Lifetime Acts of Violence Assessment (LAVA) predictors of laboratory aggression

While self-report data warrants interpretive caution in applied settings, these indices serve an important role in exploratory research. The Lifetime Assessment of Violent Acts (LAVA) inventory is a brief, reliable, face-valid questionnaire for estimating the frequency, triggers, and consequences (including injuries to others) of prior acts of aggression. The LAVA also identifies the situational contexts in which prior violence was triggered and provides a basis for risk classifications based on past reactive, intimate partner, alcohol-related, and/or weapon-related violence. Scores on the LAVA indices have been linked to a range of developmental and maladjustment indicators. Associations were found between lab-provoked (Taylor Aggression Paradigm) responding and both dimensional and risk classification scores in this sample (N = 92) of college men. Participants “competed” with a fictional opponent using electric shock as a retaliatory measure for perceived provocation. The total LAVA dimensional score predicted mean shock intensity ( d = .87), baseline responding ( d = 0.90), and past sexual aggression ( d = 1.01). Shock intensities in response to high provocation were predicted ( M d = 0.57) by all but one LAVA index. Participants who reported inflicting one or more injuries on another showed more intense escalations of aggression ( d = 0.46) in response to provocation than normative counterparts. Prior injuries to another ( RR = 2.71), reactive acts of aggression ( RR = 3.73), or intimate-partner violence ( RR = 4.19) elevated the risk of one or more prior acts of self-reported sexual aggression. The limitations and potential value of self-report data were discussed in regard to aggression research.     

Whatever happened to "What might have been"? Regrets, happiness, and maturity

Although lost opportunities and mistaken expectations are unpleasant to think and talk about, these experiences may have a role to play in personality development. Drawing on research using narratives of lost possible selves, the authors review the relations of regrettable experiences to 2 important and independent aspects of maturity, happiness and complexity. Thinking about a lost possible self is related to concurrent regrets, distress, and lowered well-being; however, elaborating on a lost possible self is related, concurrently, to complexity and predicts complexity, prospectively, over time. In this article, the authors describe the role that regrettable experiences have in promoting both happiness and complexity. Finally, expanding on previous work, the authors examine potential affordances of happy maturity and suggest psychological capacities that may promote happy maturity.     

Hostile and benevolent reactions toward pregnant women: complementary interpersonal punishments and rewards that maintain traditional roles

A naturalistic field study investigated behavior toward pregnant (vs. nonpregnant) women in nontraditional (job applicant) and traditional (store customer) roles. Female confederates, who sometimes wore a pregnancy prosthesis, posed as job applicants or customers at retail stores. Store employees exhibited more hostile behavior (e.g., rudeness) toward pregnant (vs. nonpregnant) applicants and more benevolent behavior (e.g., touching, overfriendliness) toward pregnant (vs. nonpregnant) customers. A second experiment revealed that pregnant women are especially likely to encounter hostility (from both men and women) when applying for masculine as compared with feminine jobs. The combination of benevolence toward pregnant women in traditional roles and hostility toward those who seek nontraditional roles suggests a system of complementary interpersonal rewards and punishments that may discourage pregnant women from pursuing work that violates gender norms.     

Nighttime fears of children and adolescents: frequency, content, severity, harm expectations, disclosure, and coping behaviours

The present school-based study investigated the nighttime fears of 511 children and adolescents, aged 8-16 years. Participants were assessed using a structured interview about the frequency, content, severity, harm expectations, coping strategies, and disclosure of nighttime fears. Results indicated that nighttime fears are a common experience, with nearly two-thirds (64.2%) of children and adolescents reporting nighttime fears. Fear of intruders/home invasion was the most frequently reported nighttime fear. Females more frequently reported nighttime fears than males (72.9% and 54.6%, respectively) and a greater number of children reported nighttime fears compared to adolescents (79.4% and 48.8%, respectively). Nighttime fears were given moderate severity ratings, and harm expectations were most strongly associated with 'personal security' fears. Respondents reported a variety of coping strategies to manage their nighttime fears with self-control/distraction techniques being the most common. Most respondents reported disclosing their nighttime fear(s) to another person. The clinical implications of these findings and the methodological limitations are discussed.     

A Systematic Review of the Relationship between High School Dropout and Substance Use

A systematic review of peer-reviewed, empirical literature published between 1990 and 2006 was undertaken to determine whether existing research could provide evidence, and a deeper understanding of the relationship between dropping out of high school and the use of substances such as tobacco, alcohol, cannabis/marijuana and other illicit drugs. Forty-six articles were reviewed. The review describes the heterogeneity of theoretical frameworks employed, as well as the limited ability of any one to adequately explain the relationship between high school dropout and substance use. A refinement of the many confounding and mediating variables into coherent conceptual categories would aid more robust theory building and theory integration. In spite of differences in dropout definitions and diverse measures of substance use across studies, the main findings point to a largely consistent relationship between dropping out of high school and substance use. However, socially disadvantaged and poor persons, dropouts, and drug users are over-represented in some of the loss to follow-up groups in longitudinal studies surveyed. More rigorous mechanisms to retain participants in longitudinal studies should be employed. Suggestions for future research include comparisons between urban and rural populations, employing qualitative research methods, and research in developing countries, which have the least favourable school outcomes and a dearth of research on high school dropout.

Creativity and experience of a creative task: Person and environment effects

We examined the effects of a person factor (general causality orientation) and an environment factor (threat of evaluation) on creativity and personal experience of a creative collage-making task. Ninety college students completed questionnaires and made a collage under conditions of expected evaluation or no-evaluation. Creativity was a function of participants’ characterizations of themselves as artistic, and among men, of the interaction between environment and person factors. Task experience was affected by environment factors and, marginally, by the interaction of environment and person factors, with participants feeling less competent at the task under threat of evaluation, and exerting the greatest effort when they were under evaluation threat and were higher on control orientation. These findings may have implications for future motivation for creative tasks.     

Ashes and Flowers: some Hindu approaches to death and dying

Contemporary interest in death and dying in the West has provoked reflection upon other cultural and religious traditions. Many writers assume that just as health and death are predominantly in the West the realm of the clinical so in India they are in the realm of the sacred. This article rejects this oversimplification and explores the complexity of Hindu approaches to death and dying through an examination of the varied attitudes, beliefs and practices of pilgrims, pilgrimage priests and renouncers in the sacred pilgrimage centres of Hardwar and Rishikesh. It argues that the resources offered by the culture for responding to death and dying are used creatively and contextually by many Hindus in ways that depend very much on their personal experience and individual narratives as well as the social pressures and traditions operating around them.