Rape myth acceptance and judgments of vulnerability to sexual assault: an Internet experiment

Processing strategies in risk assessment were studied in an Internet experiment. Women (N = 399) who were either low or high in rape myth acceptance (RMA) were asked to recall either two or six behaviors that either increase or decrease the risk of being sexually assaulted. Later they judged their personal vulnerability to sexual assault under either no time pressure (no response deadline) or time pressure (response deadline of 5 s). Without time pressure, the results were opposite to previous research: Women low in RMA relied on ease of recall and reported higher vulnerability after recalling few rather than many risk increasing behaviors, or many rather than few risk-decreasing behaviors; women high in RMA relied on the amount of information recalled, which resulted in an opposite pattern of vulnerability judgments. No influences of ease of recall or amount recalled on vulnerability judgments were detected under time pressure.     

Rape myths as neutralizing cognitions: evidence for a causal impact of anti-victim attitudes on men's self-reported likelihood of raping

Men's rape myth acceptance (RMA; prejudiced beliefs that serve to exonerate the rapist and blame the victim) has been shown to correlate positively with self-reported rape proclivity (RP). To explore the causal pathway underlying this correlation, two experiments were conducted in which the relative cognitive accessibility of RMA and RP was varied. Male students were asked to report their RP in the context of a scale assessing attraction toward sexual aggression (Experiment 1) or in response to five realistic date-rape scenarios (Experiment 2), either before or after they filled out a 20-item RMA scale. In both studies, the correlation of RMA and RP was significantly greater in the after than in the before condition, suggesting that the belief in rape myths has a causal influence on men's proclivity to rape. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning to learn during visual discrimination in group housed dwarf goats (Capra hircus)

Using an automated learning device, we investigated "learning to learn" by dwarf goats (Capra hircus) in what was for them a familiar environment and normal social settings. Nine problems, each consisting of four discriminable black symbols, each with one S-super+ and three different S-super(-), were presented on a computer screen. Mean daily learning success improved over the course of the first four problems, and the improvement was maintained throughout the remaining five problems. The number of trials to reach the learning criterion decreased significantly beginning with problem four. Such results may be interpreted as evidence that the goats were developing a learning set. In the present case, the learning set appeared to have two components. One involved gaining familiarity and apparent understanding of the learning device and the basic requirements of the discrimination task. The second component involved learning potential error factors to be ignored, as well as learning commonalities that carried over from one problem to the next. Among the error factors, evidence of apparent preferences for specific symbols was seen, which had a predictable effect on performances.     

Max Weber as outsider: His nominal influence on German sociology in the twenties

An assessment of the influence which Max Weber's writings had on the growth of German sociology after World War I. The author isolates those themes which were of major importance during the Weimar Republic: the concern with social integration; the shattered faith in reason; and the attempt to create a uniquely “German” sociology. It becomes clear that neither Weber's conception of sociology nor his methodological formulations had much impact on the next generation. These findings can be accounted for in three different ways: (1) that he died too early; (2) that German sociology lacked the necessary institutionalization; or (3) that there was a reorientation in scholarship following World War I, which Weber's opus could not bridge.     

Flirting With Disaster: Short‐Term Mating Orientation and Hostile Sexism Predict Different Types of Sexual Harassment

We combine evolutionary and sociocultural accounts of sexual harassment, proposing that sexuality‐related and hostility‐related motives lead to different types of harassment. Specifically, men's short‐term mating orientation (STMO) was hypothesized to predict only unwanted sexual attention but not gender harassment, whereas men's hostile sexism (HS) was hypothesized to predict both unwanted sexual attention and gender harassment. As part of an alleged computer‐chat task, 100 male students could send sexualized personal remarks (representing unwanted sexual attention), sexist jokes (representing gender harassment), or nonharassing material to an attractive female target. Independently, participants’ STMO, HS, and sexual harassment myth acceptance (SHMA) were assessed. Correlational and path analyses revealed that STMO specifically predicted unwanted sexual attention, whereas HS predicted both unwanted sexual attention and gender harassment. Furthermore, SHMA fully mediated the effect of HS on gender harassment, but did not mediate effects of STMO or HS on unwanted sexual attention. Results are discussed in relation to motivational explanations for sexual harassment and antiharassment interventions. Aggr. Behav. 38:521‐531, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mind as Computer: Birth of a Metaphor

Scientific discovery has long been explained in terms of theory, data, and little else. We propose a new approach to scientific discovery in which tools play a central role by suggesting themselves as scientific theories, by way of what we call the tools-to-theories heuristic of scientific discovery. In this article, we extend our previous analysis of statistical tools that became theories of mind to the computer and its impact on psychological theorizing. We first show how a conceptual separation of intelligence and calculation in the early 19th century made mechanical computation, and later the electronic computer, conceivable. We next show how in this century, when computers finally became standard laboratory tools, the computer was proposed—and eventually adopted—as a model of mind. Thus, we travel the full circle from mind to computer and back.     

Autismus oder „Psychopathy“?

According to the concept of Hare autism spectrum disorders and psychopathy are associated with a strong deficit in empathy. However, empathy deficits in patients suffering from autism spectrum disorders and empathy deficits in individuals with psychopathic personality traits appear to be different. Some authors described the comorbid occurrence of psychopathic personality traits/psychopathy in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. The following article aims to approach this differential diagnostic problem by a brief review of the literature on a casuistic basis. This article reports the case of a highly remarkable 17-year-old adolescent. The case will be discussed according to the construct of psychopathy with reference to the concept of Hare.