Are sexualized women complete human beings? Why men and women dehumanize sexually objectified women

Focusing on the dehumanization of sexually objectified targets, study 1 tested the extent to which objectified and non‐objectified male and female publicity photos were associated with human compared to animal concepts. Results confirmed the hypothesis that, among all targets, only objectified women were associated with less human concepts. This pattern of results emerged for both male and female participants but likely for different reasons. Study 2 directly looked at female and male participants' affinity with sexually objectified women. Results indicated that the more women distanced themselves from sexually objectified women the more they dehumanized them, whereas men's sexual attraction moderated their tendency to dehumanize female targets. In study 3, this latter motivation was operationalized as the activation of a sex goal and showed to trigger man's but not woman's dehumanization of female targets. Overall, the present set of studies show that only sexually objectified women are dehumanized by both men and women but for different reasons. Whereas sexual attraction shifts a men's focus of a female target away from her personality onto her body triggering a dehumanization process, women are more inclined to dehumanize their sexually objectified counterparts the more they distance themselves from these sexualized representations of their gender category. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tackling Acute Cases of School Bullying in the KiVa Anti-Bullying Program: A Comparison of Two Approaches

Whether cases of bullying should be handled in a direct, condemning mode or in a manner that does not involve blaming the perpetrator is a controversial issue among school professionals. This study compares the effectiveness of a Confronting Approach where the bully is openly told that his behavior must cease immediately to a Non-Confronting Approach where the adult shares his concern about the victim with the bully and invites him to provide suggestions on what could improve the situation. We analysed 339 cases of bullying involving 314 children from grades 1 to 9 (mean age?=?11.95). Cases were handled in 65 schools as part of the implementation of the KiVa anti-bullying program. In each school, a team of three teachers addressed cases coming to their attention by organizing discussions with the bullies using either a Confronting or a Non-Confronting Approach; schools were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. Victims reported that bullying stopped in 78 % of the cases. Logistic regression analyses indicated that neither approach was overall more effective than the other, controlling for grade level, duration of victimization and type of aggression. The Confronting Approach worked better than the Non-Confronting Approach in secondary school (grades 7 to 9), but not in primary school (grades 1 to 6). The Confronting Approach was more successful than the Non-Confronting Approach in cases of short-term victimization, but not in cases of long-term victimization. The type of aggression used did not moderate the effectiveness of either approach.     

Motor imagery in spinal cord injury patients: Moving makes the difference

Both real action control and execution and motor imagery abilities require knowledge of the spatial location of body parts, in other words efference copy information and feedbacks from the sensory system (Frith et al., 2000, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci., 355, 1771). Spinal cord injuries induce severe motor disability, due to a damage of the descending motor pathways (Cramer et al., 2007, Exp. Brain. Res., 177, 233). Patients' motor imagery competences are variably reported as either normal or defective (Decety & Boisson, 1990, Eur. Arch. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci., 240, 39; Lacourse et al., 1999, Behav. Brain Sci., 104, 73). We explored biomechanical constraint effects in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) patients, as they are considered the most reliable indexes of motor imagery abilities (Parsons, 1987b, Cogn. Psychol., 19, 178). Sixteen spinal cord injuries patients and 16 neurologically unimpaired subjects have been administered with (1) the Hand Laterality Task (HLT), in which subjects were asked to judge the laterality of a rotated hand; and (2) the Mirror Letter Discrimination Task (MLD), in which subjects were asked to judge if a rotated character was in its correct upright position or mirror‐reversed form. Our patients did not present the effect of stimulus orientation, neither did they show any effect related to biomechanical constraints. Based on these data, the hypothesis is that SCI patients' performance may be ascribed to the use of a different strategy to solve the tasks, based on memory rather than on mental rotation.     

Improving Interaction Competencies With Children—A Pilot Feasibility Study to Reduce School Corporal Punishment

High prevalence rates of corporal punishment in schools worldwide and the associated negative mental health issues show the need for interventions addressing this problem. Yet, so far there are very few intervention studies aimed at altering corporal punishment administered by teachers, particularly in low- or middle-income countries.

To conduct a feasibility study of the newly developed intervention approach, Interaction Competencies with Children for Teachers (ICC-T)—a training workshop designed to prevent corporal punishment and improve the teacher-student relationship.

The 1-week ICC-T intervention was conducted with 30 teachers in a Tanzanian primary school. Participants filled out a survey before, directly after, and 3 months following the intervention.

The widespread use of corporal punishment indicated strong demand for a preventive intervention. The feasibility of ICC-T was good: Despite challenging conditions, implementation of the training and participants’ acceptance was high. Further, participants reported a good integration of the training’s core elements in their daily working routine, improvements in the teacher-student relationships, and in the students’ behavior.

ICC-T shows a promising feasibility in the Tanzanian teacher sample. These encouraging results highlight the need for further studies testing the efficacy, sustainability, and effects of ICC-T on the students’ well-being.     

