Emotional Intelligence Profiles in College Students and Their Fathers’ and Mothers’ Parenting Practices

The present study has two objectives: first, to analyze whether the dimensions that make up emotional intelligence (attention, clarity, and repair) give rise to different profiles of university students, and secondly, to determine whether these different profiles are differentially associated with the parenting practices that students report with regard to their fathers and mothers. Results obtained indicate the existence of different profiles of college students. The profile that corresponds to adequate emotional skills presents a lower score in attention, but higher scores in clarity, and especially in mood repair. The other two profiles are inadequate, in the first case because a higher score in emotional attention is accompanied by low scores in mood repair, and in the second case because low scores are presented in all three dimensions. Likewise, we verified the existence of significant differences in the educational practices of parents, the adequate profile is characterized by greater use of parenting dimensions considered to be positive, and at the same time, lower scores on dimensions considered to be negative. One of the dysfunctional profiles is associated with higher scores in positive practices, and is also associated with higher scores in practices considered to produce a negative effect. The second dysfunctional profile is associated with higher scores on the dimensions considered to be negative and lower scores on positive dimensions.     

Would Mozambican Women Really “Tolerate” Their Husbands’ Extramarital Sexual Relationships as Socially Recommended?

In the Mozambican socio-cultural context, men’s extramarital sexual relationships are generally deemed acceptable, and women are “recommended” to forgive their husbands’ sexual infidelity. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess to what extent Mozambican women would forgive their husbands in case of an extramarital sexual relationship. The material consisted of 24 vignettes—each of which contained the story of a husband who was having an extramarital sexual relationship—a question, and an 11-point response scale. Overall, 225 women indicated their willingness to forgive their husbands in case of sexual infidelity, as a function of three factors: the emotional intensity involved in the extramarital sexual relationship, the regret expressed by the husband, and the commitment involved in the relationship/marriage between the husband and his wife. ANOVA results showed that the willingness to forgive depends on the nature of the extramarital relationship and the attitude of the “cheater”: (a) in the case where the extramarital relationship was of a purely sexual type, without involving deep emotions, and when the husband expressed profound regret, the willingness to forgive was high; (b) in the opposite situation, i.e., when the extramarital relationship involved a high level of emotions, and the husband expressed no regret, the forgiveness was low. Older participants had relatively high rates of forgiveness compared to younger ones. These findings corroborate earlier studies showing that, for females, emotional infidelity was much more distressful than purely sexual infidelity, and corroborate studies showing that Mozambicans tend to forgive offenders when they express regret.     

Should Authors be Requested to Suggest Peer Reviewers?

As part of a continuous process to explore the factors that might weaken or corrupt traditional peer review, in this paper, we query the ethics, fairness and validity of the request, by editors, of authors to suggest peer reviewers during the submission process. One of the reasons for the current crisis in science pertains to a loss in trust as a result of a flawed peer review which is by nature biased unless it is open peer review. As we indicate, the fact that some editors and journals rely on authors’ suggestions in terms of who should peer review their paper already instills a potential way to abuse the trust of the submission and publishing system. An author-suggested peer reviewer choice might also tempt authors to seek reviewers who might be more receptive or sympathetic to the authors’ message or results, and thus favor the outcome of that paper. Authors should thus not be placed in such a potentially ethically compromising situation, especially as a mandatory condition for submission. However, the fact that they do not have an opt-out choice during the submission process—especially when using an online submission system that makes such a suggestion compulsory—may constitute a violation of authors’ rights.     

Conscientious objection and person-centered care

Person-centered care offers a promising way to manage clinicians’ conscientious objection to providing services they consider morally wrong. Health care centered on persons, rather than patients, recognizes clinicians and patients on the same stratum. The moral interests of clinicians, as persons, thus warrant as much consideration as those of other persons, including patients. Interconnected moral interests of clinicians, patients, and society construct the clinician as a socially embedded and integrated self, transcending the simplistic duality of private conscience versus public role expectations. In this milieu of blurred boundaries, person-centered care offers a constructive way to accommodate conscientious objection by clinicians. The constitutionally social nature of clinicians commits and enables them, through care mechanisms such as self-care, to optimize the quality of health care and protect the welfare of patients. To advance these conditions, it is recommended that the medical profession develop a person-centered culture of care, along with clinician virtues and skills for person-centered communication.     

Writing life narratives through art practice

This article shares some of my doctoral experiences in a practice-based PhD research in arts developed at the Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London. It locates art practice within the academic research realm and contributes to researchers working on autobiographical studies and practice-based research methods. By offering an overview on my research topic focusing on the relationship between language and place in the life of Brazilian women living in London, I reflect on the relevance of “not-knowing” as a fruitful space for researching autobiographical and situated life narratives through art practice. The article concludes that qualitative methods are relevant for building passages from the individual to the collective sphere of an art practice developed within geographical displacement and in the context of academic research.     

