressed-o","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136199174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/19398298.136.3.02
Irwin D. Nahinsky
Abstract Parallel interactive processing (PIP) is a parallel distributed processing approach in which a representation of an object involves interaction of its components in a way that influences information processing of the components. Prior research is summarized in the areas of categorization and probability judgment. It was found that an explanation of the halo effect and its generalization as well as phenomena in other information processing situations could be explained by PIP. The explanation of the halo effect is largely in terms of reduction of variance in judgments of components of an object produced by a holistic impression of the object. There was a focus on processes common to various subject areas.
{"title":"A Feedforward Interactive Network to Explain Complex Information Processing Phenomena Including the Halo Effect and Its Generalization","authors":"Irwin D. Nahinsky","doi":"10.5406/19398298.136.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19398298.136.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Parallel interactive processing (PIP) is a parallel distributed processing approach in which a representation of an object involves interaction of its components in a way that influences information processing of the components. Prior research is summarized in the areas of categorization and probability judgment. It was found that an explanation of the halo effect and its generalization as well as phenomena in other information processing situations could be explained by PIP. The explanation of the halo effect is largely in terms of reduction of variance in judgments of components of an object produced by a holistic impression of the object. There was a focus on processes common to various subject areas.","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136199178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/19398298.136.3.01
Alice F. Healy, James A. Kole, Vivian I. Schneider
Abstract A simple letter detection task, in which subjects mark instances of a target letter in prose passages, has elucidated numerous cognitive processes involved in reading by examining the “missing letter” effect, in which readers’ detection accuracy is especially low on frequent function words. Two experiments explore the fundamental but novel issue of whether the missing letter effect is due to the test word containing the target letter or to the words surrounding the test word. College students searched for a target letter (e in Experiment 1, o in Experiment 2) in a passage that included unrelated sentences, with each sentence containing a single instance of 1 of 2 test words (the or one in Experiment 1, of or on in Experiment 2). The sentences were intact (prose), or the words in each sentence were randomly rearranged (scrambled). The 2 test words in an experiment were surrounded by the exact same words. If the word containing the target letter is primarily responsible for the missing letter effect, the proportion of correct letter detection responses should depend on the test word, whereas if the surrounding words are primarily responsible, it should depend on the text type (prose, scrambled). In fact, in both experiments a huge effect of test word was found but no effect of text type. These results provide clear evidence for the influence of the test word but, surprisingly, no evidence for the influence of the surrounding words on the missing letter effect in the letter detection task.
{"title":"Is the Missing Letter Effect Due Primarily to the Test Word Containing the Target Letter or to the Surrounding Words?","authors":"Alice F. Healy, James A. Kole, Vivian I. Schneider","doi":"10.5406/19398298.136.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19398298.136.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A simple letter detection task, in which subjects mark instances of a target letter in prose passages, has elucidated numerous cognitive processes involved in reading by examining the “missing letter” effect, in which readers’ detection accuracy is especially low on frequent function words. Two experiments explore the fundamental but novel issue of whether the missing letter effect is due to the test word containing the target letter or to the words surrounding the test word. College students searched for a target letter (e in Experiment 1, o in Experiment 2) in a passage that included unrelated sentences, with each sentence containing a single instance of 1 of 2 test words (the or one in Experiment 1, of or on in Experiment 2). The sentences were intact (prose), or the words in each sentence were randomly rearranged (scrambled). The 2 test words in an experiment were surrounded by the exact same words. If the word containing the target letter is primarily responsible for the missing letter effect, the proportion of correct letter detection responses should depend on the test word, whereas if the surrounding words are primarily responsible, it should depend on the text type (prose, scrambled). In fact, in both experiments a huge effect of test word was found but no effect of text type. These results provide clear evidence for the influence of the test word but, surprisingly, no evidence for the influence of the surrounding words on the missing letter effect in the letter detection task.","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136199172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/19398298.136.3.07
Colin M. MacLeod
Abstract Edwina Abbott (1887–1949), although little known to the field today, made significant contributions in several domains of psychology—experimental, developmental, and clinical—in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, she was the first to empirically study the “testing effect”—that learning and memory benefit from testing, not just from additional study—before going on to establish and direct an early laboratory for developmental and clinical research and treatment in Wichita, Kansas. Her forward-looking research and her devotion to applications of laboratory findings justify the designation “pioneer of psychology.”
