Men of Honor Don't Talk: The Relationship Between Masculine Honor and Social Activism Against Criminal Organizations in Italy

Criminal organizations have a strong influence on social, political, and economic life in Italy and other parts of the world. Nonetheless, local populations display collective passivity against organized crime, a phenomenon known as omertà. Omertà is linked to the concepts of honor and masculinity. That is, in order to fit ideological constructions of manliness, individuals should display indifference toward illegal activities and should not collaborate with legal institutions. In two studies, we investigated the link between endorsement of a masculine honor ideology and collective action intentions against criminal organizations (antimafia). Study 1 (N = 121) involved a Northern Italian sample, and Study 2 (N = 301) involved a Southern Italian sample. Across studies, results showed that endorsement of masculine honor ideology was associated with lower willingness to engage in social activism against criminal organizations. This relationship was mediated by attitudes toward criminal organizations (Study 1 and 2) and, in line with the notion of omertà, by lower levels of collective motive and more anxiety about interacting with police (Study 2). Directions for future research are discussed.     

What works to change identity? A rapid evidence assessment of interventions

This paper describes the results of a rapid evidence assessment that aimed to identify the characteristics and efficacy of interventions that aimed to or reportedly changed personal or social identity. Following a rapid but systematic search of the published, peer-reviewed research on identity change, 400 studies or reviews were screened for eligibility for inclusion in the review, and 22 were retained. The interventions and samples were diverse and studies came from a broad geographic area. The quality of the research varied, but the majority was assessed as carrying a low weight of evidence. Just under two-thirds of the studies were qualitative, and most explored, retrospectively, participants' perceptions of, or applied theoretical frameworks to, identity change sometime after an intervention. Quantitative studies provided little evidence of the effectiveness of interventions in changing identity. Qualitative studies most commonly applied and then supported the Social Identity Theory of Identity Change to explain perceived changes in identity. Implications for research are discussed.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Keeping it together: Semantic coherence stabilizes phonological sequences in short-term memory</Emphasis>

Our ability to hold a sequence of speech sounds in mind, in the correct configuration, supports many aspects of communication, but the contribution of conceptual information to this basic phonological capacity remains controversial. Previous research has shown modest and inconsistent benefits of meaning on phonological stability in short-term memory, but these studies were based on sets of unrelated words. Using a novel design, we examined the immediate recall of sentence-like sequences with coherent meaning, alongside both standard word lists and mixed lists containing words and nonwords. We found, and replicated, substantial effects of coherent meaning on phoneme-level accuracy: The phonemes of both words and nonwords within conceptually coherent sequences were more likely to be produced together and in the correct order. Since nonwords do not exist as items in long-term memory, the semantic enhancement of phoneme-level recall for both item types cannot be explained by a lexically based item reconstruction process employed at the point of retrieval (“redintegration”). Instead, our data show, for naturalistic input, that when meaning emerges from the combination of words, the phonological traces that support language are reinforced by a semantic-binding process that has been largely overlooked by past short-term memory research.     

African Immigrant Parents’ Perspectives on the Factors Influencing Their Children’s Mental Health

Journal of Child and Family Studies - African immigrant children experience some of the poorest mental health outcomes in Canada, yet limited research has systematically mental health determinants...     

Connectionist natural language parsing

The key developments of two decades of connectionist parsing are reviewed. Connectionist parsers are assessed according to their ability to learn to represent syntactic structures from examples automatically, without being presented with symbolic grammar rules. This review also considers the extent to which connectionist parsers offer computational models of human sentence processing and provide plausible accounts of psycholinguistic data. In considering these issues, special attention is paid to the level of realism, the nature of the modularity, and the type of processing that is to be found in a wide range of parsers.     

A plea for virtue in ethics

Comments on the original article, "Nonrational processes in ethical decision making" by M. D. Rogerson et al (see record 2011-19198-001). The current authors suggest that Rogerson, Gottlieb, Handelsman, Knapp, and Younggren (October 2011) presumed that the only ethical theories available for grounding decision-making models are of the rational, neoliberal variety. Rogerson et al stated, "Contextual, interpersonal, and intuitive factors are inextricably linked and inexorably influential in the process of ethical decision making. Ethical theory would benefit from encompassing these subtle yet powerful forces" (Rogerson et al., 2011, p. 616). They sought to augment these models with a cluster of contextual considerations, appending to them accounts of emotion, context, and intuition. First, notwithstanding the theories attributed to (the caricature of) Kant and his ilk, there are several ethical theories that include an account of what Rogerson et al. (2011) consider to be "nonrational" processes. From feminist theories to narrative ethics, sophisticated contextual theories have been developed and are readily available. Second, we question whether thick contextual considerations can simply be tacked on to extant models of decision making originally built upon a philosophical foundation that assumes a rational, autonomous agent who deliberates independently and logically.     

