Begutachtung der Kriminalprognose

A variety of standardized instruments allows risk assessment based upon empirical data. This paper calls attention to the pitfalls immanent to the application of popular prognostic instruments (Violence Risk Appraisal Guide, Static-99, Historical Clinical Risk Management-20, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised). Psychopathological assessment, however, has not been superseded by standardized instruments but serves as a valuable addition in terms of an integrative approach.     

Antecedents of coworker trust: leaders' blessings

Although employee trust in leaders has garnered substantial empirical research, trust between coworkers has been virtually ignored. Extending the work of D. L. Ferrin, K. T. Dirks, and P. P. Shah (2006), the authors examined the role of group leaders, an influential third party in the workplace, on coworker trust formation. The correlates of the extent to which coworkers trust one another were examined in an investigation of 146 members of 32 work groups representing 4 diverse organizations. In this study, which utilized full network data, coworker trust was operationalized as in-degree centrality in the trust network. Controlling for relational demography and coworker helping behaviors, the authors found, as hypothesized, that coworkers tended to place more trust in fellow coworkers who were also trusted by the teams' formal leaders than in coworkers who were less trusted by leaders. In addition, consistent with the social information processing theory, support was found for the hypothesis that the relationship between leaders' trust and coworker trust is stronger when group performance is poor.     

Effects of trusting and being trusted on team citizenship behaviours in chain stores

Previous studies showed a robust and positive relationship between subordinates' trust for leaders and their individual organizational citizenship behaviours. Building on this foundation, we examined two extensions. First, based on the team citizenship behaviours approach, we studied whether the same relationship held at the group level. Second, drawing from literature on leadership and self-efficacy, we studied whether leaders' perceptions of being trusted by their subordinates mattered in this trust relationship; we also examined how this perception affected team citizenship behaviours. Results showed that subordinates' trust for leaders and team citizenship behaviours were positively related at the team level. When leaders felt more trusted, teams showed more citizenship behaviours. Beyond these main effects, leaders' felt trust was found to negatively moderate the relationship between staff trust for leaders and team citizenship behaviours. Theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed.     

The impact of relational demographics on perceived managerial trustworthiness: similarity or norms?

Perceived trustworthiness is a critical antecedent of interpersonal trust, yet researchers have a limited understanding of how such perceptions are generated. The authors used 2 competing perspectives within the relational demography literature--similarity-attraction and relational norms--to empirically examine the effect of demographic differences. Whereas the similarity-attraction account suggests that subordinates will perceive their managers as more trustworthy when managers and staff are similar in demographic attributes, the relational norms account proposes that subordinates will perceive their managers as more trustworthy when their demographic differences follow normative expectations. Data collected from a field study of 178 manager-subordinate dyads in Hong Kong and Macau support the relational norms account in terms of education and organizational rank. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the study.     

Perfectionism and performance in a new basketball training task: Does striving for perfection enhance or undermine performance?

ObjectivesIn the psychology of sport and exercise, the question of how perfectionism affects performance is highly debated. While some researchers have identified perfectionism as a hallmark quality of elite athletes, others see perfectionism as a maladaptive characteristic that undermines, rather than helps, athletic performance. Against this background, the purpose of the present study was to investigate how different aspects of perfectionism predict performance and performance increments.MethodA study was conducted with 122 undergraduate athletes to investigate how perfectionism during training affects performance and performance increments in a series of trials with a new basketball training task. Two aspects of perfectionism were examined: striving for perfection and negative reactions to imperfection.DesignThe design was a correlational prospective design.ResultsResults showed that striving for perfection during training predicted higher performance in the new task. In contrast, negative reactions to imperfection predicted lower performance when athletes attempted the task for the first time, once the positive influence of striving for perfection on task performance was partialled out. However, negative reactions to imperfection did not undermine performance in the consecutive trials. On the contrary, athletes with both high levels of striving for perfection and high levels of negative reactions to imperfection showed the greatest performance increments over the series of trials.ConclusionThe findings suggest that perfectionism is not necessarily a maladaptive characteristic that generally undermines sport performance. Instead, when learning a new training task, perfectionism may enhance performance and lead to performance increments over repeated trials.     

