Explicit Beliefs about Aggression, Implicit Knowledge Structures, and Teen Dating Violence

This study examined whether explicit beliefs justifying aggression and implicit knowledge structures theorized to facilitate aggression both contributed to between-subjects differences in teen dating violence (TDV). In addition, this research examined the contribution of explicit and implicit cognitions in the prediction of within-subjects changes in TDV over a 6-month period. Participants were 147 14- to 17-year-olds (48 % female) recruited from courts and agencies providing services to adolescents in trouble because of antisocial behavior. Teens completed a measure of explicit beliefs justifying aggression, a speeded word-completion task designed to measure aggressive content in implicit knowledge structures, and a measure of TDV. Measures were completed at 3 assessments, spaced 3 months apart. Results indicated that explicit beliefs justifying aggression and implicit knowledge structures theorized to facilitate aggression both contributed independently to between-subjects differences in TDV. However, only explicit beliefs about aggression were associated with within-subjects changes in TDV over the 6-month study period. These findings highlight the importance of considering both explicit and implicit cognitions in attempting to understand the perpetration of TDV.     

Attention and Multistep Problem Solving in 24-Month-Old Children

The current study examined the role of increased attentional load in 24 month-old children's multistep problem-solving behavior. Children solved an object-based nonspatial working-memory search task, to which a motor component of varying difficulty was added. Significant disruptions in search performance were observed with the introduction of the motor component, but the expected differential interference effects based on task difficulty were largely absent. The primary costs to search performance seem to be incurred as the addition of an intermediate subgoal overtaxes working memory through increased goal-monitoring demands, independent of its difficulty.     

Emotional fitness and the movement of affective science from lab to field

Emotions provide a ubiquitous and consequential backdrop to daily life, influencing everything from physiology to interpersonal relationships in the blink of an eye. Instances of emotional experience accumulate and compound to impact overall mental and physical health. Under optimal conditions, emotions are adaptive for the successful navigation of daily life. However, situational features of military life likely amplify everyday emotions and their impact, creating the need for soldiers to have a well-oiled emotional resilience system in place from the start, to be maintained throughout their careers. Basic research in affective science has identified the active ingredients that would be required in order for such a system of skills and abilities to have maximum impact on overall emotional fitness. Results of this emotional resilience training may provide compounding benefits for the individual as well as have spreading impact for the benefit of the military unit and other social connections. The Comprehensive Soldier Fitness initiative highlights important new frontiers in affective science and presents a challenge to our field that requires taking a second look at the theory-testing process.     

Concurrent and longitudinal effects of ethnic identity and experiences of discrimination on psychosocial adjustment of Navajo adolescents

In this study, we examined concurrent and longitudinal relations among Navajo adolescents' ethnic identity, experiences of discrimination, and psychosocial outcomes (i.e., self-esteem, substance use, and social functioning). At Time 1, 137 Navajo adolescents (67 male, 70 female), primarily in Grades 9 and 10, completed a written survey assessing ethnic identity, discrimination experiences, and a range of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Two years later, 92 participants completed the same survey again. Ethnic and cultural identification was assessed via the Multiethnic Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM; Phinney, 1992) and the Orthogonal Cultural Identification Scale (OCIS; Oetting & Beauvais, 1990). At Time 1, MEIM Affirmation and Belonging, MEIM Exploration, and OCIS White American identification all demonstrated strong, positive associations with adaptive functioning for male and female adolescents, whereas discrimination experiences were linked to lower self-esteem and social functioning for male adolescents. By Time 2, fewer significant concurrent associations between ethnic identity and psychosocial functioning scores remained, and discrimination experiences emerged as the most consistent correlate of poorer psychosocial functioning for male adolescents. Controlling for Time 1 psychosocial functioning, relatively few direct effects of ethnic and cultural identification variables predicted psychosocial functioning longitudinally, but discrimination experiences demonstrated strong and consistent longitudinal links with boys' substance use. Finally, interaction effects assessing the moderating influence of ethnic and cultural identification on negative links between discrimination and psychosocial functioning suggested that embeddedness in and connection to Navajo culture and, in some cases, connection to White American culture, served as a buffer to the negative effects of discrimination experiences.     

Revisiting the Right to Do Wrong

Rights to do wrong are not necessary even within the framework of interest-based rights aimed at preserving autonomy (contra Waldron, Enoch, and Herstein). Agents can make morally significant choices and develop their moral character without a right to do wrong, so long as we allow that there can be moral variation within the set of actions that an agent is permitted to perform. Agents can also engage in non-trivial self-constitution in choosing between morally indifferent options, so long as there is adequate non-moral variation among the alternatives. The stubborn intuition that individuals have a right to do wrong in some cases can be explained as stemming from a cautionary principle motivated by the asymmetry between the risk of wrongly interfering and that of refraining from interfering.     

