Eine historische Fallstudie

Barbara Marie Eisele wurde 1900 in die Psychiatrische Klinik Heidelberg eingeliefert und starb 1903 in der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Emmendingen. Die Briefe Eiseles dokumentieren ihre zahlreichen Bemühungen, aus der Anstalt entlassen zu werden, um wieder in Freiheit leben zu k?nnen.     

Deliberate real-time mood regulation in adulthood: the importance of age, fixation and attentional functioning

While previous research has linked executive attention to emotion regulation, the current study investigated the role of attentional alerting (i.e., efficient use of external warning cues) on younger (N=39) and older (N=44) adults' use of gaze to regulate their mood in real time. Participants viewed highly arousing unpleasant images while reporting their mood and were instructed to deliberately manage how they felt and to minimise the effect of those stimuli on their mood. Fixations toward the most negative areas of the images were recorded with eye tracking. We examined whether looking less at the most negative regions, compared to each individual's own tendency, was a beneficial mood regulatory strategy and how it interacted with age and alerting ability. High alerting older adults, who rely more on external cues to guide their attention, experienced a smaller decline in mood over time by activating a less-negative-looking approach (compared to their own average tendency), effectively looking away from the most negative areas of the images. More negative gaze patterns predicted better mood for younger adults, though this effect decreased over time. Alerting did not moderate gaze-mood links in younger adults. Successful mood regulation may thus depend on particular combinations of age, fixation, and attention.     

Evil and Justice: An Experiential Personal Construct Approach

George Kelly (1955) made a philosophical assumption that the universe is integral or interconnected. This assumption, often overlooked by scholars, has profound implications for global issues facing the world today, including the perpetration of acts that can be considered evil. I first give an experiential personal construct psychology definition of evil (the perpetration of acts, out of our own woundedness, that harm another's central ways of being). I then discuss the ways that evil acts are manifested: objectifying others, denying connectedness, numbing of inner experiences, and a limited ability to introspect. Using these manifestations of evil, I illustrate the ways that evil acts are being perpetrated against others (e.g., travel bans, border walls) as well as the greater universe (e.g., ignoring climate change, exploiting the natural world). I conclude by discussing steps each person can take to minimize the perpetration of evil in the world today. Some of these actions are public (e.g., political, speaking up); others are more personal (e.g., maintaining an attitude of humility and reverence for the greater world). I advocate that people carefully and thoughtfully consider the implications of each action for all of our fellow humans as well as the entire planet.     

A prospective study of some effects of aircraft noise on cognitive performance in schoolchildren

Before the opening of the new Munich International Airport and the termination of the old airport, children near both sites were recruited into aircraft–noise groups (aircraft noise at present or pending) and control groups with no aircraft noise (closely matched for socioeconomic status). A total of 326 children (mean age 5 10.4 years) took part in three data–collection waves, one before and two after the switch–over of the airports. After the switch, long–term memory and reading were impaired in the noise group at the new airport. and improved in the formerly noise–exposed group at the old airport. Short–term memory also improved in the latter group after the old airport was closed. At the new airport, speech perception was impaired in the newly noise–exposed group. Mediational analyses suggest that poorer reading was not mediated by speech perception, and that impaired recall was in part mediated by reading.     

Measurement invariance of the Phubbing Scale across 20 countries

Mobile phone addiction is a robust phenomenon observed throughout the world. The social aspect of mobile phone use is crucial; therefore, phubbing is a part of the mobile phone addiction phenomenon. Phubbing is defined as ignoring an interlocutor by glancing at one's mobile phone during a face-to-face conversation. The main aim of this study was to investigate how the Phubbing Scale (containing 10 items) might vary across countries, and between genders. Data were collected in 20 countries: Belarus, Brazil, China, Croatia, Ecuador, India, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, UK, Ukraine and USA. The mean age across the sample (N = 7696, 65.8% women, 34.2% men) was 25.32 years (SD = 9.50). The cross-cultural invariance of the scale was investigated using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) as well as the invariance analyses. Additionally, data from each country were assessed individually via confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs). We obtained two factors, based on only eight of the items: (a) communication disturbances and (b) phone obsession. The 8 items Phubbing Scale.     

The “Big Two” and socially induced emotions: Agency and communion jointly influence emotional contagion and emotional mimicry

Motivation and Emotion - Three studies investigated the effects of two fundamental dimensions of social perception on emotional contagion (i.e., the transfer of emotions between people). Rooting...     

Efficacy of standard deviational ellipses in the application of criminal geographic profiling

The premise for this study is that the physical and cultural landscape has a deterministic effect on the location and distribution of serial crime. As a consequence, the distribution of linked crime scenes should exhibit a shape and orientation that is consistent with the underlying landscape. Geographic Profiling models that are able to account for these effects will provide more accurate results than those models that do not. Utilizing basic geographic principles of central tendency and spatial diffusion, this research first analyzed the output of circular and elliptical profile models generated for 30 serial burglaries (n = 164) and 67 serial robberies (n = 370) in Baltimore, Maryland between 1994 and 1997. A comparative analysis of the model output reveals that the Standard Deviational Ellipse is significantly (p = 0.000) better able to predict the home location of a serial offender than profiles generated from circles. Next, the relationship between the orientation of elliptical profiles and the mean linear orientation of the corresponding landscape was assessed to reveal a moderate but significant correlation (r = 0.511, p < 0.001). Together, these findings demonstrate that landscape does impact the locations of crime, and is a measurable parameter that can improve the efficacy of geographic profiling. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Characteristics of Peer Review Reports: Editor-Suggested Versus Author-Suggested Reviewers

Science and Engineering Ethics - Peer review is widely recognized as a mechanism for quality control of academic content. This research article aims at comparing the review reports and decisions of...     

Aggression among university employees

Harassment among university employees (n = 338; 162 males, 176 females) was investigated by help of the Work Harassment Scale (WHS), developed for the study. Nineteen cases of severe victimization by harassment were interviewed. Subjectively experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety were estimated with two subscales form SCL-90 [Derogatis LR, Lipman RS, Covi L (1973): Psychopharmacology Bulletin 9: 13-28] and aggressiveness was measured with the Buss-Durkee Inventory [Buss A, Durkee A (1957): Journal of Consulting Psychology 21: 343–349]. Females experienced themselves as significantly more harassed than men. Position was related to harassment: individuals in superior positions harassed more often than individuals in subordinate positions. Less victimization by harassment was experienced among individuals involved in research and teaching than among individuals involved in administration and service. The experienced reasons for harassment were predominantly envy and competition about jobs and status. In 25% of cases, victims felt that their sex might be a reason. Victims of harassment experienced higher levels of depression, anxiety, and aggression than others. The interviewed cases showed evidence of symptoms reminiscent of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.