Geographical offender profiling: Dragnet's applicability on a Brazilian sample

Even though geographical offender profiling is already widely used and researched in countries such as England, Canada, and United States, it is still severely overlooked in Brazil, as there are no researches on the subject using a Brazilian sample. Therefore, the present paper aims to start filling this gap by analysing the applicability of the geographical offender profiling and Dragnet on a sample of Brazilian serial killers. In order to achieve this objective, the authors collected data through police records on 15 serial killers that were active between June 2009 and June 2015, in the city of Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brazil. As a result, the circle hypothesis was confirmed, considering that 66.7% of the sample fell into the marauder category. Interestingly, the Dragnet's result accurately informed the area that contained the offender's base in the same cases in which the offender acted according to the marauder model. Also, other important correlations were found such as the influence of age, intelligence, resourcefulness, and method of approach on the distance travelled to commit a murder. Those results show that the geographical offender profiling can be effectively applied in Brazil and thus is a valid investigative tool to aid police officers in serial crimes investigations.     

The Trait Anxiety Scale for Children: A validation study for European Portuguese children and adolescents

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children is a self-report instrument inspired on the State-Trait theory extended by Spielberger that measures a momentary state of anxiety (state) and a stable tendency to experience anxiety (trait). This study presents an exploratory adaptation of the Trait Scale and provides its psychometric properties for European Portuguese children and adolescents. The influence of sex and age were also explored. Our sample, composed of 402 participants aged 8–14 years, revealed a mean anxiety value of 28.37 (SD = 5.99). As expected, females revealed higher levels of anxiety than boys. Higher anxiety was obtained in our youngest group as compared to the oldest group. The exploratory factor analysis led to retaining only 16-items that presented acceptable adjustment to a one-factorial solution. Good indexes were obtained in the confirmatory analysis. The results also revealed good internal consistency and good test-retest reliability. Our results provide initial evidence that this scale is adequate to measure trait-anxiety in European Portuguese young people.     

Conditioned fear is modulated by D2 receptor pathway connecting the ventral tegmental area and basolateral amygdala

Excitation of the mesocorticolimbic pathway, originating from dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), may be important for the development of exaggerated fear responding. Among the forebrain regions innervated by this pathway, the amygdala is an essential component of the neural circuitry of conditioned fear. The functional role of the dopaminergic pathway connecting the VTA to the basolateral amygdala (BLA) in fear and anxiety has received little attention. In vivo microdialysis was performed to measure dopamine levels in the BLA of Wistar rats that received the dopamine D(2) agonist quinpirole (1 μg/0.2 μl) into the VTA and were subjected to a fear conditioning test using a light as the conditioned stimulus (CS). The effects of intra-BLA injections of the D(1) antagonist SCH 23390 (1 and 2 μg/0.2 μl) and D(2) antagonist sulpiride (1 and 2 μg/0.2 μl) on fear-potentiated startle (FPS) to a light-CS were also assessed. Locomotor performance was evaluated by use of open-field and rotarod tests. Freezing and increased dopamine levels in the BLA in response to the CS were both inhibited by intra-VTA quinpirole. Whereas intra-BLA SCH 23390 did not affect FPS, intra-BLA sulpiride (2 μg) inhibited FPS. Sulpiride's ability to decrease FPS cannot be attributed to nonspecific effects because this drug did not affect motor performance. These findings indicate that the dopamine D(2) receptor pathway connecting the ventral tegmental area and the basolateral amygdala modulates fear and anxiety and may be a novel pharmacological target for the treatment of anxiety.     

Quality of Life (QoL) in a Brazilian Sample of Older Adults: The Role of Sociodemographic Variables and Depression Symptoms

The aim of the present study was to identify relevant variables associated with Quality of Life (QoL) in older adults. Older adults, up to 60 years old, were interviewed. Subjects were recruited through convenience sampling. 339 paticipants, who were stratified by gender, age, and subjective perception of health and illness, answered questions on sociodemographic issues, QoL (WHOQOL-100) and depressive symptomathology (Beck Depression Inventory—BDI). The multiple linear regression analysis showed associations of overall perception of QoL with depression levels, subjective perception of health status and gender. The individual analysis of each domain concluded that depression levels are correlated to all QoL domains, while health status was associated with physical, psychological, independence level and social relationship domains. Other variables were also assessed. The assessment of older adults concerning their QoL perceptions is associated with gender, age, marital status, social class, literacy rate, perception of health, and more substantially associated with depressive symptoms levels. Nevertheless, some limitations of this study and further ones are suggested.     

Multidimensional processing of dynamic sounds: more than meets the ear

Strong cross-modal interactions exist between visual and auditory processing. The relative contributions of perceptual versus decision-related processes to such interactions are only beginning to be understood. We used methodological and statistical approaches to control for potential decision-related contributions such as response interference, decisional criterion shift, and strategy selection. Participants were presented with rising-, falling-, and constant-amplitude sounds and were asked to detect change (increase or decrease) in sound amplitude while ignoring an irrelevant visual cue of a disk that grew, shrank, or stayed constant in size. Across two experiments, testing context was manipulated by varying the grouping of visual cues during testing, and cross-modal congruency showed independent perceptual and decision-related effects. Whereas a change in testing context greatly affected criterion shifts, cross-modal effects on perceptual sensitivity remained relatively consistent. In general, participants were more sensitive to increases in sound amplitude and less sensitive to sounds paired with dynamic visual cues. As compared with incongruent visual cues, congruent cues enhanced detection of amplitude decreases, but not increases. These findings suggest that the relative contributions of perceptual and decisional processing and the impacts of these processes on cross-modal interactions can vary significantly depending on asymmetries in within-modal processing, as well as consistencies in cross-modal dynamics.