Psychosocial Correlates of Suicide Attempts Among Junior and Senior High School Youth

Three groups of junior and senior high schools students (total N = 1050) recruited in rural counties of a mid-Atlantic state–those who had made a prior suicide attempt, those reporting high levels of depressed mood or suicidal ideation, and those who were not depressed or suicidal – were compared with regard to their reports of a number of potential risk factors for suicidal behavior. Adolescents with a history of a suicide attempt reported more frequent stresses related to parents, lack of adult supports outside of the home, police, and sexuality (i.e., concerns about pregnancy, pressure to have sex, getting sexually transmitted diseases), compared with both depressed/suicide ideators and nondepressed adolescents. Suicide attempters were also more likely than the other adolescents to report that they were physically hurt by a parent, that they ran away from home, that they lived apart from both parents, and that they knew someone who had completed suicide. Results are discussed in the context of prior studies of adolescent suicidal behavior in community and clinical samples.     

Relationship maintenance across platonic and non-platonic cross-sex friendships in emerging adults

Prior research examining maintenance in cross-sex friendships focuses heavily on platonic (i.e., nonsexually active) friendships with limited research examining sexually involved cross-sex friendships (i.e., “friends with benefits relationships”). In this study, we investigated differences in relational maintenance behaviors between sexually and nonsexually active cross-sex friendships types. In an online survey, 531 emerging adult participants from large southwestern and southeastern universities identified either a friends with benefits or platonic opposite sex friendship and then completed items asking them to report the frequency with which they enacted each of 36 relationship maintenance behaviors. Overall, participants involved in casual sex friendships engaged in the least, and those who transitioned from a friends-with-benefits relationship to a romantic relationship engaged in the most frequent relationship maintenance. Platonic friendships employed more frequent maintenance than casual-sex friendships but less than either true friends with benefits or participants who transitioned to a romantic relationship.     

The role of cognitive resources in determining our moral intuitions: Are we all liberals at heart?

Recent research provides evidence that one important difference between liberals and conservatives is their basic moral intuitions. These studies suggest that while liberals and conservatives respond similarly to considerations of harm/care and fairness (what Graham and Haidt call the “individualizing” foundations), conservatives also respond strongly to considerations of in-group, authority, and purity (the “binding” foundations) while liberals do not. Our study examined two alternative hypotheses for this difference—the first being that liberals cognitively override, and the alternative being that conservatives cognitively enhance, their binding foundation intuitions. Using self-regulation depletion and cognitive load tasks to compromise people's ability to monitor and regulate their automatic moral responses, we found support for the latter hypothesis—when cognitive resources were depleted/distracted, conservatives became more like liberals (de-prioritizing the binding foundations), rather than the other way around. This provides support for the view that conservatism is a form of motivated social cognition.     

An Examination of Historical Loss Thinking Frequency and Rumination on Suicide Ideation in American Indian Young Adults

No research has empirically investigated whether frequency of historical loss thinking is a potential risk factor for suicide ideation in American Indians. Results of this study demonstrated that the frequency of historical loss thinking was positively associated with brooding and reflection at a small magnitude, but was not directly related to suicide ideation. Bootstrapping analyses indicated small indirect effects of historical loss thinking frequency on suicide ideation through brooding and reflection individually, but only through brooding when analyzed in a parallel mediation model. These findings suggest that American Indians who more frequently engage in historical loss thinking may be susceptible to suicide ideation via an increase in ruminative tendencies, specifically brooding.     

The Incremental Utility of Emotion Regulation But Not Emotion Reactivity in Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury

This study assessed the incremental utility of emotion reactivity and emotion regulation in relation to nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI). Participants included 379 college students aged 18–22 who completed self‐report measures of emotion regulation, emotion reactivity, and NSSI. Emotion regulation was significantly related to NSSI both ignoring and controlling for reactivity, but the reverse was not true. Participants' use of NSSI for affect regulation appeared to moderate this relation. Findings support emotion regulation deficits as a target for intervention over and above heightened emotion reactivity, especially in those who use NSSI to regulate negative affect.     

TORTURE AND JUST WAR

I offer an argument for why torture, as an act of state‐sponsored force to gain information crucial to the well‐being of the common good, should be considered as a tactic of war, and therefore scrutinized in terms of just war theory. I argue that, for those committed to the justifiability of the use of force, most of the popular arguments against all acts of torture are unpersuasive because the logic behind them would forbid equally any act of mutilating or killing in battle. I will also argue that looking at torture through the perspective of the just war tradition forces us to place strictures on the practice that make it hard to justify, helps us to see why torture should never be legalized, helps us to clarify when circumstances might justify torture, and suggests what sort of character is required to recognize when those circumstances have occurred.