“We Told You that's How They Are”: Responses To White Women in Abusive Intimate Relationships with Men of Color

The urging by interracial couples to be accepted as “normal” couples may present as challenging if problems arise in the relationship; especially if those “problems” are of an abusive or violent nature. Drawing on semi-structured, in-depth interviews we analyze the experiences of White women in abusive intimate relationships with men of color. We query the struggles of the women negotiating these relationships and explore the responses the women receive by family, friends, the general public, and workers in the criminal justice system and social and medical services. We argue that White women abused by men of color face additional challenges because of outsiders' disapproving views of the interracial nature of the relationships.     

3-minute smartphone-based and tablet-based psychomotor vigilance tests for the assessment of reduced alertness due to sleep deprivation

The psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) is widely used to measure reduced alertness due to sleep loss. Here, two newly developed, 3-min versions of the psychomotor vigilance test, one smartphone-based and the other tablet-based, were validated against a conventional 10-min laptop-based PVT. Sixteen healthy participants (ages 22–40; seven males, nine females) completed a laboratory study, which included a practice and a baseline day, a 38-h total sleep deprivation (TSD) period, and a recovery day, during which they performed the three different versions of the PVT every 3 h. For each version of the PVT, the number of lapses, mean response time (RT), and number of false starts showed statistically significant changes across the sleep deprivation and recovery days. The number of lapses on the laptop was significantly correlated with the numbers of lapses on the smartphone and tablet. The mean RTs were generally faster on the smartphone and tablet than on the laptop. All three versions of the PVT exhibited a time-on-task effect in RTs, modulated by time awake and time of day. False starts were relatively rare on all three PVTs. For the number of lapses, the effect sizes across 38 h of TSD were large for the laptop PVT and medium for the smartphone and tablet PVTs. These results indicate that the 3-min smartphone and tablet PVTs are valid instruments for measuring reduced alertness due to sleep deprivation and restored alertness following recovery sleep. The results also indicate that the loss of sensitivity on the 3-min PVTs may be mitigated by modifying the threshold defining lapses.     

Trait Goal Orientation, Self-Regulation, and Performance: A Meta-Analysis

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to meta-analytically examine trait goal orientation constructs and their relationships with the self-regulation variables of self-monitoring, self-evaluations, self-reactions, and self-efficacy as well as task performance across a range of contexts.

Design, Methodology, Approach

Data were gathered from published and unpublished research examining the goal orientation construct and self-regulation and/or task performance. Effect sizes from 102 research reports involving over 16,000 participants were included.

Findings

In general the mastery-approach goal orientation construct was positively related to the self-regulation and performance variables. Conversely, negative relationships were found between the performance-avoid goal orientation and those variables. Relationships between goal orientation and self-regulation tended to be higher compared to those found for goal orientation and performance. Overall, the findings support the discriminant validity of the three factors of goal orientation (mastery-approach, performance-approach, performance-avoid).

Practical Implications

Practitioners and researchers will benefit from learning that mastery-approach goal orientation consistently relates to self-regulation and task performance. The findings indicate that a mastery-approach goal orientation could serve as a meaningful predictor in selection processes or as an explanatory variable of motivation.

Originality/Value

The present study updates and expands upon past research by focusing on relationships of trait goal orientation across a variety of contexts. The results extend meta-analytic results to a wider range of self-regulatory variables.     

Task difficulty moderates the revelation effect

Tasks that precede a recognition probe induce a more liberal response criterion than do probes without tasks—the “revelation effect.” For example, participants are more likely to claim that a stimulus is familiar directly after solving an anagram, relative to a condition without an anagram. Revelation effect hypotheses disagree whether hard preceding tasks should produce a larger revelation effect than easy preceding tasks. Although some studies have shown that hard tasks increase the revelation effect as compared to easy tasks, these studies suffered from a confound of task difficulty and task presence. Conversely, other studies have shown that the revelation effect is independent of task difficulty. In the present study, we used new task difficulty manipulations to test whether hard tasks produce larger revelation effects than easy tasks. Participants (N = 464) completed hard or easy preceding tasks, including anagrams (Exps. 1 and 2) and the typing of specific arrow key sequences (Exps. 3–6). With sample sizes typical of revelation effect experiments, the effect sizes of task difficulty on the revelation effect varied considerably across experiments. Despite this variability, a consistent data pattern emerged: Hard tasks produced larger revelation effects than easy tasks. Although the present study falsifies certain revelation effect hypotheses, the general vagueness of revelation effect hypotheses remains.     

