Psychopathy and verbal emotion processing in non-incarcerated males

Incarcerated males who score high on personality measures of psychopathy are reported to be less efficient than other incarcerated males in processing emotionally laden stimuli. In this study, we evaluated whether an emotion deficit is also present in non-incarcerated higher functioning males who score high on psychopathy personality measures. A sample of male university students was screened for psychopathic personality, and two subsamples, those who scored high or low on global psychopathy, participated in a series of language processing tasks designed to assess verbal emotion processing. Unlike previous studies of emotion processing in the verbal domain, stimuli also systematically varied in abstractness. The results showed that participants scoring high in psychopathy were less efficient than those scoring low in psychopathy in processing negatively valenced words, across all levels of word abstractness. The results extend previous accounts of emotional processing deficits in individuals with psychopathic personality to a relatively high-functioning non-incarcerated sample.     

Two-Component Solutions of Repertory Grid Data: A Comparison of Three Methods

Abstract

Of the various ways in which repertory grid data can be summarized, the two-component plot has been the most popular method. These plots are derived in three main ways: (1) Slater's (1977) INGR1D program, (2) subprogram FACTOR in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Brent, 1975), and (3) Higgenbotham and Bannister's (1983) CAB program, little attempt has been made to compare the solutions produced by these programs despite widespread use. A small number of single case studies suggest that the solutions are comparable. This paper reports a study that compares the solutions derived from INGRID, SPSS, and CAB for a series of cases. The results show that correspondence was good for the first components, but for the second components the results were less satisfactory     

Group fixed-role therapy: A clinical application

Fixed-role therapy has primarily been seen as a form of individual therapy. However, Kelly 0955) suggested that it would provide an interesting and useful way of approaching group psychotherapy. This article illustrates the feasibility of Kelly's suggestion in a clinical setting. The group had 5 participants, all of whom had been referred for help with social anxiety or social phobia. Self-report measures were administered before and after group therapy, and the outcome was positive.     

Making sense of “resistance”: Responses to organizational change in a private nursing home for the elderly

Abstract

This article reports a study of resistance to change amongst organizational employees. It focuses on the introduction of skill development programmes to give staff nationally recognized qualifications. Resistance to the innovation is interpreted in light of the values of staff and how they are consistent or inconsistent with the value base of the innovation.     

Research Productivity and Performance of Journals in the Creativity Sciences: A Bibliometric Analysis

A bibliometric approach was employed to analyze the research productivity and performance of creativity studies between 1965 and 2012. A dataset was constructed using all publications and citations retrieved from four key journals that publish creativity research: Journal of Creative Behavior (JCB), Gifted Child Quarterly (GCQ), Creativity Research Journal (CRJ), and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (PACA). Major findings in this study include: (a) During the study period, the four journals have published 1,891 articles on creativity and they have been cited 11,709 times; (b) the impact factors of the four journals increased from lower than .50 in 2002 to over 1.0 in 2012; in 2012 PACA had the highest impact factor, followed by CRJ; (c) JCB published the most creativity papers and CRJ had the most citations; (d) about a third of the articles published in the four journals have never been cited. Implications for the field of creativity are discussed.     

Social Capital and Community Group Participation: Examining ‘Bridging’ and ‘Bonding’ in the Context of a Healthy Living Centre in the UK

Social capital has been widely advocated as a way of understanding and building community participation in the interest of health improvement. However, the concept as proposed by Putnam, has been criticised for presenting an overly romanticised account of complex community relations. This paper presents analysis from a qualitative evaluation of a Healthy Living Centre (HLC) in the North of England, to examine the utility of the concept of social capital in this context. We found the concepts of ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ social capital were useful – though not without limitations – in helping to make sense of the complexities and contradictions in participants’ experiences of community group participation. 'Bridging' helped provide an understanding of how the decline in shared social spaces such as local shops impacts on social relationships. 'Bonding' highlighted how community group membership can have positive and negative implications for individuals and the wider community. It was found that skilled group leadership was key to strengthening bridging capital. Politically, in the UK, community participation is seen as having an essential role in social change, for example, its centrality to the coalition government's idea of the ‘Big Society’. A micro‐examination of this HLC using the lens of social capital provides a valuable critical insight into community participation. It shows that this kind of initiative can be successful in building social capital, given conditions such as an appropriate setting and effective leadership. However, they cannot substitute for other kinds of investment in the physical infrastructure of a community. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emergent Leadership and Female Sex Role Identity

The effects of female sex role identity on self- and rater evaluations of emergent leadership behavior were compared in two studies. We used the same consensus-seeking procedure in both studies to collect the data; only the biological sex composition of the groups in the second study was changed. Study 1 examined 15 mixed-sex groups of 39 female and 21 male students; Study 2 contained 96 female students in 22 same-sex groups. Sex role orientation was measured with the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI: Bem, 1974). Androgynous and feminine-oriented self-ratings of leadership were significantly higher than peer ratings and were also significantly higher than the undifferentiated self-ratings. The self-ratings of masculine-oriented women agreed most closely with peer ratings. Contrary to research and theory, peer evaluation of leadership behavior by sex role orientation did not differ.     

Campaign Contributions,Post-War Reconstruction Contracts,and State Crime

This article presents a case-control study of the relationship between Federal-level campaign contributions, corporate political connections, and the awarding of post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cases are 135 companies that received post-war contracts and controls are 135 randomly selected companies matched on industry. Results reveal that both campaign contributions and political connections significantly increase a company's odds of receiving a contract. Results are situated in the context of current theory on state crime. It is argued that awarding contracts on this basis may constitute a form of state crime, but alternative explanations for the findings are also discussed.