Debate in science: The case of acculturation

The acculturation paradigm of measuring assimilation, separation, integration and marginalization confuses dimensional and categorical conceptions of its constructs, fails to produce ipsative data from mutually exclusive scales, misoperationalizes marginalization as distress, mismeasures biculturalism using double-barreled questions instead of computing it from unicultural measures, and then tends to misinterpret and miscite this faulty science. Extensive published but widely uncited data cast doubt on claims that integration is preferred by minority groups or is beneficial for them. Such salient but unseen problems suggest that the community of acculturation researchers is biased and blinded by an ideology, probably the commendable ideology of liberalism, which advocates freedom of choice, tolerance, plurality, and redress of harm. Phenomenological observations that challenge the paradigm include the absence of studies of majority group acculturation, the well-replicated fact that minorities never prefer pure uniculturalism, the indistinctiveness of cultures, and the predominance of researchers, theory and data from similar Anglo-Saxon settler societies (USA, Australia, Canada)

The coming PIN code epidemic: A survey study of memory of numeric security codes

Most people must remember various numeric passwords, security codes and PIN numbers for banking, credit cards, debit cards, online accounts, mobile phones, door locks, luggage locks, etc. One pilot study (N=13) developed a list of eleven strategies for remembering numeric codes, and another (N=15) optimized the research questionnaire which asked respondents about a) the number of security codes they had, b) the number of self-created codes, c) mnemonic strategies used, d) problems and effort remembering codes, and e) gender, age, and education. Respondents (N=388) had a median of 4 security codes and typically used 2 different memory strategies, the most common of which were based on repetition and on keypad pattern. Difficulties remembering codes were unrelated to gender or education but were positively correlated with age and with number of strategies used. Self-creation of codes slightly reduced difficulties remembering numeric codes

Debate in science: The case of acculturation

The acculturation paradigm of measuring assimilation, separation, integration and marginalization confuses dimensional and categorical conceptions of its constructs, fails to produce ipsative data from mutually exclusive scales, misoperationalizes marginalization as distress, mismeasures biculturalism using double-barreled questions instead of computing it from unicultural measures, and then tends to misinterpret and miscite this faulty science. Extensive published but widely uncited data cast doubt on claims that integration is preferred by minority groups or is beneficial for them. Such salient but unseen problems suggest that the community of acculturation researchers is biased and blinded by an ideology, probably the commendable ideology of liberalism, which advocates freedom of choice, tolerance, plurality, and redress of harm. Phenomenological observations that challenge the paradigm include the absence of studies of majority group acculturation, the well-replicated fact that minorities never prefer pure uniculturalism, the indistinctiveness of cultures, and the predominance of researchers, theory and data from similar Anglo-Saxon settler societies (USA, Australia, Canada)

Field Notes from the Quest for the First use of Acculturation

Quest begin in the vauge way, as an interest or an orientation, and maybe as a collection of skills. I was probably bent towards this quest at Queen's University, where I was mentored in cross-cultural psychology by John Berry, where I served as a TA in Milt Suboski's statistics and research methods courses, and where I learned the lore of history of psychology with David Murray. Quests often begin unplanned, by happenstance, one thing leading to another. In this case, it was my taking a position at the University of Tromsø, in Norway, arriving just when the first graduating class was seeking supervisors for their thesis research

The Consumer Science of Sharing: A Discussant's Observations

This discussant’s response to the collected articles on the consumer behavior of sharing draws on a 1983–99 record of research on the psychology of ownership and property. The major recommendations here are: (1) that sharing be defined as the simultaneous or sequential use of an object (e.g., car), a space (e.g., living room), or an intangible (e.g., identity) by more than one individual; (2) that sharing be better described and analyzed by the naive phenomenology methods used by Ichheiser, Heider, and Goffman; (3) that sharing arising from shared ownership be distinguished from sharing arising from an owner’s prerogative to share; (4) that ownership be defined as social and legal protection of possessions for future utility in order to allow owners, as Litwinski theorized, to have relaxed expectations, in French, attente dans la détente; (5) that shopping and purchasing are inventory behaviors that are distinct from, and prior to, consumers’ use of inventory; (6) that distributed inventory accessed by digitally mediated sharing (e.g., Uber) be examined as alternative inventory behavior; (7) that scholarship on the “sharing economy” better explore and exploit the literatures in the subfields of (a) ownership theory, (b) child development, (c) inventory management, and (d) competition theory

Suicidal tendencies as correlates of disability measures

Abstract Disabilities and resultant handicaps may impair health-related quality of life to the degree that individuals feel that life is not worth living. Using archived 2009 Canadian Community Health Survey data, this study found that each of seven measures of disabilities (Health Utilities Index sub-scales of problems in (1) vision, (2) hearing, (3) speech, (4) mobility, (5) dexterity, (6) cognition, and (7) pain) had small but significant (p<0.001) positive correlations with each of seven measures of suicidality: (1) Health Utilities Index emotion problems, (2) diagnosed depression, (3) dissatisfaction with life in general, (4) feeling helpless dealing with problems in life, (5) feeling hopeless during the past month, (6) feeling worthless during the past month, and (7) suicidal thoughts ever in life). A second study examined the 724 individuals in the 2009 Canadian Community Health Survey data with Health Utilities Index scores less than 0.00, which Health Utilities Index protocol defines to be “worse than dead.” These individuals were described by demographic, disability, health, social, and suicidality measures, which showed the Health Utilities Index categorization of “worse than dead” to have doubtful validity. For example, mean measures of emotion problems and dissatisfaction with life were midrange; only half reported depression or suicidal thought; and only 18 percent chose the Health Utilities Index response that “life is not worth living.