What's wrong with Psychology, anyway?

This chapter considers various factors that have been responsible for the comparatively slow development of psychology into a cumulative empirical science. Special attention is devoted to correctable methodological mistakes, the over-reliance upon significance testing (and the fact that, in psychology, the null hypothesis is almost always false), and an analysis of the concept of replication

Research with twins: The concept of emergenesis.

Preliminaty findings from an on-going study of monozygotic twins reared apart (MZA) and data from a larger sample of twins reared together (MZT and DZT), indicate a surprisingly strong influence of genetic variation on aptitudes, psychophysiological characteristics, personality traits and even dimensions of attitude and interest. For some of these variables, MZT and MZA twins show high intra-class correlations while DZT twins are no more similar than pairs of unrelated persons. It is suggested that such traits are “emergenic,” i.e., that they are determined by the interaction--rather than the sum--of genetic influences. Emergenic traits, although perhaps strongly genetic, will not tend to run in families and for this reason have been neglected by students of behavior genetics. For this and several other listed reasons, wider use of twins in psychological research is strongly recommended

If a Man be Mad

An evaluation of the M'Naghten Rules and other versions of the insanity defense in the criminal law

The Case for Parental Licensure

The violent crime-rate in the United States increased nearly 500% from 1960 to 1992. Subsequent small decreases can be attributed to the 500% increase since 1980 in the number of men locked up in American prisons. The most plausible explanation for this increase in crime and other social pathology is the sharp increase since the 1960s in the proportion of young men who were reared without the participation of their biological fathers. In the U.S., boys reared without fathers are approximately seven times more likely to become delinquent, then criminal. Girls reared without fathers are more likely, in consquence, to produce babies out-of-wedlock, to become teen-age runaways, and to drop out of school. Millions of American children are now being reared by (or domiciled with) parents who are incompetent, over-burdened, immature, or unsocialized themselves and many of these children will be thereby cheated of their birthright to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is argued that society has a responsibility to these children to require that persons who plan to acquire a child biologically must meet the same minimal standards expected of persons hoping to adopt a baby, namely, that they be mature, married, self-supporting, and neither criminal nor crazy

Psychology and the criminal justice system: A reply to Haney and Zimbardo

A reply to Haney & Zimbardo's recent article in the American Psychologist in which they claim that America's crime problem would be largely solved if the criminal justice system had only taken heed of the lessons learned decades ago in the Stanford Prison Project

The American Crime Factory

A response to three critical essays concerning The Antisocial Personalities (1995) and a further analysis of the causes of the epidemic of crime and violence that began in the United States in the 1960s and will continue into the next millenium

Happy is as Happy Does

Although Lykken & Tellegen (1996) have shown that the stable component of happiness or subjective well-being is strongly influenced by genetic factors, One needn't permit one's own or one's child's genetic steersman have his head. One can combat the "happiness thieves" (depression, fear, irritability) and one can achieve happiness increments through a varied diet of constructive activity

To tell the truth

Lewis Thomas, in a previous issue of Discover magazine, had speculated on the sociobiological significance of the "fact" that telling a lie produces a "reproducible cascade" of physiological changes. In this response, I explain that this "fact' is a myth, the deeply entrenched myth of the lie detector. It is plausible to suppose that our ancestors evolved the ability to lie not long after acquiring the ability to talk, both of these talents having obvious adaptive qualities. They did not, however, evolve a Pinocchio's nose, an involuntary response or pattern of responses that is always shown when, and only when, a lie is being told or a deceptive answer given

Gauge Boson - Gauge Boson Scattering in Theories with Large Extra Dimensions

We consider the scattering amplitudes of the form V_1 V_2 -> V_3 V_4, where V_i=\gamma, Z, W or g(=gluon) are the Standard Model gauge bosons, due to graviton exchange in Kaluza-Klein theories with large extra dimensions. This leads to a number of experimentally viable signatures at high energy leptonic and hadronic colliders. We discuss the observability or future limits on the scale of the gravitational interactions (m_D), that may be obtained at an e+e- Next Linear Collider (NLC) and at the LHC, by studying some of these type of gauge boson scattering processes. We find that the attainable limits through these type of processes are: m_D > 3 TeV at the NLC and m_D > 6 TeV at the LHC.Comment: 27 pages, plain latex, 7 figures embadded in the text using epsfi