{"title":"Edwina Eunice Abbott (Cowan): Pioneer Psychologist","authors":"Colin M. MacLeod","doi":"10.5406/19398298.136.3.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19398298.136.3.07","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Edwina Abbott (1887–1949), although little known to the field today, made significant contributions in several domains of psychology—experimental, developmental, and clinical—in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, she was the first to empirically study the “testing effect”—that learning and memory benefit from testing, not just from additional study—before going on to establish and direct an early laboratory for developmental and clinical research and treatment in Wichita, Kansas. Her forward-looking research and her devotion to applications of laboratory findings justify the designation “pioneer of psychology.”","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136199175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/19398298.136.3.08
Joachim I. Krueger
The sciences, and psychology is no exception, pose questions to nature and seek to move toward increasingly accurate and efficient models of reality (Popper, 1972). Science is fruitful when it offers effective applications. We can use what we have learned to craft interventions to get what we want. Psychological science has made many contributions to human welfare, education, therapy, and the management of people, among other things (Forgas, Crano, & Fiedler, 2020). These improvements do not require the assumption that human nature is fundamentally flawed. Human nature just is, and yet we might tweak things to our advantage. We are perfect the way we are, and we could use a little improvement. This is the Zen of psychology.The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent & Defy Effectively is presented as a cookbook and handbook intended to promote an attitude of resistance to society's “unhelpful norms” (p. IX) and to provide insight into the skills that enable the “principled insubordinate” to prevail. Such an attitude, at least if shared by many, we are told, can deliver technological progress, individual happiness, and social harmony. Why is a revolution of insubordination necessary? In psychology, a narrative of original sin and redemption is not uncommon, and it is most evident in the rhetoric of bias and error (Krueger & Funder, 2004; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Wikipedia, the author reports, lists over 100 psychological biases. This deluge of irrationality is critical to the narrative because now we can ask, What if all these biases were eradicated? Many debiasing researchers have cut their teeth on this challenge—and broken a few—only to learn that many biases are features of a well-honed system (Krueger & Massey, 2009). Is an end run around the business of debiasing possible, such that “principled insubordination neutralizes our cognitive biases” (p. 44)?How might this be accomplished? Principled insubordination, we are told, promotes creativity, curiosity, and well-being. However, we are left wondering whether there are things that principled insubordination cannot accomplish. If it is the source of all that is good, beautiful, and true, we must rush to master and apply it. Why haven't we? Perhaps we haven't because many social norms have their uses (Sunstein, 2019). Majority opinions are often correct (Hastie & Kameda, 2005), and traditions can be empowering (Bicchieri, 2005; reviewed by Krueger, 2006). False majority opinions and oppressive traditions are—by definition—a problem, but the question is which social norms are false or oppressive and how we know the difference. Why might we want to assume that with all the cognitive biases infecting the ordinary mind, people are adept at telling insubordination-worthy social norms from beneficent ones? Assuming that people can, at least some of the time, tell the difference, are they still flawed by being overall too timid or too complacent with what is familiar?Some people do not lack courage. “A t
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Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/19398298.136.3.10
Joachim I. Krueger, David J. Grüning
Data are getting bigger, and they encroach ever more on individual and social decision making (Gigerenzer, 2022). This is for the good inasmuch as data carry useful information. Information that is predictive, valid, and free from unwanted biases helps improve human welfare. Big data can reveal truths that challenge compelling intuitions or cherished beliefs. Given that our world is being flooded with petabytes of data, we can now ask what lessons it may offer to those who want to make the best of their lives—and that appears to be most of us.Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (SSD) responds to this quest in his provocatively titled book Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life. A self-professed data geek, SSD reveals his story wryly, a point to which we shall return. Meanwhile, it is clear that he wants to write a self-help book (“I am writing a self-help book,” p. 13). He presents Gut in order to offer data-driven help with the great life decisions: How to select a mate suitable for a happy partnership, how to be a great parent, how to succeed professionally, and how to be generally happy. Whew! Using instinct and data-driven memories, we may expect Gut to do well. It is not a demanding read; it serves up the data gathered from a few—but big—sources, and readers may go forth and “get what they want in life.”Some of the data-driven lessons are worthwhile, though neither novel nor counterintuitive. The value of social connection for well-being, for example, is well established after decades of the kind of study (for a review see Cacioppo et al., 2008) SSD dismisses for its “tiny samples” (p. 21), ignoring the fact that many small samples add up to very large samples. Likewise, the benefits of being in nature as opposed to being in a built-up environment are well known (Capaldi, Dopko, & Zelenski, 2014), as SSD acknowledges. The benefits of being exposed to aesthetically pleasing scenes are a recent addition to this theme. The third element of the great happiness triad is motion. A moving body is a happy body (Zhang & Chen, 2019), and SSD turns this wheel by calling on us to get off the couch. Concluding with a flourish, he declares, “The data driven answer to life is as follows: be with your love, on an 80-degree and sunny day, overlooking a beautiful body of water, having sex” (p. 265).This is a bit much, and by the way, who would enjoy the lake view at a moment of intimacy? Treading more lightly, one of us (J.I.K.) has advised his students to take a friend out for a walk in nature to solve the equation of happiness = motion + nature + social connection. The data have long been clear. The remaining psychological puzzle is why people do not do more of this. Presumably, they have other and possibly irrational preferences as well as obligations such as making a living that keep them in a busy state short of the attainable level of happiness. Perhaps here is a chance for big data to make a contribution and solve this puzzle.Other l
