Individual aggression and a violent society

The first was [a woman], 32, waiting for a bus on San Francisco's Geary Boulevard at 7:57 one evening last week. A man stepped up to her, shot her twice fatally in the chest, and ran back to a waiting dark-colored Cadillac. Ten minutes later and eight blocks away ? a retired Coast Guardsman who had turned 69 that day was struck down by three bullets in the back and belly. At 9:15, near Market Street, octogenarian ? died instantly from two bullets in his back. Three miles south, at 9:50, [a woman], 45, was cut down as she stood in the doorway of a laundromat. And ten blocks away, at 10:10, [another woman], 23, the mother of a four-month-old boy, was climbing the stairs to her new house when a man walked up and said amiably, “Hi, howya doin'?” [She] turned to reply, and a bullet burrowed through her body to her spine, possibly paralyzing her for life. (“Crime: Nothing Personal,'Newsweek February 11, 1974.)     

Neighborhood violent crime and adolescent relationship aggression

Research has shown that neighborhoods play a role in the etiology of violence. However, few adolescent relationship aggression (ARA) studies have objective measures of violent neighborhoods. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of youth, this study examines the association between ARA and local levels of violent crime (measured using geocoded Uniform Crime Report data from each of the youths’ residential neighborhoods). Study analyses are based on survey data from 723 youth (ages 10–18) in current or recent dating relationships (351 males and 372 females) in the Survey on Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV), a national representative household panel survey exploring interpersonal violence and related aggression among adolescents. About 19% of the sample reported ARA victimization in their most recent dating relationship (ARA perpetration was 17%). Neighborhood violent crime in the study (males living in 86.9 and females 99.8) was slightly lower than the national average of 100. With a broad national sample, 40% non-Whites, hypotheses guided by theories of neighborhood influence were tested. The study did not find an association between neighborhood violent crime and ARA victimization and perpetration, controlling for key demographic factors. The results, for a broad range of high- and low-crime neighborhoods, suggest that neighborhood violence does not seem to affect individual rates of ARA. The results suggest the ARA victimization and perpetration are perhaps ubiquitous and found both in low and high violent crime neighborhoods, suggesting that addressing local violent crime rates alone does not seem to be a path to also reducing ARA.     

Moral judgments of the powerless and powerful in violent intergroup conflicts

The present research examined observers' moral judgments of groups in conflict. Study 1 found support for the prediction that actions are interpreted as more moral in the context of low power. People judged the violent actions of a fictitious group as more moral and justifiable when done by a smaller, less powerful country compared to a larger one. However, a second study found that violence may undermine the moral advantage accorded underdog groups. People reading about Israeli construction of settlements in Palestinian territories judged the Israeli actions to be more moral when Palestinians resisted violently compared to when they used non-violent resistance tactics. Together, these studies demonstrate how moral judgments of the actions of groups in conflict are influenced by contextual factors independent of the actions themselves.     

Fallacies in probability judgments for conjunctions and disjunctions of everyday events

The conjunction fallacy occurs when people judge a conjunction B‐and‐A as more probable than a constituent B, contrary to probability theory's ‘conjunction rule’ that a conjunction cannot be more probable than either constituent. Many studies have demonstrated this fallacy in people's reasoning about various experimental materials. Gigerenzer objects that from a ‘frequentist’ standpoint probability theory is not valid for these materials, and so failure to follow the conjunction rule is not a fallacy. This paper describes three experiments showing that the conjunction fallacy occurs as consistently for conjunctions where frequentist probability theory is valid (conjunctions of everyday weather events) as for other conjunctions. These experiments also demonstrate a reliable correlation between the occurrence of the conjunction fallacy and the disjunction fallacy (which arises when a disjunction B‐or‐A is judged less probable than a constituent B). This supports a probability theory + random variation account of probabilistic reasoning. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Action and emotion in everyday life

This study of naturally occurring behaviour employed a "beeper technique" to investigate the actions carried out by 152 subjects in eight different groups, viz. adult students, employed students who were also parents, unemployed, art students, doctoral students, alcoholics, retired people and a control group. Actions were sampled for seven subsequent days, five times per day between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. at randomly selected occasions. Each action was rated on a number of variables, shortly after it was sampled (median delay approximately 10 min). Some of the findings were: Time allocation corresponded well with national estimates. Being under situational control was highly aversive. Instrumental and consummatory orientations correlated positively. The background variables were, on the whole, only rather weakly related to action ratings, but it was found that women and retired persons tended to report a higher level of well-being.     

