James Thompson

University College London | UCL · Division of Psychology and Language Sciences

Gächter and Schulz (2016) assumed an effect of institutional rule violation on individual honesty within societies. In this reply we challenge this approach by including a nation's cognitive ability as a further factor for cross-national variations in the prevalence of rule violations and intrinsic honesty. Theoretical considerations, correlational...

Summary Immigration, immigration policies and education of immigrants alter competence levels. This study analysed their effects using PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS data (1995 to 2012, N=93 nations) for natives' and immigrants' competences, competence gaps and their population proportions. The mean gap is equivalent to 4.71 IQ points. There are large diffe...

US National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results from 1971 to 2008 enable four different effects to be distinguished: Cohort rise effects, gap-narrowing between ethnic groups, trends due to demographic changes in by NAEP listed or not listed ethnic groups. NAEP means and percentiles in reading and mathematics were transformed to conven...

An evaluation is presented of Lynn’s work on national differences in personality, race differences in intelligence, national IQs & economic development, correlates of national IQs, the Flynn effect, sex differences, eugenics and dysgenics, race differences in psychopathic personality, and intelligence of the Jews.

Verbal ability comprises receptive (understanding) and active (producing) facets. While the first (e.g. as literacy in PIRLS and PISA) is frequently analyzed in its relationship to further cognitive abilities and parental attributes the latter is rarely investigated. The present study using data from N=280 students aged 9 to 14years investigated th...

Traditional economic theories stress the relevance of political, institutional, geographic, and historical factors for economic growth. In contrast, human-capital theories suggest that peoples' competences, mediated by technological progress, are the deciding factor in a nation's wealth. Using three large-scale assessments, we calculated cognitive-...

Smart fraction theory supposes that gifted and talented persons are especially relevant for societal development. Using results for the 95th percentile from TIMSS 1995-2007, PISA 2000-2006 and PIRLS 2001-2006 we calculated an ability sum value (N=90 countries) for the upper level group (equivalent to a within country IQ-threshold of 125 or a studen...

To explore the state of knowledge and attitudes toward electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) among a sample of the adult British general public (n = 70) in comparison with a sample of medical students (n = 70) and MRCPsych students (n = 20). Despite documented efficacy, an uncritical anti-ECT stance is often adopted by the media. It has been suggested th...

We examined the accounts of 27 survivors of the Marchioness ferry sinking, using cross-validation of accounts to search for instances of motivated forgetting. In order to identify objective items that could be validated, we focused the analysis on subjects' statements of whom they were with at various stages of the disaster. We compared these findi...

One hundred and eight survivors of trauma attending a stress clinic were assessed on measures of coping, personality, control expectancies and psychological distress. The psychometric characteristics of these questionnaires are discussed, and the relationships between them investigated using correlational and regression techniques. Although cross-s...

The answers of 223 respondents who had been involved in the fire at the underground station at King's Cross, London, United Kingdom, on the eighteenth of November 1987, on the General Health Questionnaire, 28 Item Version, (Goldberg and Hillier 1979) and the Impact of Events Scale (Horowitz, Wilner and Alvarez 1979) were analyzed. Multiple regressi...

Twenty-three patients who had experienced a major stressful event were given a debriefing session followed by eight weekly sessions of imaginal exposure and in vivo exposure. Patients recounted their traumatic experiences aloud, using the first person and the present tense, and included as much detail as possible. This account was audiotaped and pa...

Forty-two patients with post-traumatic stress reactions were assessed 40 weeks after the traumatic event and given either an immediate (n = 29) or delayed (n = 13) eight sessions of psychotherapy. The patients in the delayed condition improved somewhat during the waiting list period, but at the end of treatment the two conditions were not significa...

The psychological after-effects of the Marchioness river boat disaster of 20th August 1989 on 27 survivors and 17 relatives are described. On measures of intrusive memories and of psychological difficulties these subjects are significantly higher than population norms, and somewhat higher than psychiatric in-patient populations. Personality measure...

This paper reviews several published reports of behavioural and cognitive behavioural treatments of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is shown that, despite slightly different mixes of ingredients, these show broad similarities in approach. Two main categories of treatment can broadly be distinguished: Anxiety Management Techniques (AMT) an...

The psychological after-effects on 27 survivors of the Marchioness riverboat disaster of 20 August 1989 are described. On measures of intrusive memories and psychological difficulties these subjects are significantly higher than population norms, and somewhat higher than psychiatric in-patient populations. Personality measures taken after the disas...

The psychological effects of body recovery duties were studied in two groups, 28 specialized police volunteers and 40 ambulance workers. The Impact of Events scale and the General Health Questionnaire were administered to both groups. The results showed that 20% of the ambulance workers and 3% of the policemen were in the moderate to severe categor...

There are many theories of stress, though few lead to detailed treatment techniques. These theories are often simple and non-theoretical. They are based on the notion of a passive structure bearing a heavy weight. There is a need for more active models, which measure a person's capacity to cope with the demands of the environment. Learning theories...

The King's Cross fire occurred at the end of the evening rush hour, on 18 November 1987. King's Cross station is within the department's health district and we felt a responsibility to respond to the psychological aftermath. The unique features of our intervention were the degree of inter agency coordination, the use of a systematic outreach and sc...

The fire at King's Cross underground station ni November 1987 caused 31 deaths, with 14 people admitted to hospital with serious injuries. The immediate "phase one" disaster plan involving local emergency and health services was effective in dealingwith physical injuries but there were no contingency plans to meet the longer term psychosocial needs...