Peer socialization of masculinity and femininity: Differential effects of overt and relational forms of peer victimization

Although peer influence has been implicated in recent theories of gender socialization, few investigations have tested whether children's gendered behaviours change over time as a function of peer experiences and whether some peer experiences may exacerbate, rather than dampen, gender non‐conformity. Accordingly, the current study examined prospective links between specific forms of peer victimization and children's adherence to traditional gender roles. Peer reports of victimization and self‐reports of engagement in stereotypically masculine and feminine activities were collected from 199 children (104 girls; 95 boys) in the Fall and Spring of their fifth‐grade year. Multi‐group path analysis was used to explore the relations between forms of victimization and masculinity and femininity for girls and boys. For girls, peer victimization predicted withdrawal from both feminine and masculine behaviours. For boys, physical, verbal, and general victimization predicted lower levels of feminine behaviours, but social exclusion forecast heightened engagement in traditionally feminine activities. These findings underscore how social experiences can amplify, as well as reduce, gender non‐conformity.     

A relational model of workplace victimization: social roles and patterns of victimization in dyadic relationships

This article proposes a model of the ways in which dyadic interactions between employees who occupy 1 of 4 archetypal social roles in organizations can lead to either episodic or institutionalized patterns of victimization. The model shows how the occurrence of victimization involving these 4 role types is influenced by organizational variables such as power differences, culture, and access to social capital. The model integrates behavioral and social structural antecedents of victimization to develop a relational perspective on the dynamics of harmful behavior in the workplace.     

Society matters: The mediational role of social recognition in the relationship between victimization and life satisfaction among gay men

This article examines the role of social recognition in the relationship between gay men's victimization and their life satisfaction. Using a comprehensive catalog of victimization, we obtained empirical evidence that strongly suggests that victimization negatively affects gay men's life satisfaction and that this relationship is mainly mediated by a perceived lack of social recognition in society. In addition, although active involvement in the gay community served as a coping mechanism, concealment of one's sexual identity played no role in the victimization–life satisfaction relationship, neither as a coping mechanism nor as a competing mediator. The mediational role of societal recognition underlines the importance of the symbolic meaning of victimization. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trauma event autobiographies: An exploratory multiple case study

This multiple case study explored trauma event memories of three individuals to characterise underlying meanings important for their recovery. The three participants were women in the age range of 43 to 54 years old, who shared their own memories of a trauma-laden event four to five years post-occurrence. Thematic analysis of the autobiographical narratives indicated underlying memories across cases of silence imposed on trauma victims by their social environments and communities. Differences in trauma autobiographical memories were in meaning making within the context of the participants’ own culture, society, and community. Autobiographical memory studies appear to have value for understanding likely pathways to recovery from trauma     

The two‐sided nature of individual and intragroup experiences in the aftermath of collective victimization: Findings from four diaspora groups

Most social psychological research on collective victimhood has examined its consequences for intergroup relations. Less attention has been paid to individual and intragroup processes associated with collective victimization, which the present study aimed to examine. We conducted eight focus group interviews among four diaspora communities (Armenian Americans, Burundian refugees, Jewish Americans, Nepali‐speaking Bhutanese refugees) with historical or more recent experiences of collective victimization. Thematic analysis revealed three major foci shared across communities (but with different emphases within each focus), which included juxtaposed themes that highlight the two‐sided nature of experiencing and coping with collective victimization and its aftermath: Vulnerability and struggle versus resilience and strength, loss versus continuity and renewal, and silence about versus transmission of knowledge about ingroup victimization. These findings illustrate how groups integrate seemingly opposite poles of collective victimization that characterize this complex and multifaceted experience, which has important theoretical implications.     

Looking forward and back: Sexual victimization prevention

The field of sexual victimization prevention has been greatly shaped by societal movements of the past forty years. The social forces that have driven the study of sexual victimization have led to major research gaps which may be viewed as opportunities for new focuses. This paper will: (1) review these social movements in light of the opportunities that have arisen, (2) re-evaluate the information that has been collected in light of the research purpose, preventing harm to potential victims through providing tailored prevention messages, victim sensitive avenues of reporting, and individualized intervention tactics based on personality characteristics, and (3) provide a framework with which to conceptualize normative personality in relation to the process of victimization-related trauma. Although research has provided many insights into the basic principles of prevention, much remains to be explored.     

“They Dumped Me Like Trash”: The Social and Psychological Toll of Victimization on Latino Day Laborers' Lives

Although recent rhetoric links undocumented immigrants to criminality, reports indicate undocumented immigrants commit less crime than their native-born counterparts and that this vulnerable group may be at increased risk for criminal victimization. Immigrants living in new immigrant settlement cities may be particularly at risk for exposure to criminal victimization due to the vulnerabilities associated with a lack of an established Latino community and limited availability of culturally appropriate social services to provide support. This ethnographic study examines the experiences of victimization and its social and psychological toll of a street-recruited sample of Latino day laborers (LDLs) (N = 25) living and working in Baltimore, a new immigrant settlement city. Findings elucidate and describe the specific types of victimization experienced by LDLs, including workplace victimization (wage theft, abandonment at the jobsite, poor working conditions, verbal abuse) and street-level victimization (assault and robbery), as well as reveal the social and psychological toll of victimization (sociocultural alienation, despair or desesperación, and problem drinking) on their lives. Findings have implications for community psychology, through research and practice, as they provide insights for prevention and intervention within the intersection of structural vulnerability (i.e., undocumented immigration status), violence, and mental health.     

