Tattoo or taboo? Tattoo stigma and negative attitudes toward tattooed individuals

Tattoos are common in the United States; however, tattooed persons may be perceived as having more negative character and as more deviant than people without tattoos. College students (Study 1) and community members (Study 2) viewed images of men and women with tattoos or the same images with the tattoos digitally removed and rated the targets’ characteristics. Half of the participants viewed a target with a tattoo, and half viewed that target without it, allowing for both within- (participants all rated one male and one female target with a tattoo and another without) and between-participants (participants rated either the tattooed or non-tattooed version of a single target) comparisons. Tattooed targets, especially women, were rated as stronger and more independent, but were rated more negatively on other character attributes than the same target images with the tattoos removed. The stigma associated with tattoos appears to still exist, despite the prevalence of tattoos in modern culture.     

Etchemendy on Squeezing Arguments and Logical Consequence: a Reply to Griffiths

Owen Griffiths has recently argued that Etchemendy’s account of logical consequence faces a dilemma. Etchemendy claims that we can be sure that his account does not overgenerate, but that we should expect it to undergenerate. Griffiths argues that if we define the relationship between formal and natural language as being dependent on logical consequence, then Etchemendy’s claims are not true; and if we define the relationship as being independent of logical consequence, then we cannot assess the truth of the claims without further information. I argue that Griffiths misconstrues Etchemendy’s theory and overstates the first horn of the dilemma: Etchemendy does see the relationship as being dependent on logical consequence, but that does not mean that his claims are not true.     

Leveling the playing field: can psychological coping resources reduce the influence of physical and technical skills on athletic performance?*

Background and Objectives: The present study assessed the extent to which individual differences in psychological coping resources are related to athletic performance; whether they can attenuate the amount of performance variance accounted for by physical/technical skills; and whether coping resources remain significant predictors of performance when physical/technical skill level is statistically controlled.

Methods: Twenty college golf coaches rated the physical/technical skills of 189 men and women varsity golfers on their teams. Athletes completed the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory (ACSI-28), with the total (Personal Coping Resources) score serving as a global measure of sport-relevant psychological coping resources. Subsequent performance (stroke average per round) of 105 golfers was assessed over a mean of 12.04 competitive rounds during the remainder of the season.

Results: Physical/technical skills and psychological coping resource measures were minimally correlated and both were significant and similarly influential predictors of performance. With psychological resources controlled, performance variance accounted for by physical/technical skills was reduced from 21.2% to 10.6%. With physical/technical skills statistically controlled, psychological coping resources, though reduced from 18.2% to 7.5% of accountable variance, remained a significant predictor of performance.

Conclusion: Results support the significant role played by psychological coping resources as predictors of athletic performance, together with their ability to “level the field” by reducing the influence of physical/technical talent.     

A Preliminary Study Investigating the Effectiveness of the Caring for Body and Mind in Pregnancy (CBMP) in Reducing Perinatal Depression,Anxiety and Stress

Prenatal mental illness is a significant public health issue with intergenerational consequences. Caring for Body and Mind in Pregnancy (CBMP) is an Australian, 8-week mindful parenting program. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of CBMP in reducing pregnant women’s levels of depression, anxiety, perinatal depression, perinatal anxiety and stress. The sample consisted of 109 pregnant women at-risk for perinatal depression and anxiety. The mean age of the sample was 33.52 years (SD?=?4.90), ranging from 21 to 45 years. A within group, pre-post research design was used to examine whether CBMP improves participants’ scores on outcome measures. Wilcoxon Signed Rank test results indicated that CBMP significantly reduced depression, anxiety, perinatal depression, perinatal anxiety and general stress scores, while significantly increasing self-compassion and mindfulness with moderate to strong effect sizes. The double mediation hypothesis was supported with self-compassion t (71)?=??2.23, p?<?03, b2?=??1.96, SE?=?88, 95% CI?=??3.71, ?.20, having a stronger influence in reducing perinatal depression than mindfulness t (71)?=??2.68, p?<?.01, b3?=??.07, SE?=?.03, 95% CI?=??.13, ?.02. Further research, using a randomized controlled design with appropriate control conditions, is needed to establish the effectiveness of CBMP in reducing psychological distress amongst pregnant women at risk of developing depression, anxiety or stress.     

Bayesian techniques for analyzing group differences in the Iowa Gambling Task: A case study of intuitive and deliberate decision-makers

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is one of the most popular experimental paradigms for comparing complex decision-making across groups. Most commonly, IGT behavior is analyzed using frequentist tests to compare performance across groups, and to compare inferred parameters of cognitive models developed for the IGT. Here, we present a Bayesian alternative based on Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVA for comparing performance, and a suite of three complementary model-based methods for assessing the cognitive processes underlying IGT performance. The three model-based methods involve Bayesian hierarchical parameter estimation, Bayes factor model comparison, and Bayesian latent-mixture modeling. We illustrate these Bayesian methods by applying them to test the extent to which differences in intuitive versus deliberate decision style are associated with differences in IGT performance. The results show that intuitive and deliberate decision-makers behave similarly on the IGT, and the modeling analyses consistently suggest that both groups of decision-makers rely on similar cognitive processes. Our results challenge the notion that individual differences in intuitive and deliberate decision styles have a broad impact on decision-making. They also highlight the advantages of Bayesian methods, especially their ability to quantify evidence in favor of the null hypothesis, and that they allow model-based analyses to incorporate hierarchical and latent-mixture structures.     

Developing student social skills using restorative practices: a new framework called H.E.A.R.T

Students attending schools today not only learn about formal academic subjects, they also learn social and emotional skills. Whole-school restorative practices (RP) is an approach which can be used to address student misbehaviour when it occurs, and as a holistic method to increase social and emotional learning in students. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of RP on student behaviour from the perspectives of students and teachers. Six schools participated in interviews and focus groups. Students and teachers were asked about the use of RP and the impact on behaviour. Students and teachers identified five main themes: greater harmony, increased empathy towards others, awareness of one’s own behaviour and being accountable for that, increased respect, and reflective thinking. These aspects increase students’ social skills. This paper discusses a new framework which describes the positive impact of RP on student behaviour and thinking. The findings have broad implications for school communities and highlight the need to move towards more relational behaviour management approaches.     

Characteristics of Danish Centenarians’ Religious Beliefs: A Nationwide Population-Based Study

Journal of Religion and Health - Research has shown that in groups of increasing age, religiousness becomes more prevalent. However, centenarians have only to a very limited extent been included in...     

Adults also have difficulty recalling one instance of a repeated event

Some forms of abuse, such as domestic violence, tend to occur repeatedly. Although memory for repeated events has received considerable empirical attention, most of this research has used a child sample. Experiments that have examined adult repeated‐event memory tend to use vastly different methodological paradigms to that used for children. To investigate whether the same pattern of findings emerge with young adults, we adapted the methodological paradigm used in child repeated‐event experiments. In this experiment, 41 undergraduate students experienced one, or multiple similar events. All participants were then interviewed about the same event. Participants who had experienced a single‐event were more likely to report correct details than those who had experienced a repeated event. Repeated‐event participants were more likely to report general details. These results have implications for the methodological paradigm which is used to examine adult memory for a recurring event.     

Does stress run through the leash? An examination of stress transmission between owners and dogs during a walk

Animal Cognition - Humans and dogs have co-evolved for over 10,000&nbsp;years. Recent research suggests that, through the domestication process, dogs have become proficient at responding to...