Children Exposed to Community Violence: The Rationale for Early Intervention

Children are exposed to violence in their homes and communities at extraordinarily high rates. Given the alarming rates of exposure and its known impact on child developmental outcomes, crisis intervention geared at interrupting the negative effects of violence exposure are increasingly important. This review provides a rationale for the implementation of early and crisis intervention strategies for children exposed to community violence and recommends principles for applying these interventions. These principles are based on the body of research concerning risk and protective factors for children who have been exposed to violence. Relevant factors are reviewed and recommended principles are explicated that correlate to these factors. Issues concerning developmentally informed crisis intervention, support of parental executive functioning, and the need for active community partnership to help ameliorate risk factors are highlighted.     

A Different View of Anger: The Cognitive‐Neoassociation Conception of the Relation of Anger to Aggression

The common, everyday understanding of anger is problematic in a number of respects—in its inattention to the prototypic nature of this emotional state; in its failure to recognize the important role often played by the critical event's aversiveness; and in its neglect of the frequently close connection between anger arousal and aggression‐related motor impulses. This article discusses all of these matters from the point of view of my cognitive‐neoassociation perspective [Berkowitz, 1990, 1993, 2010; Berkowitz and Harmon‐Jones, 2004]. The role of automatic, nonconscious reactions is considered, and it is also emphasized that angry feelings are linked to approach motivation—movement toward the perceived source of the anger. The article also briefly summarizes relevant research dealing with the self‐regulation of anger reactions. This broad review hopefully will prompt further inquiries into the arousal, nature, and operation of anger. Aggr. Behav. 38:322‐333, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

On the consideration of automatic as well as controlled psychological processes in aggression

Without slighting the important role played by controlled psychological processes in human aggression, this paper recommends that considerable systematic attention should also be given to the operation of automatic processes in bringing about this behavior. The concepts of automaticity and impulsivity are discussed briefly and it is proposed that many impulsive actions, particularly antisocial ones, are due to failures of restraint after they were initiated involuntarily. A number of experiments are reviewed in which situational stimuli automatically instigated or heightened aggressive inclinations. These have to do with associations in hostility displacement, reactions to stigmatized persons, and association in aggressive reactions to media violence. The last-mentioned studies deal especially with factors affecting the selection of the target for aggression. In discussing these findings it is suggested that after the crucial situational features had automatically initiated the sequence of determinants, the aggression displayed could have been due either to a hostile appraisal of the target or the activation of aggression-related bodily reactions as well as hostile ideas. It is also hypothesized that in at least one of the studies, an experienced negative affect might have instigated the aggression independently of any appraisals.     

Building Collaborative Capacity in Community Coalitions: A Review and Integrative Framework

This article presents the results of a qualitative analysis of 80 articles, chapters, and practitioners' guides focused on collaboration and coalition functioning. The purpose of this review was to develop an integrative framework that captures the core competencies and processes needed within collaborative bodies to facilitate their success. The resulting framework for building collaborative capacity is presented. Four critical levels of collaborative capacity—member capacity, relational capacity, organizational capacity, and programmatic capacity—are described and strategies for building each type are provided. The implications of this model for practitioners and scholars are discussed.     

An examination of the assumptions in the demand characteristics thesis: With special reference to the Velten mood induction procedure

We examine the assumptions that are generally made when it is argued that a set of experimental findings is due to the subjects' compliance to demand characteristics. There is little evidence supporting many of these assumptions: that many experimental subjects disbelieve the cover story given them, that they are eager to search for clues revealing the study's actual purpose, that they are highly sophisticated in making inferences on the basis of any cues they detect, and that they are motivated to confirm the experimenter's hypothesis, whether to aid science or to make their participation meaningful. Our argument is applied to studies contending that results obtained with the Velten mood induction procedure are substantially affected by demand compliance. In particular, we question an assumption often made by these studies and point out the following: A demonstration that subjects can accurately mimic the reactions of participants given the Velten statements when they are explicitly asked to do so, or when they are instructed how to simulate these reactions, does not necessarily mean that subjects will voluntarily engage in such accurate play-acting when they are not asked to engage in this make-believe. Research has also noted that a number of Velten-induced reactions are probably too subtle to have been deliberately faked.