In two related studies, 268 male undergraduates rated the justifiability of date rape under various circumstances. As predicted, rape was rated as significantly more justifiable (a) if the couple went to the man's apartment rather than to a religious function, (b) if the woman asked the man out rather than vice versa (significant in Study 1 only), and (c) if the man paid all the dating expenses rather than splitting them with the woman. It was also predicted that men who were classified as traditional on the Attitudes toward Women Scale would rate rape as more justifiable than nontraditional men, especially under the three conditions mentioned above. These results were always in the predicted directions, but did not always reach statistical significance. Two explanations for the differences between traditional and nontraditional men are explored.

This study investigated the strategies subjects adopted to solve stem‐equivalent SAT‐Mathematics (SAT‐M) word problems in constructed‐response (CR) and multiple‐choice (MC) formats. Parallel test forms of CR and MC items were administered to subjects representing a range of mathematical abilities. Format‐related differences in difficulty were more prominent at the item level than for the test as a whole. At the item level, analyses of subjects' problem‐solving processes appeared to explain difficulty differences as well as similarities. Differences in difficulty derived more from test‐development than from cognitive factors: On items in which large format effects were observed, the MG response options often did not include the erroneous answers initially generated by subjects. Thus, the MC options may have given unintended feedback when a subject's initial answer was not an option or allowed a subject to choose the correct answer based on an estimate. Similarities between formats occurred because subjects used similar methods to solve both CR and MC items. Surprisingly, when solving CR items, subjects often adopted strategies commonly associated with MC problem solving. For example, subjects appeared adept at estimating plausible answers to CR items and checking those answers against the demands of the item stem. Although there may be good reasons for using constructed‐response items in large‐scale testing programs, multiple‐choice questions' of the sort studied here should provide measurement that is generally comparable to stem‐equivalent constructed‐response items.

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In this paper we provide a new perspective on the fundamental question of why long-term violent conflicts are so difficult to resolve. We point at the generational gap in hope for peace as a potential explanation for the intractability of such conflicts. In a series of large-scale studies (Ntotal = 118,843) in the context of the violent Israeli-Palestinian conflict we show that younger generations from both rival groups, who are supposed to be the drivers of social change, are more hopeless and unwilling to compromise for peace than older generations. This phenomenon is explained by the general negativity bias among youth that diminishes with age. While aging may be a natural cure for hopelessness in long-term conflicts to some extent, we show that this process can be experimentally accelerated through a virtual reality-based aging simulation that increased young Israelis’ hope for peace.