The effects of safety-seeking behavior and guided threat reappraisal on fear reduction during exposure: an experimental investigation

We examined the effects of safety-seeking behavior and guided threat focus and reappraisal on fear reduction during exposure. Participants (N=46) displaying marked claustrophobic fear were randomized to one of three 30-min exposure conditions: (a) guided threat focus and reappraisal; (b) safety-behavior utilization; or (c) exposure only control. Tripartite outcome assessments during a behavioral approach test, along with measures of suffocation and restriction fears were obtained at pre- and post-treatment, and at a 2-week follow-up. Treatment process measures were collected throughout treatment and consisted of indices of fear activation; within and between-trial fear habituation; and suffocation and entrapment expectancies. Measures of safety behavior utilization and attentional focus were also collected to assess the integrity of the experimental manipulations. Consistent with prediction, those encouraged to utilize safety-behaviors during exposure showed significantly more fear at post-treatment and follow-up relative to those encouraged to focus and reevaluate their core threat(s) during exposure. Moreover, growth curve analyses of treatment process data analyses revealed that safety-behavior utilization exerted a detrimental effect on between-trial habituation; whereas guided threat reappraisal enhanced between-trial habituation.     

Media Construction of White-Collar Violence Revisited: An Examination of Two Nightclub Tragedies

Wright, Cullen, and Blankenship (1995 Wright , John P. , Francis T. , Cullen , and Michael B. , Blankenship . 1995 . “ The Social Construction of Corporate Violence: Media Coverage of the Imperial Food Products Fire .” Crime and Delinquency 41 : 20 – 27 . [CSA] [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) examined print media constructions of a chicken-processing plant fire that killed scores of workers. They found that newspaper coverage of the fire was reluctant to describe the event as corporate violence. We examine the generalizability of Wright et al.'s study by conducting a content analysis of newspaper coverage of two events at nightclubs in Chicago, Illinois, and Warwick, Rhode Island, that left numerous people dead and injured. We found that although newspapers did discuss the extent of personal harm caused by the disasters and the potential criminal sanctions that could be imposed, they seldom made any specific claims as to the cause of the events (i.e., whether they were due to an accident, negligence, or criminal behavior). Contrasting findings between our study and Wright et al.'s suggests that more research should be done if we are to understand media constructions of corporate and white-collar violence.     

Emotional granularity and borderline personality disorder

This study examined the affective dysregulation component of borderline personality disorder (BPD) from an emotional granularity perspective, which refers to the specificity in which one represents emotions. Forty-six female participants meeting criteria for BPD and 51 female control participants without BPD and Axis I pathology completed tasks that assessed the degree to which participants incorporated information about valence (pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (calm-activated) in their semantic/conceptual representations of emotions and in using labels to represent emotional reactions. As hypothesized, participants with BPD emphasized valence more and arousal less than control participants did when using emotion terms to label their emotional reactions. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Residential Mobility and Prosocial Development Within a Single City

Neighborhood social dynamics have been shown to impact behavioral development in residents, including levels of prosociality (i.e. positive social behavior). This study explores whether residential moves to neighborhoods with different social dynamics can influence further prosocial development. Prosociality, five domains of social support, and residential location were tracked between 2006 and 2009 in 397 adolescents across a small city in upstate New York. Analysis compared the role of the different forms of social support in prosocial development for movers versus non-movers. The effects of one's neighborhood of residence at Time 2 were also compared between movers and non-movers. Prosocial development in these two groups responded similarly to all forms of social support, including from neighbors. Movers experienced a greater increase in prosociality the more residentially stable the adolescent population of their new neighborhood of residence. Such neighborhood characteristics were not influential in the prosocial development of non-movers.