Rates and correlates of undetermined deaths among African Americans: results from the National Violent Death Reporting System

Little is known about the factors associated with undetermined death classifications among African Americans. In this study, the rates of undetermined deaths were assessed, the prevalence of missing information was estimated, and whether the circumstances preceding death differ by race were examined. Data were derived from the 2005-2008 National Violent Death Reporting System. African Americans had higher prevalence of missing information than Whites. African Americans classified as undetermined deaths were more likely to be older, women, never married/single, to have had a blood alcohol content at or above the legal limit, and to have had a substance abuse problem. The results suggest that racial differences in the preponderance and the type of evidence surrounding the death may affect death classification.     

Observed need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior in physical education: Do teachers' motivational orientations matter?

ObjectivesThe behaviors physical education (PE) teachers engage in affect a number of important student outcomes. Therefore, it is essential to study the antecedents of these teaching behaviors.Design and methodGrounded in Self-Determination Theory, this cross-sectional study explored the relations between PE teachers' autonomous and controlled motivational orientations and a variety of observed need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behaviors in 79 PE classes by means of regression analyses.ResultsControl-oriented teachers made less use of an overall need-supportive teaching style and provided less structure during the activity in particular, while they engaged in more need-thwarting teaching behavior in general and in more controlling and cold teaching behavior in particular.ConclusionAlthough autonomy-oriented teachers tended to display the opposite pattern of correlates, these associations were non-significant. As the current findings suggest that teachers' actual teaching behavior is rooted at least partly in their own dispositional motivational orientation, they may inform the design of effective continuous professional development programs and interventions aimed at enhancing teachers' need-supportive teaching. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Ratings of Perceived Exertion by Women with Internal or External Locus of Control

Ratings of perceived exertion are frequently used to estimate the strain and effort experienced subjectively by individuals during various forms of physical activity. A number of factors, both physiological and psychological in origin, have been suggested to work as modifiers of the exertion perceived by the individual. It has been reported in non-sport-related research that individuals with an internal locus of control seem to pay more attention to relevant information and use the available information more adequately than individuals with an external locus of control. The reputed inferior information-processing abilities of externals compared with internals could possibly also influence the ratings of perceived exertion, with externals being less accurate in their ratings. Whether locus of control might be such a factor was investigated. Fifty women worked on an ergometer cycle at four different work loads. The results showed statistically significant differences in subjective ratings of perceived exertion between externals and internals, especially at heavier work loads. Such differences might be because of unequal information-processing abilities, as the observed discrepancies occurred at higher work intensities, when more cues are available for processing.     

Context-specific control and context selection in conflict tasks

This study investigated whether participants prefer contexts with relatively little cognitive conflict and whether this preference is related to context-specific control. A conflict selection task was administered in which participants had to choose between two categories that contained different levels of conflict. One category was associated with 80% congruent Stroop trials and 20% incongruent Stroop trials, while the other category was associated with only 20% congruent Stroop trials and 80% incongruent Stroop trials. As predicted, participants selected the low-conflict category more frequently, indicating that participants avoid contexts with high-conflict likelihood. Furthermore, we predicted a correlation between this preference for the low-conflict category and the control implementation associated with the categories (i.e., context-specific proportion congruency effect, CSPC effect). Results however did not show such a correlation, thereby failing to support a relationship between context control and context selection.     

Managing the work-home interface by making sacrifices: Costs of sacrificing psychological needs

Motivation and Emotion - Research has suggested that sacrifices are made to manage the work-home interface. They have been however, related to various deleterious effects. Drawing from...     

The role of passion for work and need satisfaction in psychological adjustment to retirement

Two studies tested a model in which passion for work predicts psychological adjustment to retirement through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. With a sample of 103 French-Canadian retirees from a variety of occupations, the first study used a retrospective cross-sectional design. The second study followed 73 French-Canadian teachers over a 6-year period and examined the relationship between passion for work, assessed when participants were still working, and psychological adjustment to retirement, measured when participants were retired. All participants completed questionnaires on demographics, passion for work, basic psychological needs and psychological adjustment to retirement. Results from structural equation modeling confirmed the hypothesized model, such that both studies confirmed the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction in the passion–psychological adjustment to retirement relationship. Need satisfaction significantly mediated the relationship between harmonious passion for work and psychological adjustment to retirement in Studies 1 and 2. The mediation was also confirmed between obsessive passion and psychological adjustment to retirement in Study 1, but not in Study 2. These findings suggest that passion for work matters in psychological adjustment to retirement. Being passionate about work can thus lead to positive or negative outcomes in retirement, depending on whether the passion is harmonious or obsessive, respectively.     

Western Anti‐Muslim Prejudice: Value Conflict or Discrimination of Persons Too?

Do Western anti‐Muslim attitudes reflect Islamophobia as a general, ethnoreligious prejudice that does not distinguish between persons and ideas, values, or behavior, or are they limited to issues perceived to be in conflict with Western liberal values? In two experiments, we measured discrimination as decreased willingness to help a Muslim versus non‐Muslim to undertake an action that was either neutral or possibly in conflict with Western liberal values. As opposed to general discrimination, the participants displayed conditional, anti‐Muslim discrimination: The two targets were treated equally when the cause was neutral, but there was less willingness to help the Muslim when the cause was conflicting (protesting against the headscarf ban and against gay rights). However, participants did demonstrate subtle discrimination by showing less willingness to help the protesting Muslim compared to the protesting non‐Muslim target. Individual differences moderated these effects with multiculturalism predicting conditional outgroup prosociality, ethnocentrism predicting global outgroup discrimination, and proatheism attitudes predicting both conditional outgroup prosociality and unprejudiced rejection of value‐conflicting behavior.