Unwanted and unfollowed: Defining ghosting and the role of social media unfollowing

Ghosting involves terminating communication, including through technological mediums, as a means of ending a relationship. Despite attention from popular media, empirical examinations of this breakup strategy are sparse. Using a correlational design, we examined the defining features of ghosting including its associations with other breakup tactics, whether it is an exclusively unilateral strategy, and the role of social media unfollowing in its implementation. A convenience sample of primarily undergraduate students (n = 260) completed an online survey describing recent breakups, indicating the disengagement tactics used, social media unfollowing, and the extent to which the breakups involved ghosting. Findings indicated that ghosting is extremely common, it was used to terminate more than half of participants' recent relationships. Most participants had experienced a breakup involving ghosting as either the disengager and/or the recipient. Ghosting was found to involve less open confrontation, more avoidance/withdrawal and de-escalation tactics. Contrary to previous research, ghosting can occur bilaterally, with partners ghosting each other. Social media unfollowing is an important aspect of ghosting. Relationships ended via ghosting have fewer post-breakup connections than those ended through other strategies. Typically, ghosters initiate social media unfollowing. Findings provide insight into how ghosting should be conceptualized and measured in future explorations.     

From Gaming to Hating: Extreme-Right Ideological Indoctrination and Mobilization for Violence of Children on Online Gaming Platforms

As a consequence of numerous extreme-right terror attacks in which the perpetrators posted their manifestos and attack life streams on online platforms adjacent to the video gaming community, as well as radicalized within that environment to a significant degree (e.g., Christchurch, New Zealand; Halle, Germany), increasing scholarly and policymaker interest is focusing on far-right radicalization and recruitment within online video game environments. Yet little empirical insights exist about the specific engagement between right-wing extremists and their potential recruits on these platforms. This study presents findings from a qualitative exploration of German police-investigation files for two children who radicalized on gaming platforms to become involved in extreme-right criminal behavior, including the plotting of a terrorist attack. The study demonstrates the importance of online and offline factor interaction, especially regarding the role of familiar criminogenic factors, as well as the social–emotional bonding between potential recruits and extremist gamers created through shared gaming experiences that lead to high-intensity extremist radicalization aimed at offline behavioral changes. The study did not find evidence for strategic organizational far-right recruitment campaigns, but rather multidirectional social-networking processes which were also initiated by the potential recruits.     

Fathers and fetuses

Harris postulates that in certain instances it would be morally impermissible for a woman to have an abortion because it would be a wrongful harm to the father and a violation of his autonomy. He constructs and analyzes five cases chosen to elucidate the moral issues involved and concludes that, for a man to lay claim to the fetus being his in a sense that the mother is obligated to respect, the fetus must be the result of his having pursued a legitimate interest in procreation in a morally legitimate way. When a man has satisfied the requirements of autonomy both for himself and for his sexual partner in regard to the interest in procreation, the woman has a prima facie obligation to him not to harm the fetus. Therefore, unless there is some contravening moral consideration that overrides this obligation, the abortion of the fetus is morally impermissible.     

Enhancing the prediction of self-handicapping

Levels of test anxiety, Type A and Type B coronary-prone behavior, fear of failure, and covert self-esteem were studied as predictors of self-handicapping performance attributions for college women who were placed in either a high- (N = 49) or low- (N = 49) evaluative test or task situation. We hypothesized that test anxiety. Type A or Type B level, and their interaction would account for reliable variance in the prediction of self-handicapping. However, we also theorized that underlying high fear of failure and low covert self-esteem would explain the self-handicapping claims of test-anxious and Type A subjects. The results indicated that only high levels of test anxiety and high levels of covert self-esteem were related to women's self-handicapping attributions.     

Personality moderators of interpersonal expectancy effects: Replication of Harris and Rosenthal (1986)

Personality moderators of interpersonal expectancy effects were examined in a replication and extension of the findings of Harris and Rosenthal (1986). Twenty-eight undergraduates, assigned the role of “interviewer,” interacted with 89 undergraduates during several 15-min getting acquainted sessions. Interviewers had been led to believe that the subjects they were interviewing were extremely high, average, or extremely low with respect to shyness. Prior to the sessions, all subjects completed a battery of personality measures. Analyses suggested mixed support for an interviewer expectancy effect, with stronger bias effects being found for interviewers given Shy vs Average expectancies than for those given Not Shy vs Average expectancies. Greater bias effects were found for interviewers who scored higher on PRF Achievement, Order, self-rated expressiveness and lower on self-rated shyness. Interviewees who scored higher on Achievement, Dogmatism, Endurance, and Cognitive Structure showed significantly lower bias effects. These findings are interpreted as indicating the importance of the rigidity of cognitive schemas in determing whether or not an expectancy effect will occur.     