Violent Victimization Vulnerability: Testing a Conceptual Model of Personality,Social, and Community Factors

The current study extends theories of crime to explain victimization by examining the direct effects of personality factors (low self-control), social factors (social bonds), and community factors (collective efficacy) on violent victimization. Next, we examine the effects of these theories indirectly through risky lifestyles to impact violent victimization. The proposed conceptual model is tested among a large national sample of youth (ages 12–16) from three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data (Add Health). Self-control, social bonds, and collective efficacy impact violent victimization indirectly through their effects on risky lifestyles, including unstructured peer socialization, peer marijuana use, respondents’ own marijuana use, and violence. The proposed conceptual model was generally supported and future directions for research to test and enhance this conceptual model are considered     

Exposure to community violence in adolescence: trauma symptoms

This research explored the relationship between exposure to violence and psychological stress among adolescents. It focused on the cumulative experience of recurring community violence during the high school years, differentiated victimization from witnessing violence, and examined four conceptually separate psychological symptoms of trauma (anger, anxiety, depression, and dissociation). Considerable exposure to recurring community violence, but also considerable variation in the amount of exposure, was found in the sample of 455 first-year students at an urban college. Exposure to recurring community violence was moderately correlated with the manifestation of psychological trauma symptoms. Further, being victimized and witnessing violence had independent (as well as overlapping) relationships with trauma symptoms. It was concluded that attempts to account for psychological stress among adolescents must include exposure to community violence.     

Teacher–child relationship,child withdrawal and aggression in the development of peer victimization

The study examined pre-kindergarten teacher–child relationship as a predictor of peer victimization up to first grade, assessed whether this role moderated risks from children's social withdrawal and/or aggression. Participants were 377 Australian children from 12 schools. Parent ratings of victimization in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade were used, as well as prekindergarten self-ratings of parenting. Teacher-ratings of conflict and closeness, child aggression and social withdrawal were collected in pre-kindergarten. Two-part growth curve analyses conjointly modeled the likelihood of being victimized and severity of victimization. Teacher–child conflict in prekindergarten predicted the likelihood of concurrent and first grade victimization; closeness in prekindergarten was protective of more severe victimization over time. Conflict also moderated the relationship between social withdrawal and growth in severity of victimization. Discussion focuses on elucidating the ‘invisible hand’ of the teacher in peer dynamics, and on interventions for reducing conflict and promoting closeness in the classroom.     

Specificity of peer difficulties to social anxiety in early adolescence: categorical and dimensional analyses with clinical and community samples

Background and Objectives: We investigated the specificity of social difficulties to social anxiety by testing associations of social anxiety and other anxiety presentations with peer acceptance and victimization in community and treatment-seeking samples of adolescents aged 12–14 years.

Design: Cross-sectional, quantitative survey.

Methods: Adolescents from the community (n?=?116) and a clinical setting (n?=?154) completed ratings of anxiety symptoms, perceived social acceptance, and peer victimization. Their parents also completed ratings of the adolescents’ anxiety and social acceptance.

Results: Social acceptance was lowest among adolescents with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and lower among adolescents with other anxiety disorders than in the community sample. Anxiety symptoms were negatively correlated with social acceptance, but these associations were not unique to social anxiety symptoms. Girls in the community sample reported more overt victimization than girls with SAD and with other anxiety diagnoses. Relational victimization was associated with social and nonsocial anxiety symptoms only in the community sample.

Conclusions: Our findings supplement recent laboratory-based observational studies on social functioning among adolescents with SAD and other anxiety disorders. Although social anxiety may be associated with unique social skill deficits and impairment, concerns about peer relations should also be considered among adolescents with other anxiety symptoms.     

Prior interpersonal trauma: the contribution to current PTSD symptoms in female rape victims

The purpose of the current study was to disentangle the relationship of childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical abuse from prior adult sexual and physical victimization in predicting current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in recent rape victims. The participants were a community sample of 117 adult rape victims assessed within 1 month of a recent index rape for a history of child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, other adult sexual and physical victimization, and current PTSD symptoms. Results from path analyses showed that a history of child sexual abuse seems to increase vulnerability for adult sexual and physical victimization and appears to contribute to current PTSD symptoms within the cumulative context of other adult trauma.     

