The dangers of religious nationalism: Lessons from Srebrenica

What are the consequences of the politicization of religious myths and symbols for religious communities? The ethnic cleansing that culminated in the massacre of Srebrenica was promoted to the Serbian population, both in Serbia proper and in Bosnia, through the use of religious mythology and symbols. In Bosnia, religious language lost its meaning, religious observance remained low and it became difficult for religious leaders to join together to address community issues. We see a similar use of religious language and symbolism today in the U.S., particularly from evangelical leaders justifying the current president and his jingoistic actions. We can look to the conflict in Bosnia as a warning to the U.S. not to link religion and nationalism.     

Older adults’ neural activation in the reward circuit is sensitive to face trustworthiness

We examined older adult (OA) and younger adult (YA) neural sensitivity to face trustworthiness in reward circuit regions, previously found to respond to trustworthiness in YA. Interactions of face trustworthiness with age revealed effects exclusive to OA in the amygdala and caudate, and an effect that was not moderated by age in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). OA, but not YA, showed a nonlinear amygdala response to face trustworthiness, with significantly stronger activation response to high than to medium trustworthy faces, and no difference between low and medium or high. This may explain why an earlier study investigating OA amygdala activation to trustworthiness failed to find a significant effect, since only the linear low versus high trustworthiness difference was assessed. OA, but not YA, also showed significantly stronger activation to high than to low trustworthy faces in the right caudate, indicating a positive linear effect, consistent with previous YA research, as well as significantly stronger activation to high than to medium but not low trustworthy faces in the left caudate, indicating a nonlinear effect. Activation in dACC across both age groups showed a positive linear effect consistent with previous YA research. Finally, OA rated the faces as more trustworthy than did YA across all levels of trustworthiness. Future research should examine whether the null effects for YA were due to our inclusion of older faces. Research also should investigate possible implications of our findings for more ecologically valid OA responses to people who vary in facial trustworthiness.     

The cost of caring–the impact of secondary trauma on assumptions,values and beliefs

The aim of this paper is to look at the impact of working with distressed and traumatized clients. The paper describes a survey involving 430 care workers who regularly work with distressed or traumatized clients. The survey involved the participants completing a 21-item beliefs inventory describing their supervision or support and recording whether they had any spiritual or religious beliefs. A factor analysis of the results of the inventory found four factors, three of which involved the negative impact of the work on beliefs while the fourth gave an indication of the positive beliefs or post trauma growth that comes from working in this area. The results showed that while doing a good job and experiencing fulfilment were higher in carers who experienced lower levels of distressing experiences and beliefs, an increase in competence and improved learning opportunities were associated with higher levels of challenge. A review of the information provided on supervision and support showed that there was a wide variation in the sources of support for the different professions. While around 46% of the carers had spiritual beliefs only 29% were members of a religious group. The discussion looked at the implication of the results of the survey including the possible benefit of using the carer belief inventory to identify carers who may be vulnerable to secondary trauma or compassion fatigue. The need to provide support to all professions undertaking caring work with distressed or traumatized clients was highlighted.     

Relations of low frustration tolerance beliefs with stress, depression, and anxiety in young adolescents

Young adolescents (N=144; 66 boys, 78 girls), ages 12 to 14 years (M=12.2, SD=.8), who reported lower scores on the Low Frustration Tolerance Beliefs Instrument had higher scores on the Perceived Stress Scale and the Profile of Mood States Subscales of Depression and Anxiety.     

