Young,unassimilated hispanic offenders: Absolutist vs. relativist cultural assumptions

California State Law §288(a) defines any sexual contact between a person 18 or older with someone under the age of 14 as illegal and punishable by incarceration. Data from the State Department of Justice shows that Young, Unassimilated Hispanic Offenders (YUHO) are arrested for these crimes at rates disproportionately greater than their numbers in the population. Through a review of the pertinent literature and clinical archives, we argue that YUHOs have been acculturated into a sexual morality that violates legally codified American sexual standards. While their sexual behavior is deemed morally deviant and illegal in the United States, this same behavior is not considered morally deviant or illegal within their internalized, home culture. This contrasts with the typical §288(a) offender who is motivated by a sexual perversion. Should the criminal justice system regard YUHOs differently from typical §288(a) offenders? “relativists” suggest that cultural considerations should be taken in the adjudication of these cases. Our preliminary work is to inform and articulate this debate at the crossroads of psychology, anthropology and criminal justice, without advocating either of the above perspectives. We suggest that legislatures did not anticipate the population of YUHO sexual offenders when these laws were written, and argue that YUHOs differ significantly from the typical pedophile for which these statutes were intended.     

The Effect of Victims' Social Support on Attributions of Blame in Female and Male Rape

The effects of perceived social support of the victim, victim gender, and participant gender on attributions of blame in rape were examined. The impact of attitudes toward gender roles was also investigated for their mediational role between participant gender and blame. Participants ( N= 121) read a report of an incident of rape and evaluated the victim and the perpetrator. Two ANOVAs showed that social support and participant gender influenced blame attributed to the victim, while victim gender influenced blame attributed to the perpetrator. Socially supported victims were blamed less than were unsupported victims. Men were more blaming of rape victims than were women, but further analyses showed this was mediated by attitudes toward gender roles. Men held significantly more traditional attitudes toward gender roles than did women, and this accounted for the effect of participant gender on victim perceptions. The perpetrator of male rape was blamed less than the perpetrator of female rape. Findings are discussed in terms of the differential attributional mechanisms that may underpin men's and women's reasoning about different types of rape.     

Reform of statistical inference in psychology: the case of memory & cognition.

Geoffrey Loftus, Editor of Memory & Cognition from 1994 to 1997, strongly encouraged presentation of figures with error bars and avoidance of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). The authors examined 696 Memory & Cognition articles published before, during, and after the Loftus editorship. Use of figures with bars increased to 47% under Loftus's editorship and then declined. Bars were rarely used for interpretation, and NHST remained almost universal. Analysis of 309 articles in other psychology journals confirmed that Loftus's influence was most evident in the articles he accepted for publication, but was otherwise limited. An e-mail survey of authors of papers accepted by Loftus revealed some support for his policy, but allegiance to traditional practices as well. Reform of psychologists' statistical practices would require more than editorial encouragement.     

Exploring the Public Understanding of Basic Genetic Concepts

It is predicted that the rapid acquisition of new genetic knowledge and related applications during the next decade will have significant implications for virtually all members of society. Currently, most people get exposed to information about genes and genetics only through stories publicized in the media. We sought to understand how individuals in the general population used and understood the concepts of “genetics” and “genes.” During in-depth one-on-one telephone interviews with adults in the United States, we asked questions exploring their basic understanding of these terms, as well as their belief as to the location of genes in the human body. A wide range of responses was received. Despite conversational familiarity with genetic terminology, many noted frustration or were hesitant when trying to answer these questions. In addition, some responses reflected a lack of understanding about basic genetic science that may have significant implications for broader public education measures in genetic literacy, genetic counseling, public health practices, and even routine health care.     

Making sense of male rape: constructions of gender,sexuality and experience of rape victims

This study reports a preliminary investigation into accounting practices for male rape in conversation. Thirty men and women, in dyads, were asked to discuss an incident of male rape presented to them in a vignette. The findings showed that two main issues were discussed: the experience of the rape act and societal responses to male victims. In addition, participants established a ‘hierarchy of suffering’, where rape was judged to be worse for ‘heterosexual’ men than it is for ‘women’ or ‘gay’ men. Hegemonic, phallocentric representations of heterosexuality were mobilized to argue that acts of rape and consensual intercourse are the same for ‘gay’ men and ‘women’ and therefore less traumatic than for ‘heterosexual’ men. This obscures the violence of rape for gay men and women and exonerates perpetrators by minimizing injury sustained. Participants also argued that heterosexual victims are likely to experience ridicule for having departed from hegemonic masculinity. Arguments were constructed to avoid charges of being dismissive towards women and gay men and of victim blaming in relation to heterosexual men. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Writing the Pentecostal history of Africa,Asia and Latin America

This article examines the writing of Pentecostal history and in particular, the biases and presuppositions associated with it. The problem of sources and the neglect of the important role of indigenous (‘native’) workers in the historiography of Pentecostalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America is the main focus. It refutes the idea of an American ‘Jerusalem’ and urges a rewriting of this history from the perspective of those who ‘received’ the Pentecostal missionaries from the West.     

Survival on the margins: Summary of a research project on undocumented migrants in Munich

The paper summarizes results of a research project commissioned by the City of Munich into the social problems of undocumented migrants. The accommodation situation, health problems, women as a vulnerable group, employment and the economic dimension of the undocumented as a “silent reserve” are principal topics addressed by the article. Analytical hypotheses on the findings are followed by concluding remarks on reconmendations to the local authority in order to address the social and human rights concerns raised by the precarious existential conditions faced by the sans papiers.     

Value-driven attentional and oculomotor capture during goal-directed, unconstrained viewing

Covert shifts of attention precede and direct overt eye movements to stimuli that are task relevant or physically salient. A growing body of evidence suggests that the learned value of perceptual stimuli strongly influences their attentional priority. For example, previously rewarded but otherwise irrelevant and inconspicuous stimuli capture covert attention involuntarily. It is unknown, however, whether stimuli also draw eye movements involuntarily as a consequence of their reward history. Here, we show that previously rewarded but currently task-irrelevant stimuli capture both attention and the eyes. Value-driven oculomotor capture was observed during unconstrained viewing, when neither eye movements nor fixations were required, and was strongly related to individual differences in visual working memory capacity. The appearance of a reward-associated stimulus came to evoke pupil dilation over the course of training, which provides physiological evidence that the stimuli that elicit value-driven capture come to serve as reward-predictive cues. These findings reveal a close coupling of value-driven attentional capture and eye movements that has broad implications for theories of attention and reward learning.     

Intentional suppression of unwanted memories grows more difficult as we age

People often encounter reminders to memories that they would prefer not to think about. When this happens, they often try to exclude the unwanted memory from awareness, a process that relies upon inhibitory control. We propose that the ability to regulate awareness of unwanted memories through inhibition declines with advancing age. In two experiments, we examined younger and older adults' ability to intentionally suppress retrieval when repeatedly confronted with reminders to an experience they were instructed to not think about. Older adults exhibited significantly less forgetting of the suppressed items compared to younger adults on a later independent probe test of recall, indicating that older adults failed to inhibit the to-be-avoided memories. These findings demonstrate that the ability to intentionally regulate conscious awareness of unwanted memories through inhibitory control declines with age, highlighting differences in memory control that may be of clinical relevance in the aftermath of unpleasant life events.