Aggression,violence, and the death of a Dutch soccer hooligan: A reversal theory explanation

In March 1997, an aggressive and violent confrontation took place between more than 3000 rival soccer hooligans in the small town of Beverwijk in the Netherlands. In the prearranged and well‐organized confrontation, a 35 year‐old man was beaten and stabbed to death and others were seriously wounded. In this paper, the details of what happened at Beverwijk and the response of the Dutch authorities, including the subsequent arrest and conviction of the main perpetrators, are reviewed. In addition, the psychological approach of reversal theory [Apter MJ. 1992. The Dangerous Edge. New York: The Free Press] is used to answer several unresolved questions about the motivation of the Dutch soccer hooligans involved in the aggressive behavior and violent fighting at Beverwijk. Aggr. Behav. 28:1–10, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Serious Lies

In a pair of studies, college students and community members told autobiographical narratives about the most serious lie they ever told or the most serious lie that was ever told to them. Most serious lies were told by or to participants' closest relationship partners. Participants reported telling their serious lies to get what they wanted or to do what they felt they were entitled to do, to avoid punishment, to protect themselves from confrontation, to appear to be the type of person they wished they were, to protect others, and to hurt others. The degree to which the liars and targets felt distressed about the lies differed significantly across these 7 different types of lies. Systematic variations in the kinds of serious lies described by different subgroups of participants suggest that serious lies may be indicative of the life tasks that are most significant to those groups.     

Community responses following suicide, homicide, and other deaths: the perspective of potential comforters

To determine whether actual responses of potential comforters in the community differ according to cause of death, 83 college students participated in a structured, individual interview. They were asked demographic questions about themselves, the bereaved, and the deceased, and then about various aspects of how they, and others in the community, responded to the death. Students were grouped by their reports of the cause of death (suicide, homicide, accident, natural anticipated death, or natural unanticipated death). When the death was by suicide or homicide, others were perceived as relatively less supportive of the bereaved person. When the death was by suicide, respondents themselves tended more to blame the bereaved person. When the death was by homicide, the bereaved person was perceived as reacting relatively worse. Potential comforters were relatively more shocked when the death was by homicide or accident.     

Life cycle and loss--the spiritual vacuum of heroin addiction

This research studied the function of heroin addiction as a family-learned method of coping with death, separation, and loss across the life cycle. Heroin addicts, psychiatric outpatients, and normal students were given an extensive interview and test battery to determine the incidence of loss of family members and significant others. Because the impact of death is often overcome through religious rituals, this study also investigated the subjects' perception of their families' religious values and orientation to life's meaning and purpose. Results indicate that the incidence of death differs significantly across groups and that addicts have a distinct orientation to death, are more suicidal, and have more premature and bizarre death experiences. During childhood they have more family separations, and they tend to develop a distinct pattern of continuously separating from and returning to their families. They are also less likely to have a clearly defined purpose in life. A subset of parents from each group were also interviewed and tested, and these results support the theory of the intergenerational transmission of behavior.     

Positive Aspects of Grief

Three hundred twelve adults whose loved ones had died approximately one year prior were interviewed to learn if, despite the tragedy, anything good had come about as a result of the death, what they had learned from their experience, and what they and others had done that helped during their grief. Eighty-four percent of those interviewed said that positive things had happened as a result of the death—it brought their family closer together, they learned to appreciate life more, and they found they were stronger and more capable than they had thought. The main thing other people did that helped was listen.     

Cognitive confrontation and avoidance during a naturalistic medical stressor

This study was undertaken to shed some light on problems that have arisen in measuring cognitive confrontation (monitoring) and cognitive avoidance (blunting) with a self-report questionnaire, the Miller Behavioral Style Scale (MBSS; Miller, 1987). For this purpose, variants of both coping styles were studied in a naturalistic setting: 37 women who underwent prenatal diagnosis were interviewed at home about their ways of coping with different stages of the procedure, a few days before they expected the diagnostic results. Interview fragments pertaining to cognitive confrontation and avoidance were selected and analysed by two investigators in order to generate categories of avoidance and confrontation coping strategies. For some of the fragments, inter judge reliability was assessed using new judges. A comparison between the categories found and the kinds of items used in the MBSS shows that in real life more coping variants occur than those represented in the MBSS, in particular variants that involve a combination of cognitive confrontation and avoidance. Implications for the dimensionality of both concepts and for their measurement are discussed.     

