Can We Use Hare’s Psychopathy Model within Forensic and Non-Forensic Populations? An Empirical Investigation

Although psychopathy construct (Self-Report Psychopathy Scale–Short Form [SRP–SF]) was assessed among various samples, prior research did not investigate whether the model proposed by Hare and colleagues can be used to capture psychopathy scores derived from forensic and nonforensic populations. The main objective of the current study was to test dimensionality, construct validity, and factorial invariance of the SRP–SF within prison (n = 730) and student (n = 2,506) samples. Our results indicate that the SRP–SF measure cannot be used in the same way within forensic and nonforensic samples, which may be due to the inclusion of criminal/antisocial traits as an integral part of psychopathy.     

There Is No Bathing in River Styx: Rule Manipulation,Performance Downplaying and Adversarial Schemes

Adversarial scheme points to situations of rivalry like auctions, public tendering, sports competitions, elections or trials. Thomas Pogge suggested that these schemes have great advantage: they force agents to reveal their full performance. But they also incentivize agents to manipulate the rules. In other schemes with incentives, he also suggests, agents can easily downplay their performance, but won’t engage in rule manipulation to the same extent. In this paper, I will argue that adversarial schemes and other schemes with incentives advantages or disadvantages do not map from one to the other as Pogge suggests. Performance-downplaying also takes place in adversarial schemes, as well as in other schemes with incentives also lead to rule manipulation. I will also argue that there are genuine differences between these two types of schemes. Adversarial schemes have three unique advantages: first, they may be more effective in producing motivational improvements at a lower cost, second, they may lead to an automatic optimization of performances and, third, they may produce unique system benefits. In order to produce these advantages, we must design adversarial schemes properly and use them in the right situation.     

Sarcasm and emoticons: Comprehension and emotional impact

Most theorists agree that sarcasm serves some communicative function that would not be achieved by speaking directly, such as eliciting a particular emotional response in the recipient. One debate concerns whether this kind of language serves to enhance or mute the positive or negative nature of a message. The role of textual devices commonly used to accompany written sarcastic remarks is also unclear. The current research uses a rating task to investigate the influence of textual devices (emoticons and punctuation marks) on the comprehension of, and emotional responses to, sarcastic versus literal criticism and praise, for both unambiguous (Experiment 1) and ambiguous (Experiment 2) materials. Results showed that sarcastic criticism was rated as less negative than literal criticism, and sarcastic praise was rated as less positive than literal praise, suggesting that sarcasm serves to mute the positive or negative nature of the message. In terms of textual devices, results showed that emoticons had a larger influence on both comprehension and emotional impact than punctuation marks.     

Activity in the human amygdala corresponds to early, rather than late period autonomic responses to a signal for shock

Laboratory animal and human subject studies report that the amygdala is a critical brain structure that supports the acquisition and expression of conditional fear. Recent functional neuroimaging studies in humans have reported that activity in this region is closely related to the behavioral expression of conditional skin conductance responses (SCR). However, SCR waveforms following conditional stimulus (CS) presentation contain both early period and late period responses that may differ with respect to underlying central processes. It is not known whether amygdala activity corresponds to the expression of early conditonal responses (CRs) that occur shortly following CS onset or late CRs that closely precede UCS onset. The present study used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging and concurrent skin conductance measurements to determine whether amygdala activity is more closely related to the expression of early or late period CRs. Increased amygdala activity was detected during the formation of early, but not late period CRs. Additionally, this pattern of amygdala activity did not dissipate, but persisted into late stages of the experiment. These findings are consistent with the idea that amygdala responding is critically involved in the generation of CRs formed shortly following CS onset.     

Differences in African American and White Women’s Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men

The aim of the present study was to examine racial differences in women’s attitudes toward lesbians and gay men and to offer an understanding of these differences. Participants were 224 18–30 year old heterosexual African American (64%) and White (36%) female undergraduates from a large urban university in the southeastern United States. Participants completed measures of social demographics, sexual orientation, and sexual prejudice. Results showed that African American, relative to White, women endorsed more negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Also, unlike White women, African American women reported more negative attitudes toward gay men than lesbians. Implications are discussed regarding differences in cultural contexts that exist between African American and White women.     

Superior discrimination between similar stimuli after simultaneous exposure

Human participants received unsupervised exposure to difficult-to-discriminate chequerboard stimuli (e.g., AX and BX), before learning a discrimination between them. Experiment 1 demonstrated that prior exposure enhanced later discrimination and that intermixed exposure (AX, BX, AX, BX ...) resulted in better subsequent discrimination than did blocked exposure (CY, CY ... DY, DY ...). Experiment 2 showed that simultaneous exposure to two similar stimuli (AX-BX, BX-AX ...) facilitated the later acquisition of a successive discrimination, more than successive exposure (AX-AX, BX-BX ...). These results parallel those observed by Mundy, Honey, and Dwyer (2007) who used pictures of human faces as stimuli and establish the generality of the fact that simultaneous exposure produces a particularly marked perceptual learning effect.     

The Moral Foundations of Human Rights Attitudes

Human rights are claimed to be innate and based on moral principles. Human rights attitudes have been shown to be related to political ideology, but there have been few studies investigating their relationship with morality. Using moral foundations theory, we examine whether morals can predict human rights attitudes across two studies. The first study used questionnaires to show that human rights are based exclusively on individualizing moral foundations; however, increases in individualizing and decreases in binding foundations predict increases in human rights endorsement. Moral foundations also mediated the relationship between political identification and human rights. Both individualizing and binding foundations performed a role in explaining the lower endorsement of human rights by conservatives as compared to liberals. The second study used textual analysis of newspaper articles to show that human-rights-related articles contained more moral language than other articles, in particular for the individualizing foundations. Conservative newspapers had a greater use of binding foundations in human rights articles than liberal newspapers.     

Valuing life and evaluating suffering in infants with life-limiting illness

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - In this paper, we explore three separate questions that are relevant to assessing the prudential value of life in infants with severe life-limiting illness....