Asymmetrical scepticism towards criminal evidence: The role of goal‐ and belief‐consistency

Previous demonstrations of asymmetrical scepticism (i.e., that investigators perceive evidence inconsistent [vs. consistent] with the focal hypothesis of a case as less reliable) have failed to account for the underlying mechanism. This study examined whether inconsistent evidence is discredited due to its inconsistency with a prior belief or because it conflicts with the goal to reach closure in a case. Police trainees (N = 107) were presented with a homicide case and judged the reliability of incriminating or exonerating evidence while entertaining a ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ hypothesis concerning a suspect. Asymmetrical scepticism was observed in the guilty condition, but not in the innocent condition, partially supporting the goal‐consistency explanation. Implications for the organization of criminal investigations are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trait emotional intelligence influences on academic achievement and school behaviour

Background. Trait emotional intelligence (trait EI or trait emotional self‐efficacy) refers to individuals’ emotion‐related self‐perceptions ( Petrides, Furnham, & Mavroveli, 2007 ). The children's trait EI sampling domain provides comprehensive coverage of their affective personality. Preliminary evidence shows that the construct has important implications for children's psychological and behavioural adjustment. Aims. This study investigates the associations between trait EI and school outcomes, such as performance in reading, writing, and maths, peer‐rated behaviour and social competence, and self‐reported bullying behaviours in a sample of primary school children. It also examines whether trait EI scores differentiate between children with and without special educational needs (SEN). Sample. The sample comprised 565 children (274 boys and 286 girls) between the ages of 7 and 12 (M_(age)= 9.12 years, SD= 1.27 years) attending three English state primary schools. Method. Pupils completed the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire‐Child Form (TEIQue‐CF), the Guess Who peer assessment, the Peer‐Victimization Scale, and the Bullying Behaviour Scale. Additional data on achievement and SEN were collected from the school archives. Results. As predicted by trait EI theory, associations between trait EI and academic achievement were modest and limited to Year 3 children. Higher trait EI scores were related to more nominations from peers for prosocial behaviours and fewer nominations for antisocial behaviour as well as lower scores on self‐reported bulling behaviours. Furthermore, SEN students scored lower on trait EI compared to students without SEN. Conclusions. Trait EI holds important and multifaceted implications for the socialization of primary schoolchildren.     

Sexual orientation and spatial memory

The present study aimed at determining the influence of sexual orientation in human spatial learning and memory. Participants performed the Boxes Room, a virtual reality version of the Holeboard. In Experiment I, a reference memory task, the position of the hidden rewards remained constant during the whole experiment. In Experiment II, a working memory task, the position of rewards changed between blocks. Each block consisted of two trials: One trial for acquisition and another for retrieval. The results of Experiment I showed that heterosexual men performed better than homosexual men and heterosexual women. They found the rewarded boxes faster. Moreover, homosexual participants committed more errors than heterosexuals. Experiment II showed that working memory abilities are the same in groups of different sexual orientation. These results suggest that sexual orientation is related to spatial navigation abilities, but mostly in men, and limited to reference memory, which depends more on the function of the hippocampal system.     

Consequences of job insecurity. The moderator role of organizational support from a multilevel perspective

Job insecurity is one of the main stressors for many employees. Hence, it is important to identify factors that can ameliorate its detrimental effects. In this respect, the present study examines the moderator role of organizational support, understood as a contextual factor in the relationship between job insecurity and its consequences. The sample comprised 859 employees from 42 Spanish organizations. Results showed that organizational support modulated the relationship between job insecurity and employees' reactions (i.e., job satisfaction, psychological health and intention to leave the organization). These results reveal the need to consider contextual factors such as organizational support in the study and intervention of job insecurity.     

Nearby nature as a moderator of stress during childhood

The aim of this investigation is to study the relation between the amount of nature existing in children's daily environments and the way children deal with stressful events. Every day, children are exposed to situations that cause stress. Taking into account previous studies, it is thought that the greener the place where children spend their time, the better they cope with adversities. Thus, when comparing the stress level of children who are exposed to the same amount of adverse situations, the children who have more frequent daily contact with nature will show less stress than those who do not spend time in nature. This effect from nearby nature is called a buffering effect. The present study provides empirical evidence of the buffering effect caused by the existence of Nature in the residential and the school environment. Therefore, our results show that children who have more access to nature increase their resilience, showing a lower stress level than children whose contact with nature is less frequent.     