Closing the empathy gap in college students' judgments of end‐of‐life tradeoffs

When considering hypothetical end‐of‐life (EOL) scenarios involving 80‐year‐old intensive‐care unit patients, young adults are more likely than older adults to judge that shorter lifespan would be a fair trade in exchange for a more pleasant death. This result has been interpreted in terms of an empathy gap, in which individuals fail to relate to the affective states of others. If so, the effect should be reduced when young adults consider scenarios involving patients similar to themselves. The present study examined college students' willingness to trade healthy lifespan for better death in EOL scenarios involving 80‐year‐old and 22‐year‐old cancer victims. Results indicated students under 30 were less likely to trade lifespan in the 22‐year‐old scenarios, and were less likely to trade lifespan in either set of scenarios when the 22‐year‐old scenarios were presented first. The findings are consistent with an empathy gap account of judgments concerning EOL care.     

Personal and parents’ life stories in patients with borderline personality disorder

Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) display disturbances in understanding self and others. We examined whether these disturbances extended to how patients described their personal and parents’ life stories and to measures of identity, alexithymia, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Thirty BPD patients and 30 matched control participants described personal and parents’ life stories and completed measures of identity disturbance, alexithymia, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Compared to the controls, patients with BPD described their personal and their parents’ life stories more negatively and with fewer themes of agency and communion fulfillment. Patients and controls showed equally complex reasoning about their personal life stories, but patients displayed less complexity and more self‐other confusion, when reasoning about their parents’ stories. Patients also differed from controls on identity disturbance, alexithymia, and empathy. The results suggest that patients’ storied understanding of themselves and others are disturbed and should be taken into account to better understand BPD.     

The relativity of grief: Differential adaptation reactions of younger and older persons

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate the differential emotional and coping responses of 41 older (M = 66.5 years) and 48 younger (M = 23.5 years) respondents who had recently lost a close loved one to death. Respondents completed a questionnaire in which they gave an account of the death of their loved one, information about how they coped with this loss, and responses concerning their emotions pertaining to the loss. As predicted, older respondents reported a higher degree of account-making (i.e., story-like constructions) about their losses and confiding in close others than did younger respondents. Further, older respondents showed fewer negative and more positive responses than younger respondents. These results were interpreted to suggest that older respondents were less acutely devastated by their losses and are consistent with the idea that     

The relationship between interpersonal perception and post‐traumatic stress disorder‐related functional impairment: a social relations model analysis

This study used Kenny's social relations model to examine the relationship between Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorder‐related impairment and interpersonal perceptions. Participants were 124 students who had previously completed the Post‐traumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale as part of a larger study. After engaging in brief dyadic conversations with 3 other students, participants recorded perceptions of personality traits for themselves, their interaction partners and how they believed their partners saw them (metaperceptions). Results indicated that those with more severe post‐traumatic stress disorder‐related impairment saw themselves negatively and believed their interaction partners also viewed them negatively. However, these individuals were not seen differently by others, except that they were rated as less dependable. Our findings suggest that post‐traumatic stress disorder is associated with negative beliefs about the self that may influence self‐esteem and interpersonal relationships.     

