Lake Wobegon’s Guns: Overestimating Our Gun-Related Competences

The Lake Wobegon Effect is a general tendency for people to overestimate their own abilities. In this study, the authors conducted a large, nationally-representative survey of U.S. citizens to test whether Americans overestimate their own gun-relevant personality traits, gun safety knowledge, and ability to use a gun in an emergency. The authors also tested how gun control attitudes, political identification, gender, and gun experience affect self-perceptions. Consistent with prior research on the Lake Wobegon Effect, participants overestimated their gun-related competencies. Conservatives, males, and pro-gun advocates self-enhanced somewhat more than their counterparts but this effect was primarily due to increased gun experience among these participants. These findings are important to policymakers in the area of gun use, because overconfidence in one’s gun-related abilities may lead to a reduced perceived need for gun training

Influence of viscosity on growth of high pressure phases in computer experiments

The general aim of the project is the examination of microstructures that develop under HP conditions in computer experiments. Starting point is an interest in the dynamics of HP phase transitions, as for instance the probably catastrophic phase-change event of olivine to spinel in the upper mantle. This is either explained by large overpressure or failure during the development of micro-structures during the growth of the spinel phase. Experimental results on this subject are rare, and do not lead by themselves to a deeper insight into the complicated stress/strain/volumechange/ micro-crack relationships of the transition. We developed a central force spring model, where particles can undergo a phase change using parameters of olivine and spinel. The algorithm is capable of simulating the local growth of the mentioned phases on the basis of direction-dependant rate laws. In the current context newtonian viscosity is added to the previously solely elastic system, since under HP/HT conditions the viscous flow within the material will have a large influence on the distribution of elastic energies, which in turn have an important influence on the driving force of the transition. Thus we are dealing with a visco-elastic system, which will be subjected to timedependant strain.conferenc

Finding the Epicenter of I-O Psychology

Where is the epicenter of I-O psychology in the U.S.? Where is the location around which all research, teaching and consulting revolves? Is it East Lansing, the home of Michigan State? No. Is it Bowling Green, Ohio, SIOP headquarters? No, but you are getting closer. How about Champaign, IL? Is the University of Illinois the epicenter? Warmer still, but not quite there. The center of U.S. I-O psychology is Mount Vernon, Illinois

Developing a Measure of Virtual Community Citizenship Behavior

This study examines the kinds of behaviors that constitute virtual community citizenship behaviors (VCCB) and tests three factors that may influence community members’ willingness to engage in VCCB. More specifically, the authors propose a multi-dimensional VCCB construct (altruism, civic virtue, consciousness, courtesy, and sportsmanship) and three antecedents of VCCB (affective commitment, structural embeddedness and membership tenure). Four dimensions including altruism, civic virtue, courtesy and loyalty emerged as a result of behavioral examples collection from SMEs using critical incident technique and a VCCB survey with 19 Likert type items reflecting the behavioral examples within each dimension was created. Data was collected from an online discussion forum (The Grad Cafe) to address the research questions of this study. Results indicate that affective commitment was a significant predictor of the virtual community citizenship behaviors. A research agenda for studying VCCB is presented

Should You Hire [email protected]?

When a person applies for a job online, one of the first things a recruiter learns about the applicant is the applicant’s e-mail address. So what might a recruiter think about an applicant who refers to himself as DemonSeed420@ mail.com or [email protected]? That is, would job applicants with unprofessional e-mail addresses behave less professionally than applicants with more appropriate addresses? Will [email protected] be as unstable as she claims to be? Should an employer take a chance on [email protected]? Managers often make snap judgments about job candidates (Howard & Ferris, 1996) and do so using whatever information is available to them including the candidate’s smile, clothing, handshake, small talk (Barrick, Swider & Stewart, 2010), or name. For instance, Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) mailed resumés in response to help wanted advertisements in Boston and Chicago. The researchers mailed identical resumés, manipulating only the first name of the applicants to be either a stereotypically “White” name or a stereotypically “African-American” name. Across all industries, occupations, and employer sizes, resumés with “White” names (e.g., Greg, Brad, Kristen, and Allison) received 50% more callbacks than did resumes with “African-American” names (e.g., Darnell, Jermaine, Latoya, and Tanisha). E-mail addresses function like names but e-mail addresses may have a greater potential to shape impressions than a given and/or family name because they can reflect more than gender and ethnicity. For example, e-mail addresses can imply skills ([email protected]), political affiliation (BlueDem@ mail.com), interests ([email protected]), and values ([email protected]). In a study about the relationship between e-mail addresses and personality traits, Back, Schmukle, and Egloff (2008) asked 600 university students to complete the Big Five Inventory. The researchers then gave the students’ e-mail addresses to a group of judges and asked the judges to guess how each student would score on the Big Five. The authors found that the judges were able to guess how the students scored on Openness and Conscientiousness. For example, judges guessed that students with addresses like [email protected] and [email protected] would score low on Conscientiousness, and they were right. Like Back and her colleagues, we tested the relationship between e-mail address and personality, but we also wanted to know if an address could tell us something about an applicant’s job qualifications. More specifically, we asked if candidates with addresses that contained references to sex, antisocial behavior, and deviant interests were less intelligent, conscientious, professional, and experienced than applicants without these types of references. We also asked if candidates with nondeviant but otherwise nonprofessional addresses including cutesy, geeky, and immature addresses were less qualified than candidates with more professional addresses

The Prosocial and Aggressive Driving Inventory (PADI): A Self-Report Measure of Safe and Unsafe Driving Behaviors

Surveys of 1217 undergraduate students supported the reliability (inter-item and test-retest) and validity of the Prosocial and Aggressive Driving Inventory (PADI). Principal component analyses on the PADI items yielded two scales: Prosocial Driving (17 items) and Aggressive Driving (12 items). Prosocial Driving was associated with fewer reported traffic accidents and violations, with participants who were older and female, and with lower Boredom Susceptibility and Hostility scores, and higher scores on Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness, and Neuroticism. Aggressive Driving was associated with more frequent traffic violations, with female participants, and with higher scores on Competitiveness, Sensation Seeking, Hostility, and Extraversion, and lower scores on Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness. The theoretical and practical implications of the PADI’s dual focus on safe and unsafe driving are discussed

A review of natural hydrofractures in rocks

Hydrofractures, or hydraulic fractures, are fractures where a significantly elevated fluid pressure played a role in their formation. Natural hydrofractures are abundant in rocks and are often preserved as magmatic dykes or sills, and mineral-filled fractures or mineral veins. However, we focus on the formation and evolution of non-igneous hydrofractures. Here we review the basic theory of the role of fluid pressure in rock failure, showing that both Terzaghi's and Biot's theories can be reconciled if the appropriate boundary conditions are considered. We next discuss the propagation of hydrofractures after initial failure, where networks of hydrofractures may form or hydrofractures may ascend through the crust as mobile hydrofractures. As fractures can form as a result of both tectonic stresses and an elevated fluid pressure, we address the question of how to ascertain whether a fracture is a hydrofracture. We argue that extensional or dilational fractures that formed below c. 2-3 km depth are, under normal circumstances, hydrofractures, but at shallower depth they may, but must not be hydrofractures. Since veins and breccias are often the products of hydrofractures that are left in the geological record, we discuss these and critically assess which vein structures can, and which do not necessarily, indicate hydrofracturing. Hydrofracturing can suddenly and locally change the permeability in a rock by providing new fluid pathways. This can lead to highly dynamic self-organization of crustal-scale fluid flow