Internalized Homophobia and Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adult Women’s Same-Sex Relationships

This study examined the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV), internalized homophobia, and psychological maladjustment in a convenience sample of young adult women. Rates of psychological and physical abuse in women’s same-sex relationships were shown to be commensurate to previously reported rates of violence in the IPV literature; rates of sexual coercion were also ascertained. A relationship was found between Moral and Religious Attitudes Toward Lesbianism (MRATL), a dimension of internalized homophobia, and the perpetration of sexual coercion. As expected, internalized homophobia was connected to psychological maladjustment. In addition, both the perpetration of psychological aggression and physical violence were associated with emotional instability. The study findings are discussed within the current body of literature on IPV.     

Perceptual expertise and the plasticity of other-race face recognition

In this paper, we argue that our ability to recognize own-race faces can be treated as a form of perceptual expertise. Similar to object experts (e.g., birdwatchers), people differentiate own-race faces at the subordinate level of categorization. In contrast, like novices, we tend to classify other-race faces at the basic level of race. We demonstrate that, as a form of perceptual expertise, other-race face recognition can be systematically taught in the lab through subordinate-level training. When participants learn to quickly and accurately differentiate other-race faces at the subordinate level of the individual, the individuating training transfers to improved recognition of untrained other-race faces, produces changes in event-related brain components, and reduces implicit racial bias. Subsequent work has shown that other-race learning can be optimized by directing participants to the diagnostic features of a racial group. The benefits of other-race training are fairly long-lived and are evident even 2 weeks after training. Collectively, the training studies demonstrate the plasticity of other-race face recognition. Rather than a process that is fixed by early developmental events, other-race face recognition is malleable and dynamic, continually being reshaped by the perceptual experiences of the observer.     

The Effects of Initial Habit Strength Differences Upon Performance in a Coaction Situation

The present investigation examined the effects of initial habit strength differences upon performance in a coaction situation. During a training session, a habit-strength hierarchy was developed in each of three groups through the establishment of a differential response expectancy for each of four alternative responses. In a subsequent test session, both performance and consistency of performance were affected by the pretraining on the correct habit. However, there was no statistical support for the hypothesis that coaction would interact with the habit-strength condition resulting in an improvement in the coaction/habit-correct group and a decrement in the coaction/habit-incorrect group. Similarly, no differences were found between the coaction and alone conditions.     

Complainant’s physical attractiveness and juristic judgments of blame and punishment in physical,domestic, and sexual assault scenarios

ABSTRACT

Extralegal factors, including physical attractiveness, may bias juristic opinions. The present study provided 450 university students with hypothetical scenarios of physical, domestic, and sexual assault in which complainant’s attractiveness and other legal and extralegal characteristics were independently varied. Results indicate complainant’s attractiveness mattered in sexual assault scenarios only for guilt of the defendant, but not for physical or domestic assault. Complainant’s attractiveness was not related to perceptions of blameworthiness of complainant or punishment of defendant. Overall, legal factors of injury level, prior offending, and intoxication mattered more than attractiveness or race of the victim. Implications are discussed.     

Augustine's On the Good of Marriage and Infused Virtue in the Twelfth Century

In the history of ethics, it remains remains unclear how Christians of the Middle Ages came to see God‐given virtues as dispositions (habitus) created in the human soul. Patristic works could surely support other conceptions of the virtues given by grace. For example, one might argue that all such virtues are forms of charity, so that they must be affections of the soul, or that they consist in what the soul does, not anything the soul has. Scholars usually assume that the explanation lies in the impact of Aristotle's philosophy on medieval theology. This essay argues that the dispositional account of God‐given virtues was already entrenched by the end of the twelfth century and probably owes more to the influence of Augustine's treatise On the Good of Marriage.     

Microstructural integrity of the corpus callosum linked with neuropsychological performance in adolescents

Background: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has revealed microstructural aspects of adolescent brain development, the cognitive correlates of which remain relatively uncharacterized. Methods: DTI was used to assess white matter microstructure in 18 typically developing adolescents (ages 16–18). Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusion (MD) were evaluated within the splenium and body of the corpus callosum in relation to cognitive performance. Results: Visuospatial construction abilities were associated with white matter integrity in both the splenium and body of the corpus callosum, while only splenium integrity was associated with language and psychomotor function. Conclusion: Results suggest that, for typically developing adolescents, white matter coherence positively relates to visuospatial, psychomotor, and language skills. These findings may have implications for the cognitive functioning of clinical populations in which typical white matter development is altered.     

The role of amount,cognitive elaboration,and structural consistency of attitude‐relevant knowledge in the formation of attitude certainty

Despite their intuitive plausibility and prominence in theorizing regarding attitude certainty, past studies have provided equivocal evidence for the role of informational and structural consistency factors in perceptions of attitude certainty. The present research attempted to overcome methodological and conceptual limitations in past research in order to establish that amount, cognitive elaboration, and structural consistency of attitude‐relevant knowledge are in fact determinants of attitude certainty. As predicted, certainty was influenced by experimental manipulations of all three constructs. Mediational analyses suggested that the amount and elaboration of information manipulations were mediated by subjective impressions of knowledge. Subjective impressions of amount of thought partially mediated the effects of manipulated elaboration. Finally, perceived ambivalence mediated the effects of manipulated consistency of knowledge. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

STRUCTURES OF THE SCHEDULES OF RACIST AND SEXIST EVENTS: CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN'S RESPONSES

Use of the Schedule of Racist Events (SRE; Landrine & Klonoff, 1996 ) and the Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE; Klonoff & Landrine, 1995 ) has advanced research on experiences of perceived racism and sexism. The present study responds to calls for further investigation of the structural properties of data from these instruments and is the first study to do so using (a) responses of African American/Black women ( N = 246) and (b) confirmatory factor analysis. Regarding the SRE, results supported the unidimensional structures reported by Klonoff and Landrine (1999) for SRE Lifetime, SRE Recent, and SRE Appraisal data. Regarding the SSE, results supported the two-factor structures for SSE Lifetime and SSE Appraisal data and the three-factor structure for SSE Recent data derived by Matteson and Moradi (2005) . Thus, the present results support the structural stability of SRE and SSE data with African American/Black women and can inform future use of these measures with this population.