Failure to Consider Future Consequences Increases the Effects of Alcohol on Aggression

The failure to consider the future consequences of one's behavior is a major risk factor for aggression. Aggressive people tend to act first, and think later. Some people focus on the -here and now rather than on the future, a tendency measured by the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) scale (Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, & Edwards, 1994). Alcohol intoxication is a neuro-biological variable that produces similar effects. Participants in the present experiment completed the CFC scale and then consumed either an alcohol or a placebo beverage. Next, they competed against a same-sex ostensible partner on an interpersonally adversarial competitive task in which the winner could administer electric shocks to the loser (the aggression measure). As expected, aggression was highest in intoxicated persons with low CFC scores. Being unconcerned about the future consequences of one's actions, in conjunction with acute alcohol intoxication, combine in a pernicious manner to increase aggression.     

The disguise of sobriety: unveiled by alcohol in persons with an aggressive personality

This investigation examined the factor structure of 8 well-validated self-report measures that assess traits that fall under the rubric of an "aggressive personality" and then determined how those factor(s) moderated the association between alcohol intoxication and aggression. Participants were 518 (252 men and 266 women) healthy social drinkers between 21 and 35 years of age. Following the consumption of an alcoholic or a placebo beverage, participants were tested on a laboratory aggression paradigm in which electric shocks were received from, and administered to, a fictitious opponent. Aggression was operationalized as the shock intensities and durations administered to the opponent. Results demonstrated a unidimensional factor structure for the aggressive personality traits, which were then combined into a latent variable. The aggressive personality variable moderated the alcohol-aggression relation. Specifically, alcohol was significantly more likely to increase aggression in persons with higher, compared with lower, aggressive personality scores.     

Validity for an Integrated Laboratory Analogue of Sexual Aggression and Bystander Intervention

This study sought to develop and validate an integrated laboratory paradigm of sexual aggression and bystander intervention. Participants were a diverse community sample (54% African American) of heterosexual males (N = 156) between 21 and 35 years of age who were recruited to complete the study with a male friend and an ostensibly single, heterosexual female who reported a strong dislike of sexual content in the media. Participants viewed a sexually explicit or nonsexually explicit film clip as part of contrived media rating task and made individual choices of which film clip to show the female confederate. Immediately thereafter, participants were required to reach consensus on a group decision of which film clip to show the female confederate. Subjecting a target to an unwanted experience with a sexual connotation was operationalized as selection of the sexually explicit video, whereas successful bystander intervention was operationalized as the event of one partner individually selecting the sexually explicit video but then selecting the nonsexually explicit video for the group choice. Results demonstrated that a 1‐year history of sexual aggression and endorsement of pertinent misogynistic attitudes significantly predicted selection of the sexually‐explicit video. In addition, bystander efficacy significantly predicted men's successful prevention of their male peer's intent to show the female confederate a sexually explicit video. Discussion focused on how these data inform future research and bystander intervention programming for sexual aggression. Aggr. Behav. 38:309–321, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

EPS Prize Lecture. Licking and liking: the assessment of hedonic responses in rodents

Affective processes are a key determinant of behaviour: At its simplest, liked stimuli are approached while disliked stimuli are avoided. Although assessing hedonic responses in nonverbal animals can be difficult, one relatively tractable approach relies on detailed analyses of rodents' consummatory behaviour. Rodents typically produce rhythmic sets of licks that can be grouped into clusters on the basis of the intervals between licks. The mean number of licks in a cluster (cluster size) is directly related to the concentration of palatable and unpalatable solutions. These relationships suggest that lick cluster size might be a useful index of an animal's hedonic reaction to the solution being consumed. I begin by reviewing studies of conditioned flavour preference and aversion that support the idea that lick cluster size can provide useful information about rats' hedonic reactions. I then describe how this methodology has been used to address previously intractable issues in the investigation of contrast effects as well as revealing an analogue of effort justification effects that, in humans, are commonly explained in terms of cognitive dissonance reduction. Finally, I consider how lick analysis might provide information about hedonic responses in animal models of human psychiatric disorders. In all these cases, how an animal did something was particularly informative about why it was doing it.