{"title":"Big Data, Small Mind","authors":"Joachim I. Krueger, David J. Grüning","doi":"10.5406/19398298.136.3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19398298.136.3.10","url":null,"abstract":"Data are getting bigger, and they encroach ever more on individual and social decision making (Gigerenzer, 2022). This is for the good inasmuch as data carry useful information. Information that is predictive, valid, and free from unwanted biases helps improve human welfare. Big data can reveal truths that challenge compelling intuitions or cherished beliefs. Given that our world is being flooded with petabytes of data, we can now ask what lessons it may offer to those who want to make the best of their lives—and that appears to be most of us.Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (SSD) responds to this quest in his provocatively titled book Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life. A self-professed data geek, SSD reveals his story wryly, a point to which we shall return. Meanwhile, it is clear that he wants to write a self-help book (“I am writing a self-help book,” p. 13). He presents Gut in order to offer data-driven help with the great life decisions: How to select a mate suitable for a happy partnership, how to be a great parent, how to succeed professionally, and how to be generally happy. Whew! Using instinct and data-driven memories, we may expect Gut to do well. It is not a demanding read; it serves up the data gathered from a few—but big—sources, and readers may go forth and “get what they want in life.”Some of the data-driven lessons are worthwhile, though neither novel nor counterintuitive. The value of social connection for well-being, for example, is well established after decades of the kind of study (for a review see Cacioppo et al., 2008) SSD dismisses for its “tiny samples” (p. 21), ignoring the fact that many small samples add up to very large samples. Likewise, the benefits of being in nature as opposed to being in a built-up environment are well known (Capaldi, Dopko, & Zelenski, 2014), as SSD acknowledges. The benefits of being exposed to aesthetically pleasing scenes are a recent addition to this theme. The third element of the great happiness triad is motion. A moving body is a happy body (Zhang & Chen, 2019), and SSD turns this wheel by calling on us to get off the couch. Concluding with a flourish, he declares, “The data driven answer to life is as follows: be with your love, on an 80-degree and sunny day, overlooking a beautiful body of water, having sex” (p. 265).This is a bit much, and by the way, who would enjoy the lake view at a moment of intimacy? Treading more lightly, one of us (J.I.K.) has advised his students to take a friend out for a walk in nature to solve the equation of happiness = motion + nature + social connection. The data have long been clear. The remaining psychological puzzle is why people do not do more of this. Presumably, they have other and possibly irrational preferences as well as obligations such as making a living that keep them in a busy state short of the attainable level of happiness. Perhaps here is a chance for big data to make a contribution and solve this puzzle.Other l","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136199179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.5406/19398298.136.3.03
Robert W. Howard
Abstract Human potential and its limits are of broad interest. One issue is whether high-level intellectual performance depends mainly on persistence and extensive practice, or whether genes set widely varying maximum performance levels. Another issue is whether, if genes do limit performance level, how much genetic potential still goes undeveloped in a given domain's participants who progress some way and then stop. International chess is a good test domain because it has objective performance measures, little gatekeeper influence, and abundant longitudinal, population-level data. Performance of 27,362 players entering the international chess domain between 1985 and 1999 was investigated in 6 studies. By June 2022, only about 3% had met the high achievement criterion of grandmaster status, taking a median 9.26 years and 472 internationally rated games to gain the title, far more games than the median all-participant career total of 130. About 67% of those playing over 1,500 games became grandmasters, and almost all grandmasters had achieved the title by 1,500 games. Then, for non-grandmaster participants playing at least 100 but less than 1,500 games, a mathematical model, which predicts future grandmaster performance reasonably well, estimated their unrealized potential. The model projected their learning curves out to over 1,500 games and predicted their peak rating if they actually had played over 1,500 games. By model predictions, perhaps only 10–15% might have achieved the title by persisting. These results show that persistence is important but not all-important because genes may limit maximum performance level. Players also may gauge accurately their ultimate performance prospects.
{"title":"Gauging the Power of Perseverance and Extent of Unrealized Potential in One Intellectual Domain","authors":"Robert W. Howard","doi":"10.5406/19398298.136.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19398298.136.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Human potential and its limits are of broad interest. One issue is whether high-level intellectual performance depends mainly on persistence and extensive practice, or whether genes set widely varying maximum performance levels. Another issue is whether, if genes do limit performance level, how much genetic potential still goes undeveloped in a given domain's participants who progress some way and then stop. International chess is a good test domain because it has objective performance measures, little gatekeeper influence, and abundant longitudinal, population-level data. Performance of 27,362 players entering the international chess domain between 1985 and 1999 was investigated in 6 studies. By June 2022, only about 3% had met the high achievement criterion of grandmaster status, taking a median 9.26 years and 472 internationally rated games to gain the title, far more games than the median all-participant career total of 130. About 67% of those playing over 1,500 games became grandmasters, and almost all grandmasters had achieved the title by 1,500 games. Then, for non-grandmaster participants playing at least 100 but less than 1,500 games, a mathematical model, which predicts future grandmaster performance reasonably well, estimated their unrealized potential. The model projected their learning curves out to over 1,500 games and predicted their peak rating if they actually had played over 1,500 games. By model predictions, perhaps only 10–15% might have achieved the title by persisting. These results show that persistence is important but not all-important because genes may limit maximum performance level. Players also may gauge accurately their ultimate performance prospects.","PeriodicalId":48063,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136199177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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