Self-Determination in Intervention With Battered Arab Women in Community Health Clinics in Israel

Many abused women from patriarchal collectivistic societies that are subjected to social control seek help in community health clinics. The article is based on a qualitative study, which consisted of 24 interviews with 12 abused Israeli Arab women who sought the help of social workers in community health clinics. A central theme that emerged from the interviews was the women’s wish to maintain their self-determination in retaining the power to determine the boundaries of the intervention within the professional relationship. The discussion focuses on the dialectical consequences of maintaining the women’s self-determination—empowering them, on one hand, and limiting them, on the other.     

Positive Feelings at School: On the Relationships Between Students’ Character Strengths,School-Related Affect,and School Functioning

The present study was designed to examine the relationships between students’ character strengths, school-related affect, positive school functioning (i.e., motivation to learn, interest, and engagement at class), and school achievement following the “engine model of well-being” that is focusing on inputs (e.g., personality traits), processes (e.g., moods, emotions), and outcomes (e.g., engagement, accomplishments) within the context of well-being research. A sample of 196 children completed the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth, which assesses 24 character strengths, and the PANAS-C that assesses school-related positive and negative affect. Additionally, homeroom teachers rated students’ positive school functioning (i.e., motivation, engagement, and interest at school) and their overall school achievement. The character strengths of zest, love of learning, perseverance, and social intelligence showed the strongest positive correlations with school-related positive affect. Teamwork, hope, self-regulation, and love were substantially negatively correlated with school-related negative affect. Certain character strengths showed positive relationships with positive school functioning and overall school achievement. A path model, testing the “engine model of well-being”, found—additionally to direct effects—indirect relationships between character strengths and positive school functioning (through school-related positive affect), which in turn leads to higher school achievement. The presented findings show character strengths as meaningful resources in the schooling context. Character strengths emerge to be crucial for students to experience school-related positive affect, which in turn supports students’ positive school functioning and their overall school achievement. The results demonstrate the complex interplay between students’ personality traits, affect, school functioning, and achievement at school.     

Why Should I Help You? Man Up! Bystanders’ Gender Stereotypic Perceptions of a Cyberbullying Incident

Bystanders observing a cyberbullying incident do not always intervene in favor of the victim. We argue that gender stereotypic perceptions of female versus male victims contribute to the differential reactions of bystanders to cyberbullying incidents. Results of a scenario-based experiment show that participants with moderate or high levels of sexist attitudes are more empathic toward a female victim of workplace cyberbullying. Consequently, a female victim is more likely to receive help. Female victims are less likely to be attributed blame if the perpetrator is male. The results imply that male victims of cyberbullying are marginalized by their social environment.     

Repeated Play Reduces Video Games’ Ability to Elicit Guilt: Evidence from a Longitudinal Experiment

Statements supported mostly by correlational and cross-sectional studies suggest that playing violent video games can cause emotional desensitization. A longitudinal experiment examined a) whether repeated violent game play leads to emotional desensitization and b) whether desensitization generalizes to other play and real-life experiences. Participants played alternative versions of the same violent game for the first four days; on these days, the character role was varied between-subjects to be moral (United Nations soldier) or immoral (terrorist soldier). On Day 5, all participants played a novel game as a terrorist. Results indicate two things. First, habituation occurs over repeated game play: Repeated exposure decreased the ability of the original game to elicit guilt. Second, the decreased ability to elicit guilt can generalize to other game-play experiences: Guilt elicited by the novel game on Day 5 was reduced for the immoral character condition compared to the moral character condition. The current study provides causal, longitudinal evidence regarding the potential for video game play to lead to emotional desensitization with regard to future video game-play experiences.     

Evidence of a metacognitive benefit to memory?

