The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence

Past research shows that violent video game exposure increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal, aggressive behaviors, and decreases helpful behaviors. However, no research has experimentally examined violent video game effects on physiological desensitization, defined as showing less physiological arousal to violence in the real world after exposure to video game violence in the virtual world. This experiment attempts to fill this gap. Participants reported their media habits and then played one of eight violent or nonviolent video games for 20 min. Next, participants watched a 10-min videotape containing scenes of real-life violence while heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) were monitored. Participants who previously played a violent video game had lower HR and GSR while viewing filmed real violence, demonstrating a physiological desensitization to violence. Results are interpreted using an expanded version of the General Aggression Model. Links between desensitization, antisocial, and prosocial behavior are discussed.     

Us and them: Memory advantages in perceptually ambiguous groups

Ingroup advantages and outgroup deficits in perception and memory are well-established in research on race, gender, and other ostensibly identifiable social categories. The present study extended this research to a social category that is not as perceptually apparent: male sexual orientation. Consistent with hypotheses, an interaction of participant sexual orientation and image sexual orientation revealed an ingroup enhancement and outgroup deficit for memory of faces that participants perceived—both accurately and inaccurately—as belonging to either their ingroup or outgroup in a subsequent task. Additionally, parallel effects were found for the accurate identification of sexual orientation—a finding consistent with previous literature. The present data highlight the importance of social categorization for subsequent memory and suggest that the underlying cognitive machinery responsible for the recognition of groups may be co-opted for other relevant social applications.     

How philosophy and theology have undermined bioethics.

This essay begins by distinguishing among the viewpoints of philosophy, theology, and religion; it then explores how each deals with "sin" in the bioethical context. The conclusions are that the philosophical and theological viewpoints are intellectually defective in that they cripple our ability to deal with normative issues, and are in the end unable to integrate Christian concepts like "sin" successfully into bioethics. Sin is predicated only of beings with free will, though only in Western Christianity must all sins be committed with knowledge and voluntarily. Without the notions of free will, sin, and a narrative of redemption, bioethics remains unable to provide itself with an adequate normative framework. Bioethics, and morality in general, remain a morass precisely because there has been a failure to translate Christian morality into fully secular and scientistic terms.     

Concreteness training reduces dysphoria: A pilot proof-of-principle study

We hypothesized that a tendency towards abstract, general and decontextualized processing is a cognitive distortion that causally contributes to symptoms of depression. This hypothesis predicts that training dysphoric individuals to become more concrete and specific in their thinking would reduce depressive symptoms. To test this prediction, participants with stable dysphoria (scoring ≥ 14 on BDI-II at 2 consecutive weekly assessments) were randomly allocated in an additive design either to an active intervention control consisting of relaxation training or relaxation training plus concreteness training. Concreteness training involved repeated mental exercises designed to encourage more concrete and specific thinking about emotional events. Both interventions involved a training session and then repeated daily use of compact disc recordings for 7 days. Relaxation training plus concreteness training resulted in significantly greater decreases in depressive symptoms and marginally significantly greater decreases in state rumination than relaxation training alone. These findings suggest the potential value of concreteness training as a guided self-help intervention for mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms.     

She’s Got the Look: Inferences from Female Chief Executive Officers’ Faces Predict their Success

Inferences from faces can predict success. This may be particularly important for women, who are often evaluated by their appearance. Here 170 northeastern U.S. undergraduates judged personality traits or leadership ability from the faces of all 20 U.S. Fortune 1,000: 2006 female chief executive officers (CEOs) and we compared these ratings to the same trait ratings made for male CEOs in a previous study. After controlling for cues important for female leaders (attractiveness, affect, age, and masculinity/femininity), ratings of competence and leadership predicted the amount of profits that the CEOs’ companies made and ratings of dominance predicted the amount of individual compensation that the CEOs received. CEOs’ success is therefore related to their facial appearance regardless of target and perceiver gender.     

A cost-effective high-throughput digital system for observation and acquisition of animal behavioral data

We have designed and implemented a low-cost digital system using closed-circuit television cameras coupled to a digital acquisition system for the recording of in vivo behavioral data in rodents and for allowing observation and recording of more than 10 animals simultaneously at a reduced cost, as compared with commercially available solutions. This system has been validated using two experimental rodent models: one involving chemically induced seizures and one assessing appetite and feeding. We present observational results showing comparable or improved levels of accuracy and observer consistency between this new system and traditional methods in these experimental models, discuss advantages of the presented system over conventional analog systems and commercially available digital systems, and propose possible extensions to the system and applications to nonrodent studies.     

The Unmet Educational Agenda in Integrated Care

One of the reasons integrated care has not become a dominant service delivery model is the unmet training agenda. This article argues that the typical mental health professional is not trained to adequately address the challenges of integrated care. To insure competency both a macro and clinical training agenda are needed. At the macro-level, mental health professionals need to understand healthcare economics and basic business principles as any integrated care service delivery system is embedded and driven by economic forces. Integrated care practitioners also need some basic business skills to understand these forces and to create and manage a financially viable system, given the future flux of the system. Traditional mental health professionals also do not have the clinical skills to implement integrated care. Integrated care is not simply placing a traditionally trained mental health professional and letting them practice specialty mental health in a medical setting. Thus, the special skills needed in integrated care are enumerated and discussed. Finally, a new degree program is described as it is time given the huge need and advantages of integrated care to develop specialty training in integrated care.