The role of schizoid personality,peritraumatic dissociation and behavioral activation system in a case of parricide

The goal of this paper is to emphasize several important details through a case study of parricide: a) the schizoid personality structure as a potential basis for brutal offenses, b) the role of dissociation during the commitment of crime; and c) the contribution of non-standard psychological assessment instruments and Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory in illuminating the killer's personality and motivation for the offense. A parricide case was analyzed through psychiatric examination, standard clinical psychological assessment, and Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scales based on Gray's theory. It was determined that the perpetrator suffered from schizoid personality disorder and that there were visible signs of peritraumatic dissociation at the moment he committed the offense. It was concluded that: a) a schizoid personality sometimes become a perpetrator of a brutal offense in situations where he feels he is in danger of punishment, and his personal space is being threatened, b) dissociation, activated by murder itself, can help the murderer to protect himself from a traumatic situation which overcomes his resources, and c) Gray's theory can serve as a framework for understanding individual cases as this one.     

Working in the hidden economy: Associations with the latent benefits and psychological health

Hidden economy working can provide income and cushion the financial hardship during unemployment; can it also substitute for some latent functions of regular employment? According to Jahoda's theory, the latent functions include the time structure, regular shared experience, information about personal identity, a link with the collective purpose, and enforced regular activity. This article explores whether the undeclared working reduces the degree of deprivation of these functions during unemployment and, consequently, improves the psychological health of a person. The data were collected from a sample of unemployed persons (N = 1138) registered with the Croatian Employment Bureau. A series of questions about their day-to-day activities were used to estimate the amount of undeclared working, an ad hoc developed scale to assess the extent of their latent deprivation, and the SF-36 Health Survey to measure their psychological health. The ANCOVA revealed that the participants who were often engaged in the hidden economy working exhibited reduced latent deprivation and improved psychological health compared to those who were sometimes engaged. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that their better psychological health was partially mediated through reduced latent deprivation. However, the unemployed who were never engaged in undeclared working exhibited a relatively high psychological health as well.     

Personality change following religious conversion: perceptions of converts and their close acquaintances

This study focuses on how converts and their close acquaintances perceive changes in personality characteristics after religious conversion and possible demographic influences of these perceptions. Sixty Slovakian respondents self-defined as having experienced conversions rated themselves twice on measures of Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, and meaningfulness in life. The first rating provided retrospective information concerning pre-conversion conditions and the second rating obtained data reflecting the convert's present self-understanding. In addition, every convert was rated on the same characteristics by someone who knew the person well during both pre- and post-conversion times. The convert and the rater both provided demographic information (age, education, religiosity, relationship to conversions and converts etc.). Analyses showed that the converts perceived several personality changes: neuroticism decreased while self-esteem, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion increased. They also reported a large increase in meaningfulness. Perceived changes were in part related to education level and age for converts, and to religiosity in both converts and close persons, suggesting a retrospective bias.     

Dimensionality and Validity of the Serbian Version of the Life Orientation Test-Revised in a Sample of Youths

The main aim of this research was to evaluate psychometric properties and dimensionality of the Serbian version of the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R). The sample consisted of 744 youths, with a mean age 18.68 years. Psychometric properties of the Serbian version of the LOT-R were found to be satisfactory. The total scale and both subscales (Optimism and Pessimism) had adequate internal consistency. Convergent validity was demonstrated by moderate correlations with well-being measures (positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, hope, self-efficacy, loneliness and general distress). The results of confirmatory factor analyses yielded two correlated dimensions reflecting optimism and pessimism, and provided support for the two-factor model of optimism. The results of simultaneous multiple regression analyses demonstrated that both optimism and pessimism contributed uniquely to various indicators of well-being. Implications and directions for future research were discussed.     

Health Is Associated With Antiparasite Behavior and Fear of Disease-Relevant Animals in Humans

Evolutionary arms races between humans and parasites resulted in a set of behavioral adaptations that serve as parasite-avoidance mechanisms. We investigated associations among reported health of the respondent, antiparasite behavior, and sensitivity to disgust and fear of disease-relevant and irrelevant animals. Ninety-seven participants (15–19 years old) rated their fear and disgust at 25 colorful pictures of disease-relevant and disease-irrelevant invertebrates. Consistent with previous work, we found that participants reported greater fear and disgust of disease-relevant invertebrates relative to disease-irrelevant invertebrates. Better perceived health correlated with lower fear of disease-relevant invertebrates. Sensitivity to disgust correlated with reported antiparasite behaviors. Contrary to expectations, we found a positive correlation between antiparasite behavior and reported health, which suggests that antiparasite behavior influences perceived health (but not vice versa), and we found that males perform more antiparasite behaviors than females. These results support the idea that disgust and fear of disease-relevant objects are adaptive emotions that prevent contact with contagious objects, especially in individuals with low perceived health.     

