Inhibition and Disinhibition of Male Aggression Against Females: A Personality Moderator Approach

Three experiments examined the role of individual differences in combination with contextual factors hypothesized to moderate the level of hostility toward females evident in male participants' responses. In Study I, we manipulated survey context and examined the influence of participants' levels of rape myth acceptance (RMA) on self-reported rape likelihood. In Study 2, we examined the interactive role of target gender and participants' levels of sex guilt (SG) on aggression toward the target after exposure to an erotic film. Study 3 results suggested that high SG males have particularly negative responses to women (but not men) who enjoy erotic presentations, consistent with a "Jack-the-Ripper" interpretation of the Study 2 findings.     

The pleasures of success: game-related efficacy experiences as a mediator between player performance and game enjoyment

In the present study, the interplay of player performance, game-related self-efficacy experiences, and the resulting effects on game enjoyment are investigated. We hypothesized that a player's performance stimulates enjoyment via its potential to stimulate game-related self-efficacy experiences. In a laboratory setting, participants (N?=?213) played a jump 'n' run game. Their performance during game play was recorded by log-file software, and efficacy and enjoyment were assessed with questionnaires. As predicted, both player performance and game-related self-efficacy experience were significant predictors of enjoyment. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that game-related self-efficacy experience significantly mediates the relationship between player performance and game enjoyment.     

Subchance perception: Anxious, non-defensive individuals identify subliminally-presented positive words at below-chance levels

People who chronically experience anxiety are biased towards subliminally-presented negative information. Recent research has shown that they may also avoid subliminally-presented positive information. However, these findings are equivocal due to the limitations of previous paradigms and measures. This paper reports two experiments demonstrating that highly anxious, non-defensive individuals exhibit subchance perception when attempting to identify subliminally-presented positive words; that is, they identify such words with accuracy rates that are below chance (guessing). Participants attempted to identify masked positively and negatively valenced words that had been presented briefly (6.4 ms) in a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm. In Experiment 1, persons high in trait anxiety and low in defensiveness identified positive words at below-chance levels and negative words at above-chance levels. No other participant-group’s performance differed from chance. In Experiment 2, persons high in trait anxiety and low in defensiveness again exhibited subchance perception of positive words when responding quickly. This represents the clearest evidence to date that anxious, non-defensive individuals systematically avoid subliminally-presented positive information.     

Computerized adaptive assessment of personality disorder: introducing the CAT-PD project

Assessment of personality disorders (PD) has been hindered by reliance on the problematic categorical model embodied in the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Model of Mental Disorders (DSM), lack of consensus among alternative dimensional models, and inefficient measurement methods. This article describes the rationale for and early results from a multiyear study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that was designed to develop an integrative and comprehensive model and efficient measure of PD trait dimensions. To accomplish these goals, we are in the midst of a 5-phase project to develop and validate the model and measure. The results of Phase 1 of the project--which was focused on developing the PD traits to be assessed and the initial item pool--resulted in a candidate list of 59 PD traits and an initial item pool of 2,589 items. Data collection and structural analyses in community and patient samples will inform the ultimate structure of the measure, and computerized adaptive testing will permit efficient measurement of the resultant traits. The resultant Computerized Adaptive Test of Personality Disorder (CAT-PD) will be well positioned as a measure of the proposed DSM-5 PD traits. Implications for both applied and basic personality research are discussed.     

Breaking apart the typical mortality salience manipulation: Two questions,two outcomes

The typical mortality salience manipulation asks participants to reflect on two questions, one about the emotions associated with the thought of death and the other about what happens after one dies. In five experiments, we separated these two questions and gave participants either one or a control question. In Experiment 1, participants' responses to the afterlife question were coded as being informed more by cultural knowledge and values compared with responses to the emotion question. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that participants responding to the afterlife question showed greater stereotype usage compared with those responding to the emotion or a control question. In Experiment 4, results illustrate that the afterlife and emotion question differ on various coding dimensions related to self‐focus, emotion, and culturally related death words, but not death‐related words. In addition, participants who responded to the afterlife question demonstrated greater cultural worldview defense by setting a higher bail for an alleged prostitute compared with those who answered the emotion or a control question. In Experiment 5, participants responding to the emotion question demonstrated a greater preference for personally endorsed values compared with those who responded to the emotion or a control question. These results suggest that the two questions used in the common mortality salience manipulation produce different results when separated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moving Beyond Us and Them? Marginality,Rhizomes, and Immanent Forgiveness

Here, I offer a candid response to bell hooks's call for a testimony to the “movement beyond a mere ‘us and them’ discussion” that purportedly informs contemporary radical and feminist thought on difference. In alignment with a tradition that includes bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aurora Levins Morales, I offer a personal testimony to the ways in which I—a middle‐class, French, immigrant, continental‐philosophy‐bred incest survivor—envision both that movement and its limits. To establish these alliances means forming necessary (if only momentary and unlikely) communities. I call on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to propose an account of the production of such communities that does not depend only on shared lived experience, but also on shared marginal spatiality (rhizomes), temporality (trauma), and “medicinal history” (nomadology). I suggest that on the one hand, Deleuze's philosophy of immanence may indeed find apt expression in the politics of integrity that hooks, Lorde, and Morales call for. On the other hand, a genuine politics of integrity may benefit from drawing on the philosophy of immanence, which alone offers alternatives to the traditional, oppositional models of difference informed by transcendence. Finally, I propose the concept of “immanent forgiveness” to capture the movement at issue.     

Alcohol expectancies, alcohol use, and hostility as longitudinal predictors of alcohol-related aggression

The direct and interactive effects of alcohol expectancies for aggression, dispositional hostility, and heavy alcohol consumption on alcohol-related physical aggression were examined across the first four years of marriage in a sample of 634 newlywed couples. For husbands, alcohol aggression expectancies predicted increases in alcohol-related aggression; across husbands and wives, however, aggression expectancies were not found to interact with hostility or alcohol consumption to predict physical aggression. Consistent with previous research, hostility and alcohol consumption interacted with each other to predict alcohol-related aggression. Specifically, for both husbands and wives high in dispositional hostility, heavy alcohol consumption was positively associated with the occurrence of alcohol-related aggression; for those low in dispositional hostility, however, there was no association between alcohol consumption and alcohol-related aggression. Findings are contrasted with previous longitudinal research on alcohol aggression expectancies and physical aggression in married couples. The article discusses the extent to which findings may vary depending on whether expectancies are assessed in relation to alcohol's effect on one's own behavior versus alcohol's effect on others' behavior.     

Visuospatial attention in schizophrenia: deficits in broad monitoring

Although selective attention is thought to be impaired in people with schizophrenia (PSZ), prior research has found no deficit in the ability to select one location and withdraw attention from another. PSZ and healthy control subjects (HCS) performed a stimulus detection task in which one, two, or all four peripheral target locations were cued. When one or two locations were cued, both PSZ and HCS responded faster when the target appeared at a cued than uncued location. However, increases in the number of validly cued locations had much more deleterious effects on performance for PSZ than HCS, especially for targets of low contrast whose detection was more dependent on attention. PSZ also responded more slowly in trials with four cued locations relative to trials with one or two invalidly cued locations. Thus, visuospatial attention deficits in schizophrenia arise when broad monitoring is required rather than when attention must be focused narrowly.