Jeffrey Michael Rudski

• Muhlenberg College

Women are diagnosed with clinical depression at twice the rates as men. Treating depression through psychotherapy or medication both focus on changing an individual, rather than addressing socioecological influences or social roles. In the current study, participants read of systemic inequality contributing to differential rates of depression in ei...

Background: Opioid overdoses can often be reversed with naloxone hydrochloride. Past studies on attitudes toward expanded naloxone access have surveyed drug users, family members, and providers. Objectives: To explore how the general public perceives take-home or nonmedical first-responder access to naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses. Addition...

Discussions of withdrawal of life support often revolve around a patient’s perceived level of suffering or lack of experience. Personhood, however, is often linked to personal agency (e.g., self-control, ability to plan). In the present study, 279 laypeople estimated the amount of agency and experience in hypothetical patients differing in degree o...

Background: The goal of this study was to examine how the variables of treatment versus enhancement, competition, type of behavioral characteristic, and a person's history of enhancer or psychotropic medication use are related to acceptability and ethical concerns raised by psychotropic drug use. Methods: Participants completed online surveys probi...

The current study examined whether attitudes toward the acceptability and stigma of medical marijuana are affected by its method of administration and the severity of illness being treated. Participants (200 men, 409 women, 2 omitted) were assigned to experimental conditions differing according to illness severity, and rated the acceptability, stig...

Past research has shown that many people prefer natural foods and medicines over artificial counterparts. The present study focused on examination of aversive events and hazards. Preferences were compared by having subjects consider pairs of scenarios, one natural and one artificial, matched in negative outcome and severity. Pairings were also rate...

Women's perceptions of and responses to explicitly erotic stimuli have been shown to vary across the menstrual cycle. The present study examined responses to implicit eroticism. A total of 83 women provided reactions to paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe in 6 day intervals over the course of 1 month. Among freely cycling women (n = 37), 31% of their des...

The term addiction involves aspects of salience, withdrawal, and conflict or interference with everyday functioning. The present series of studies examined whether high levels of engagement with the Harry Potter (HP) phenomenon could qualify as an addiction. Through use of three surveys posted online, we established that a sizeable portion (though...

Superstitions and anti-Semitism are generally based on irrational beliefs. To date, no research has examined the relationship between anti-Semitism and superstition. Four groups, Arab-Muslim, Arab-Christian, Non-Arab Muslim, and Non-Arab Christian, responded to anti-Semitism and superstition measures. With respect to anti-Semitism scores, Arabs sco...

Anthropologists have long noted that the use of ritual and magic is linked to conditions of risk and uncertainty. In this study, the authors examined how perceived task difficulty, participants' level of preparation, and the value of the outcome interact to influence the self-reporting of superstition and ritual. College students rated the likeliho...

The Ratio-Bias phenomenon, observed by psychologist Seymour Epstein and colleagues, is a systematic manifestation of irrationality. When offered a choice between two lotteries, individuals consistently choose the lottery with the greater number of potential successes, even when it offers a smaller probability of success. In the current study, we co...

The Ratio-Bias phenomenon, observed by psychologist Seymour Epstein and colleagues, is a systematic manifestation of irrationality. When offered a choice between two lotteries, individuals consistently choose the lottery with the greater number of potential successes, even when it offers a smaller probability of success. In the current study, we co...

That opioids can mediate unconditioned reinforcement is well established, but there is little evidence indicating whether they modify conditioned reinforcement. Here, a tone which initially served as a discriminative stimulus for the availability of water reinforcement was established as a conditioned stimulus. When later given a choice between pre...

Two hundred and seventy five participants each filled out three questionnaires examining the illusion of control, optimism/pessimism, and paranormal belief. The illusion of control was related to overall paranormal belief, an effect primarily due to the superstition and precognition sub-scales on the PBS-R. Optimism was positively and pessimism neg...

Over a 28-year period, 724 men and 1148 women completed the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A. Overall, women scored higher than men. This effect was most prominent on 6 of the 12 items, most (though not all) challenge items (identified by a principal-components analysis). The overall effect size was quite small. Results are di...

The questions in surveys in which superstitious belief is examined are based on the researcher or researchers' definitions of superstition and not on participants' definitions. In the present study, 170 undergraduates filled out 2 surveys. In the 1st survey, they were asked to rate 28 possible beliefs of a fictitious person described as "superstiti...

