News Releases

 

January 2008	Bill submitted a proposal to the Templeton Foundation to seek funding for the PPRI research program overall.  The Templeton Foundation funds individuals and organizations working on a wide range of topics, including the "biggest problems" and issues such as evolution, future-mindedness and the relationship between science and religion.
January 2008	Bill and his web site designer, Marc Baber, put on the PPRI site Bill's new measure of contructive leadership attitudes, the "McCLAS" (McConochie Constructive Leadership Attitudes Scale).  Bill met in December with U of Oregon professor in the political science department, who offered to have his students help with research on this scale and the warmongering-proneness scale.
January 2008	Bill joined the research committee of Division 48 of the American Psychological Association, the Peace Studies division.  The president of this division, Dan Mayton, Ph.D., of Idaho, will chair a panel presentation at the Boston APA convention in August 08.  The panel will present three papers.  Bill will present his 44-item measure of warmongering (see Publications).
January 2008	Bill submitted a research proposal to the ANES program (American National Election Studies) in response to a solicitation for questionnaire items designed to measure citizens' attitudes about terrorism and the government's responses to it.  These items, if accepted, will be added to a study of a large national sample of Americans.  This portion of the study is funded by the government, in part by the Department of Homeland Security.
December 2007	Bill submitted proposals to present papers at conventions in Boston, Berlin and Paris in the summer of 08, on his measures of warmongering, constructive leadership traits and authoritarianism endorsement.
December 2007	Bill attended an inagural meeting to kick off the new peace studies program at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon and subsequently met with Stan Taylor and his wife, both professors involved in this foundling program.  Bill developed measures of pro-social and antisocial social and political activism to study these traits, hopefully in the winter term at LCC and elsewhere.
December 2007	Bill attended a convention of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies at Columbia Teachers College, New York City and became their research coordinator.  He solicited ideas from members and drafted a lengthy research questionnaire (over 400 items) the organization will consider for a study to develop measures of humiliation and dignity and explore their relationships with up to 40 other measured traits.  Funding has been a challenge for research on this topic, so the study, while international in design and to be administered via the Internet, is on temporary hold.  The study must also be approved by the research team and board.    If HDHS can't fund it, Bill might seek some other way so the study can be completed, as it will throw light on many interesting issues.  For example, humiliation is closely related to felt oppression, which Bill's Victoroff study (see Publications) has shown is directly related to endorsement of terrorism.  And, this study showed that persons who felt "differently and unpleasantly treated" by their parents tend to feel this same way about teachers, police, government leaders...virtually anyone in a position of authority, even foreign governments and persons from religions different from one's own.  Thus, understanding and preventing humiliation may be a central issue for combating terrorism, and specifically for reducing terrorism by citizens in one's own country.
Fall 2007	For PsySR bill interviewed retired military generals, AG's, and interrogators and wrote a white paper on the role of psychologists in potentially illegal interrogations in military detention centers.  The essence of the findings was that what is approved by an administration (e.g. the Bush administration) can be illegal in other jurisdictions (e.g. under the U.S. Constitution, or the Geneva Convention) and put anyone involved in jeopardy of prosecution.  Therefore, it behooves psychologists to be well-informed on legal as well as ethical issues when accepting assignments in the employ of the government.
Fall 2007	Bill with Brad Olson of Boston wrote a new code of ethics for psychologists for the PsySR.  This code is based on the APA code but is altered to make very clear that illegal behavior, such as interrogations involving torture of detainees, is not ethical.  The code will be reviewed by the board, and Bill tentatively plans to present it on panels at conventions in Boston and Berlin in the summer of 08 on behalf of PsySR.
August 2007	Bill attended the American Psychological Association convention in San Franscisco, talked to a book publisher who invited a proposal and joined the Psychologists for Social Responsibility organization (PsySR).
July 2007	Bill completed the 3-week Stanford Institute for Political Psychology program at Stanford U.  55 persons were in the program, several from the CIA.  Others were  student and professionals, from as far away as Europe, one with the United Nations in Kosovo.  With a graduate student from Michigan State Bill did a research project on ANES study data, as invited by the SIPP program staff.
14 June 2007	Bill testified before the Lane County Commissioners on 6/23/06 about the value to the county of conducting detailed public opinion polling to increase voter trust of county government.  He had been invited to testify by one of the commissioners, who has also expressed interest in Deliberative Democracy as presented by Dr. James Fishkin at Stanford University.  This commissioner is also considering applying to attend the Stanford University intensive on political psychology next summer (2008).  He's looking forward to Dr. McConochie's opinion of the program when he returns from it in August.
6 April 2007	Dr. McConochie will present a paper on this new PPRI web site and corporation at the Portland, Or. convention of the International Society of Political Psychology in July, 2007.
6 April 2007	Dr. McConochie has been accepted as a student in the three-week politicial psychology institute at Stanford University in July.