Professor Lucy Johnston

© 2015 Society for Research into Higher Education. With increasing competition for postgraduate research scholarships, awarding processes demand attention and scrutiny. We examine inter-rater reliability for two prestigious New Zealand scholarships, the Shirtcliffe Fellowship and the Gordon Watson Scholarship. For each scholarship, five assessors (three academic; two non-academic) independently evaluate all applicants over three domains: Academic Merit, Quality of Study Plans and Character/Leadership. Data from years 2009 to 2014 were extracted, comprising 12 separate assessment rounds. Good to excellent agreement was observed for each scholarship in each year. Agreement was significantly higher for the Academic Merit domain compared to the other domains. Moreover, agreement among academics was higher and less variable than non-academics for this Academic Merit domain. No such differences were noted in the other domains. While resource efficiencies could be made, reductions in committee size resulted in poorer applicant selection performance. Applicants and donors alike can be confident that the awardee for these scholarships is a top applicant.

Male perceivers completed two testing sessions 1 week apart. In each of two testing sessions held a week apart, male perceivers provided a saliva sample that was analyzed for testosterone level and completed a sex categorization task. Within-subjects analyses showed relative testosterone levels to influence response time to female but not to male targets. Males were significantly slower to identify females when their testosterone levels were relatively high. These findings are considered in terms of adaptive person construal. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We report the use of a combination of self- and peer-assessment in an undergraduate social psychology laboratory course. Students worked in small groups on a self-directed empirical project that they each wrote up independently as a laboratory report. Marks for the written assignment were moderated by a contribution index measure based on the self- and peer-assessment measures. Our analyses indicated that: (i) students took the peer-assessment process seriously, clearly differentiating between group members on the contributions questionnaires; (ii) students show a self-bias, rating their own contribution to the group task higher than that of other group members; (iii) for a large majority of students the contribution index resulted in very little moderation of the final assignment marks; (iv) there was a strong correlation between the contribution index and the overall assignment score. Implications for the assessment of group work are considered. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

Aims: In December 2001, nursing industrial action occurred at Christchurch Hospital. This study assesses the effect industrial action had on relatives of those Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients involved. Method: A written questionnaire was sent to the relatives of the 17 patients on Intensive Care around the time of the strike; 11 of these patients had needed to be transferred to out of region hospitals for continuing care, whilst the others remained in the intensive care unit. Comparisons were made with a control group of 26 next-of-kin. Results: Compared with relatives of patients not involved in the strike, relatives involved during the strike were significantly more angry (p < 0.007) and less trusting that the patients had received the best possible care (p < 0.05). Compared to the control group, they were also more negative in their continuing view of the healthcare system (p < 0.05). Those relatives involved in air transfers were more distressed (p < 0.05), angry (p < 0.001), and less trusting than those not involved in a transfer (p < 0.005). Conclusion: The study shows that industrial action caused measurable distress and anxiety to the relatives involved some 16 months after the strike, especially in patients who were transferred. A persistent negative perception of the healthcare system in New Zealand could be demonstrated in this group. © NZMA.

The cognitive and emotional demands of modern life mean that it has become increasingly important to learn how to manage effectively our mental processes and behavior. Central to the achievement of mental control is the suppression, or inhibition, of unwanted or inappropriate thoughts or behaviors. Our recent work has considered the potential utility of instructing individuals to suppress sexually deviant thoughts as a therapy technique for sexual offenders. Of special concern was the subsequent hyperaccessibility, or "rebound," of the very thoughts which were previously suppressed. The present study is a preliminary experimental investigation of the ability of incarcerated child molesters to suppress unwanted sexual thoughts and the subsequent impact of this suppression on the accessibility of the suppressed thoughts. Participants completed an articulated thoughts task under instructions to suppress sex-related thoughts or under no specific instructions. Suppression instructions reduced the incidence of sex-related thoughts. In a subsequent color naming task (Stroop Task), the accessibility of the previously suppressed thoughts was tested. Both sex-related and child-related words were more accessible after prior suppression instructions for preferential child molesters than for either situational child molesters or nonsexual offenders. Implications for treatment of sexual offenders and for offender typology are discussed. © 1997 Plenum Publishing Corporation.

Despite recent laboratory successes in demonstrating stereotype change in response to disconfirming information, stereotypes remain resistant to change or modification. The reported research employed an information gathering methodology in which perceivers could control the amount and nature of the information they received about members of a stereotyped group prior to evaluating the group on a number of stereotype-relevant characteristics. Perceivers showed a stereotype-preservation bias in their information gathering (Experiments 1 and 2) and, consequently, showed no modification of existing stereotypic beliefs. Experiment 3 manipulated the salient processing goals under which perceivers gathered information and found that, under certain conditions, the stereotype preservation bias could be overcome and stereotypes moderated.

Clinicians and researchers have noted the important rote of maladaptive beliefs and distorted thinking in facilitating or justifying sexual offenses. There have been a number of attempts to describe the nature of these beliefs and to develop ways of measuring them but in the absence of any integrating theory. It is our belief that an understanding of the cognitive processes underlying the initiation, maintenance, and justification of sexual offending is a vital prerequisite to the development of successful treatment programs. The present paper proposes the use of a social cognition framework in considering cognitive processes that may be important contributing factors in the propensity of some men to commit sexual offenses. Pertinent research in the social cognition domain, covering information processing, mental control, and the impact of affective and motivational factors on cognitive processes, is described and related to the sexual offending literature. Implications for clinical practice and suggestions for future research are highlighted. © 1996 Plenum Publishing Corporation.

Most analysts of British general elections believe that the constituency campaigns have very little impact on the outcome. Using campaign expenditure as a surrogate for constituency campaign activity, analyses of the 1987 general election indicate that it was significantly related to the outcome. © 1989.