Anxiety-related biases in children's avoidant responses to a masked angry face

While anxious children often show escape and withdrawal behaviours towards threats, few studies have experimentally assessed avoidance. The present study examined whether children with high levels of anxiety showed more avoidant responses to a neutral conditioned cue (CS+) that was paired with an unconditioned threat stimulus (UCS), a masked angry facial expression. Thirty-six 10 and 11 year-olds participated in a task, which involved choosing between two CS card stimuli of different colours to win points. Whilst both cards awarded the same number of points, one colour was systematically paired with a masked angry face (CS+), whilst the other colour was paired with a masked neutral face (CS-). Children with higher anxiety scores had an overall tendency to choose the card associated with the neutral face, with some evidence suggesting that this tendency emerged gradually across trials. These results suggest a relationship between anxiety and stimulus-response learning for CS+-UCS associations that support behavioural avoidance.     

Pathways to childhood depressive symptoms: the role of social, cognitive, and genetic risk factors

Childhood depressive conditions have been explored from multiple theoretical approaches but with few empirical attempts to address the interrelationships among these different domains and their combined effects. In the present study, the authors examined different pathways through which social, cognitive, and genetic risk factors may be expressed to influence depressive symptoms in 300 pairs of child twins from a longitudinal study. Path analysis supported several indirect routes. First, risks associated with living in a step- or single-parent family and punitive parenting did not directly influence depressive outcome but were instead mediated through maternal depressive symptoms and child negative attributional style. Second, the effects of negative attributional style on depressive outcome were greatly exacerbated in the presence of precipitating negative life events. Third, independent of these social and cognitive risk mechanisms, modest genetic effects were also implicated in symptoms, with some indication that these risks are expressed through exposure to negative stressors. Together, these routes accounted for approximately 13% of total phenotypic variance in depressive symptoms. Theoretical and analytical implications of these results are discussed in the context of several design-related caveats.     

Temperamental dimension and anxiety problems in a clinical sample of three- to six-year old children: a study of variables

In the last few years, many researchers have studied the presence of common dimensions of temperament in subjects with symptoms of anxiety. The aim of this study is to examine the association between temperamental dimensions (high negative affect and activity level) and anxiety problems in clinical preschool children. A total of 38 children, ages 3 to 6 years, from the Infant and Adolescent Mental Health Center of Girona and the Center of Diagnosis and Early Attention of Sabadell and Olot were evaluated by parents and psychologists. Their parents completed several screening scales and, subsequently, clinical child psychopathology professionals carried out diagnostic interviews with children from the sample who presented signs of anxiety. Findings showed that children with high levels of negative affect and low activity level have pronounced symptoms of anxiety. However, children with anxiety disorders do not present different temperament styles from their peers without these pathologies.     

Effects of prime task on affective priming by facial expressions of emotion

Priming of affective word evaluation by pictures of faces showing positive and negative emotional expressions was investigated in two experiments that used a double task procedure where participants were asked to respond to the prime or to the target on different trials. The experiments varied between-subjects the prime task assignment and the prime-target interval (SOA, stimulus onset asynchrony). Significant congruency effects (that is, faster word evaluation when prime and target had the same valence than when they were of opposite valence) were observed in both experiments. When the prime task oriented the subjects to an affectively irrelevant property of the faces (their gender), priming was observed at SOA 300 ms but not at SOA 1000 ms (Experiment 1). However, when the prime task assignment explicitly oriented the subjects to the valence of the face, priming was observed at both SOA durations (Experiment 2). These results show, first, that affective priming by pictures of facial emotion can be obtained even when the subject has an explicit goal to process a non-affective property of the prime. Second, sensitivity of the priming effect to SOA duration seems to depend on whether it is mediated by intentional or unintentional activation of the valence of the face prime.