Special perspective: An immodest proposal: should treating mental health professionals be barred from testifying about their patients?

Notwithstanding ethical rules that address therapeutic and forensic role conflicts for psychologists and psychiatrists, overzealous patient advocacy by therapists, tightened reimbursement for therapy, and a growth market for forensic psychology and psychiatry, have led many therapists to appear willingly as forensic experts on behalf of their patients. Existing ethical rules, as well as other proposed approaches to address this problem, assume that it can be resolved by modest changes in existing practice that permit therapists to testify as long as their testimony avoids psycholegal opinions. This essay questions whether these modest changes can adequately address this problem and advances consideration of a more radical proposal to address this problem, prohibiting therapists from testifying about their patients. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neural correlates of intertemporal choice in aggressive behavior

People often have to make decisions between immediate rewards and more long-term goals. Such intertemporal judgments are often investigated in the context of monetary choice or drug use, yet not in regard to aggressive behavior. We combined a novel intertemporal aggression paradigm with functional neuroimaging to examine the role of temporal delay in aggressive behavior and the neural correlates thereof. Sixty-one participants (aged 18–22 years; 37 females) exhibited substantial variability in the extent to which they selected immediate acts of lesser aggression versus delayed acts of greater aggression against a same-sex opponent. Choosing delayed-yet-more-severe aggression was increased by provocation and associated with greater self-control. Preferences for delayed aggression were associated with greater activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) during such choices, and reduced functional connectivity between the VMPFC and brain regions implicated in motor impulsivity. Preferences for immediate aggression were associated with reduced functional connectivity between the VMPFC and the frontoparietal control network. Dispositionally aggressive participants exhibited reduced VMPFC activity, which partially explained and suppressed their preferences for delayed aggression. Blunted VMPFC activity may thus be a neural mechanism that promotes reactive aggression towards provocateurs among dispositionally aggressive individuals. These findings demonstrate the utility of an intertemporal framework for investigating aggression and provide further evidence for the similar underlying neurobiology between aggression and other rewarding behaviors.     

Associative priming and conflict differentially affect two processes underlying cognitive control: Evidence from reaching behavior

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Previous research has indicated that two components of reaching behavior, initiation time and reach curvature, exhibit distinct patterns of trial sequence...     

Associations of Emotional Abuse Types With Suicide Ideation Among Dating Couples

Numerous studies have demonstrated that coercive control is more strongly associated with suicidal ideation than other forms of intimate partner violence. However, a majority of these studies focused on samples of help-seeking women. This study examined whether coercive control remains the form of intimate partner violence most strongly associated with suicidal ideation within a sample of nonclinical dating couples. This cross-sectional, survey study on 104 dating couples examined the associations of coercive control (i.e., dominance/intimidation and restrictive engulfment) with suicidal ideation, while controlling for other forms of emotional abuse (i.e., hostile withdrawal and denigration), physical assault, and depressive symptoms. As expected, dominance/intimidation and depressive symptoms, but not denigration and physical assault, were associated with suicidal ideation. Contrary to our hypothesis, hostile withdrawal, but not restrictive engulfment, was associated with suicidal ideation. This study suggests that dominance/intimidation and hostile withdrawal are forms of emotional abuse that are pertinent to suicidal ideation in nonclinical dating couples.     

Neural correlates of conventional and harm/welfare-based moral decision-making

The degree to which social norms are processed by a unitary system or dissociable systems remains debated. Much research on children’s social-cognitive judgments has supported the distinction between “moral” (harm/welfare-based) and “conventional” norms. However, the extent to which these norms are processed by dissociable neural systems remains unclear. To address this issue, 23 healthy participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they rated the wrongness of harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions and neutral vignettes. Activation significantly greater than the neutral vignette baseline was observed in regions implicated in decision-making regions including rostral/ventral medial frontal, anterior insula and dorsomedial frontal cortices when evaluating both harm/welfare-based and social-conventional transgressions. Greater activation when rating harm/welfare-based relative to social-conventional transgressions was seen through much of ACC and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus. Greater activation was observed in superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left PCC, and temporal-parietal junction when rating social-conventional transgressions relative to harm/welfare-based transgressions. These data suggest that decisions regarding the wrongness of actions, irrespective of whether they involve care/harm-based or conventional transgressions, recruit regions generally implicated in affect-based decision-making. However, there is neural differentiation between harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions. This may reflect the particular importance of processing the intent of transgressors of conventional norms and perhaps the greater emotional content or salience of harm/welfare-based transgressions.     

The promotion of self-forgiveness,responsibility, and willingness to make reparations through a workbook intervention

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a workbook intervention designed to promote self-forgiveness, acceptance of responsibility, and willingness to make amends/reparations in a university student sample. The intervention manual consisted of three parts: (a) promoting prosocial and responsible attitudes, (b) reducing barriers to self-forgiveness, and (c) promoting healthy thinking and behaviors. Outcome measures included acceptance of responsibility, motivation to make reparations, and state and trait self-forgiveness. Measures were administered pre-intervention and immediately post-intervention. Participants were randomly assigned to an intervention group (N = 50) or a control group (N = 43). The control group studied materials for their university courses instead of completing the intervention. Following the intervention, the intervention group had significantly a higher state and dispositional self-forgiveness post-test compared to the control group. Changes in acceptance of responsibility and willingness to make reparations did not reach statistical significance as compared to the control group.     

Prosocial thinkers and the social transmission of justice

Feeling the sting of another's injustice is a common human experience. We adopt a motivated information processing approach and explore how individual differences in social motives (e.g., high vs. low collectivism) and epistemic motives (e.g., high vs. low need for closure) drive individuals' evaluative and behavioral reactions to the just and unjust treatment of others. In two studies, one in the laboratory (N = 78) and one in the field (N = 163), we find that the justice treatment of others has a more profound influence on the attitudes and behaviors of prosocial thinkers, people who are chronically higher (vs. lower) in collectivism and lower (vs. higher) in the need for closure. In all, our results suggest that chronically higher collectivism and a lower need for closure work in concert to make another's justice relevant to personal judgment and behavior.     

Locus of Control and Anti‐Immigrant Sentiment in Canada,the United States,and the United Kingdom

Using data collected in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, this article examines the determinants of attitudes toward immigrants. In particular, we draw on the literature in social psychology to explore the role of locus of control in promoting more ethnocentric and restrictive attitudes towards immigration. We conceptualize control at three levels: (1) perceptions of individual locus of control (i.e., feeling that one can control one's own circumstances), (2) perceptions of societal control (i.e., feeling that one's country has control over immigration), and (3) perceptions of an outgroup's locus of control (i.e., feeling that an outgroup's social circumstances are attributable to dispositional rather than external factors). Results show that all three measures of control are important predictors of negative attitudes toward immigrants: Those who feel in control (personally or as a society) are less hostile towards immigrants, while those who attribute negative outcomes to immigrants' predispositions are also more hostile. Results also suggest that measures of control are related to, but distinct from, both partisanship and racial prejudice.