Americans respond politically to 9/11: understanding the impact of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath

The 9/11 terrorist attacks have had profound effect on U.S. domestic and foreign security policy, leading to several expensive wars and the erosion of civil liberties (under the USA PATRIOT Act). We review evidence on political reactions to the 9/11 attacks and conclude that subjective reactions to terrorism played an important role in shaping support for national security policy in the wake of 9/11. Support for a strong national security policy was most pronounced among Americans who perceived the nation as at threat from terrorism and felt angry at terrorists. In contrast, Americans who were personally affected by the attacks were more likely to feel anxious about terrorism, and this anxiety translated into less support for overseas military action. In addition, Americans who felt insecure after the 9/11 attacks and perceived a high future threat of terrorism were more likely than others to support strong foreign and domestic national security policies. Overall, research on American political reactions to 9/11 suggests that support for a strong government response to terrorism is most likely when members of a population perceive a high risk of future terrorism and feel angry at terrorists.     

Distressed Mothers and Their Infants Use a Less Efficient Timing Mechanism in Creating Expectancies of Each Other’s Looking Patterns

The prediction of events and the creation of expectancies about their time course is a crucial aspect of an infant's mental life, but temporal mechanisms underlying these predictions are obscure. Scalar timing, in which the ratio of mean durations to their standard deviations is held constant, enables a person to use an estimate of the mean for its standard deviation. It is one efficient mechanism that may facilitate predictability and the creation of expectancies in mother-infant interaction. We illustrate this mechanism with the dyadic gaze rhythm of mother and infant looking at and looking away from each other's faces. Two groups of Hi- and Lo-Distress mothers were created using self-reported depression, anxiety, self-criticism and childhood experiences. Lo-Distress infants (controls) used scalar timing 100% of the time, about double that of Hi-Distress infants. Lo-Distress mothers used scalar timing about nine times as much as Hi-Distress mothers. The diminished use of scalar timing patterns in Hi-Distress mothers and infants may make the anticipation of each other's gaze patterns more difficult for both partners.     

Premarital precursors of marital infidelity

Premarital precursors of infidelity were evaluated in a sample of 72 couples (N = 144) who were taking part in a longitudinal study of marriage. Premarital self-report and observational data were compared for couples who experienced infidelity and those who did not experience infidelity in the first years of marriage. Couples in which the male engaged in marital infidelity were characterized, premaritally, by significantly lower male sexual satisfaction, lower male positive communication, and higher female invalidation, whereas couples in which the female went on to engage in infidelity were characterized, premaritally, by significantly lower levels of female positive communication, higher levels of male and female negative communication, and higher levels of male and female invalidation. Implications of the findings for future research on the prediction and prevention of infidelity are discussed.     

The Neural Basis of Implicit Attitudes

ABSTRACT— Evidence that human preferences, beliefs, and behavior are influenced by sources that are outside the reach of conscious awareness, control, intention, and self-reflection is incontrovertible. Recent advances in neuroscience have enabled researchers to investigate the neural basis of these implicit attitudes, particularly attitudes involving social groups. From this research, a model with three identified neural components related to the automatic activation and regulation of implicit attitudes is beginning to emerge. The amygdala is implicated in the automatic evaluation of socially relevant stimuli, while the anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices are involved in the detection and regulation, respectively, of implicit attitudes. Further support for this model comes from the inclusion of these regions in current models concerning the cognitive regulation of emotion and the detection of conflict. The identification of a putative neural substrate for implicit attitudes has had a direct impact on psychological research into their nature and operational characteristics. We discuss how this emerging neural model has influenced current research on implicit attitudes and describe the importance of such models for directing future research.     

Synthesis of studies of co-occurring disorder(s) in criminal justice and a research agenda

The studies reported in this special issue were designed to take advantage of the unique opportunity that the Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJDATS) cooperative provides to the systematic study of several key issues in programming for co-occurring disorder(s) (COD) in the criminal justice system. These papers present findings from CJDATS studies pertaining to co-occurring disorder(s), identify clinical initiatives to strengthen efforts to treat the population with co-occurring disorder(s), and point to a direction for the elaboration of a future research agenda. Four key areas of investigation are presented: Screening and Diagnosis; the Relationship of Co-Occurring Disorder(s) to Violence; Gender Differences; and the Delivery of Services for Co-Occurring Disorder(s). The first section of this article summarizes the studies included in this special issue within the context of the research literature already available. The second section suggests a future research agenda for the study of offender populations with co-occurring disorder(s), and concludes with a broad statement of clinical advancements to date.     