World isolation and meaning in segmentation

The effect of meaning and isolation of words on the acquisition of segmentation of words in sentences was examined with an artificial miniature language composed of Mandarin Chinese quasi-elements. Forty undergraduate students participated in one of four groups: Word No Meaning, Word Meaning, Sentence No Meaning, or Sentence Meaning. In each group the subjects listened to the same set of words, either as isolated words or in sentences. Additionally, the meaning groups saw accompanying pictorial representations of isolated words or sentences. Pretest and posttest assessments indicated that isolation of words is a significant factor in word segmentation for an initial word set restricted in size when meaning is not provided. When meaning is provided, the isolation of words apparently does not influence word segmentation performance.     

Family system variables and the health status of adolescents with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus

This study investigated the associations between important dimensions of family relations and the metabolic control of adolescents with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). Participants were 94 intact families (mother, father, and adolescent) of adolescents with IDDM. Metabolic control was determined by the adolescents' level of HbA(1c), and family relations were assessed with the Marital Adjustment Scale and the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales-II. Although zero-order correlations showed that good metabolic control was associated with high family cohesion, family flexibility, and high marital satisfaction, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that these associations were considerably attenuated when participant demographic variables, especially the duration of IDDM, were controlled. Follow-up analyses showed that the associations between family relations and metabolic control were mediated by the duration of IDDM. Under conditions of short duration, there were strong associations between family relations and metabolic control. As duration lengthened, however, these associations decreased substantially. These results suggest that the associations between family relations and health are relatively complex in this sample of adolescents with IDDM.     

Exposure effects on the psychophysical scaling methods of magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching for vibrotactile stimulation of the tongue and hand

The purpose of the present study was to investigate possible effects of exposure upon psychophysical scaling responses when vibrotactile magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching are conducted within the same experiment. Four groups of 10 subjects each, with an over-all age range of 18-23 yr., were employed. Groups 1 and 2 performed magnitude estimation for lingual vibrotaction and cross-modal matching with the lingual vibrotactile stimulus as the standard. Group 1 received the magnitude-estimation task first and Group 2 received the cross-modal-matching task first. Groups 3 and 4 performed magnitude estimation for vibrotaction applied to the thenar eminence of the hand and cross-modal matching with the vibrotactile stimulus applied to the thenar eminence of the hand as the standard. Group 3 received the magnitude-estimation task first and Group 4 received the cross-modal-matching task first. The psychophysical scaling methods of magnitude estimation and cross-modal matching showed very little exposure effect of one upon the other when used in the same experiment. Also, magnitude scaling responses tended to increase more rapidly with increases in vibrotactile stimulus intensity when the test site was the thenar eminence of the hand as opposed to the dorsum of the tongue.     

A further examination of the constructs underlying assessment center ratings

Previous factor analytic work (Sackett and Dreher, 1982) has found exercise factors, rather than the expected dimension factors, underlying ratings made in managerial assessment centers. The present paper responds to criticisms that inappropriate analyses were conducted and that unrepresentative assessment centers were studied. Exercise factors were found to predominate in two new sets of assessment data which we obtained and in three studies published by other authors, thus indicating that the results were not idiosyncratic to the three centers studied by Sackett and Dreher. Analyses using confirmatory, rather than exploratory, factor analysis also support the dominance of exercise factors. Although dimension factors were found in three of four data sets studied, variables loading on a dimension factor consistently loaded more highly on an exercise factor as well.     

An empirical approach to the classification and treatment of maximum security psychiatric patients

Treatment approaches with forensic patients have traditionally been nonspecific and have been based primarily on legal or diagnostic categories. The current study, stimulated by the need to reorganize treatment and assessment services, examined the incidence among 189 maximum security psychiatric patients of 70 problems commonly exhibited either in the community prior to admission or within the institution. Through a series of factor and cluster analyses, a model for the placement and treatment of these patients was developed that included assaultiveness, level of functioning, social withdrawal, and active psychotic symptoms.