Forgiveness: Who Does It and How Do They Do It?

Forgiveness is a suite of prosocial motivational changes that occurs after a person has incurred a transgression. People who are inclined to forgive their transgressors tend to be more agreeable, more emotionally stable, and, some research suggests, more spiritually or religiously inclined than people who do not tend to forgive their transgressors. Several psychological processes appear to foster or inhibit forgiveness. These processes include empathy for the transgressor, generous attributions and appraisals regarding the transgression and transgressor, and rumination about the transgression. Interpreting these findings in light of modern trait theory would help to create a more unified understanding of how personality might influence forgiveness.     

Texting and Driving: Is It Just Moral Panic?

Significant public efforts have been mounted to stop the perceived epidemic of texting and driving, especially among younger drivers. However, despite the taken-for-granted nature of these fears, cell phones are reported as a contributing factor in only about 1% of all crashes. This study examines 11 years of crash data from Kentucky to demonstrate that despite the exponential growth of cell phones in American culture, cell phone-related crashes have remained stable over time, and they represent far less of a public health risk than most people are led to believe. The conclusions are presented in the context of moral panic theory.     

Just Ignore It? Parents and Genetic Information

This paper discusses whether prospectiveparents ought to find out about their geneticconstitution for reproductive reasons. It isargued that ignoring genetic information can bein line with responsible parenthood or perhapseven recommendable. This is because parenthoodis essentially an unconditional project inwhich parents ought to commit themselves tonurturing any kind of child. Besides, thetraditional reasons offered for theunfortunateness of impairments and the tragicfate of families with disabled children are notconvincing. Other morally problematic outcomesof genetics, such as discrimination againstindividuals with impairments, and limiting freeparental decision making, are alsoconsidered.     

Blaming Drunk Victims: Is It Just World or Sex Role Violation?

Richardson and Campbell (1980, 1982), in studying attributions of blame and responsibility for violent interactions, found that intoxicated victims were blamed more and held more responsible for their victimization than their sober counterparts. Two alternative explanations were proposed to account for this finding: the just world hypothesis and the effects of sex role violation. The present study was designed to test these explanations. One hundred twenty-nine males and 93 females read scenarios that varied the sex of the victim and the level of intoxication of the victim and the aggressor. Participants rated the responsibility of the aggressor, victim, and situation for the action and evaluated the aggressor and victim. Although strong support for neither of the hypotheses was demonstrated, more support was found for the effect of sex role violation than for the just world hypothesis.     

Integrity and Honesty Testing: What Do We Know? How Do We Use It?

This selective review of integrity and honesty testing addresses two primary questions: ‘What do we know about honesty testing?’ and ‘How do we use what we know?’ Up-to-date information about test reliability, validity, and construct definition from recent reviews of the research literature in the USA is presented and interpreted. Relationships to other selection devices and personality measures are discussed, as well as how integrity tests fit into a multiple assessment selection system.     

The Psychopath: What's Love Got to Do with It?

The archetypal figure of the psychopath has always been fascinating, even numinous, and terrifying. We know him as the headline-making serial killer, shameless fraud, or charming con artist, but we are not as well aware of him as an inner aspect of the psyche, a cold, implacable figure that can do horrific deeds but also act as a protection against them. We each have a natural and strong resistance to recognizing such a figure in our own psyches, but the old adage is true: It takes one to know one, and such knowledge is our best defense against its destructiveness.

The psychopath as an individual has been called by many names since the syndrome was first identified more than 200 years ago, each new appellation reflecting the attitude of the culture toward it. But following Manfred Bleuler's and then Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig's work on the psychopathic personality, the argument for understanding the psychopath as congenital and incurable seems as convincing as when it was put forward decades ago.

But now the characteristics of the psychopathic attitude are visible everywhere in collective American culture, even epidemic: in politics, commerce, technology, and in psychology itself. Eros is conspicuous by his absence in more and more areas of public life and discourse.

The future of our species is endangered by a psychopathic lack of reflection on the ways in which psychopathic institutions and technologies work insidiously to erode our capacity for Eros and thus our capacity for relatedness, deep emotion, and human love.     

Memory for the Experience of Donating Blood: Just How Bad Was It?

A field experiment investigated the accuracy of blood donor's memory for the emotions they experienced during blood donation. Compared to what they reported at the time of donation, the donors remembered a greater contrast between predonation and postdonation emotions. The donors also remembered experiencing more anxiety than they actually did. The bias in memory was especially pronounced among relatively inexperienced donors who had not been asked to report on their emotion prior to their actual donations. The memory boas was also related to donors' attitudes at the time of recall. Donors' intentions to donate blood again were reliably predicted by a combination of attitude and emotion measures. Discussion considers a potential intervention for improving donor return rates.     