Perception of suffering and compassion experience: brain gender disparities

Compassion is considered a moral emotion related to the perception of suffering in others, and resulting in a motivation to alleviate the afflicted party. We compared brain correlates of compassion-evoking images in women and men. BOLD functional images of 24 healthy volunteers (twelve women and twelve men; age=27±2.5 y.o.) were acquired in a 3T magnetic resonance scanner while subjects viewed pictures of human suffering previously verified to elicit compassion and indicated their compassionate experience by finger movements. Functional analysis revealed that while women manifested activation in areas involved in basic emotional, empathic, and moral processes, such as basal regions and cingulate and frontal cortices, activation in men was restricted mainly to the occipital cortex and parahippocampal gyrus. These findings suggest that compassion and its moral elements constitute gender-relative subjective phenomena emerging from differently evolved neural mechanisms and socially learned features possibly related to nurturing skills.     

Gender characteristics of cerebral hemodynamics during complex cognitive functioning

Functional Transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) has been applied to assess peak mean cerebral blood flow velocity (MFV) with a high temporal resolution during cognitive activation. Yet, little attention has been devoted to gender-related alterations of MFV, including spectral analysis. In healthy subjects, fTCD was used to investigate a series of cerebral hemodynamic parameters in the middle cerebral arteries (MCA) during the Trail Making Tests (TMT), a means of selective attention and complex cognitive functioning. In females, there was a frequency peak at 0.375 Hz in both MCA, and we observed a dynamic shift in hemispheric dominance during that condition. Further, after the start phase, there was an MFV decline during complex functioning for the entire sample. These novel results suggest condition-specific features of cerebral hemodynamics in females, and it adds to the notion that gender is a fundamental confounder of brain physiology.     

Promoting Self‐Esteem in Adolescents: The Influence of Wellness Factors

To assess the extent to which holistic wellness factors are predictive of self‐esteem, the authors administered the Coopersmith Self‐Esteem Inventories, School Form (Coopersmith, 2002), and the Five Factor Wellness Inventory (Myers & Sweeney, 2005a) to 225 adolescents ages 15 to 17 years. Wellness factors (Coping Self, Social Self, and Creative Self) explained a significant portion of the variance in components of self‐esteem (General Self‐Esteem, Home‐Parents Self‐Esteem, and School‐Academic Self‐Esteem). Implications for counselors and for further research are considered.     

Advances in stalking risk assessment

Over the past 15 years, forensic mental health has become more concerned with the concepts of violence prevention, management, and treatment. The development of specialist tools to aid in the assessment of a range of risks reflects this concern. This article explores contemporary thinking on violence risk assessment and how this knowledge can be applied to the relatively newer field of stalking risk assessment. The role of risk state and risk status are discussed, in addition to the way that standard structured professional judgment procedures need to be adapted to reflect the variety of risks present in stalking situations. The authors go on to describe the development and format of the Stalking Risk Profile, a set of structured professional judgment guidelines for assessing risk in stalkers. Suggestions are made for future research to enhance knowledge and improve practice in the field of stalking risk assessment.     

The survey of personal beliefs: comparison of south african, mexican and american samples

In order to investigate the cross-cultural reliability and independence of subscales of the Survey of Personal Beliefs (SPB) data from 751 undergraduate Psychology students (189 White South African students, 114 Black South African students, 262 Mexican students and 186 American students) were compared. Coefficient alphas for the subscales in all samples were low, ranging from .33 to .76. However, alphas for the total scale across all subgroups were high. A comparison of the rank ordering of alpha coefficients for subscales in the different samples partially supported the cross-cultural reliability of the SPB for White South African and Mexican students, and for Black South African and American students. The similarities across samples regarding intercorrelations and shared variance between subscales also provided some evidence for the possible cross-cultural independence of subscales of the SPB. Comparison of total and mean subscale scores showed no significant differences between males and females within samples. However, a significant effect for culture, with significant between-subject effects for all the subscales as well as for the total score, was found. This may be indicative of real differences in irrational belief styles between the groups or may be a result of the insufficient cross-cultural reliability of the SPB.