Other Psychology Commons^™

The November 2010 Elections: Verification And Nuclear Weapons Reduction, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the results of the November 2010 elections in the United States (US), the transition of power between two very different Senates, and US participation in international treaties pertaining to nuclear weapons. Of note, are the roles of and problems with the idea of verification as per modern logical positivism.

The Yemen Narrative: Cargo Cults And Cargo Security, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author gives a psychological perspective on the security of aviation cargo shipments.

In Drag On Drugs, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Since commentators generally assert that the war on illegal and illicit drugs has been a failure, we should evaluate the assertion and, then, opine on why there is a war, winnable or not.

Memory And True Lies, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the concept of memory, its relation to culture, and three hypothetical phenomena associated with it.

Giving Foot The Boot: Right Or Wrong?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The article examines philosopher Philippa Foot’s famous conundrum – The Trolley Problem.

Cybersecurity: Growing Like Topsy!, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses cybersecurity in an intelligence context – what it is, what it does to us, and the sudden (and somewhat unplanned) increase in financial support for the area.

Assessment Of Students’ Knowledge Of Internet Risk And Internet Behaviors: Potential Threat To Bullying And Contact By Internet Predators, Stacey L. Kite, Robert K. Gable, Lawrence P. Filippelli

Cyberbullying

Given the serious issue of bullying, this study sought to assess middle and high school students' knowledge of appropriate use and their behaviors on the Internet and social networking sites, especially regarding behaviors that may lead to cyberbullying or contact with potential Internet predators.

Construct Invariance Of The Survey Of Knowledge Of Internet Risk And Internet Behavior Knowledge Scale, Robert K. Gable, Ph.D., Larry H. Ludlow, Ph.D., D. Betsy Mccoach, Ph.D., Stacey L. Kite

Cyberbullying

The wide use of the Internet has the potential for students to become victims of Internet sexual predators or other students who engage in inappropriate cyberbullying behaviors. The key for educational programming efforts targeted for students, teachers and parents is instrumentation that provides meaningful and reliable data assessing students’ knowledge of Internet risk and their actual Internet behaviors. The Survey of Knowledge of Internet Risk and Internet Behavior (SKIRIB) was developed for this type of assessment. Construct invariance of the SKIRIB Knowledge scale regarding gender and grade level is examined for N=2621 middle school and N=1594 high school students using …

Venus In Furs: Why False Confessions Are True, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the nature of truth and false confessions in the context of confession and interrogation.

The Strange Fruit Of 9/11, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks and the larger psychological narrative and context of the attacks. Stoicism is considered as a viable response.

American Graffiti: Musings On The Ground Zero Mosque, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses reactions and parallels to a mosque proposed near the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in public discourse.

Dirty Laundry: A Philosophical Primer For Politicians On Scandal, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the management of post-sex scandals by politicians from a variety of theoretical and/or philosophical perspectives.

Fool For Love: The Psychology Of Security Violation, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses why Pfc. Bradley Manning, United States (US) Army, who has been accused of illegally disclosing classified material—more than 150,000 diplomatic cables, 90,000 intelligence reports, and at least one video – allegedly performed the actions in question.

Are You Down With Ppp? A Look At Prohibited Personnel Practices In The United States Government, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the prevalence of identified proscribed personnel practices, and the power dynamics of such identifications among federal employees.

The Profiler's Story, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Courtesy of commercial television, we better be good. Or else the profilers will get us. It turns out that applied science and its sidekicks intuition and psychism (what psychics do) have our number. One step out of line and our number will be called, and we’ll be served our due comeuppance and just desserts. But is profiling more dessert or desert—or upon close inspection fated to desert us as a valuable tool in deterring or identifying perpetrators of egregious misbehavior? This article describes some implicit assumptions—as contradictory and interdependent as some may be—on which profiling often rests. For these purposes, …

Differentiating Classes From Dimensions Under Unfavorable Data Conditions: Monte Carlo Comparisons Of Taxometric And Latent Variable Mixture Models, Anthony Olufemi Ahmed

Dissertations

Taxometric and latent variable mixture models can aid in (1) determining whether the source of population heterogeneity, a latent variable, θ, is best explain by a dimensional (one-class) or taxonic (two-class) model and (2) distinguishing between constructs continuously distributed and those that are Bernoulli distributed at the latent level. Although these models have gained widespread use in psychology research, few have been systematically evaluated to determine the robustness of their results when statistical assumptions are violated (e.g., severe skew, unequal mixing proportions, etc.). The current study examined the performance of Meehl’s taxometric procedures and two latent variable mixture models: a …

Counterterrorism Intelligence Analysis: Language As Threat, Vulnerability, And Risk, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the role of language in describing possible membership in or connection to al Qaeda.

