Category Archives: Social psychology

Juror Psychology–Can juries ignore inadmissible evidence or pretrial publicity?

Answer: prob­a­bly not. Superb chap­ter by Lieberman, Arndt, & Vess: “Inadmissible evi­dence and pre­trial pub­lic­ity: The effects (and inef­fec­tive­ness) of admo­ni­tions to dis­re­gard.” You “can­not unring the bell” as one judge put it. The last 30 years of social cog­ni­tive psy­chol­ogy, start­ing with the work of Tversky and Kahneman, up to the most recent work …

January 21, 2012 – 9:32 pm | By Marvin W. Acklin, Ph.D. | Posted in Social psychology | Comments (0)

Modern Times? Masturbation Discourse in 2011

Archives of Sexual Behavior is surely the most inter­est­ing pro­fes­sional jour­nal. It cat­a­logs sex­ual behav­ior is just about every species. A recent arti­cle on atti­tudes toward mas­tur­ba­tion among young adults (col­lege stu­dents) artic­u­lates issues and atti­tudes that reflect deeply on our social fab­ric and mores: Kaestle, CE, & Allen, KE (2010), The Role of Masturbation in …

August 5, 2011 – 10:26 am | By Marvin W. Acklin, Ph.D. | Posted in Behavior, Social psychology | Comments (0)

17,000 Helens agree — Bad Parents are Bad News

But seri­ously, check out http://www.cdc.gov/ace/index.htm. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is one of the largest inves­ti­ga­tions ever con­ducted to assess asso­ci­a­tions between child­hood mal­treat­ment and later-life health and well-being. The study is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente’s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego. More than 17,000 Health Maintenance …

December 4, 2010 – 10:22 am | By J. Gregory Turnbull, Psy.D., J.D. | Posted in Child Abuse, Social psychology, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Use it or lose it–adverse cognitive effects of early retirement?

Taking Early Retirement May Retire Memory, Too (excerpts from the NY Times, Online, October 11, 2010) The two econ­o­mists call their paper “Mental Retirement,” and their argu­ment has intrigued behav­ioral researchers. Data from the United States, England and 11 other European coun­tries sug­gest that the ear­lier peo­ple retire, the more quickly their mem­o­ries decline… Researchers repeat­edly …

October 12, 2010 – 6:37 am | By Marvin W. Acklin, Ph.D. | Posted in Assessment, Social psychology | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

More on terror management theory — “mortality salience”

You may have won­dered why our polit­i­cal and cul­tural cli­mate has become so nasty; it seems that polit­i­cal and reli­gious intol­er­ance has never been more intense. In a pre­vi­ous post, I dis­cussed ter­ror man­age­ment the­ory, based on the work of Ernest Becker (remem­ber in “Annie Hall” when Woody Allen handed Diane Keaton a copy of Becker’s Denial of …

September 30, 2010 – 7:04 am | By Marvin W. Acklin, Ph.D. | Posted in Behavior, Social psychology | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Terror, no not terrorist, management

I just did a book review of the mas­sive 5th edi­tion of the Handbook of Social Psychology and came across some­thing quite new. The chap­ter is “Experimental Existential Psychology: Coping with the Facts of Life.”  I thought exis­ten­tial phi­los­o­phy and psy­chol­ogy were rel­e­gated to the ’60’s (you know when every­one read Sartre and Camus), or …

September 28, 2010 – 7:28 am | By Marvin W. Acklin, Ph.D. | Posted in Behavior, Social psychology | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)