In this study, Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility: Form A scores for 458 college students were compared with college yearbook records of their participation in student activities. Students who scored low in susceptibility showed significantly less participation in activities than others who were either moderate or high in susceptibility...

Belief in the paranormal or claims of paranormal experiences may be, at least in part, associated with systematic cognitive biases. 48 undergraduate college students engaged in an exercise in telepathy in which the color of cards was 'sent' to them by the experimenter under two conditions. In a Hindsight-possible condition, participants recorded wh...

The ratio-bias effect refers to the perception that a low probability event is more likely when presented in the form of a larger, e.g., 10-in-100, than smaller, e.g., 1-in-10, numerical ratio. This phenomenon has been used to help distinguish between rational-analytic versus heuristic-automatic ways of problem solving. In the current study, respon...

The effects of reinforcement schedule and competition on generating superstitious behaviors and beliefs were examined in 72 people. Superstition was induced by having participants respond to turn on a tone under a concurrent 2—lever Variable Interval (VI) Extinction (EXT) schedule. During the session, stimulus lights would occasionally be illuminat...

Participants were engaged in a computer game in which outcomes occurred independently of responses. Depending upon group assignment, positive outcomes occurred randomly on either 33% or 66% of trials. Outcome relative to chance was manipulated by varying the number of response alternatives from which participants could choose (two, three, or six)....

Temporal contiguity is positively associated with ease of detecting contingencies. When actions and outcomes are not contiguous, intervening responses might be strengthened by adventitious reinforcement. In the current study, participants engaged in a task where pressing 1 of 10 keys was reinforced either immediately or after various delays. Outcom...

One hundred and fifty participants played a computer task in which points were either gained (reinforcement) or lost (punishment) randomly on 75%, 50%, or 25% of trials. Despite the noncontingent nature of the task, participants frequently suggested superstitious rules by which points were either gained or lost. Rules were more likely to be suggest...

Decreased motivation following drug withdrawal is often characterized as indicative of addiction. Similar behavioral disruptions are seen in negative contrast paradigms. In the current study, 7 rats with a history of access to a palatable 0.15% saccharine solution before operant sessions were conditioned. Rats responded for food under a multiple FR...

Rats maintained under restricted access to food (but at 100% free-feeding weights) received one of two diets in their home cages: a palatable sucrose-based diet, or regular chow (grain based diet), and could respond for either sucrose- or grain-based reinforcers under an FR 40 reinforcement schedule (crossover design). Naloxone (0, 0.1, 0.3, 1.0, a...

We evaluated the effect of naloxone on neuropeptide Y (NPY)-induced feeding behavior using two methods; operant chambers and observational analysis. In the first study rats were trained on a FR 80 (first pellet) FR 3 (subsequent pellets) reinforcement schedule. Following training, rats were injected with NPY (intraventricular, 5 micrograms) and var...

Opiate administration increases short-term free feeding in satiated rats. The feeding effects of the mixed opioid receptor agonist/antagonist buprenorphine were examined in both free-feeding and operant chamber paradigms. Buprenorphine (0.1 and 0.3 mg/kg) produced significant increases in short-term free feeding (i.e., 4 h), an effect enhanced by r...

In the present series of studies we examined the effect of butorphanol tartrate on food-reinforced operant responding in satiated rats. In the first experiment, 8.0 mg/kg butorphanol was administered subcutaneously, once per day for 4 days, to satiated rats responding under an fixed ratio 10 (FR 10) reinforcement schedule. In the second experiment,...

Naloxone's effects on initiation, maintenance, and maximal response effort to acquire food were examined in rats maintained under different levels of food deprivation. In Experiment 1, naloxone was administered SC to rats responding under an FR 80 (first pellet) FR 3 (subsequent pellets) reinforcement schedule. Naloxone did not increase time to acq...

Methadone administration is reported to increase food intake in studies examining free feeding and to decrease food reinforced operant responding. In light of this apparent paradox, the present study evaluated methadone's effects on food reinforced operant responding under conditions more typical of free feeding studies than operant studies. The ef...

A variety of opioids and opiates are known to increase short-term food intake. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of methadone on free feeding in satiated rats. We assessed the effect of methadone (0, 1.5, 3.0, 5.0, and 10.0 mg/kg) on food intake 1, 2, 4, and 6 h after injection for 3 consecutive days. Two hours after methadone administ...