The Educational Community as In-tentional Community

This paper reassesses a perennial concern of philosophy of education: the nature of the educational community and the role of the teacher in relation to such a community. As an entry point into this broader question, we turn to Philosophy for children (P4C), which has consistently emphasized the importance of community. Yet, not unlike pragmatist notions of community more broadly, the P4C community has largely focused on the goal-directed, purposive, aspect of the process of inquiry. The purpose of our paper is to move beyond P4C (as it has traditionally been conceived) in order to theorize a non-instrumental, in-tentional, educational community without pre-conceived goals or intentions. Drawing largely from the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, we describe the P4C-classroom as one that refuses to be operative (moving forward toward reaching common goals) and thus undermines the taken-for-granted logic of means and ends that underlies how educational communities are typically depicted and justified. Again drawing from Agamben, we identify the specific ways in which the experience of love and friendship (both of which are pure means rather than means to an end) constitute the in-tentional community. The silence of the voice of the teacher enables the experience of love and friendship to come about. Being included as an exclusion via his/her silence, the teacher is neither immanent (facilitator of student learning) nor transcendent (outside or beyond learning) but alongside the community as a paradigm of friendship.     

Putting the onus on authority: A review of obedient behavior and why we should move on

The obedience to authority domain arose in psychological research between the 1950s–1960s as a combination of interest in obedience, conformity, and compliance that expanded after Milgram's shock experiments. Each of these components compared different forms of submissive behavior as a response to authority and social pressure, but over the past fifty years the domain has merged these three components and become more centered around the shock of submissive behavior than the authority that causes it. As a result, many modern investigations use inconsistent understandings of these constructs and often leave out manipulation of the second half of the paradigm – authority. If we reintroduce the distinctions for each form of submissive behavior, we can notice patterns of how each is related to differences in authority and the systemic benefits of studying the nuances of authoritative systems. Understanding the impact of power dynamics on submissive behavior and what truly separates obedience from conformity and compliance not only allows for a more dualistic approach to this discipline, but allows the authority domain to provide insight into other domains such as education, workplace behavior, and conformity to mass media.     

In God’s House

Abstract

By naming the ways silence and taboo structure the documentary, In God’s House, the article traces the ways personal narratives are deployed as: (1) a cultural practice to consolidate an “Asian” ethnicity; and as (2) a pedagogical strategy to address the silence of sexual discourse—particularly around LGBTQ issues—in Asian American contexts. As cultural practices, silence and taboo undergird the framework of community—protecting individual honor, securing public face and fortifying webs of relationships that sustain individual and social flourishing. More than a façade for the “inscrutable Asian,” silence illuminates a practice of communal relationality that reconfigures “American” significations of community, sexuality, race and identity.     

“Victims” Versus “Righteous Victims”: The Rhetorical Construction of Social Categories in Historical Dialogue Among Israeli and Palestinian Youth

Informed by social identity theory and a rhetorical approach to the study of social category construction in social interaction, this study analyzed the nature and function of participant utterances in two conditions of intergroup dialogue about history between Israelis and Palestinians. Across conditions that sought to either emphasize recategorization into a common in‐group identity or subcategorization into mutually differentiated identities, Palestinian and Arab Israeli utterances primarily reflected the theme of victimization, while Jewish Israeli utterances primarily reflected themes of justification and victimization. The way in which these utterances produced social competition for victim and perpetrator roles and reproduced master historical narratives of Palestinian victimization versus Jewish Israeli “righteous” victimization is illustrated. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of narrative and rhetoric about social categories in settings of intractable political conflict, and implications for dialogue‐based intervention about history are addressed.     

The impact of high school on social development

In reviewing the literature on the social impact of high school, six themes were identified: (1) students perceive strong norms for conformity to school rules, (2) the emphasis on conformity and control influences the quality of student/teacher relations which tend to be role bound and inflexible, (3) paths to social status continue to emphasize athletic competence, (4) peer group identification has an impact on social relations within the larger community as well as in the school setting, (5) powerlessness is felt as a result of the authoritarian approach to decision making, and (6) the overall high school environment does not enhance students' beliefs in the Bill of Rights. It was concluded that high school students have limited opportunities for flexible self-definition. As a result of the way they are treated by authority figures and the strong pressures toward conformity, many adolescents fail to learn the extent of their rights or effective strategies for the exercise of power.     

Violent Victimization in the Community and Children’s Subsequent Peer Rejection: The Mediating Role of Emotion Dysregulation

This paper describes a short-term longitudinal study of the relation between violent victimization in the community and peer rejection among 199 children (mean age = 9.02 years) attending two urban Los Angeles area elementary schools. We used a multi-informant approach to assess victimization by community violence, peer group victimization, peer rejection, and impairments in emotion regulation. These data were collected annually for two consecutive school years. Violent victimization in the community predicted later peer rejection after accounting for the effects of initial levels of peer rejection. Analyses indicated that this relation was mediated by deficient emotion regulation skills. In addition, we found evidence that victimization by community violence and peer rejection are reciprocally related over time. The developmental implications of these findings are discussed.