The pornography/aggression linkage: Results from a field study

Renewed concern over the possible effects of pornography has been sparked by a “new” body of research. Foremost among these concerns is the possibility of a linkage between viewing pornography and subsequent aggressive behavior, especially toward women. However, the vast majority of this research is limited to laboratory settings. This study reports on a field experiment which assesses the impact of presenting a pornographic movie on a college campus. A longitudinal, self‐report study of 230 women students was conducted to determine any effects of the film's showing on the sample's experiences with aggression from males. Compared with the weeks prior to and following the movie's showing, no significant difference in reported aggression was found. Further, those women reporting association with males attending the movie reported no significantly different levels of experienced aggression from those women whose companions did not view the film. Reasons for the apparent lack of effect are discussed in light of the laboratory‐based literature.     

Suppressor effects and age differences in the expression of anxious emotion

This study examined the role of suppressor effects on age differences in anxious emotion. Children and adolescents (n = 1099) ages 7–18 years were assessed for separation anxiety, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety. Results of zero-order correlations indicated a significant negative association between age and separation anxiety but no association for social anxiety and generalized anxiety. However, semi-partial correlations indicated the presence of a cooperative suppressor effect such that the associations between age and social anxiety as well as age and generalized anxiety symptoms became significant and positive and the association with separation anxiety became larger in a simultaneous regression analysis of each facet with age. Similar effects occurred when controlling for hyperarousal in an ANCOVA across grade levels. Results suggest that attempts to understand developmental differences in anxious emotion in childhood and adolescence will be facilitated by parsing facets of anxious emotion and attention to potential suppressor effects.     

Relationship enhancement with premarital dyads: A six-month follow-up

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to assess the short-term and longterm effectiveness of relationship enhancement on the self-disclosure and empathy skills of premarital dating couples. Nineteen couples were given the Guerney Relationship Enhancement Program over an eight week period, while 18 other couples were given a lecture/discussion program on relationship development. Behavioral assessments of self-disclosure and empathy skill levels were taken prior to training, immediately following training, and six months after training. Results indicated that from both pretest to posttest and pretest to follow-up, the relationship enhancement couples, relative to the lecture/discussion couples, demonstrated a significant increase in both self-disclosure and empathy skill levels. Discussion centers on the implications of the durability of the skills learned as well as on suggestions for future research on skill generalization to social interactions with others.     

The Injustice of Discrimination

Discrimination might be considered unjust on account of the comparative disadvantage it imposes, the absolute advantage it imposes, the disrespect it shows, or the prejudice it shows. This article argues that each of these accounts overlooks some cases of unjust discrimination. In response to this state of affairs we might combine two or more of these accounts. A promising approach combines the comparative disadvantage and absolute disadvantage accounts.     

Sleep Symptoms as a Partial Mediator Between Combat Stressors and Other Mental Health Symptoms in Iraq War Veterans

Sleep symptoms are a prominent feature of mental health disorders like PTSD and depression. However, it is unknown whether sleep symptoms mediate the relationship between combat stress and these disorders. We examined the mediating role of sleep symptoms on the relationship between combat stress and PTSD; and the relationship between combat stress and depression using data from 576 Army veterans of the Iraq War surveyed in 2004. Correlational analyses revealed that when insomnia was included in the model, the correlation between combat stressors and other depression symptoms decreased by 65%; and when nightmares were included in the model, the correlation between combat stressors and other PTSD symptoms decreased by 69%. We replicated these analyses using individual items assessing PTSD and depression and found that the insomnia and nightmare items had the largest and second largest mediation effect between combat stressors and PTSD and depression symptoms. Our result support the theory that sleep symptoms contribute to the development and/or maintenance of other mental health symptoms and that early treatment of sleep symptoms may mitigate the other mental health consequences of combat stress.     

The Effects of Work-Related and Boundary-Related Stress on the Emotional and Physical Health Status of Ordained Clergy

This research is the second component of a three-part series that explores the relationship between stress and health in the clerical profession. The first article (Wells, Journal of Religion and Health 51(1):215–30, 2012) determined that there is an association between two different sources of stress in the clerical profession (work-related stress and boundary-related stress). This research explores the association between these two sources of stress and two different measures of health (emotional health and physical health). Utilizing the same dataset from the previous research (Wells, Journal of Religion and Health 51(1):215–30, 2012), and simple and multiple regression, this research determined that there is a positive association between the two sources of stress (work-related stress and boundary-related stress) and the two measures of health (physical health and emotional health). African-American and obese clergy exhibited lower levels of physical health as stress increased. Clergy with children and those with higher levels of education exhibited lower levels of emotional health as stress increased. African-American clergy consistently exhibited higher levels of emotional health than their White colleagues did. Finally, age and length of time in ministry are associated with higher levels of emotional health but lower physical health status.     

Rorty's Debt to Sellarsian Metaphysics

Rorty regards himself as furthering the project of the Enlightenment by separating Enlightenment liberalism from Enlightenment rationalism. To do so, he rejects the very need for explicit metaphysical theorizing. Yet his commitments to naturalism, nominalism, and the irreducibility of the normative come from the metaphysics of Wilfrid Sellars. Rorty's debt to Sellars is concealed by his use of Davidsonian arguments against the scheme/content distinction and the nonsemantic concept of truth. The Davidsonian arguments are used for Deweyan ends: to advance secularization and anti‐authoritarianism. However, Rorty's conflation of theology and metaphysics conceals the possibility of post‐theological metaphysics. The key distinction lies between “metaphysics” and “Metaphysics.” The former provisionally models the relations between different vocabularies; the latter continues theology by other means. Sellars shows how to do metaphysics without Metaphysics. This approach complements Rorty's prioritization of cultural politics over ontology and his vision of Enlightenment liberalism without Enlightenment rationalism.     

Essay review

MICHAEL DUMMETT, Elements of intuitionism. With the assistance of Robert Minio. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. xii + 466 pp. No price stated.     

The ground is dominant in infants’ perception of relative distance

When making relative distance judgments, adults attend to information provided by the ground surface and generally ignore information provided by ceiling surfaces. In the present study, we asked whether this ground dominance effect is present in infancy. Groups of 5- and 7-month-old infants viewed a display depicting textured ground and ceiling surfaces. Two toys, which were attached to vertical rods, were affixed to the display. The toys/rods were positioned so that one toy was specified as being nearer by the ground surface but farther away by the ceiling surface, while the other toy was specified as being farther away by the ground surface but nearer by the ceiling surface. Under monocular viewing conditions, the infants in both age groups reached preferentially for the toy that was specified as being nearer by the ground surface. This effect was significantly stronger than that observed under binocular viewing conditions. The findings indicate that the infants responded to the distance information provided by the ground surface to a greater extent than to information provided by the ceiling.     

Realism in confidence judgements of performance based on implicit learning

In two experiments we employed calibration methods to investigate the realism of participants' confidence ratings of their own classification performance based on knowledge acquired after training on an artificial grammar. In Experiment 1 participants showed good realism (but overconfidence) for grammatical strings but very poor realism for non-grammatical strings. Method of training (string repetition in writing or mere exposure) did not affect the realism. Furthermore, the participants underestimated their overall performance. In Experiment 2, using a more complex grammar and controlling for two types of associative chunk-strength, participants showed good realism (but still overconfidence) for both letter and symbol strings, irrespective of grammaticality. Together, these experiments show that implicit learning can give rise to knowledge products that are associated with fairly realistic meta-knowledge. It is argued that both the zero-correlation criterion and the guessing criterion are misplaced when used to define implicit knowledge; two reasons being that confidence judgements may be affected both by implicit knowledge and by inferences.