The Political Personality Of U.S. President Barack Obama, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of U.S. president Barack Obama, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Information concerning Obama was collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM–IV.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles manuals. Obama’s primary personality patterns were found to be Ambitious/confident …

Optimism And Pessimism In Children With Cancer And Healthy Children: Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of The Youth Life Orientation Test And Relations With Health-Related Quality Of Life, Natalie A. Williams, Genevieve Davis, Miriam Hancock, Sean Phipps

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Objective To test the measurement equivalence of the Youth Life Orientation Test (YLOT) in children with cancer (N = 199) and healthy controls (N = 108), and to examine optimism and pessimism as predictors of children's health-related quality of life (HRQL).

Methods Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to establish the two factor structure of the YLOT and to test for metric invariance.

Results A two-factor structure for the YLOT was confirmed and found to be stable across our study groups. There were no differences in mean levels of optimism and pessimism between cancer patients and controls after controlling for …

Stanley Mcchrystal, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Jérôme Kerviel: Are We All Ciphers?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article examines the fall of United States (US) Army General Stanley McChrystal, and the concepts of the self and identity.

An Update On Suicide Terrorism, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author considers the potential moral and ethical merits of suicide and suicide terrorism from a historical and philosophical perspective.

Psychologists Gone Wild: The Politics Of Scientific Psychology, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

With power on the line in science, one should expect controversy beyond the substantive. In scientific psychology—whether discovering human nature or discovering what can be said about it—the search for the what of human nature becomes a mask for human nature.

Sea Cruise: Israelis And Palestinians Drowning In Water Sport, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The article discusses differing Israeli and Palestinian narratives in regards to the deaths of 9 people during an Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Spot Off: The Gao Takes On The Tsa’S Behavior Detection Program, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recently Issued Efforts to Validate TSA’s Passenger Screening Behavior Detection Program Underway, but Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Validation and Address Operational Problems (May 2010, GAO-10-763). This IBPP article will describe and comment on the main GAO findings and additional data on which the findings are based. The article will end with some basic challenges to behavior detection as a useful security measure.

Are We All On The M Squad? Murdering Schoolchildren In China, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the phenomena of violent attacks against schoolchildren in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and its relevance to political psychologists.

The Word On Terrorism Threat As Terrorism Threat, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses terrorism (and terms associated with it), considering the social rhetoric surrounding the terms as well as other potential meanings. The constraints of the words used to define these terms of terror are considered.

Under The Volcano: Emergency Management And The Eyjafjallajokull Eruptions, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull eruptions that began on April 14^th, 2010 have exemplified challenges for transportation in a world of globalization, and ever-present need for preparation for emergencies.

Counting Blessings Versus Neutral Events: An Experimental Investigation Of Gratitude And Athletic Performance In Volleyball, Marie B. Godwin

Psychology Honors Projects

Positive psychology has related gratitude to positive outcomes for individuals. The purpose of the current study was to apply gratitude journaling to the athletic domain, specifically volleyball. It was hypothesized that participants journaling about things they were grateful for at each practice would result in heightened athletic performance, measured through vertical approach and block jump, team win/loss percentage, and satisfaction with performance, especially when compared to participants who journaled about neutral practice events. Results showed a significant difference between groups in athlete satisfaction with individual and team performance; however, participants who journaled about neutral practice events displayed higher levels of …

What To Do, Now That Big Pharma And Psychiatry Have Thrown Empiricism Under The Bus, W. Joseph Wyatt

Psychology Faculty Research

Organized Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry have worked toward a mutually reinforcing cultural zeitgeist, to wit: the majority of psychological/behavioral disorders are biologically caused and medications are the treatments of choice. The history of this phenomenon and its implications for behavioral practitioners will be presented.

Second Language Learning Anxiety Among Malay Learners Of English / Razlina Muhammad Sabri, Razlina Muhammad Sabri

Student Works (2010-2019)

This is a study of second language speaking anxiety among Malay ESL learners at an institution of higher learning. The objectives of this study are to determine whether learners experience test anxiety during public speaking, to discover if there is a difference in the anxiety level of high and low proficiency learners, to ascertain whether there are any differences between the high and low anxiety learners in their speaking test assessment, and to identify the factors leading to speaking language anxiety. This study has taken both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The data is mainly obtained from questionnaires and interviews with …