The Effects of Threat Sensitivity and Face Giving on Dyadic Psychological Safety and Upward Communication1

The tendency for individuals in organizational hierarchies to fail to communicate negatively valenced information has been well documented, but the psychological mechanisms behind the phenomenon have not. With the increasing emphasis on organizational transparency, the need to understand why organizational participants regularly fail to transfer critical task‐relevant information is pressing. Two measures of how individuals give (face giving) and react to (threat sensitivity) negatively valenced information are developed and are shown to significantly affect upward communication. These effects are mediated by 2 dyadic psychological safety constructs based on Edmondson's (1999) team psychological safety construct. Self psychological safety mediated the effect of supervisor face giving on admission of errors and help seeking, and other psychological safety mediated the effect of supervisor face giving and supervisor threat sensitivity on the likelihood that a subordinate will raise disagreement, give candid feedback, and point out errors to a supervisor.     

Child sexual abuse, early family risk, and childhood parentification: pathways to current psychosocial adjustment.

In this study, the authors examined the role of parentification (children assuming adult-like roles in the family) as it relates to family risk (parental psychopathology, parental illness, and domestic violence), child sexual abuse (CSA), and psychosocial adjustment in 499 college women. Structural equation modeling was used to test a model of direct, indirect, and mediational pathways through which CSA, family risk, and parentification contributed to later psychosocial maladjustment. Results indicate that CSA and family risk independently and directly predicted higher levels of maladjustment, but only family risk positively predicted parentification in childhood. Parentification was unexpectedly related to less maladjustment. Parentification failed to mediate the relation between early family risk and maladjustment. Findings suggest that family risk factors may contribute to parentification and that parentification is not always related to poorer psychosocial outcomes. Future research should examine the impact of parentification on other aspects of functioning and should assess how individual, familial, and cultural variables (e.g., age, gender, duration, perceived fairness, ethnicity, and family support) moderate the impact of parentification on long-term adjustment.     

Intimate partner violence and preschoolers' explicit memory functioning.

This research examines whether parents' intimate partner physical violence (IPV) relates to their preschoolers' explicit memory functioning, whether children's symptoms of hyperarousal mediate this relation, and whether mothers' positive parenting moderates this relation. Participants were 69 mothers and their 4- or 5-year-old child (34 girls). Mothers completed measures of IPV, children's hyperarousal symptoms, parent-child aggression, and positive parenting. Measures of explicit memory functioning were administered to preschoolers. As expected, IPV correlated negatively with preschoolers' performance on explicit memory tasks, even after controlling for parent-child aggression and demographic variables related to preschoolers' memory functioning. Preschoolers' hyperarousal symptoms did not mediate the relation between IPV and explicit memory functioning, but mothers' positive parenting moderated this relation. Specifically, the negative relation between IPV and preschoolers' performance on 2 of the 3 explicit memory tasks was weaker when mothers engaged in higher levels of positive parenting. These findings extend research on IPV and children's adjustment difficulties to explicit memory functioning in preschoolers and suggest that mothers can ameliorate the influence of IPV on preschoolers' memory functioning via their parenting.     

Marian Images: Madonna and Hodigitria

The Madonna of Western religious art and the articulation of Marian theology is enunciated in Kathleen C. Ford's piece entitled Portrait of Our Lady. This paper is a companion piece focusing on the Hodigitria, Mother of God, an Eastern liturgical icon and its theological and psychological influence on the clinical treatment of a young woman. The client's recurrent turtle metaphor is discussed for clinical significance. In both portraits, Madonna and Hodigitria, the centrality of the mother image is essential. Kathleen emphasized the influence of the Great Mother Archetype in art and religion and the ancillary theme of containing and contained. The emphasis in this companion paper is the mother image as theologically and psychologically relational, communal, interpathic and companioning.     

Personal Inadequacy and Intimacy Predictors of Men's Hostility Toward Women

In this study we examined social/personality and intimacy predictors of men's hostility toward women (HTW). The study was framed in terms of a projection model that suggests that men's feelings of inadequacy contribute to hostility toward women. The sample consisted of 172 college men. The strongest attitudinal predictors were measures of locus of control. These data support the feminist analysis of sexual violence as an issue of power and lend support to the proposed projection model in terms of perceived powerlessness. In addition, based on the projection model, intimacy predictors for best male friend and female romantic partner were examined. The strongest correlate of men's HTW was intellectual intimacy, which conceptually is more related to the idea of an egalitarian relationship than other aspects of intimacy and may be most inhibited in men who are hostile toward women's intimate relationships.