Conflict Transformation: Relinquishing or Maintaining Social Identity Among Former Loyalist Combatants in Northern Ireland

This study explored the accounts of former loyalist combatants now involved in conflict transformation, preventing violent extremism and peace-building work. To understand how former loyalist combatants negotiate their dramatic change in context and function, we analyzed accounts of peace building through thematic analysis. The themes demonstrated that conducting conflict transformation is expressively linked to former combatant identity. The themes also demonstrate that former combatants construct identity continuity by viewing their current transformative actions as an evolution of their militant activity during the Troubles. The article concludes on the implications of these identity maintenance strategies for former combatants and, more widely, what implications this has for other militants transitioning from conflict or extremism towards peace.     

From Victim to Perpetrator of Trauma: Lived Experiences of Gang-Involved Urban Refugee Youth in Kenya

Somali children and youth in displacement are exposed to prolonged trauma and chronic violence. In spite of a striking link among trauma, gang activities, victimization, and perpetration of violence, however, few studies have been conducted with Somali refugee youth in low-resource urban settings. This qualitative study demonstrates how prolonged trauma shapes ecological conditions of refugee life that induce vulnerable youth to forge support systems through gang membership and violence. The accession of the challenges, from loss of family, to discrimination and police brutality, and to chronic impoverishment, forces the high-risk refugee youth to replicate the various forms of violence to which they have been exposed to survive. Undergoing such chronic and cumulated trauma, these youth continue to normalize and become further desensitized to violence. The systems perspective of this study expands understanding of the intersection of trauma and gang membership and implies the need for an expanded approach to trauma and understanding of the complexities of gang involvement, beyond posttraumatic stress disorder treatment and clinical intervention.     

Institutional Approaches to Research Integrity in Ghana

Science and Engineering Ethics - Research misconduct (RM) remains an important problem in health research despite decades of local, national, regional, and international efforts to eliminate it....     

A randomized clinical trial of three prompting systems to teach tact relations

Prompts are commonly used during discrete trial teaching for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three commonly used prompting systems include constant time delay, most-to-least prompting, and flexible prompt fading. Most of the research demonstrating the effectiveness of these three prompting strategies have been completed through the use of single subject experimental designs. Some within the field of behaviorally based approaches to ASD interventions have called for more randomized clinical trials of these approaches. The purpose of the present study was to compare these 3 prompting systems to teach tact relations for 27 individuals diagnosed with ASD through a randomized clinical trial without a control group with respect to pre–post responding, generalization, sessions to mastery, and responding during teaching. Overall, minimal differences were observed across the 3 systems. The results are discussed with respect to future research and clinical application of the methods evaluated.     

Temporal dynamics of guilt: changes in the role of interpersonal and intrapsychic factors

Baumeister, Stillwell and Heatherton (1994) argue that guilt serves primarily interpersonal functions and take issue with more traditional intrapsychic accounts of guilty feelings, in which causality, responsibility, and blame are emphasized. We examined the validity of these claims by asking 198 college students to imagine that they destroyed the valued property of either their best friend or mother, under each of three conditions of causal responsibility (accidental, foreseeable, unjustifiably intended). They then rated the reactions they anticipated from the victim (anger, disappointment; change in impression of the perpetrator), their perceived blameworthiness, aspects of causality, and how guilty they would feel immediately after perpetrating the harm as well as an entire day later. Imagined guilt was curvilinearly related to responsibility at time 1, but linearly at time 2. Results suggest that people only weigh interpersonal concerns more heavily after time has elapsed, but that both factors integrally affect feelings of guilt. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hypochondriacal concerns and the five factor model of personality

Using data from two studies (Ns = 205 and 161), this article examines the associations between the domains of the five factor model of personality and hypochondriacal concerns (HCs). These associations are explored once covariation due to other related traits (somatosensory amplification) and comorbidity factors (anxiety, depression, and somatic symptom reporting) have been controlled. As predicted, emotional stability was associated with most criteria related to HCs and agreeableness was negatively associated with the perceived inadequacy of a physician's explanation. Conscientiousness was negatively associated with HCs. These associations remained after partialing the comorbidity factors and somatosensory amplification. The discussion focuses on the particular role of agreeableness and conscientiousness in relation to HCs.     

Children's conceptions of characteristic features of category members

The authors investigated children's conceptions of the characteristic features of category members and found that their conceptions underwent qualitative developmental changes. They hypothesized that (a) children initially tend to perceive category members in terms of individual characteristics (i.e., internal dispositions and behavioral patterns) and (b) only later do they conceive of category members in terms of their shared beliefs and values. They explored these hypotheses in 2 studies: In Study 1, they investigated how Protestant and Catholic children in Northern Ireland understood the religious intergroup context in their own country; in Study 2, children in Italy were presented with a fictional scenario of intergroup conflict and asked to explain the causes of the conflict. The results of both studies confirmed the 2 hypotheses.     

Beliefs and inferences: a test of a rational-emotive hypothesis: 2. On the prospect of seeing a spider

96 subjects were asked to imagine that they were about to enter a room in which there may have been one or more spiders. They were also asked to imagine that (a) they either held a rational or an irrational belief about spiders, (b) they were about to enter the room either alone or with someone, and (c) that the room was either dark or light. Having absorbed their assigned role, the subjects were then asked to make inferences about various elements of their situation. The results supported the hypothesis that holding an irrational belief leads to more negative inferences. It was also found that the lighting conditions in the room and whether the subject was alone or with someone affected the negativity of the inferences made. In addition, there were several two-way and three-way interactions between the independent variables which indicated that entering a light room or being with someone else tended to moderate the negativity of inferences made by those holding a rational belief rather than the opposite, amplifying the negativity of inferences made by those holding an irrational belief. The results supported Ellis's (1985) recent formulation concerning the complex relationship between events and inferences (A), beliefs (B), and emotional and behavioral consequences of beliefs (C).     

Age differences in using source-relevant cues.

Subjects heard words originating from 2 speakers and later decided which of the 2 speakers said the words. Older adults had difficulty with source monitoring when perceptual cues from 2 sources were similar (2 female speakers), but this difficulty was overcome when perceptual cues were distinctive (a male and a female speaker) and were the only salient cues to source. Older adults also benefited from distinctive spatial cues when these were the only salient cues to source. Older adults, however, experienced difficulties in using multiple cues (both perceptual and spatial) to source effectively, whereas younger adults were able to use multiple cues to enhance their source-monitoring performance. It is suggested that age differences in source monitoring result from differential cue utilization.