Enhancing theory of mind in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia with transcranial direct current stimulation

Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a form of frontotemporal degeneration characterized by early changes in personality, emotional blunting, and/or loss of empathy. Recent research has highlighted that these features may be at least partially explained by impairments in the theory of mind (ToM; i.e., the ability to understand and predict other people’s behaviour by attributing independent mental states to them). The aim of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was to test the hypothesis that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the medial frontal cortex (MFC) selectively enhances communicative intention processing, a specific ToM ability. Using a single-session online design, we administered a ToM task that measures the ability to represent other people’s private and communicative intentions during active or sham tDCS to 16 bvFTD patients. To assess the impact of dementia on performance on the ToM task, we included 16 age-matched healthy volunteers who were asked to perform the entire experimental ToM task. BvFTD is characterized by an impairment in the comprehension of both communicative and private intentions relative to a healthy control group and by a disproportional impairment in communicative intention compared with private intention processing. Significant and selective accuracy improvement in the comprehension of communicative intentions after active stimulation was observed in patients with bvFTD. This is the first study that analyses ToM ability in patients with bvFTD using tDCS stimulation. Our findings could potentially contribute to the development of an effective, noninvasive brain stimulation treatment of ToM impairments in patients with bvFTD.     

Family Allocentrism and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: The Role of Self-Identity Style

Recent research has found that a strong family allocentrism relates to reduced adolescent depressive symptoms. Besides providing continuous support for this relation, this research extended the scope by exploring whether there was a U-shaped association between family allocentrism and depressive symptoms and testing the mediation effect of identity style among Italian adolescents (N?=?387, 183 boys, 204 girls, M_age?=?16.38 years). Result of hierarchical regression model showed that the association between family allocentrism and depressive symptoms was linear rather than U-shaped. More importantly, this linear relation was mediated by normative and diffuse-avoidant style. In sum, the current findings suggest that adolescents who are allocentric toward family tend to follow family members’ expectations to establish self-identity and deal with identity issues more proactively, and thus they are less likely to experience depressive symptoms. Moreover, there is no significant evidence that too much family allocentrism would lead to elevated depressive symptoms.     

Giving Voice to Patients: Developing a Discussion Method to Involve Patients in Translational Research

Biomedical research policy in recent years has often tried to make such research more ‘translational’, aiming to facilitate the transfer of insights from research and development (R&D) to health care for the benefit of future users. Involving patients in deliberations about and design of biomedical research may increase the quality of R&D and of resulting innovations and thus contribute to translation. However, patient involvement in biomedical research is not an easy feat. This paper discusses the development of a method for involving patients in (translational) biomedical research aiming to address its main challenges.After reviewing the potential challenges of patient involvement, we formulate three requirements for any method to meaningfully involve patients in (translational) biomedical research. It should enable patients (1) to put forward their experiential knowledge, (2) to develop a rich view of what an envisioned innovation might look like and do, and (3) to connect their experiential knowledge with the envisioned innovation. We then describe how we developed the card-based discussion method ‘Voice of patients’, and discuss to what extent the method, when used in four focus groups, satisfied these requirements. We conclude that the method is quite successful in mobilising patients’ experiential knowledge, in stimulating their imaginaries of the innovation under discussion and to some extent also in connecting these two. More work is needed to translate patients’ considerations into recommendations relevant to researchers’ activities. It also seems wise to broaden the audience for patients’ considerations to other actors working on a specific innovation.     

Changes in research on Judaism in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods

This article offers an overview of what every theologian and scholar of religion should know about changes in biblical studies that have taken place concerning the past depreciation of Second Temple Judaism, the use of newly discovered sources and their implications, as well as integrative approaches to top-down (reflected beliefs, prescribed practices, textual sources) and bottom-up (intuitive beliefs, lived practices, material culture) processes. Changes in the field lead to the re-writing of the history of the Bible and of Judaean society in the Greco-Roman context. By means of this co-authored research article, we wish to demonstrate the benefit of, as well as the need for, interdisciplinary work in the study of antiquity.     

Brightness for different surround conditions: the effect of transient glare

We measured the effect of a transient glare source on t heperceived brightness of astandard luminance (L(STD)) patch (0.5 cd/m2) as a function of the surround luminance (Ls). In the experiment, both increment and decrement stimuli were dependent on the value of the Ls (0.01, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 cd/m2). We adopted a magnitude comparison paradigm using constant stimuli to determine the test matching luminance (L(M)). When L(S) was lower than the luminance of the patch, which corresponds to increments, LM was lower than L(STD), and this effect was highest for the lowest L(S). There was a small but noticeable cusp as increments shifted to decrements. As L(S) increased further (i.e., as the decrement grew), L(M) flattened out below L(STF). The overall pattern of results could be interpreted in terms of the concept of contrast brightness, with consideration of the intrinsic differences in brightness evaluations between decrements and increments.