Effects of midbrain central gray lesions on spontaneous and electrically induced aggression in the rat

Large electrolytic lesions were placed in the midbrain central gray of male rats. Their effects on hypothalamically induced aggression, switch-off behaviour, and locomotion were investigated. A number of these animals were also tested for territorial intermale aggression in order to compare electrically induced and spontaneous aggression. Large lesions resulted in an increase of the current threshold to induce aggression by hypo-thalamic stimulation. Smaller, but still quite large, lesions decreased the threshold current for hypothalamic aggression. After the operation a decrease in the threshold for switch-off was present, both in the experimental and the control group. Current thresholds for locomotion were decreased after the lesions only in the experimental group. Spontaneous aggression was temporarily decreased after the lesion. No indication was found that other behavioural elements of the animal were distorted by the lesion. The parallel between the effects on spontaneous and electrically induced aggression makes it attractive to ascribe a role to the neural circuit of hypothalamus and central gray in territorial aggression. However, even with large lesions the animals were still capable of fighting, hence the central gray is not indispensable. An attempt was made to explain the differential effects that differently sized central gray lesions have on hypothalamic aggression.     

Collaboration and Memory: Effects of Dyadic Retrieval on Different Memory Tasks

Collaborative retrieval was investigated in two experiments. The experiments were explicitly designed to investigate how different types of memory tasks were affected by two individuals working together compared to individuals working on their own. A nominal group score was treated as the predicted potential a dyad could attain. In Experiment 1, semantic and episodic retrieval were employed. The episodic task was to encode and retrieve a story and the semantic task was to answer, without any encoding, 20 questions from the same history domain as the episodic task. In Experiment 2, explicit recognition and implicit retrieval of dot patterns were employed. The explicit recognition task was forced-choice, and in the implicit task, subjects were instructed to complete a pattern they saw from an incomplete pattern. The results suggest that: (1) dyads suffer from collaboration relative to the predicted potential, (2) the reduction of productivity for dyads was limited to explicit and episodic memory tasks, and (3) friends as opposed to non-friends reduced the negative effect of collaboration. The results replicate and extend the results from a previous study.     

Temperamental Factors in the Execution of Interrupted Editing Tasks

The question investigated in this study is how the temperament traits of strength of excitation (SE), strength of inhibition (SI), and mobility (MO) affect behaviour during the execution of computer tasks and tasks interrupting them. Several hypotheses, partly derived from the regulative theory of temperament, were tested in an experiment in which the natural environment and the types of task commonly performed by secretaries were simulated. The sample consisted of 39 female secretaries (21–64 years old). It was found that individuals high on SE and MO needed less time to resume tasks after an interruption than individuals low on these temperament traits. Interruptions similar to the main task resulted in longer resumption times for low-SE individuals. MO was negatively related to the time needed to perform the main task. A model describing the relationship between the frequency of switches between tasks and the speed of task performance in low-MO and high-MO individuals is presented.     

Citizen Advocacy Observed: Tool or Tokenism?

Citizen advocacy, where a volunteer works in partnership with a vulnerable person, compliments self- and legal advocacy. In the context of mental health services, citizen advocacy is a tool for enabling and empowering people who use these services, and is founded on the recognition that mental health service users are frequently socially oppressed and disadvantaged. This article describes the development of a Citizen Advocacy service for people with mental health difficulties, and also the problems they brought to this service. The problems encountered in sustaining the service are noted and lessons are drawn for the future.     

Letter Therapy: A Model for Enhancing Counseling Intervention

Based on 15 letters between a counselor and a female client, this article outlines and discusses a unique letter therapy process, which is loosely adapted from the Morita Therapy approach to counseling. The five-step Letter therapy approach consists of 1) opening up, 2) focusing on life themes, 3) redirecting toward strengths, 4) reinforcing actions, and 5) affirming a positive attitude toward life. Letter writing has the potential of being used by counselors either in conjunction with face-to-face counseling or as a separate therapeutic method.     

Anger and aggression in women: Influence of sports choice and testosterone administration

We report on two studies of anger and aggression in women. One study concerns an experimental study of anger induction in aggressive and non-aggressive sportswomen. It was found that sports choice in itself, contrary to expectation, does not predict anger arousal and aggressive behavior in the laboratory. However, at an individual level the anger proneness of the subject, as measured by a questionnaire we developed, was related to the intensity of aggressive behavior and subjectively reported anger. The second study concerns the activating effects of androgens on aggression and anger proneness. In a group of 22 female-to-male transsexuals, a battery of anger proneness and aggression questionnaires was administered twice: shortly before and 3 months after the start of androgen treatment. Administration of androgens was clearly associated with an increaese in anger proneness, although there were no changes in several aspects of overt aggressive behavior. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Construct validation of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire in Spanish-speaking countries: Assessment of the reliability,structural and external validity and cross-cultural equivalence

A recent re-operationalisation of grandiose narcissism has resulted in the distinction of two narcissistic strategies based on the cognitive, affective-motivational and behavioural dynamics: admiration (assertive self-enhancement) and rivalry (antagonistic self-protection). The Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ) was developed to assess this model with two higher-order dimensions. However, cross-validations of the NARQ have not been extensively conducted across diverse population groups and languages. This study aimed to test the internal and external validity (through the relation with envy and self-esteem), reliability and cross-cultural equivalence of the Spanish version of the NARQ. The psychometric properties were evaluated in a Spanish sample (N = 310), and cross-cultural equivalence was tested in participants from Chile (N = 234) and Colombia (N = 256). The results supported the reliability and validity of the Spanish NARQ, as well as the cross-cultural equivalence across Spanish-speaking countries. In addition, we discuss obtained differences across Spanish, Chilean and Colombian sample within two narcissistic strategies.     

Getting older and living up to implicit followership theories: Implications for employee psychological health and job attitudes

Age discrimination at work is a widespread destructive phenomenon that often takes subtle forms. Based on negative stereotypes about older employees, we argue that older employees often experience that they are perceived as less ideal followers than younger employees. We propose that older and younger employees do not differ in what they assume their supervisors expect of an ideal follower (implicit followership theories, IFTs). Thus, we hypothesize that older employees perceive that they compare less favorably to their supervisors' IFTs than younger employees (i.e., worse IFT-fit). This should entail lower quality of the relationship between leader and follower (leader-member-exchange, LMX), which, in turn, should have detrimental effects on employees' health (i.e., burnout) and job attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and identification). We tested our model in a field study with 379 employees. Results differed for ideal and counter-ideal follower attributes. Concerning counter-ideal follower attributes (e.g., being incompetent), age had the proposed negative effect on psychological health and job attitudes that mediated through IFT-fit and LMX. Concerning ideal follower attributes (e.g., thinking ahead), older employees expected their supervisors not only to think less of them than of their younger colleagues, but also expected them to have less demanding IFTs—contrary to our expectations. Employee age was negatively related to psychological health and job attitudes, mediated through lower perceived IFTs, worse perceived appraisal of the actual employee and their joint effects on LMX.