Like any other domain of human activity, psychology has its fads and fashions. One consequence of fads is an overconcentration of resources on specific problems or approaches, which leaves other important problems or approaches (holes) underappreciated and understudied. This article is primarily about different factors (such as negativity bias,…

Whether explicitly acknowledged or not, behavior-analytic principles are at the heart of most, if not all, empirically supported therapies. However, the change process in psychotherapy is only now being rigorously studied. Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP; Kohlenberg & Tsai, 1991; Tsai et al., 2009) explicitly identifies behavioral-change…

Benefiting from new data provided by experimental economists, behavioral economics is now moving beyond empirical tests of standard behavioral assumptions to the problem of designing improved institutions that are tuned to fit real-world behavior. It is therefore worthwhile to consider the potential for new experiments to advance school choice…

Resilience researchers are intrigued with the challenge of understanding how people overcome risk or adversity to succeed in life. The study of resilience emerged about 40 years ago when a group of scientists studying the origins of behaviour problems and mental illness were surprised to find that many children in "high risk" groups were…

The literature on engaging families in prevention programs is informed by the Health Beliefs Model (HBM), Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), and Family Systems theory. Although useful, these frameworks have not facilitated the development of prevention-based practice strategies that recognize different levels of prevention (i.e., universal,…

Ahmad R. Hariri, recipient of the Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology, is cited for pioneering contributions to understanding the neurobiological mechanisms driving individual differences in complex behavior traits. Hariri has integrated molecular genetics, neuropharmacology, neuroimaging, and psychology in…

Objective: To test and compare 2 predictive models of weapon carrying in youth (n=308) recruited from 4 drop-in centers in San Diego and Imperial counties. Methods: Both models were based on the Behavioral Ecological Model (BEM). Results: The first and second models significantly explained 39% and 53% of the variance in weapon carrying,…

This paper investigates the determinants of student attendance of economics classes. Course-specific and individual-specific factors are shown to have significant impacts on class attendance. It was found that female students and overseas students skip classes less often. Surprisingly, students involved in extra-curricular activities attend…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to measure the relative effect of relevant explanatory variable on smoking tendency and smoking intensity. Design/methodology/approach: Using survey data collected by the Israeli Bureau of Statistics in 2003-2004, a probit procedure is estimated for analyzing factors that affect the probability of being a…

The "Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior" was founded in 1958 by a group of male psychologists, mainly from the northeastern USA and connected with either Harvard or Columbia. Fifty years later about 20% of both editors and authors reside outside this country and almost the same proportion is women. Other changes in the…

Sidney W. Bijou is among the founders of behavior analysis, but the record of his contributions is incomplete. It has not systematically described his contributions beyond his tenure at the University of Washington (1948-1965). The purpose of this paper is to describe his contributions over the course of the next decade--his years at the…

The author reviews research showing that repetitive thought (RT) can have constructive or unconstructive consequences. The main unconstructive consequences of RT are (a) depression, (b) anxiety, and (c) difficulties in physical health. The main constructive consequences of RT are (a) recovery from upsetting and traumatic events, (b) adaptive…

In this essay I reflect on the ethical challenges of ethnographic fieldwork I personally experienced in a female gambling study. By assuming a covert research role, I was able to observe natural occurrences of female gambling activities but unable to make peace with disturbing feelings of my research concealment. By making my study overt, I was…

Quantitative behaviour analysis requires the classification of behaviour to produce the basic data. This can be challenging when the theoretical taxonomy does not match observational limitations, or if a theoretical taxonomy is unavailable. Binary keys allow qualitative observation to be used to modify a theoretical taxonomy to produce a practical…

Previous research has suggested that the topography of instructions (general vs. specific) may influence the likelihood that young children comply with instructions. The purpose of the current study was to compare the rates of task completion of a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when provided with general and specific instructions…