Subjective Invulnerability,Optimism Bias and Adjustment in Emerging Adulthood

The relationship between subjective invulnerability and optimism bias in risk appraisal, and their comparative association with indices of risk activity, substance use and college adjustment problems was assessed in a sample of 350 (M _age = 20.17; 73% female; 93% White/European American) emerging adults. Subjective invulnerability was measured with the newly devised adolescent invulnerability scale (AIS). Optimism bias in decision-making was assessed with a standard comparative-conditional risk appraisal task. Results showed that the danger- and psychological invulnerability subscales of the AIS demonstrated strong internal consistency and evidence of predictive validity. Subjective invulnerability and optimism bias were also shown to be empirically distinct constructs with differential ability to predict risk and adjustment. Danger invulnerability and psychological invulnerability were more pervasively associated with risk behavior than was optimism bias; and psychological invulnerability counter-indicated depression, self-esteem and interpersonal problems. Results support recent claims regarding the “two faces” of adolescent invulnerability. Implications for future research are drawn.     

The New Partnership for Africa's Development: Social,Economic and Environmental Contradictions

Richard D. North: Life on a Modern Planet: A Manifesto for Progress. Manchester University Press, 1995.     

Doctor in Trouble: Anderson v Gorrie and the Extension of Judicial Immunity from Suit in the 1890s

This article explores the case of Anderson v Gorrie (1894) in which the Court of Appeal completed the immunity of judges from suit for actions whilst ostensibly sitting judicially and within their jurisdiction. They subsequently rejected an argument for an extension of the ambit of the decision in Dimes v Grand Junction Canal Company to judges sitting in a case in which they had an interest. The strength of the fortifications the judiciary had built around itself, erected on the bones of Anderson and others, must have been influenced by the concerns the judges felt – concerns with the influx of litigants in person, who sometimes pursued their cases all the way to the Lords, benefiting from the in forma pauperis procedure.