Memory for emotional faces in naturally occurring dysphoria and induced sadness

The aim was to establish if the memory bias for sad faces, reported in clinically depressed patients (Gilboa-Schechtman, Erhard Weiss, & Jeczemien, 2002; Ridout, Astell, Reid, Glen, & O'Carroll, 2003) generalises to sub-clinical depression (dysphoria) and experimentally induced sadness. Study 1: dysphoric (n = 24) and non-dysphoric (n = 20) participants were presented with facial stimuli, asked to identify the emotion portrayed and then given a recognition memory test for these faces. At encoding, dysphoric participants (DP) exhibited impaired identification of sadness and neutral affect relative to the non-dysphoric group (ND). At memory testing, DP exhibited superior memory for sad faces relative to happy and neutral. They also exhibited enhanced memory for sad faces and impaired memory for happy relative to the ND. Study 2: non-depressed participants underwent a positive (n = 24) or negative (n = 24) mood induction (MI) and were assessed on the same tests as Study 1. At encoding, negative MI participants showed superior identification of sadness, relative to neutral affect and compared to the positive MI group. At memory testing, the negative MI group exhibited enhanced memory for the sad faces relative to happy or neutral and compared to the positive MI group. Conclusion: MCM bias for sad faces generalises from clinical depression to these sub-clinical affective states.     

The beneficial effects of prosocial spending on happiness: work hard,make money,and spend it on others?

Previous research has shown that the way people spend their money is as important to happiness as how much money people earn. Specifically, it has been shown that spending money on others contributes more to an individual’s happiness than spending money on oneself. In the present study, we investigated this effect and examined the role of the money’s origin. Students were randomly assigned either to spend a small amount of money on themselves or to spend the money on others. Moreover, half of the participants received the money as a wage, whereas the other half received the money as a windfall. The results replicated previous research indicating that prosocial spenders report greater happiness than do selfish spenders. However, the happiness effect was unaffected by the source of the money (i.e. wage vs. windfall). Implications for well-being and happiness are discussed.     

Assessing the impact of stressful incidents in organizations: the development of an extended impact of events scale

Employers are becoming increasingly aware of the risks to employee wellbeing associated with the traumatic incidents that occur in the workplace. Despite this increased organizational awareness of the need to protect employees from the damaging effects of traumatic events, there has been little provision to help organizations to evaluate their management systems and post trauma interventions. This problem of a lack of evaluation has become more important as a growing body of evidence has provided evidence that suggests that trauma debriefing, the widely used approach to traumatic stress may be ineffective or damaging. The problem for an organization is to have a means of assessing the impact of a traumatic incident on exposed employees soon after the event and at regular intervals as a way of tracking the effectiveness of the treatment and rehabilitation programme. This paper examines the development and validation of a traumatic stress questionnaire designed to be used by trained practitioners working with traumatized employees. The extended impact of events scale (IES-E), took the 15 items from the impact of events scale (IES) and added eight new items which had been chosen on the basis of existing theory and clinical experience to represent the traumatic stress symptom of hyperarousal. Two studies are reported which examine the structure and reliability, and then the discriminant validity of the extended scale when used with a working population. The first study involved a factor analysis of the IES-E items using data collected from 105 subjects who had formally reported exposure to stressful work events to their employing organization. The second study then used the IES-E to compare employees self-reporting of the impact of either a major positive or a major negative life event. The results of the first study confirmed the presence of the re-experience and avoidance symptoms as a response to a traumatic event (as in the IES) but, in addition, identified a new factor, arousal and a new measurement model based on a single general factor. The reliability coefficients for all three scales and the general factor were found to be good. The second study showed that IES-E scores on re-experience, avoidance, arousal and the general factor could be used to discriminate between the subjects reporting major positive and negative life events. Two measurement models can therefore describe the impact of stressful events, the first based on three orthogonal factors, and the second based on a single general factor. The theoretical implications of these findings are explored.     

Photography as a therapeutic tool for substance abuse clients who have a history of sexual abuse

Symptoms of sexual abuse among persons in substance abuse treatment facilities may be difficult to recognise since presenting symptoms frequently mirror those associated with substance abuse. Additionally, treatment may be difficult due to a lack of previous verbal processing and shared negative defence mechanisms that are resistant to traditional talking therapy. The use of photography is presented here as a method of treatment initiation and exploration for substance abuse clients who have a history of sexual abuse. The paper reviews rationale, advantages, current applications and practitioner concerns associated with the use of photography as a therapeutic tool.