Childhood dental fear in relation to parental child-rearing attitudes

The aim of this study was to assess the relation between parental self-reported child-rearing attitudes and dental fear in children. The parents of 51 children with high dental fear and of 56 children with low dental fear, of different age groups, completed the Amsterdam version of the Parental Attitude Research Instrument. In addition, parents were asked to rate their own dental fear. Multivariate analysis of variance (child fear x parental fear x child age) showed a significant main effect only of child dental fear on parental self-complaints (p = .03). For parental dental fear, main effects were found on overprotection and on promotion of autonomy (p < or = .01). No age effects were found. Also, no relation between children's dental fear and parental dental fear was found. Based on the present findings, it was concluded that parents may play a more secondary, mediating role in the etiological process of dental fear in children.     

Demographic, criminal, and psychiatric factors related to inmate suicide

A review of 19 studies suggests that it may be feasible to identify prisoners with suicide risk on the basis of demographic, psychiatric, and criminal characteristics. The present study aimed to identify combinations of characteristics that are capable of identifying potential suicide victims. Characteristics of 95 suicide victims in the Dutch prison system were compared with those of a random sample of 247 inmates in ten jails. Combinations of indicators for suicide risk were also tested for their capability of identifying 209 suicides in U.S. jails and 279 prison suicides in England and Wales. A combination of six characteristics (age 40+, homelessness, history of psychiatric care, history of drug abuse, one prior incarceration, violent offence) was capable of correctly classifying 82% of the Dutch suicide victims (82% specificity). Less powerful combinations correctly classified 53% of the U.S. suicides and 47% of the U.K. suicides. It is concluded that a set of demographic and criminal characteristics and indicators of psychiatric problems is useful for the identification of suicide risk in jails and prisons.     

Presentation and validation of the Radboud Faces Database

Many research fields concerned with the processing of information contained in human faces would benefit from face stimulus sets in which specific facial characteristics are systematically varied while other important picture characteristics are kept constant. Specifically, a face database in which displayed expressions, gaze direction, and head orientation are parametrically varied in a complete factorial design would be highly useful in many research domains. Furthermore, these stimuli should be standardised in several important, technical aspects. The present article presents the freely available Radboud Faces Database offering such a stimulus set, containing both Caucasian adult and children images. This face database is described both procedurally and in terms of content, and a validation study concerning its most important characteristics is presented. In the validation study, all frontal images were rated with respect to the shown facial expression, intensity of expression, clarity of expression, genuineness of expression, attractiveness, and valence. The results show very high recognition of the intended facial expressions.     

The resentful sucker: Do rewards ease the pain?

In a cross-sectional field study we found, as predicted, that performance differences between members of semi-autonomous teams were associated with feelings of unfairness. On the basis of equity theory we hypothesized that the relationship between performance differences and unfairness feelings would be moderated for suckers, i.e., team members with relatively high performances, who feel highly rewarded for their efforts, either with high financial rewards, with high task rewards, or with high social rewards. The results showed that financial rewards had no moderating effects, but high social rewards and low task rewards moderated feelings of unfairness for suckers.     

Expertise-related differences in conceptual and ontological knowledge in the legal domain

Little research has been conducted on expertise-related differences in conceptual and ontological knowledge in law, even though this type of knowledge is prerequisite for correctly interpreting and reasoning about legal cases, and differences in conceptual and ontological knowledge structures between students and between students and teachers, might lead to miscommunication. This study investigated the extent and organisation of conceptual and ontological knowledge of novices, advanced students, and experts in law, using a card-sorting task and a concept-elaboration task. The results showed that novices used more everyday examples and were less accurate in their elaborations of concepts than advanced students and experts, on top of that, the organisation of their knowledge did not overlap within their group (i.e., no “shared” ontology). Experts gave more judicial examples based on the lawbook and were more accurate in their elaborations than advanced students, and their knowledge was strongly overlapping within their group (i.e., strong ontology). Incorrect conceptual knowledge seems to impede the correct understanding of cases and the correct application of precise and formal rules in law.     

Humour in advertising: An associative processing model

This chapter reviews a research programme on the effects of humour in advertising on positive and negative brand associations and brand choice, and integrates the findings into a single overarching model. Based on the Associative and Propositional Processes Model of Evaluation (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006, 2007, 2011), we propose that repeated pairings of a novel brand with brand-unrelated humour forms positive brand associations, which mediate spontaneous brand choice. This associative process was found to be independent from the level of distraction posed by humour and from awareness of the stimulus pairings. In fact the distraction posed by humour benefits persuasion by preventing negative brand associations. Previous marketing research, which mainly viewed humour as a cue in peripheral processing, was rather pessimistic about the persuasive impact of humour. In contrast, this research programme suggests that a repeated pairing of a brand with humour affects the brand’s underlying associative structure, which may lead to stable attitude changes that guide overt spontaneous brand choice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.