Explicit and Implicit Measures of Black Cat Bias in Cat and Dog People.

Two studies looked at the prevalence and predictors of black cat bias-negative behaviors and attitudes toward black cats-using explicit and implicit measures. The first study looked at an internet sample of 114 people to see if people who self-identified as liking cats (cat people) showed less bias against black cats than those who self-identified as dog people or those who liked both dogs and cats (dog-and-cat people). Participants completed a questionnaire that measured superstitious beliefs, belief in witchcraft, and religiosity before rating pictures and, for about half of the participants, descriptions of black and non-black cats.

Participatory community action research in homeless shelters: Outcomes for shelter residents and service-learning research assistants.

The article reports empirical outcomes of an ongoing transdisciplinary participatory community action research project that implements behavioral activation in homeless shelters. The overall goal of this Project is twofold: (1) to improve psychosocial functioning of shelter residents and enhance their opportunities to overcome homelessness; and (2) to enhance civic development of service-learning students who assist in Project implementation. Two studies are reported, representing these goals.

Background music and cognitive performance.

The present experiment employed standardized test batteries to assess the effects of fast-tempo music on cognitive performance among 56 male and female university students. A linguistic processing task and a spatial processing task were selected from the Criterion Task Set developed to assess verbal and nonverbal performance. Ten excerpts from Mozart's music matched for tempo were selected.