Studies of the memory-control framework have contrasted free-report and forced-report recall, with little regard to the order of these two tests. The present experiment sought to demonstrate that test order is crucial, and that this suggests a potential role for metacognitive monitoring on memory retrieval. Participants undertook tests of episodic and semantic memory in both free- and forced-report format, in one of the two potential response orders. This showed that free-report performance was more accurate if conducted prior to forced-report, rather than after it, with no cost to memory quantity. Additionally, there was a trend towards higher forced-report performance if it was preceded by an initial free-report test, a pattern revealed by a meta-analysis to be consistent with previous studies in the literature. These findings suggest a reciprocal relationship between metacognitive monitoring and early retrieval processes in memory that results in higher memory performance when monitoring is encouraged.     

Willingness to express emotion: The impact of relationship type,communal orientation,and their interaction

This research examines the effects of relationship type (close vs. business), a personality variable (dispositional communal orientation), and the interaction of these two variables on individuals’ willingness to express emotions to relationship partners. Results supported our predictions that (a) people are willing to express more emotion in relationships likely to be high in communal strength than in relationships likely to be low in communal strength, (b) individuals high in communal orientation are willing to express more emotion than those who are low in communal orientation, and (c) relationship type and communal orientation interact to influence willingness to express two emotions that reveal weakness and vulnerability (fear and anxiety). Specifically, communal orientation had little effect on willingness to express fear and anxiety in business relationships, whereas high relative to low communal orientation was associated with willingness to express more fear and anxiety within close relationships.     

Characterization of memory impairment following closed-head injury in children using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT).

Memory impairment following closed-head injury (CHI) in children is well documented. Characterization of the memory deficits of children with CHI could contribute to the prediction of academic performance and rehabilitation of these children. Twenty-five children who sustained closed-head injury and 25 matched controls were administered the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). The advantage of this memory test is that a number of memory components are measured simultaneously, thus enabling us to study the relations between different aspects of memory within the same patient sample. The findings indicate that the Rey AVLT is a good test for characterization of impaired verbal memory in children following CHI. Transformation of scores derived from the Rey AVLT to Z-scores enables us to determine the relative effect of CHI in children on different memory scores. Raw scores were more vulnerable than relational ones, derived as the difference between two raw scores (e.g., learning, Trial 5 - 1), to closed-head injury in children, and scores reflecting word span were the least vulnerable. The results are discussed in terms of the possible contribution of the frontal lobes, which are frequently affected in closed-head injuries, to memory performance.     

Using confidence ratings to identify a target among foils

Sauer, Brewer, and Weber (2008) advanced a novel procedure for testing eyewitness recognition memory. Rather than providing a single decision (i.e., identifying a lineup member or rejecting the lineup as a whole), participants rated their confidence that each lineup member was the culprit. Classification algorithms determined when patterns of confidence ratings indicated suspect guilt or innocence. Across varied test stimuli, confidence-based classifications equalled or out-performed single decisions. However, Sauer et al.’s classification criteria were designed to optimize performance for the data to which they were applied. If effective classification using confidence ratings requires such idiosyncratic criteria, the applied utility of the confidence procedure is nil. We re-analysed the data from Sauer et al.’s two identification experiments and demonstrated that confidence-based classification performance exceeding that of a traditional lineup task did not depend on uniquely developed classification criteria. Confidence-rating lineups offer a potentially promising alternative to procedures requiring single decisions from witnesses.     

Outsourcing self-regulation

Three studies demonstrate a novel phenomenon--self-regulatory outsourcing--in which thinking about how other people can be instrumental (i.e., helpful) for a given goal undermines motivation to expend effort on that goal. In Experiment 1, participants who thought about how their partner helped them with health goals (as opposed to career goals) planned to spend less time and effort on health goals in the upcoming week. This pattern was stronger for depleted participants than for nondepleted participants. In Experiment 2, participants who thought about how their partner helped them with academic-achievement goals procrastinated more, leaving themselves less time for an academic task, than did participants in two control conditions. This pattern was stronger for participants who were told that procrastinating would drain their resources for the academic task than for participants who were told that procrastinating would not drain their resources for that task. In Experiment 3, participants who decreased their effort after thinking of an instrumental significant other reported higher relationship commitment to that individual than did participants who did not decrease their effort. The possibility for shared (or transactive) self-regulation is discussed.