Challenges older adults face in detecting deceit: the role of emotion recognition

Facial expressions of emotion are key cues to deceit (M. G. Frank & P. Ekman, 1997). Given that the literature on aging has shown an age-related decline in decoding emotions, we investigated (a) whether there are age differences in deceit detection and (b) if so, whether they are related to impairments in emotion recognition. Young and older adults (N = 364) were presented with 20 interviews (crime and opinion topics) and asked to decide whether each interview subject was lying or telling the truth. There were 3 presentation conditions: visual, audio, or audiovisual. In older adults, reduced emotion recognition was related to poor deceit detection in the visual condition for crime interviews only.     

Analysis of the Reliability of the Leadership Practices Inventory in the Item Response Theory Framework

The paper examines the psychometric properties of the leadership practices inventory (LPI) in the framework of item response theory (IRT). The LPI assesses five dimensions (i.e. leadership practices) of transformational leadership and consists of 30 items. IRT is a model‐based theory that relates the characteristics of questionnaire items (item parameters) and characteristics of individuals (latent variables) to the probability of choosing each of the response categories. The theory does not assume that the instrument is equally reliable for all levels of the latent variable examined. Samejima's graded response model was used to estimate LPI item characteristics, such as item difficulty and item discrimination power. The results show that some items are redundant in the sense they contribute little to the overall precision of the instrument. Moreover, the LPI seems to be most precise and reliable for respondents with low to medium leadership competence, whereas it becomes increasingly unreliable for high‐quality leaders. These findings suggest that the LPI is best used for training and development purposes, but not for leader selection purposes.     

Caregiver involvement in applied behavior-analytic research: A scoping review and discussion

We conducted a scoping review to characterize the role of caregiver involvement in behavior-analytic research. We reviewed eight behavioral-learning journals from 2011–2022 for works that included children or caregivers as participants and characterized caregiver involvement as passive (implications for caregivers, input, social validity) and active (implementation, caregiver behavior, training, caregiver-collected data). The review identified 228 studies, and almost all (96.1%; n = 219) involved caregivers in some capacity; 94.3% (n = 215) had passive involvement (26.8% had only passive involvement; n = 61), 69.3% (n = 158) had active involvement (1.8% had only active involvement; n = 4), and 3.9% (n = 9) had neither passive nor active involvement. Involvement generally increased over publication years. The most common types of involvement were implications for caregivers, implementation, and input; caregiver-collected data were rare. We propose considerations when engaging caregivers in research and suggest new avenues of inquiry related to caregivers' treatment objectives and social validity, treatment implementers, and caregiver-collected data.     

Parent’s Social Support for Children’s Outdoor Physical Activity: Do Weekdays and Weekends Matter?

In this study we examined the relationships among parental social supportive behaviors for children’s weekday and weekend outdoor physical activity (OPA). Thirty-nine girls and 29 boys 8 to 11 years wore pedometers for 7 days. Sixty-five mothers and 50 fathers responded to a social support questionnaire about OPA that was comprised of four dimensions: encouragement, playing with, use of activity as family recreation, and watch. After controlling for age and sport participation, regression analyses indicated that mothers’ use of activity as recreation was positively associated with girls’ weekday OPA. On the weekend, fathers’ play with son was positively related to OPA. The effectiveness of family-based activity interventions depends on when parents have opportunities to be present for their child’s activity and gender differences in the support provided.     

Psychosocial and Moral Development of PTSD‐Diagnosed Combat Veterans

Two related studies were conducted in order to investigate whether psychosocial and moral development appeared to have been disrupted and arrested in veterans diagnosed as having posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Study 1 was devoted to developing a measure of late adolescence, early adulthood, and adulthood stages of psychosocial development. In Study 2, a sample of 32 PTSD‐diagnosed and 32 PTSD‐free veterans participated. The PTSD‐diagnosed participants presented evidence of arrested psychosocial and moral development.