Public Views About Reintegrating Child Sex Offenders via Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA): A Qualitative Analysis

Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) have recently become part of the criminal justice landscape. However, little has been documented on public views about COSA. The existing research on this topic is entirely quantitative, providing no insight into the reasons behind public support for COSA. This study addresses this gap by analyzing comments made on four online forums following the announcement of Australia’s first COSA program. Findings suggest that community education should focus on a number of key messages about COSA to harness public support for this program. Recommendations are made about the content and delivery of these messages.     

“Clean and Fresh”: Understanding Women’s use of Vaginal Hygiene Products

We explore Canadian women’s use of vaginal hygiene products including feminine washes, douches, sprays, deodorants, wipes, and powders. Vaginal hygiene products in North America are part of a two billion dollar industry, which focuses on cleanliness and freshness in their advertising toward women. In interviewing women who were currently using or had previously used vaginal hygiene products, we found that vaginal cleanliness and freshness were also frequently brought up as reasons for using these products. Using an inductive thematic analysis informed by Braun and Clarke (2013) we explore how attaining a clean-and-fresh vagina has become a subjective physical need for the participants in our study. In a society where female genitalia are constructed as unclean, we argue the marketing of vaginal hygiene products contributes to the problematization of women’s genitalia by suggesting women need to use these products to attain an ideal (i.e., clean and fresh) vagina. The reliance on vaginal hygiene products reported by participants in attaining sensations of vaginal cleanliness and freshness raises concerns in the context of medical literature suggesting adverse health risks that may result from using some of these products. Potential risks include bacterial vaginosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and a higher susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections, among others. We believe that companies that advertise these products as beneficial for vaginal health and hygiene can be perceived as not just misinforming women but also profiting from products that are harmful.     

The Effect of War Stressors and Life Events on Gulf War Veterans With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Symptoms

This study examines the association of life stressors and the period when they occur, with the development of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) symptoms in Gulf War veterans. Of data collected from Gulf War Health Registry veterans, 113 met CFS criteria and 441were controls. After hierarchical multiple regression, several negative life stressors were associated with CFS group membership: being wounded, experiencing a traumatic war experience, frequent battle experiences, demotion, and unable to work within 2 years of returning from the Gulf. The positive life stressor of buying a house more than 2 years after returning protected against being in the CFS group. The findings are consistent with etiological hypotheses of CFS incorporating a psychosocial component and are useful in developing programs for veterans returning from war.     

Interpersonal impact messages associated with different forms of achievement motivation

Two studies evaluated relations between different forms of achievement motivation and transactional interpersonal impact messages during a dyadic puzzle-solving task. In Study 1,400 college students received no formal competence feedback during the task. In Study 2, competence feedback was manipulated for 600 college students and used to create high-, low-, and mixed-status dyads. Expectancies of success had robust actor and partner effects on submission in both studies. Competence valuation was linked with communal partner effects in Study 1 and a generalized interpersonal sensitivity in Study 2. When competence was ambiguous, approach and avoidance achievement motives exhibited affectively driven actor and partner effects consistent with their roots in pride and shame, respectively; however, when competence was established formally, motives had more cognitively driven effects on person perception and behavior (e.g., rejection sensitivity). Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of the achievement motivation system for organizing interpersonal impact messages during competence pursuits.     

Reasons and Causes

Abstract: This paper argues for a causal‐psychological account of acting for reasons. This view is distinguished from a more ambitious causal theory of action, clarified as far as possible, and motivated—against non‐reductive, teleological, and behaviourist alternatives—on broadly metaphysical grounds.     

Fear of Failure Biases Affective and Attentional Responses to Lexical and Pictorial Stimuli

The purpose of this investigation was to examine whether attentional biases would be noticed among individuals differing in levels of fear of failure (FF) as they viewed pictorial and lexical stimuli depicting various affective content. Indices of natural selective attention, namely, viewing time and self-reported affect, were assessed in 137 college students during free viewing picture and word presentation conditions. As hypothesized, FF was (a) negatively associated with self-reported dominance and valence for failure- and unpleasant-themed stimuli, and (b) positively associated with arousal ratings for unpleasant pictures. Although initially suppressed by neuroticism, partial correlation coefficients revealed a significant positive relationship between FF and viewing time for failure pictures. Results are discussed in the context of current theories of emotional reactivity and attentional biases pertaining to the nature of FF. Recommendations are provided for future research to elaborate the mechanisms involved in detrimental effects of FF.     

Selective postevent review and children's memory for nonreviewed materials

Two experiments investigated the impact of selective postevent questioning on children's memory for nonreviewed materials. In both experiments, children participated in a series of novel activities. Children in the selective-review condition were subsequently questioned about half of these and comparisons were made to memory in a no-review condition. In Experiment 1, participants were 60 5- and 9-year-olds. For children in both age groups, memory for nonreviewed activities was impaired 20 min later in free recall. In Experiment 2, participants were 60 5-year-olds. Memory impairment was found following a 1-day delay after spaced review (three sessions over 3 days) but not after massed review (three sessions on 1 day). In both experiments, memory impairment was absent when specific retrieval cues were provided. The possible mechanisms underlying these findings and their potential practical implications are discussed.     

Attractiveness of own-race, other-race, and mixed-race faces

Averaged face composites, which represent the central tendency of a familiar population of faces, are attractive. If this prototypicality contributes to their appeal, then averaged composites should be more attractive when their component faces come from a familiar, own-race population than when they come from a less familiar, other-race population. We compared the attractiveness of own-race composites, other-race composites, and mixed-race composites (where the component faces were from both races). In experiment 1, Caucasian participants rated own-race composites as more attractive than other-race composites, but only for male faces. However, mixed-race (Caucasian/Japanese) composites were significantly more attractive than own-race composites, particularly for the opposite sex. In experiment 2, Caucasian and Japanese participants living in Australia and Japan, respectively, selected the most attractive face from a continuum with exaggerated Caucasian characteristics at one end and exaggerated Japanese characteristics at the other, with intervening images including a Caucasian averaged composite, a mixed-race averaged composite, and a Japanese averaged composite. The most attractive face was, again, a mixed-race composite, for both Caucasian and Japanese participants. In experiment 3, Caucasian participants rated individual Eurasian faces as significantly more attractive than either Caucasian or Asian faces. Similar results were obtained with composites. Eurasian faces and composites were also rated as healthier than Caucasian or Asian faces and composites, respectively. These results suggest that signs of health may be more important than prototypicality in making average faces attractive.