Information Needs and Behavior of Catholic Priests in Croatia

This article presents a segment of the results gathered in a doctoral study that investigated information needs and behavior of Catholic priests in Croatia. The study focused on parish priests in particular and their information needs and behavior in the liturgy and care-giving role. The research was conducted with the help of quantitative and qualitative methodology. Print questionnaires were filled out by 327 respondents, while in the follow-up interviews 20 respondents took part. Research results show that respondents, in the care-giving role and liturgy, require information about theology, general culture, psychology, and pedagogy. More than half of respondents find information for liturgy on religious websites and in their personal parish libraries. However, in their care-giving role they seek information most often from their parishers, members in parish pastoral and economic boards, and from colleagues at their regular meetings organized by the (arch)diocese. Both in liturgy and care-giving role, respondents use religious publications to a much larger degree than secular books, magazines, or newspapers. The respondents explained that in liturgy they consult colleagues and parishers in order to exchange advices and ideas, while in the care-giving role some respondents also prefer to seek an advice from an expert in specific field. The results of this study can help Catholic Church and theological faculties when preparing the information literacy courses for future parish priests.     

Egg arrangement in avian clutches covaries with the rejection of foreign eggs

In birds, the colour, maculation, shape, and size of their eggs play critical roles in discrimination of foreign eggs in the clutch. So far, however, no study has examined the role of egg arrangement within a clutch on host rejection responses. We predicted that individual females which maintain consistent egg arrangements within their clutch would be better able to detect and reject foreign eggs than females without a consistent egg arrangement (i.e. whose eggs change positions more often across incubation). We tested this “egg arrangement hypothesis” in blackbirds (Turdus merula) and song thrush (T. philomelos). Both species are suitable candidates for research on egg rejection, because they show high inter-individual variation and individual repeatability in egg rejection responses. As predicted, using our custom-defined metrics of egg arrangement, rejecter females’ clutches showed significantly more consistent patterns in egg arrangement than acceptor females’ clutches. Only parameters related to blunt pole showed consistent differences between rejecters and acceptors. This finding makes biological sense because it is already known that song thrush use blunt pole cues to reject foreign eggs. We propose that a disturbance of the original egg arrangement pattern by the laying parasite may alert host females that maintain a consistent egg arrangement to the risk of having been parasitized. Once alerted, these hosts may shift their discrimination thresholds to be more restrictive so as to reject a foreign egg with higher probability. Future studies will benefit from experimentally testing whether these two and other parasitized rejecter host species may rely on the use of consistent egg arrangements as a component of their anti-parasitic defence mechanisms.     

An Analysis of a Cross-Cultural Personality Inventory: The IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers in Croatia

We investigated the psychometric properties of the Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS), a brief public-domain alternative to commercial inventories, in a large community sample and in a college sample. In both samples, we examined the factor structure, scale intercorrelations, and personality correlates of the ORVIS, and in the community sample, we also examined the correlations of the ORVIS scales with cognitive abilities and with the scales of a longer, proprietary interest survey. In both samples, all 8 scales—Leadership, Organization, Altruism, Creativity, Analysis, Producing, Adventuring, and Erudition—showed wide variation in scores, high internal-consistency reliabilities, and a pattern of high convergent and low discriminant correlations with the scales of the proprietary interest survey. Overall, the results support the construct validity of the scales, which are recommended for use in research on vocational interests and other individual differences.     

How challenging was your work today? The role of autonomous work motivation

The main aim of this study was to investigate whether autonomous motivation for work can explain the distinctive associations between hindrance and challenge demands and work-related well-being (i.e., positive affect and work engagement) on a within-person level. Autonomous work motivation represents the degree to which motivation for putting effort in work is intrinsic (i.e., with a sense of volition and personal choice) or has been internalized (i.e., without feelings of internal or external pressure). In order to test our hypotheses, we employed a diary methodology and followed 153 secondary school teachers throughout five consecutive working days. The results of multilevel modelling provided support for the hypothesized research model. On days when teachers experienced more challenges, they also experienced more positive affect and more engagement in their work on the same day, and this relationship could be explained by (higher) autonomous work motivation on that day. In contrast, on days when teachers experienced more hindrance demands, they experienced less positive affect and less work engagement, and this process was explained by (reduced) autonomous work motivation that day. Our findings add to the literature by showing that daily autonomous motivation as a motivational process can explain why daily challenge and hindrance demands are differentially related to positive well-being at work.     

Impression Management Use in Resumes and Cover Letters

Purpose

This study contributes to the ecological validity of resume research by systematically examining the impression management (IM) content of actual resumes and cover letters and empirically testing the effect on applicant evaluation.

Design/methodology/approach

A content analysis of the frequency and intensity of IM tactic use in 60 resumes and cover letters was completed (Study 1). Next, an experiment was conducted in which IM tactic use was manipulated and the effect on applicant evaluation examined, using a sample of MTurk workers as evaluators (Study 2).

Findings

In Study 1, four self-promotion categories, three ingratiation categories, and one hybrid category were delineated. In Study 2, ingratiation and lower intensity self-promotion were found to increase perceptions of job and organization fit.

Implications

Employers should be aware that resumes and cover letters contain IM tactics that may influence applicant evaluation. In addition, employment training programs might communicate the benefits of using ingratiation and lower intensity self-promotion, while emphasizing the importance of accurately conveying one’s qualifications. Furthermore, the present taxonomy of IM resume content might be applied to resume database search engines to identify and index IM tactic use.

Originality/value

This research is the first to develop a taxonomy of IM tactics based on actual resumes and cover letters and may facilitate more comprehensive manipulations of IM tactic use and better integration of IM research across the selection process.