The Moderating Role of Anxiety in the Associations of Callous-Unemotional Traits with Self-Report and Laboratory Measures of Affective and Cognitive Empathy

In a sample of detained male adolescents (n = 107; Mean age = 15.50; SD = 1.30), we tested whether anxiety moderated the association of CU traits with self-report and computerized measures of affective (emotional reactivity) and cognitive (affective facial recognition and Theory of Mind [ToM]) empathy. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that CU traits were negatively associated with self-reports of affective empathy and this association was not moderated by level of anxiety. Significant interactions revealed that CU traits were negatively associated with cognitive empathy (self-report) only at high levels of anxiety, whereas CU traits were positively associated with cognitive empathy on the ToM task only at low levels of anxiety. CU traits were also associated with greater fear recognition accuracy at low levels of anxiety. Implications for understanding and treating different variants of CU traits (i.e., primary and secondary) are discussed.     

Emotion Regulation Mediates Effects of Alexithymia and Emotion Differentiation on Impulsive Aggressive Behavior

Alexithymia and low emotion differentiation restrict access to emotional information and increase propensity toward dysregulated and deviant behaviors, such as impulsive aggression. However, mechanisms underlying such effects are largely unknown. This study examined the mediating role of emotion regulation in the relationship between restricted access to emotional information and impulsive aggression. Alexithymic features and emotion differentiation explained 43% of the variance in impulsive aggression; these relationships were fully mediated by emotion-regulation difficulty. Contrary to previously held assumptions, alexithymic features and emotion differentiation were uncorrelated with one another, each limiting the translation of unique emotion information necessary for adaptive emotion and behavior regulation.     

Slut Shaming in a School Bullying Case: Evaluators Ignore Level of Harm When the Victim Self-Presents as Sexually Available

To investigate slut shaming (condemnation aimed at presumably sexually active females) as a form of bullying, we asked 142 U.S. college students acting as disciplinary committee members to decide a case involving two female high school students. We manipulated the victim’s self-presentation (sexually available, control) and the level of harm she suffered (mild anxiety, PTSD). Although evaluators typically make more pro-victim judgments when the level of harm is higher rather than lower, we expected participants to ignore harm when the victim self-presented as sexually available. As predicted, participants in the control condition made higher probability of guilt estimates and harsher sentence recommendations when the victim experienced PTSD versus mild anxiety. In contrast, harm level did not influence participants’ judgments in the sexually available condition. Additional analyses demonstrated that participants attributed relatively more responsibility to the sexually available than to the control victim, and the effect of the victim’s self-presentation on guilt estimates was mediated by attributions about the cause of the harm. The results correspond with previous findings that evaluators blame bullying victims whom they believe made themselves targets. We suggest that school districts revise their policies as necessary to avoid encouraging slut shaming and that evaluators receive training to help them apply the legal definition of bullying to specific situations.     

What Is ‘The Meaning of Our Cheerfulness’? Philosophy as a Way of Life in Nietzsche and Montaigne

Robert Pippin has recently raised what he calls ‘the Montaigne problem’ for Nietzsche's philosophy: although Nietzsche advocates a ‘cheerful’ mode of philosophizing for which Montaigne is an exemplar, he signally fails to write with the obvious cheerfulness attained by Montaigne. We explore the moral psychological structure of the cheerfulness Nietzsche values, revealing unexpected complexity in his conception of the attitude. For him, the right kind of cheerfulness is radically non‐naïve; it expresses the overcoming of justified revulsion at calamitous aspects of life through a reflective, higher‐order affirmative attitude. This complex notion of cheerfulness turns out to have roots in Montaigne himself, and it must (according to both philosophers) be thought of as a kind of second nature cultivated through practice, as a kind of second nature. Understanding the meaning of cheerfulness thereby sheds light on the conception of philosophy as a way of life in both Nietzsche and Montaigne.     

Wanting a body that's better than average: the effect of manipulated body norms on ideal body size perception

We examined the effect of body norms on ideal and current body size perception. In Study One, female participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (1) a thinner body norm, (2) a heavier body norm, or (3) no body norm. Body norms were manipulated by indicating a bogus "population average," and current and ideal body size perception were subsequently measured using a body silhouettes measure. Women had a thinner ideal body size in the thinner norm condition than in the heavier norm condition. Study Two replicated these results, but in a sample of young men and with regards to muscularity rather than thinness. Men had a more muscular ideal body size in the more muscular norm condition than in the less muscular norm condition. Current body size perception was also influenced by body norms, but only for women and after controlling for BMI.     

Effects of audio-visual integration on the detection of masked speech and non-speech sounds

Integration of simultaneous auditory and visual information about an event can enhance our ability to detect that event. This is particularly evident in the perception of speech, where the articulatory gestures of the speaker's lips and face can significantly improve the listener's detection and identification of the message, especially when that message is presented in a noisy background. Speech is a particularly important example of multisensory integration because of its behavioural relevance to humans and also because brain regions have been identified that appear to be specifically tuned for auditory speech and lip gestures. Previous research has suggested that speech stimuli may have an advantage over other types of auditory stimuli in terms of audio-visual integration. Here, we used a modified adaptive psychophysical staircase approach to compare the influence of congruent visual stimuli (brief movie clips) on the detection of noise-masked auditory speech and non-speech stimuli. We found that congruent visual stimuli significantly improved detection of an auditory stimulus relative to incongruent visual stimuli. This effect, however, was equally apparent for speech and non-speech stimuli. The findings suggest that speech stimuli are not specifically advantaged by audio-visual integration for detection at threshold when compared with other naturalistic sounds.     

Binocular rivalry: a window into emotional processing in aging

Previous binocular rivalry studies with younger adults have shown that emotional stimuli dominate perception over neutral stimuli. Here we investigated the effects of age on patterns of emotional dominance during binocular rivalry. Participants performed a face/house rivalry task where the emotion of the face (happy, angry, neutral) and orientation (upright, inverted) of the face and house stimuli were varied systematically. Age differences were found with younger adults showing a general emotionality effect (happy and angry faces were more dominant than neutral faces) and older adults showing inhibition of anger (neutral faces were more dominant than angry faces) and positivity effects (happy faces were more dominant than both angry and neutral faces). Age differences in dominance patterns were reflected by slower rivalry rates for both happy and angry compared to neutral face/house pairs in younger adults, and slower rivalry rates for happy compared to both angry and neutral face/house pairs in older adults. Importantly, these patterns of emotional dominance and slower rivalry rates for emotional-face/house pairs disappeared when the stimuli were inverted. This suggests that emotional valence, and not low-level image features, were responsible for the emotional bias in both age groups. Given that binocular rivalry has a limited role for voluntary control, the findings imply that anger suppression and positivity effects in older adults may extend to more automatic tasks.     

Management and treatment of stalkers: problems, options, and solutions

Legal sanctions alone are often ineffective in preventing stalking because, in the absence of treatment, the fundamental problems driving the stalker remain unresolved. Criminal justice interventions can be problematic because of difficulties in framing anti-stalking legislation and inconsistencies in their application. Civil remedies in the form of restraining orders may be ineffective or counterproductive. Treatment of stalkers involves pharmacotherapy when mental illness is present, but the mainstays of treatment for non-psychotic stalkers are programmes of psychological intervention. These depend on accurate assessment of the risks inherent in stalking and on the identification of psychological deficits, needs, and responsivity factors specific to the individual. Treatment can then be tailored to suit the stalker, thereby enhancing therapeutic efficacy. Developing a framework for identifying the risk factors and shaping the delivery of treatment is crucial. Two service innovations developed specifically to work with stalkers are presented as options to overcome current management deficiencies.