What is terrorism and can psychology do anything to prevent it?

Terrorism has a long history, which continues to unfold, and takes many forms. Notwithstanding these facts, there is no generally accepted definition of terrorism. I set forth the definitional issues that underlie the current debate about terrorism. By comparing terrorism with various forms of violence, I argue that it is plausible to construe terrorism as crime and, in support of this, I demonstrate why terrorism cannot be morally justified. Next, I cluster various immediate and long-term approaches intended to prevent terrorism, highlighting psychologically based strategies, such as behavioral profiling, teaching tolerance and citizenship, modifying media images of terrorism, and building peace. In order to understand and respond more effectively to 21st-century terrorism, I advocate adoption of a multidisciplinary, contextually sensitive approach.     

Borderline personality disorder features and utilization of treatment over two years

This study assessed the relationship between borderline personality disorder (BPD) features and treatment utilization over a 2-year time period. Participants included 349 18-year-old nonclinical young adults, approximately one-half of whom endorsed significant borderline features. The laboratory phase of the study involved the administration of self-report and interview-based assessments of BPD psychopathology at Wave 1, as well as interviews targeting Axis I psychopathology and treatment utilization history at Wave 2 (2 years later). Results indicated that borderline features prospectively predicted utilization of psychopharmacological treatment above and beyond what was accounted for by gender, lifetime Axis I psychopathology, and nonBPD Axis II psychopathology. The borderline feature most strongly associated with treatment utilization was affective instability.     

Peer Contagion of Depressogenic Attributional Styles Among Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study

This study examined longitudinal associations between adolescents and their friends depressive symptoms and depressogenic attributional style. Participants included 398 adolescents in grades six through eight at the outset of the study. Adolescents completed peer nominations to identify reciprocated and unreciprocated best friendships as well as measures of depressive symptoms and depressogenic attributional style at an initial time point, and again 11 months later. Results revealed that best friends reported level of depressive symptoms was prospectively associated with adolescents own depressive symptoms and with adolescents depressogenic attributional style. Moderator effects suggested that friends attributional styles were prospectively associated with adolescents own attributional styles for those involved in reciprocated friendships. Lastly, findings offered preliminary support for adolescents Time 2 depressive symptoms as a mediator of the association between friends depressive symptoms and adolescents attributional style. Findings have important implications for cognitive and interpersonal models of adolescent depression, as well as the study of peer contagion effects.     

A model of exact small-number representation

To account for the size effect in numerical comparison, three assumptions about the internal structure of the mental number line (e.g., Dehaene, 1992) have been proposed. These are magnitude coding (e.g., Zorzi & Butterworth, 1999), compressed scaling (e.g., Dehaene, 1992), and increasing variability (e.g., Gallistel & Gelman, 1992). However, there are other tasks besides numerical comparison for which there is clear evidence that the mental number line is accessed, and no size effect has been observed in these tasks. This is contrary to the predictions of these three assumptions. Moreover, all three assumptions have difficulties explaining certain symmetries in priming studies of number naming and parity judgment. We propose a neural network model that avoids these three assumptions but, instead, uses place coding, linear scaling, and constant variability on the mental number line. We train the model on naming, parity judgment, and comparison and show that the size effect appears in comparison, but not in naming or parity judgment. Moreover, no asymmetries appear in primed naming or primed parity judgment with this model, in line with empirical data. Implications of our findings are discussed. This work was supported by Grant P5/04 from the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Program—Belgian Science Policy and by a GOA grant from the Ghent University Research Council to W.F.     

Effort in isometric muscular contractions related to force level and duration

The degree of perceived force involved in squeezing a handgrip dynamometer is shown to grow as a power function of the force of isometric contraction and also as a power function of the duration of the squeeze. The exponent for force turns out to be more than twice that for duration. These two power functions are able to predict measurements of muscle endurance, i.e., of the maximum length of time that contraction of any constant level of force can be sustained.     

Duration,luminance, and the brightness exponent

The relation of brightness to duration and luminance has been studied by matching one brightness to another and also by matching numbers to brightnesses (magnitude estimation). The two methods concur in confirming certain well-known visual functions: Bloch’s law, the Broca-Sulzer effect, and the shift of the Broca-Sulzer enhancement to shorter durations when luminance increases. It is shown that the shift with luminance requires the exponent of the power function for short-flash brightness to be larger than the exponent for stimuli of longer duration. An attempt is made to analyze some of the reasons why the procedure advocated by Graham may not give comparable results.     

Matching functions between loudness and ten other continua1

Cross-modality matches have been made between loudness and ten other perceptual continua. The matching functions are all power functions. When the exponent values of the matching functions are divided by the exponent values previously determined for the various continua, the quotients predict values for the loudness exponent. A tentative consensus suggests that the loudness exponent may be about 0.64.     

ON THE NEW PSYCHOPHYSICS

A discussion of problems and methods in modern psychophysics is presented. A distinction is made between prothetic and metathetic continua, and between ratio scales, category scales and what are called confusion scales. The paper includes a survey of some scaling experiments and reports the exponents of a number of power functions describing the relation between stimulus magnitude and subjective magnitude.     

Sociocultural expectations of attractiveness for males

Sociocultural expectations of attractiveness for women have been studied extensively, but little research has focused on this topic with males. Using the two most popular men's fashion magazines (GQand Esquire), this study examined article and advertisement content as well as male models' body sizes to determine the extent to which men have received messages from the media on how to behave (e.g., diet, exercise) and look over a 32 year period (i.e., 1960–1992). Linear trend analyses revealed that the number of messages concerning physical fitness and health have increased as has the general popularity of health and fitness activities. Messages concerning weight and beauty, however, have declined since the late 1970s. In spite of these changes, measures of male models' body sizes have not changed significantly since the 1960s. These findings are discussed in the context of the sociocultural approach to eating disorders and recommendations for future research are provided.