Criminal attitudes to violence: Development and preliminary validation of a scale for male prisoners

Two studies report on the development and preliminary psychometric properties of a new scale measuring criminal attitudes to violence. In Study 1, the responses of a mixed sample of male prisoners were used to select 20 scale items from a larger pool. The final scale (the Criminal Attitudes to Violence Scale; CAVS) was designed so that it had a single‐factor structure and was uncorrelated with a measure of social desirability bias. It demonstrated high internal reliability, and a strong relationship to a self‐report measure of physical aggression. Significant differences were found in CAVS mean scores for various offence history comparisons, such as whether or not the offender was currently on sentence for a violent conviction. In the second study, most results from the first study were replicated with an independent sample of male prisoners. Further, compared to another scale measuring attitudes to aggression [the EXPAGG Instrumental subscale; Archer and Haigh, 1997b], the CAVS was a better predictor of general attitudes to crime. Mean CAVS scores were again significantly higher for current violent offenders than those on sentence for other types of offences. Lastly, the CAVS was moderately predictive of estimated risk of reconviction and re‐imprisonment. Overall these results suggest that this scale measures the construct of attitudes to criminal violence, which partially overlaps two other constructs: attitudes to aggression and attitudes to crime. Aggr. Behav. 30:484–503, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Dorsal striatal dopamine depletion impairs both allocentric and egocentric navigation in rats

Successful navigation requires interactions among multiple but overlapping neural pathways mediating distinct capabilities, including egocentric (self-oriented, route-based) and allocentric (spatial, map-based) learning. Route-based navigation has been shown to be impaired following acute exposure to the dopaminergic (DA) drugs (+)-methamphetamine and (+)-amphetamine, but not the serotoninergic (5-HT) drugs (±)-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine or (±)-fenfluramine. The dopaminergic-rich neostriatum is involved in both allocentric and egocentric navigation. This experiment tested whether dorsal striatal DA loss using bilateral 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) injections impaired one or both types of navigation. Two weeks following 6-OHDA injections, rats began testing in the Cincinnati water maze (CWM) followed by the Morris water maze (MWM) for route-based and spatial navigation, respectively. 6-OHDA treatment significantly increased latency and errors in the CWM and path length, latency, and cumulative distance in the MWM with no difference on cued MWM trials. Neostriatal DA levels were reduced by 80% at 2 and 7 weeks post-treatment. In addition, 6-OHDA increased DA turnover and decreased norepinephrine (NE) levels. 6-OHDA injections did not alter monoamine levels in the prefrontal cortex. The data support that neostriatal DA modulates both types of navigation.     

Treatment and psychopathy in forensic settings

People commonly question whether highly psychopathic offenders are treatable. Little scientific research has addressed this question despite key developments in the last 20 years in two relevant areas: reliable measurement of psychopathy, and effective treatments for reducing criminal and antisocial behavior in offenders. One obstacle to progress is confusion about defining psychopathy; a necessary preliminary step to advancing intervention. After outlining the principal definitional issues, we review past and recent research on psychopathy and treatment, concluding that a handful of newer, well-designed studies suggest grounds for optimism about psychopathy and treatability. Although psychopathy characteristics—along with other indices of criminal risk—signal responsivity challenges, well-conceived programs for higher risk offenders can reduce recidivism in highly psychopathic offenders and appear to do so by reducing dynamic risk factors. There are no clear indications yet of whether PCL-psychopathic offenders differ from other high-risk offenders in their ability to respond to such treatments. The questions of whether psychopathy itself responds to treatment, and if so, what forms such treatment might take have not yet been addressed. We conclude by suggesting that advances will come from the use of more divergent measures of psychopathy, and in particular, dynamic measures of psychopathy traits that will allow us to document whether change is occurring.     

Attribution and building blocks: Comment on Ann Taves's Religious Experience Reconsidered

Taves nicely elaborates an attribution approach to the study of religious experience, clarifying the issues it raises and providing some guides for further research. This comment addresses two of those issues, (1) the relation of top-down and bottom-up accounts of religious experiences and (2) what Taves describes as the building block approach to their study.