Spirituality in Counseling: What Do Counseling Students Think About It?

The author discusses students' reactions to 4 seminars. 1‐hour each, on the topic of spirituality in counseling. Students were enrolled in a master's‐level counseling program, Several issues emerged that have implications for the training of counselors on spiritual issues, including students' level of comfort with discussing spiritual issues, the difficulty of defining spirituality, client and counselor readiness to explore spirituality, and training issues in the area of spirituality.     

Wanting It Both Ways: Do Women Approve of Benevolent Sexism?

An oft-expressed criticism of feminism is thatwomen want it both ways, opposing whatGlick and Fiske (1996) have called hostilesexism, but accepting or approving ofbenevolent sexism. To examine this issue, anethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of onehundred female undergraduate volunteers rated profilesof a hostile sexist, a benevolent sexist and anon-sexist. For the benevolent sexist, ratings were mildlyfavorable, while for the hostile sexist, ratings werehighly unfavorable. Forty-four participants (a categoryreferred to as equivocal egalitarians) approved of the benevolent sexist while disapproving ofthe hostile sexist. Equivocal egalitarianism waspositively related to participants' Attitudes AboutReality (Unger, Draper, & Pendergrass, 1986) andnegatively related to their belief that hostile andbenevolent sexism could coexist. Overall, participantsconsidered it unlikelythat the hostile and benevolentsexist profiles described the same person. Givenprevious findings, these data suggest that women mayunderestimate the coexistence of hostile and benevolentsexism in men (Glick & Fiske, 1996).     

Will They Do It Again? Predicting Sex-Offense Recidivism

This article reviews the empirical research on the prediction of reoffending among sexual offenders. The major predictors of sexual-offense recidivism are factors related to sexual deviance (e.g., deviant sexual preferences, previous sex crimes) and, to a lesser extent, criminal lifestyle (e.g., antisocial personality disorder, total number of prior offenses). The factors that predict general recidivism among sex offenders are the same as the factors that predict general recidivism among nonsexual criminals (e.g., juvenile delinquency, prior violent offenses). Given that there are special predictors of sexual recidivism, evaluators should consider separately the risk for sexual and nonsexual recidivism.     

“Just Do It? An Examination of Race on Attitudes Associated with Nike’s Advertisement Featuring Colin Kaepernick”

ABSTRACT

The relationship between race and just about any social issue has been and continues to be controversial. Within the context of literature on public opinion regarding sports and social movements, this study considers the intersections between race, business, and athlete activism by examining attitudes related to Nike’s controversial advertisement campaign with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Results obtained from a sample of young adults reveals a deep racial divide between black and non-black respondents. At almost a ratio of 2:1, blacks were more likely to agree with Nike’s decision to use the former player in their advertisement, that Nike should address social issues in their ads, and that Nike should contribute to his charity. These race differences remain in models that control for a variety of other correlates, including political orientation, income, discrimination, player protests, and whether they watch the NFL.     

Father Christmas: Just a story?

The present paper aims to discuss parental and professionals' views toward the Father Christmas story--who also known as Santa Claus (in America and many other countries), Saint Nicholas (in the Netherlands), Saint Basil the Great (in Greece)--and to explore the potential of the story for young children's spiritual growth. Stories are often told because of their entertaining nature, however, their value goes beyond entertainment. Stories allow individuals to express an emotion in a satisfying way, to harmonise their lives with reality and to come to terms with the world. Stories are often told to offer some explanation for existing phenomena or customs. The discussion in this paper is based on the findings of a study undertaken among parents of young children (phase one) and Early Years professionals (phase two) to investigate their attitudes and practices toward the Father Christmas story. The research findings have shown that parents tend to agree that the Father Christmas story conveys values with some kind of universal acceptance such as generosity, kindness and caring. Additionally parents themselves use the story to transmit social and personal values and to facilitate their children's ability to make sense of the self and the world. These elements and children's experience of excitement and the sense of magic, wonder and awe which the Father Christmas story generates were seen by parents as being extremely important. Early Years professionals acknowledge similar issues, but not so strongly as parents. Early Years professionals tend to place the Father Christmas story below curricular demands and in consequence show ambivalence about the place of the Father Christmas story in educational settings. The values of generosity, kindness and caring were more likely to be associated with the religious celebration of Christmas by Early Years professionals than with the Father Christmas story. These findings will be discussed in relation to their implications for practice in Early Years education settings.