The Lived Experience of Young Widows and Widowers

A phenomenological study was conducted to better understand the challenges faced by young widows and widowers. Nine young widows and three young widowers (n = 12) participated in a focus group and discussed their experiences after the loss of their spouse. Five major themes emerged from the focus group depicting their challenges: Death Experience; Family Dynamics; Coping; Family and Community Involvement; and Advice. The themes and sub-themes provide direction for family therapists treating young widows and widowers, and areas of future research to better understand and provide services to this vulnerable population.     

Stability and change in religiousness during emerging adulthood

Understanding the development of religiousness is an important endeavor because religiousness has been shown to be related to positive outcomes. The current study examined mean-level, rank-order, and individual-level change in females' religiousness during emerging adulthood. Genetic and environmental influences on religiousness and its change and stability were also investigated. Analyses were completed with an epidemiological study of 2 cohorts of twins: 1 assessed at ages 14 and 18 and a 2nd at 20 and 25. Mean levels of religiousness decreased significantly with age, while rank-order stability was high. Individual-level change was also evident. Analyses also supported the hypotheses that more change would occur in the younger cohort compared with the older cohort and that more change would occur in religious service attendance than the general index of religiousness. Twin analyses suggested that the heritability of religiousness increased with age, while the shared environmental influences decreased. For the younger cohort, change was genetic in origin, while stability was environmental. In the older cohort, change was influenced by nonshared environment and stability by both genes and family environment.     

Regulation of Teacher Elicitations in the Mathematics Classroom

Using the perspective of instructional conversation, we investigated how one teacher regulated student participation and conceptual reasoning in the middle-school mathematics classroom. We examined the elicitations—questions and provocative statements—made by the teacher over a four-day algebra lesson. Analyses showed how the teacher systematically regulated the level of cognitive complexity of his elicitations in reaction to students' responses. When students gave inaccurate or incomplete answers, the teacher tended to reduce the level of cognitive complexity needed to respond to a subsequent elicitation, with the apparent impact being that he scaffolded participation and reasoning. When students provided responses that were mathematically accurate, the teacher usually increased the elicitation level, which subsequently engaged students in more sophisticated forms of reasoning.     

Personality correlates of revenge‐seeking: Multidimensional links to physical aggression,impulsivity, and aggressive pleasure

People differ in how much they seek retribution for interpersonal insults, slights, rejections, and other antagonistic actions. Identifying individuals who are most prone towards such revenge‐seeking is a theoretically‐informative and potentially violence‐reducing endeavor. However, we have yet to understand the extent to which revenge‐seeking individuals exhibit specific features of aggressiveness, impulsivity, and what motivates their hunt for retribution. Toward this end, we conducted three studies (total N = 673), in which revenge‐seeking was measured alongside these other constructs. Analyses repeatedly demonstrated that revenge‐seeking was associated with greater physical (but not verbal) aggressiveness, anger, and hostility. Revenge‐seeking's link to physical aggression was partially accounted for by impulses toward enjoying aggression and the tendency to use aggression to improve mood. Dominance analyses revealed that sadism explained the most variance in revenge‐seeking. Revenge‐seeking was associated with greater impulsive responses to negative and positive affect, as well as greater premeditation of behavior. These findings paint a picture of revenge‐seekers as physically aggressive curators of anger, whose retributive acts are performed with planned malice and motivated by the act's entertaining and therapeutic qualities.