NEAR‐DEATH EXPERIENCES AND SPIRITUALITY

Abstract. Some individuals when they come close to death report having experiences that they interpret as spiritual or religious. These so‐called near‐death experiences (NDEs) often include a sense of separation from the physical body and encounters with religious figures and a mystical or divine presence. They share with mystical experiences a sense of cosmic unity or oneness, transcendence of time and space, deeply felt positive mood, sense of sacredness, noetic quality or intuitive illumination, paradoxicality, ineffability, transiency, and persistent positive aftereffects. Although there is no relationship between NDEs and religious belief prior to the experience, there are strong associations between depth of NDE and religious change after the experience. NDEs often change experiencers' values, decreasing their fear of death and giving their lives new meaning. NDEs lead to a shift from ego‐centered to other‐centered consciousness, disposition to love unconditionally, heightened empathy, decreased interest in status symbols and material possessions, reduced fear of death, and deepened spiritual consciousness. Many experiencers become more empathic and spiritually oriented and express the beliefs that death is not fearsome, that life continues beyond, that love is more important than material possessions, and that everything happens for a reason. These changes meet the definition of spiritual transformation as “a dramatic change in religious belief, attitude, and behavior that occurs over a relatively short period of time.” NDEs do not necessarily promote any one particular religious or spiritual tradition over others, but they do foster general spiritual growth both in the experiencers themselves and in human society at large.     

The proximity heuristic in judgments of accident probabilities

In daily life, probabilities are often assessed informally through the perceived distance to a target event. Accident probabilities are believed to be high when a disastrous outcome appears to be close. This proximity heuristic can lead to exaggerated p(death) estimates in risky situations (Experiment 2), and sometimes higher probabilities for death after near‐accidents than after actual accidents (Experiment 3 and 4). Near‐accidents are also believed to be equally good, or better, predictors of future disasters than actual accidents, despite being less serious and more frequent (Experiment 5). The proximity heuristic influences the way people talk about their own and other people's chances (Experiment 1), and how they prepare to avoid (or, if necessary, to produce) a disastrous outcome (Experiment 6).     

Motivational cues: The role of perceived senders' self‐control ability in raters' deception judgements

Previous studies have found that senders' personal traits may be used by others to make judgements about the senders' truthfulness. Two studies were conducted to examine whether perceived self‐control ability has an effect on deception judgement. Perceived self‐control was hypothesized to act as a motivational cue that participants would use to assess the sender's motivation to lie, which in turn would influence their deception judgement. Results revealed that when participants assessed the sender as having higher self‐control ability, they would consider the sender to be less motivated to lie in daily life (Study 1), and judge the sender more truthful in a text‐based deception judgement task (Study 2). However, the effect of perceived self‐control ability disappeared in a video‐based task (Study 2), likely due to the multitude of various cues available in audio‐visual stimuli. The theoretical and applied implications of the results are discussed.     

People's Perceptions of Women's and Men's Worry about Life Issues: Worrying about Love, Accomplishment, or Money?

The study was designed to examine people's perceptions of women's and men's worry about life issues and self-perceptions of worry. Some undergraduates (n = 498) rated typical women's or men's worry, and others (n = 396) rated significant others' worry based on the Worry Domain Questionnaire (Tallis, Eysenck, & Mathews, 1992). As expected, participants perceived women as worrying more than men do about relationships, when they rated typical or significant others. As well, they rated typical men as worrying more than typical women about achievement and finances. Participants who rated significant others' worry also rated their own worry and parallel findings were expected. However, women tended to report more worry about achievement than men did. Overall, the findings indicate that the better people know their targets, the less likely they are to perceive their worry in gender stereotypical terms. This article is partially based on Wendy-Jo Wood's Master's thesis.     

Acculturation discrepancies and well‐being: the moderating role of conformity

This study examines associations of immigrants' well‐being with the discrepancies they perceive between their own acculturation attitudes and the acculturation expectations of members of the host society. A hundred immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union reported their personal value priorities, their satisfaction with life, their attitudes towards acculturation, and their beliefs about what members of the dominant society require of them. The immigrants believed that Israelis want them to relinquish their distinctive identity and to assimilate more than they themselves wish to do. As hypothesized, perceived pressure to assimilate correlated negatively with life satisfaction only among those who value conformity, but not among others. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Older (but not younger) preschoolers understand that knowledge differs between people and across time

