Attachment and empathy as predictors of roles as defenders or outsiders in bullying interactions

Bullying almost always occurs in the presence of peers, most of whom do not intervene to stop it. This study examined the role of attachment, empathy, and gender in predicting the behavior of 105 middle school students who reported being either (a) defenders who actively intervened to stop bullying, or (b) outsiders who were either not involved or stood by passively. It was hypothesized that gender, attachment to mother, attachment to father, and empathy would predict whether children nominated themselves as defenders in bullying situations. A hierarchical logistic regression analysis indicated that these variables together significantly predicted whether children nominated themselves as defenders or outsiders. Gender was not a unique significant predictor. Attachment to mother contributed significant unique variance to the model, but attachment to father did not after accounting for gender and attachment to mother. Empathy contributed significant unique variance to the model even after accounting for all other variables. Results suggest that middle school personnel should openly discuss with students their roles in bullying interactions. In addition, teaching empathy towards others and involving parents may be critical components in comprehensive prevention programs.     

Using mediational models to explore the nature of tobacco motivation and tobacco treatment effects

Various theories have proposed mechanisms for drug motivation and relapse. For instance, negative reinforcement theories focus on the alleviation of withdrawal. However, other theories and some data cast doubt on the importance of withdrawal as a motivator of addictive drug use. Using data from a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled smoking cessation treatment study (N=608), this research examined the impact of withdrawal on drug motivation and the ability to maintain abstinence. Withdrawal was experimentally manipulated by randomly assigning participants to receive active bupropion versus placebo. Mediation analyses revealed that active bupropion reduced the amount of withdrawal and craving that individuals reported in the 1st week post quit; modest support was also found for smaller declines in positive affect. These effects, in turn, were all positively associated with posttreatment abstinence. These results implicate withdrawal as an important factor in motivating persistent tobacco use.     

Choosing a Place of Death: The Influence of Pain and of Attitude Toward Death1

This experimental study sought to verify if factors like pain or attitude toward death can determine the choice of a place of death. Using a questionnaire developed from Triandis’(1980) theory, the influence of pain on the intention of choosing a place of death was measured among 138 respondents. “Attitude toward death,” used as a control variable, was measured by means of the Death Attitude Profile. Variance analyses (p < .008) demonstrated the influence of pain on intention of choosing a place of death and on the cognitive component. Linear regression (p .002) highlighted 2 determinants of intention of choosing a place of death: moral norm and social role. As for attitude toward death, it seems to have no influence on the choice of a place of death.     

Using latent semantic analysis to assess reader strategies

We tested a computer-based procedure for assessing reader strategies that was based on verbal protocols that utilized latent semantic analysis (LSA). Students were given self-explanation—reading training (SERT), which teaches strategies that facilitate self-explanation during reading, such as elaboration based on world knowledge and bridging between text sentences. During a computerized version of SERT practice, students read texts and typed self-explanations into a computer after each sentence. The use of SERT strategies during this practice was assessed by determining the extent to which students used the information in the current sentence versus the prior text or world knowledge in their self-explanations. This assessment was made on the basis of human judgments and LSA. Both human judgments and LSA were remarkably similar and indicated that students who were not complying with SERT tended to paraphrase the text sentences, whereas students who were compliant with SERT tended to explain the sentences in terms of what they knew about the world and of information provided in the prior text context. The similarity between human judgments and LSA indicates that LSA will be useful in accounting for reading strategies in a Web-based version of SERT.     

Behavior Genetics: What's New? What's Next?

What's new in behavior genetics? With widespread acceptance that nearly all behavioral variation reflects some genetic influence, current studies are investigating developmental changes in the nature and magnitude of genetic and environmental effects, the extent to which different behaviors are influenced by common genes, and different forms of gene-environment correlation and interaction. New designs, focused on assessment of unrelated children in the same households or neighborhood environments, and use of measured environmental variables within genetically informative designs, are yielding more incisive evidence of common environmental effects on behavior. What will be next? Behavior genetic techniques and analyses will be used to inform efforts to find genes altering susceptibility for disorder and dispositional genes affecting behavioral variation. The developing integration of behavioral and molecular genetics will identify genes influencing specific behavioral variation and enhance understanding of how they do so. Psychologists will play a pivotal role in communicating that understanding to the public and in facilitating consideration of the inevitable ethical issues then to be confronted.     

Compensatory Control: Achieving Order Through the Mind, Our Institutions, and the Heavens

ABSTRACT— We propose that people protect the belief in a controlled, nonrandom world by imbuing their social, physical, and metaphysical environments with order and structure when their sense of personal control is threatened. We demonstrate that when personal control is threatened, people can preserve a sense of order by (a) perceiving patterns in noise or adhering to superstitions and conspiracies, (b) defending the legitimacy of the sociopolitical institutions that offer control, or (c) believing in an interventionist God. We also present evidence that these processes of compensatory control help people cope with the anxiety and discomfort that lacking personal control fuels, that it is lack of personal control specifically and not general threat or negativity that drives these processes, and that these various forms of compensatory control are ultimately substitutable for one another. Our model of compensatory control offers insight into a wide variety of phenomena, from prejudice to the idiosyncratic rituals of professional athletes to societal rituals around weddings, graduations, and funerals.     

“I Feel Your Pain”: The effects of observing ostracism on the ostracism detection system

Ostracism—being ignored and excluded—is a painful experience with negative psychological consequences. Social psychologists ( [Kerr and Levine, 2008] and [Spoor and Williams, 2007] ) argue humans have an evolved system for automatically detecting cues of ostracism and exclusion. Detection elicits pain and threats to fundamental needs. We hypothesize simply observing ostracism will cause negative affect and need threat in the observer. Participants observed a three-player Cyberball game; a target player was included or ostracized, and participants were either instructed to take the perspective of this player or given no such instructions. Participants observing ostracism reported negative affect and need threat. Our results indicate that ostracism detection is even more powerful than previously suggested, because vicariously, we feel the pain of others’ ostracism as our own.     

Use of an analogue method to examine children’s appraisals of threat and emotion in response to stressful events

An analogue methodology was used to present a set of realistic, salient stressors to children in grades 3, 5, and 7. Children (N = 146) viewed eight videotaped vignettes depicting interpersonal and non-interpersonal stressors; these were expected to differentially threaten psychological needs for relatedness, competence and autonomy and provoke different emotional reactions. Analyses showed that scenarios portrayed stressors that were commonly experienced by children and evoked a differentiated profile of appraisals and emotions. When tenets of the motivational theory of stress and coping were tested, scenarios more threatening to needs were more distressing, sadness was linked to relatedness and competence threat appraisals, and fear was a more common reaction to parent stressors that involved dyadic conflict. After accounting for threat appraisals and previous experience of stressors, younger children and girls appraised events as more distressing than older children and boys. Future research could use the analogue procedure to focus on children’s development of regulation and coping with stress.