Inadvertent plagiarism in everyday life

Inadvertent plagiarism is a source monitoring error described in laboratory studies. In the present study, the existence of this phenomenon in everyday life and the impact of a variable considered in laboratory (i.e. source similarity) were investigated. Two hundred and two participants were asked to remember an episode involving inadvertent plagiarism in the past, and to describe it. Results showed that inadvertent plagiarism occurs in real life conditions with respect to various types of activities. Moreover, source similarity had an impact on inadvertent plagiarism. In particular, same‐sex plagiarism occurred more often than opposite‐sex plagiarism. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

在日常生活中悟道

近年来 ,教内外一些道士、居士隐居山水静地专心于打坐静养。无疑 ,静坐炼养是一种悟道养身的行为。许多宫观名胜古迹都是开放旅游场所 ,现代人生活节奏紧张 ,工作压力大 ,暇时静下心闭目打坐 ,为长时精神状态紧张的人们提供了一个休息松弛的好方式。本性迷 ,神即是众生 ;本性悟 ,众生即是神 ,静坐中最重要的目的 ,是在静坐中找回本性。而静坐的关键在于炼心 ,当心住性澄之际 ,便是觉悟之时 ,静坐的好处 ,主要是塞兑闭门。日常生活中所面对的功名、利禄、争强好胜 ,七情六欲等等 ,均一一在这静坐的过程中得以化解。心不动气自固 ,意不动神自…     

Subjective probability and everyday life

Abstract.— Recent research on probability judgement indicates that people's ability to estimate probabilities is very limited. It is argued that people may lack the cognitive apparatus necessary for processing probabilistic information, in so far as probability judgements play an unimportant role in everyday life. When probability judgements occasionally are made in everyday life it is argued that they are not based on frequency data but on some more or less well grounded theory.     

The effects of violent video games on aggression.

Violent content video games such as Mortal Kombat and Doom have become very popular among children and adolescents, causing great concern for parents, teachers, and policy makers. This study cumulates findings across existing empirical research on the effects of violent video games to estimate overall effect size and discern important trends and moderating variables. Results suggest there is a smaller effect of violent video games on aggression than has been found with television violence on aggression. This effect is positively associated with type of game violence and negatively related to time spent playing the games. Directions for future programmatic research on video games are outlined.     

Creativity and mental health in everyday life

Abstract

The connection between mental health and creativity has traditionally been studied in terms of outstanding aesthetic‐professional creativity and mental illness. More interesting however, is the possible connection between “everyday “ creativity and mental health. Everyday creativity involves attacking day to day activities in a divergent way: It derives from a complex of cognitive, affective, personal, motivational, and social factors, and is characterized by openness, flexibility, autonomy, playfulness, humor willingness to take risks, and perseverance. These characteristics are also consistently emphasized in models of “normal”; personality growth, so that the possibility of promoting mental health arises by fostering creativity in day to day life. Several small studies described in this article give examples of how this might be done and the kinds of benefits which can result.     

Behavioral activation and inhibition in everyday life

Joint effects of daily events and dispositional sensitivities to cues of reward and punishment on daily positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) were examined in 3 diary studies. Study 1 showed that positive events were strongly related to PA but not NA, whereas negative events were strongly related to NA but not PA. Studies 2 and 3 examined how the dispositional sensitivities of independent appetitive and aversive motivational systems, the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) and the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), moderated these relationships. Participants in Study 2 with higher BAS sensitivity reported more PA on average; those with more sensitive BIS reported more NA. Also, BIS moderated reactions to negative events, such that higher BIS sensitivity magnified reactions to negative events. Study 3 replicated these findings and showed that BAS predisposed people to experience more positive events. Results demonstrate the value of distinguishing within-person and between-person effects to clarify the functionally independent processes by which dispositional sensitivities influence affect.     

Self-awareness and aversive experience in everyday life

One hundred and seven adults reported their activities, thoughts, and feelings at randomly designated intervals over seven days, resulting in more than 4,800 self-reports. The present investigation focused on the relation of self-awareness and voluntariness to the quality of experience. Results indicated that perceived voluntariness is associated with positive experience, while self-awareness is associated with lower affect, activation, and personal involvement, but only when the activity is felt to be voluntary. This conditional association between self-awareness and aversive experience is discussed as it relates to current theory on self-awareness and recent models of human motivation.     

Substance use and violent behavior in adolescence

The relation between substance use and violent behavior in adolescence is reviewed, and each of five competing models of this relation is examined. I begin by presenting background material on adolescent substance use and adolescent violence. I then describe five different models that have been proposed to explain the association between substance use and violent behavior. Next, I review the adolescent literature concerning substance use and violence, noting methodological weaknesses that have plagued this research. I conclude with an evaluation of the five models and suggestions for future research.