We examined 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds' understanding of general knowledge (e.g., knowing that clocks tell time) by investigating whether (1) they recognize that their own general knowledge has changed over time (i.e., they knew less as babies than they know now), and (2) such intraindividual knowledge differences are easier/harder to understand than interindividual differences (i.e., Do preschoolers understand that a baby knows less than they do?). Forty‐eight 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds answered questions about their current general knowledge (‘self‐now’), the general knowledge of a 6‐month‐old (‘baby‐now’), and their own general knowledge at 6 months (‘self‐past’). All age groups were significantly above chance on the self‐now questions, but only 5‐year‐olds were significantly above chance on the self‐past and baby‐now questions. Moreover, children's performance on the baby‐now and self‐past questions did not differ. Our findings suggest that younger preschoolers do not fully appreciate that their past knowledge differs from their current knowledge, and that others may have less knowledge than they do. We situate these findings within the research on knowledge understanding, more specifically, and cognitive development, more broadly.     

The effects of post ‐identification feedback and age on retrospective eyewitness memory

Two studies examined the effects of post‐identification feedback, age, and retention interval on participants' memories and beliefs about memories for a videotaped event, as captured by a store surveillance camera. After viewing the video, they were then asked to identify the suspect from a target‐absent photo line‐up. After making their identification, some participants were given information suggesting that their identification was correct, while others were given no information about the accuracy of their identification. In both experiments participants who received confirming feedback indicated they were more confident in their identification, paid more attention to the video, and that they were more willing to testify in court than those who received no feedback. The confidence inflation effects of post‐identification feedback did not vary with retention interval or age. These results are consistent with a position focusing on accessibility, which suggests that witnesses have little or no retrievable recollection of how sure they were at the time of their identification. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

External Validity,Why Art Thou Externally Valid? Recent Studies of Attraction Provide Three Theoretical Answers

Some studies have better external validity than others, but why? Recent studies in the domain of interpersonal attraction have been tackling this question by documenting how people respond differently to hypothetical versus live interactions. In live interactions, people tend to report their experienced emotions, they evaluate others using a low‐level concrete construal, and they attempt to implement the goal of having a pleasant interaction. In hypothetical scenarios, people forecast their emotions, they evaluate others using a high‐level abstract construal, and they deliberate about others' positive and negative features. By situating the hypothetical versus live interaction distinction within the framework of strong preexisting theories (i.e., affective forecasting, construal‐level theory, mindset theory), this research reinforces the idea that there is nothing inherently invalid about laboratory studies that are cosmetically dissimilar from real life. Nevertheless, it remains highly problematic to generalize findings to a setting that elicits a countervailing set of psychological processes.     

“A Matter of Life and Death”: Kawabata on the Value of Art after the Atomic Bombings

This article explores the possible interpretations—and the implications of those interpretations—of a comment about the importance of art made by Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972), later the first Japanese Nobel laureate for literature: that “looking at old works of art is a matter of life and death.” (In 1949, Kawabata visited Hiroshima in his capacity as president of the Japan literary society P.E.N. to inspect the damage caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that helped end World War II. On his way back to his home in Kamakura, he stopped in Kyoto. He came under severe criticism for “sightseeing” at such a time. This comment was his response.) The introduction explains why we should take him seriously as a commentator on art. The body of the article examines why our looking at art might be more, not less, important after the post‐War situation, the kinds of art Kawabata might have meant, why some possibilities are more likely than others, and how they differ in what they offer us and the value of art under conditions of trauma and mass trauma.     

Confronting prejudice (literally): reactions to confrontations of racial and gender bias

Participants in two studies reported how they would feel, think, and behave after being confronted about either gender-biased or equivalent racial-biased responses. In Study 2, whether the confrontation was from a target group member (Black or female) or nontarget (White or male) group member was manipulated. Regardless of confronter status, allegations of racial bias elicited more guilt and apologetic-corrective responses and greater concern over having offended the confronter than similar confrontations of gender bias, which elicited more amusement. Target confrontations elicited less guilt but greater discomfort than nontarget confrontations and were associated with feelings of irritation and antagonism among more prejudiced participants. In addition, participants perceived a target's confrontation as more of an overreaction than the same confrontation from a nontarget. The implications of these findings for prejudice-reduction efforts are discussed.