The Role of Gender and Ethnicity in Perceptions of Rape and Its Aftereffects

Caucasian-, Hispanic-, and Asian-American male and female students (n?=?764) attending a California (USA) public university reported their perceptions of sexual assault. After reading a rape vignette, participants gave their impressions of the victim; estimated time needed for recovery and treatment; and recommended a sentence for the assailant. Half of the sample received information regarding state sentencing guidelines. Relative to female participants, males perceived the victim as more responsible. Caucasian-American males had stronger reservation about the victim’s judgment. Males were less inclined to assign blame than were females. Ethnicity was the only factor influencing perceptions of recovery. Ethnicity and sentencing guidelines, but not gender, impacted imprisonment decisions. Issues impeding a unified theoretical understanding of perceptions of rape victims were considered.     

Strengthening Connections in Interracial Marriages Through Pre-Marital Inventories: A Critical Literature Review

The importance of preparing for marriage is apparent when one considers the consequences of marital distress and the high rate of divorce. Pre-marital inventories help couples’ prepare for marriage by identifying their personal risks and resilience profiles as well as other factors that may influence their marriage. Research demonstrates the benefits of pre-marital inventories; however, there is little research on their effectiveness for interracial couples. In this review challenges facing interracial couples are identified, the benefits of using eco-systems theory in the creation of pre-marital inventories are discussed, and suggestions on how pre-marital inventories can become more applicable to interracial couples are offered.     

Conditions for Facelike Expertise With Objects: Becoming a Ziggerin Expert—but Which Type?

ABSTRACT— Compared with other objects, faces are processed more holistically and with a larger reliance on configural information. Such hallmarks of face processing can also be found for nonface objects as people develop expertise with them. Is this specifically a result of expertise individuating objects, or would any type of prolonged intensive experience with objects be sufficient? Two groups of participants were trained with artificial objects (Ziggerins). One group learned to rapidly individuate Ziggerins (i.e., subordinate-level training). The other group learned rapid, sequential categorizations at the basic level. Individuation experts showed a selective improvement at the subordinate level and an increase in holistic processing. Categorization experts improved only at the basic level, showing no changes in holistic processing. Attentive exposure to objects in a difficult training regimen is not sufficient to produce facelike expertise. Rather, qualitatively different types of expertise with objects of a given geometry can arise depending on the type of training.     

Knowing who knows what and who knows whom: Expertise recognition,network recognition,and individual work performance

We tested the relationship between individuals' expertise recognition and work performance, the role of job resourcefulness (i.e. individuals' ability to garner resources to overcome obstacles) as a mediator, and network recognition as a moderator in the link between expertise recognition and job resourcefulness. We found that the positive impact of expertise recognition on work performance was mediated by job resourcefulness, but network recognition did not play a moderating role.     

What are effective phonological units in Cantonese spoken word planning?

Two picture—word interference experiments were conducted to investigate the nature of effective phonological units in Cantonese spoken word production. The names of the pictures were Cantonese monosyllables with a consonant 1 vowel 1 consonant (CVC) structure. Participants’ picture-naming responses were faster when the target (e.g., “star” /sing1/) and the distractor shared the same CVC component (e.g., /sing4/, meaning “city”), the same CV component (e.g., /sik6/, “eat”), or the same VC component (e.g., /ging2/, “region”), as opposed to when they were unrelated, and the facilitation effects observed were comparable in size. Also, similar facilitation effects were obtained across the CV1tone-related and the VC1tone-related conditions, whereas no reliable effect was found in the V1tone-related condition. These results indicate that an effective phonological unit in spoken word planning is neither a syllable (without tone) nor a segmental unit, and that the possible candidates lie between the two, at least in Cantonese.     

Personality, Meta-Mood Experience, Life Satisfaction, and Anxiety in Australian versus Singaporean Students

This study explores two issues concerning the relationships between personality, meta-mood experience, life satisfaction, and anxiety. First, it explored the incremental value of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience in predicting the three components of meta-mood experience (that is, attention to feelings, emotional clarity, clarity of feelings and mood repair), after controlling for demographic variables across Australia and Singapore. Second, it explored the incremental value of the three meta-mood experience components in predicting life satisfaction and anxiety, after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables across the two countries. One hundred and eighty nine tertiary students from Australia and 243 tertiary students from Singapore participated in this study. First, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that Agreeableness and Neuroticism are the two most important personality predictors of meta-mood experience, emotional attention, and emotional repair. Second, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that emotional repair was a significant predictor for life satisfaction and anxiety, even after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables. These results have implications for therapeutic interventions with life satisfaction versus anxiety. Funding for this research is facilitated partially by a research grant from the National Institute of Education.     

Measuring General Indecisiveness

Although indecisiveness seems to be a widespread problem, little empirical research has addressed its measurement. Frost and Shows (1993; Behaviour Research and Therapy, 31, 683–692) introduced the Indecisiveness Scale (IS) as a measure of individual differences in general indecisiveness. Although these authors conducted various psychometric analyses, some properties (e.g., factor structure, test-retest reliability) were not investigated. In the present studies, several reliability and validity indices were computed. First, four of the fifteen items of the IS were found to be omissible. Second, 4-week test-retest reliability was found to be satisfactory. Third, scores on the IS were found to correlate meaningfully with a concurrent measure of decision making, and with various scales of psychopathology. Lastly, in Study 4, the IS was found to predict scores on a behavioural measure of decision making, suggesting good predictive validity. Overall, these findings suggest that the IS has good psychometric properties.     

他们为何争辩?——良心自由与公共理性之间

伴随着许多历史经验和教训,以基督教新教文明的兴起为思想和制度背景,充分保障每个人良心的自由不受逼迫和免予恐惧成为人类宪法权利的核心理念之一;与此相应,宗教自由及其真正实现不可缺乏的表达自由、结社自由等基本权利为各国宪法所承认。在这些宪法权利被确认之初,宗教在道德和公共生活中具有毋庸置疑的地位,而且是抹不去的底色。然而,20世纪以来,在地球上许多地区保有和出现宗教复兴的同时,对于主要以基督教文明为文化主体的西方社会,宗教在社会和政治问题上的作用却日益衰微,传统宗教似乎已经失去了其道德力量。有研究提到,在欧洲历史…     

Emotional competencies and maladjustment in Singaporean adolescents

This study explores the relationships between four emotional competencies (i.e., intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, adaptability skills, and stress management skills) and four factors of maladjustment (i.e., antisocial behavior, anger control problems, emotional distress, and negative self problems) in 217 students from Singapore. Multiple regression findings indicated that stress management skills significantly predicted overall maladjustment, antisocial behavior, anger control problems, emotional distress, and negative self problems. With regard to the three remaining emotional competencies, interpersonal skills significantly predicted negative self problems, while intrapersonal skills and adaptability skills were not predictive of any of the four factors of maladjustment. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.