From posts to protection: Ethical considerations regarding forensic psychiatrists and a duty to warn based on social media

Increasing use of social media in forensic mental health evaluations will lead to new challenges that must be resolved by forensic practitioners and the legal system. One such dilemma is the discovery of information that would typically trigger a legal duty and professional ethics obligation for mental health professionals to breach doctor-patient confidentiality to promote public safety and prevent harm to vulnerable third parties. Although the law and professional organizations offer clear guidance for practitioners in the treatment role, there is currently no clarity from the law or instruction from professional organizations on what mental health professionals should do if they discover such information during a confidential forensic evaluation. For example, a forensic evaluator may find evidence on social media of an evaluee’s threats to seriously harm others, abuse of children and the elderly, or severely impaired driving. There are no clear guidelines for how a forensic psychiatrist should respond in these complicated situations. We review the legal concepts and historical evolution of confidentiality, privilege, and mandated reporter duties that forensic practitioners should consider in these legally ambiguous situations. Finally, we discuss ethics frameworks practitioners can implement to determine their most ethical course of action when faced with such dilemmas.     

Climate action now: How to fuel a social movement

Our research develops a framework that explores how to fuel the climate movement by accelerating grassroots, community-based climate action. Drawing on insights from consumer psychology, our framework identifies the psychological mechanisms that encourage and motivate people, both individually and collectively, to take climate action, thereby contributing to our understanding of how to advance social action and propel a social movement. Our climate action framework builds on: (1) individuals we describe as climate upstanders who rise up to take climate action with like-minded others, and (2) communities of climate upstanders who engage in collective action aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Our framework expands the field of consumer psychology by redefining the role of consumers to include the practice of social action and broadening the study of consumers to include collective, community-based action. We call on consumer psychologists to research individual and collective consumer practices related to social action and contribute to making social good central to the study of consumer psychology.     

Making faces: Creating three-dimensional parameterized models of facial expression

Previous studies of the perceptual processing and dynamics of emotional expression in faces have been limited by the lack of realistic yet controlled stimuli. The present work offers researchers a method for creating such stimuli for exploring these phenomena. We describe the creation of the stimuli and a series of experiments testing the validity of these stimuli with respect to emotional expressions in humans. Participants evaluated synthesized facial images and standardized photographs of six basic emotional expressions for intensity and accuracy of perceived emotion. Comparisons of these measures were qualitatively similar for synthesized and photographed faces. A manipulation of the magnitude of the synthesized expressions yielded a significant effect on the perceived intensity of expression. In a subsequent multidimensional scaling study, no systematic differences were uncovered in the derived configurations of the synthesized expressions and the photographs. These results are discussed in the context of possible future research applications.     

Rhythm and the timing of movement sequences

Summary Many motor skills involve a sequence of movements phased over a period of time. The present study investigated the importance of rhythmic timing structures in the acquisition and control of a serial key-pressing task. Four groups of subjects received extensive practice on 9-element finger sequences varying in the form of the inherent temporal structure. Following a training period, the stability of the various timing patterns was examined by requiring subjects to perform the key-pressing task concurrently with a verbal memory task. The memory task involved reporting back a sequence of visually-presented words with a lag of one word. A comparison was made of performance on the two tasks under dual task and control (single task) conditions. The results suggested that natural rhythmic timing structures require less attention for production than unnatural temporal patterns. A breakdown of the temporal patterns into within-group and between-group intervals showed that patterns containing within-group intervals that related as 1:1 or 1:2 evidenced good stability under dual-task conditions. These results were taken as support for the suggestion by Fraisse (1946) that the perception and production of rhythms can be understood by an internal representation that allows only two distinct durations that relate as 1:2. Furthermore, it was suggested that relative timing may become an invariant property of motor program representation only in those instances in which the timing sequence completely fits the internal timing structure.     

Use of on-line computers in experimental psychology: Hardware considerations

A series of modules provide students with the basic skills to set up and use a computer to run psychological experiments. The modules include basic knowledge of AC/DC power supplies, relay switching, analog/digital conversion, integrated circuit board design and soldering, and elementary programming (FORTH and BASIC). These skills are then utilized to build an interface board and to design and run actual on-line experiments. The hardware orientation is combined with computer skills and experimental methodology to allow students to experience all stages of modem psychological experimentation.     

Extraversion and performance in ‘extra-sensory perception’ tasks

English-language reports on the relationship between extraversion and performance in extra-sensory perception tasks are reviewed. Data reported show that significant confirmations of a positive relationship occur at over six times the chance error rate whilst only one significant reversal of the effect is to be found. It is suggested that this consistency in the experimental reports reflects a real positive relationship between the two variables. Possible mechanisms underlyinf the effect are discussed and suggestions for studying them are made with an emphasis on improvement of methodology.     

The effects of newcomer proactive behaviours on socialization outcomes: A meta-analysis

Organizational researchers and practitioners have shown increasing interest in how newcomer proactivity contributes to socialization. This meta-analysis synthesizes the existing empirical research that examines the relationships between frequently performed newcomer proactive behaviours (sensemaking, relationship building, positive framing and job change negotiation) and proximal and distal socialization outcomes. Proximal outcomes include role clarity, task mastery and social integration; distal outcomes include job performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention. Based on 45 independent samples (N = 11,508), proactive behaviours were found to be generally beneficial for newcomer socialization. Relative weight analyses identified positive framing as the strongest predictor of five of the seven reviewed outcomes while relationship building accounted for the greatest part of the variance in social integration. Job change negotiation was the weakest predictor of socialization outcomes. The study also explored the impact of boundary conditions, including culture, study design and sample type, on the magnitude of these effects. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, along with the study's limitations and suggestions for future research.     

Weighting information from outside sources: a biased process

How do people utilize information from outside sources in their decisions? Participants observed a signal‐plus‐noise or noise‐alone event and then made a yes–no decision about whether a signal had occurred. Participants were provided with two information sources to aid decision making. Each source consisted of four components that provided estimates of signal likelihood. In Experiment 1, the two sources had equal overall accuracy but differed in the expertise and internal correlation of their components. A regression analysis indicated that participants overweighed the high‐expertise‐high‐correlation source. This bias occurred on trials when the aggregate opinions of the sources disagreed. In Experiment 2, both the overall accuracy of the source and its components were manipulated. Participants overweighed information from the higher accuracy source. These biases reflect people's sensitivity to across‐trial and within‐trial differences in the accuracy and internal consistency of information sources. Experiment 3 provided additional evidence supporting these conclusions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attentional focus affects how events are segmented and updated in narrative reading

Readers generate situation models representing described events, but the nature of these representations may differ depending on the reading goals. We assessed whether instructions to pay attention to different situational dimensions affect how individuals structure their situation models (Exp. 1) and how they update these models when situations change (Exp. 2). In Experiment 1, participants read and segmented narrative texts into events. Some readers were oriented to pay specific attention to characters or space. Sentences containing character or spatial-location changes were perceived as event boundaries—particularly if the reader was oriented to characters or space, respectively. In Experiment 2, participants read narratives and responded to recognition probes throughout the texts. Readers who were oriented to the spatial dimension were more likely to update their situation models at spatial changes; all readers tracked the character dimension. The results from both experiments indicated that attention to individual situational dimensions influences how readers segment and update their situation models. More broadly, the results provide evidence for a global situation model updating mechanism that serves to set up new models at important narrative changes.