A COMPARISON OF GROUP AND INDIVIDUAL SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIMS

The experiences of 44 group sexual assault victims (multiple offenders, one victim) were compared with 44 individual sexual assault victims (one offender, one victim). Sexual assaults included various degrees of sexual victimization ranging from verbal coercion to rape. Participants were located from among a national sample of 3,187 college women. Group sexual assaults, compared to individual sexual assaults, were in general more violent, involved greater resistance from the victims, and were more likely to be perpetrated by strangers or relatives and to involve an experience which met the legal definition of rape. Group sexual assaults were less likely to involve multiple episodes by the same offender(s). Group sexual assault victims were more likely than individual sexual assault victims to seek police and crisis services, to have contemplated suicide, and to have sought therapy postassault. Despite these differences, the two groups were similar in the amount of drinking and drug use during the assault and their scores on standardized measures of psychological symptoms.     

SCALING PERFORMANCE UTILITY TO ENHANCE SELECTION/CLASSIFICATION DECISIONS

For purposes of selection and classification there are two general reasons for scaling the mean and variance of the utility of performance across jobs. First, if differential utility across jobs does exist, then the payoff from a selection and classification system will be enhanced to the extent that accurate utility values are incorporated in the assignment system. Second, a valid utility metric would permit a more meaningful comparison of the gains achieved by alternative selection and classification procedures. It is argued in this paper that the Army context, and perhaps others, precludes using the dollar metric and estimates of SD_y in dollars. Consequently, Project A conducted a relatively long series of exploratory workshops with Army personnel to (a) define the utility issue, (b) pilot test a wide variety of possible scaling methods, and (c) evaluate the methods that seemed most appropriate. On the basis of exploratory analysis, a combined procedure incorporating both an interval estimation and a ratio estimation method was used to estimate the utility of five different performance levels for each of 276 jobs (MOS) in the enlisted personnel system. The psychometric properties of the resulting scale values are analyzed and discussed.     

The role of compliance in hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia

We modified the standard procedure for administering finger pressure pain in order to assess the extent to which subjects biased their reports of pain reduction when exposed to compliance-inducing instructions. Experiment 1 used only highly hypnotizable subjects and found that compliance-induced reductions in reported pain were about half as large as the reported reductions produced by hypnotic analgesia suggestions. Experiment 2 used low as well as high hypnotizables and administered hypnotic or nonhypnotic analgesia instructions and compliance instructions to the same subjects on separate pain trials. Reported pain reductions produced by hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia suggestions and those produced by compliance instructions were substantially and significantly correlated. Furthermore, hypnotizability correlated with compliance-induced reported pain reductions as highly as it correlated with the reported reductions produced by hypnotic analgesia suggestions. Among high hypnotizables (but not low hypnotizables) compliant responding was predicted by social desirability. The findings of both studies indicate that compliance strongly influences the reports of hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia proffered by high hypnotizables. The role of compliance in the pain reductions reported by low hypnotizables is less clear-cut.     

Adolescent Attachment,Identity, and Adjustment to College: Implications for the Continuity of Adaptation Hypothesis

We examined the concurrent relationship between late adolescent attachment to parents and peers and two broad indices of adolescent adaptation—personal and social identity and adjustment to college. Participants included 130 college freshmen and 123 upperclassmen. Although freshmen were disadvantaged relative to upperclassmen with respect to social and personal-emotional adjustment, there were no group differences on the attachment measures, on the measures of academic adjustment and goal commitment, and on the measure of social identity. Freshmen scored higher on personal identity than did upperclassmen. Women reported less alienation from peers, had more trust and better communication with peers, and had higher scores on personal and social idenitity than men. The attachment variables were significant predictors of personal and social identity. Pervasive relations were also found between attachment and adjustment to college, particularly for the upperclassmen sample.     

Husserl and queer theory

In spite of a history wherein queer theory has openly rejected phenomenology, phenomenology has gained increasing interest amongst queer theorists. However, Husserl’s phenomenology is often marginalized in attempts to integrate queer theory with phenomenology, and when Husserl is addressed specifically, his work is often treated superficially or even misrepresented. Given this, my first goal is to demonstrate how Husserl’s work is already open to positions considered fundamental to queer theory, and that Husserl is often explicitly arguing for these positions himself. In doing so, I wish to show that Husserl’s phenomenology is well fitted for complementary engagement with queer theory. My second goal is to work through some ways in which Husserl’s phenomenology and queer theory can work together in detail to accomplish shared theoretical goals. Although this will not be a full-blown analysis—which would exceed the parameters of this article—my hope is to provide a certain amount of in depth work that can then assist further analyses that combine these methods.     

Partiality and distributive justice in African bioethics

African ethical theories tend to hold that moral agents ought to be partial, in the sense that they should favour members of their family or close community. This is considered an advantage over the impartiality of many Western moral theories, which are regarded as having counterintuitive implications, such as the idea that it is unethical to save a family member before a stranger. The partiality of African ethics is thought to be particularly valuable in the context of bioethics. Thaddeus Metz, in particular, argues that his African-derived theory best accounts for a number of plausible intuitions, such as the intuition that health care practitioners ought to be biased towards the patients for whom they are directly responsible. In this article, I claim that the plausible intuitions drawn on in favour of partiality can be satisfactorily explained on the basis of impartial moral theories. Moreover, I argue that blanket acceptance of partiality has problematic consequences for distributive justice in resource allocation in biomedical contexts. By contrast, impartial theories can justify plausible instances of partiality whilst avoiding the pitfalls of fully partial moral theories. Although this provides grounds for abandoning partiality in principle, I claim that this finding should not be seen as damaging to African medical ethics. Instead, it prompts investigation of underexplored possibilities of impartial African moral theories. To demonstrate the value of this direction, I sketch some novel and attractive conceptions that combine impartiality with elements of African ethics.