Heart Rate and Affective Reactions to State Self-Objectification as a Function of Gender

The purpose of the present study was to examine heart rate (HR) and affective reactions to state self-objectification as a function of gender. We examined negative affect, positive affect, guilt, and HR at 6-second and 5-minute intervals across baseline, control, high objectification, low objectification, and cologne conditions in men (n = 53) and women (n = 57). Mixed factorial MANOVA results indicated a statistically significant Gender × Condition interaction. Both men and women showed a cardiac orienting response to high versus low objectification. Cardiac stress reactions to objectification were higher among women. Negative affective reactions to objectification were more pervasive across conditions among women.     

Parental Attitudes,Beliefs, and Responses to Childhood Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale

ABSTRACT

This paper documents preliminary examination of the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Scale (PABS), an OCD-specific measure of parental attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral strategies related to childhood OCD. Employing a sample of 123 youth (mean age = 11.7; 59% male, 79% Caucasian) diagnosed with OCD in an outpatient child anxiety clinic, we used exploratory factor analysis to produce a 3-factor solution representing the following domains of parental responses to childhood OCD: accommodation, empowerment, and hostility/blame. These scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency and concurrent validity, providing preliminary evidence for the psychometric integrity of the PABS.     

Personal goals as predictors of intended classroom goals: Comparing elementary and secondary school pre‐service teachers

Background and Aims. The literature documents fewer classroom mastery goal structures in secondary school compared to elementary. However, little is known about how personal achievement goals may influence classroom goal structures. This is especially true at the level of pre‐service teachers. Our objective was to investigate if pre‐service teachers’ personal goals predicted their intended classroom goal structures. Sample. Participants were 125 elementary and 175 secondary school pre‐service teachers from two Western Canadian universities. Method. Structural equation modelling was used to examine if the structural relationships and latent means of personal and intended classroom goal structures differed for elementary and secondary school pre‐service teachers. Results. The results revealed that personal goals predicted the goal structures that pre‐service teachers intended to establish; however, the relationships and means differed between elementary and secondary school pre‐service teachers. Specifically, personal mastery‐approach goals positively predicted classroom mastery goals much more strongly at the elementary than the secondary level. Furthermore, elementary pre‐service teachers had significantly higher latent mean scores on personal mastery‐approach goals than their secondary counterparts. Conclusions. It seems possible that the currently documented differences between classroom goal structures noted for elementary compared to secondary school may be based on the personal goals endorsed as pre‐service teachers. The results are further discussed in terms of alignment with research on practising teachers’ personal and classroom goals and implications for teacher education.     

Adult Psychological Distress and Self-Worth Following Child Verbal Abuse

Despite the proliferation of child maltreatment research over the last 30 years, there remains a dearth of research examining the long-term effects of child psychological maltreatment (CPM), particularly child verbal abuse (CVA). Using a college sample of 173 participants from a Southeastern university, this study examined the role of gender and perpetrator relationship in predicting psychological distress and self-worth of adults exposed to CVA. Maternal CVA emerged as a significant predictor of lower levels of self-worth in adult daughters and sons as well as greater psychological distress in adult daughters. Paternal CVA did not emerge as a significant predictor of greater psychological distress or lower levels of self-worth in either adult daughters or sons.     

Migratory Emotions: The Murder of Jean Charles de Menezes

What does it mean to have empathy within a late capitalist world? What does it mean to practise solidarity in a time of common sense individualism? In this piece, I reflect upon the deeply tragic case of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian immigrant who was brutally murdered by the British police in the wake of the London bombing. Drawing upon concepts from psychoanalysis and critical psychology, I discuss the affective and emotive nature of the case. I argue that the case offers insight into the irrational nature of `terror' used to explain state-led violence in a time of mass Islamophobic paranoia. I further argue that the emotive nature of the political is consistently disavowed in order to consolidate the face of the nation state as a white, western, masculinist, rational one. Finally, I offer thoughts on what this case might tell us about the interrelationship between discourses of `race,' racism, and citizenship within our contemporary political moment. Rather than being used to support succinct political and theoretical categories of identity politics, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes is an example of the urgent necessity for solidarity to be formed between marginalized bodies. The persistence of state-led murders, justified and legislated by the newest `N word' of the decade – `terrorist' – requires theoretical endeavours that transcend disciplinary boundaries and political action that transcends bodies.     

Is there a temporal basis of the word length effect? A response to Service (1998)

Service (1998) carried out a study of the word length effect with Finnish pseudowords in which short and long pseudowords were identical except for the inclusion of certain phonemes differing only in pronunciation length, a manipulation that is impossible in English. She obtained an effect of phonemic complexity but little or no word duration effect per se - a discrepancy from the expectations generated by the well-known working memory model of Baddeley (1986). In the present study using English words, we controlled for phonemic complexity differences by using the same words for the short- and long-word sets, but with instructions inducing shorter or longer pronunciation of the words. We obtained substantial word duration effects. Concerns raised by Service are addressed, and we conclude that both duration and complexity are likely to contribute to the word length effect in serial recall.     

The Impact of Cognitive Diversity on Crisis Negotiations

This paper reports on a series of experiments designed to assess the impact of grouping decision makers by level of cognitive complexity on the outcomes they attain in crisis negotiations. The participants—University of Maryland undergraduates who took roles in a simulated international hostage crisis—used a computer decision support system and a controlled network environment for communications. The goal of the experiments was to better understand the dynamics that lead certain types of groupings to have greater success in negotiations, and that lead certain groups of adversaries to achieve more mutually beneficial outcomes such as compromise and agreement. The findings point to a positive relationship between the level of homogeneity in cognitive complexity among decision makers and the achievement of positive outcomes in crisis negotiations.     

Rights, Wrongs, and Aristotelian Egoism: Illuminating the Rights/Care Dichotomy

Since the recent work of Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, and others, it has become commonplace in moral philosophy to employ a dichotomy between an ethics of "Care" and an ethics of "Rights." Gilligan claims that men and women view moral issues in fundamentally divergent ways. Responses to moral problems tend to divide along lines emphasizing respect for rights, in the case of men, and caring for others, in the case of women. Inspired by these findings, several authors have classified moral theories in two basic camps, revolving around the injunction to care or the mandate to respect rights. While many concede that the Care and Rights perspectives are not mutually exclusive, it is increasingly common to view ethicists as forced to choose between these two types of theories.     

Within‐subject analysis of a prevention strategy for problem behavior

Although decades of research on functional analysis methodology have identified common contingencies that maintain problem behavior and effective interventions, relatively little research has been conducted on strategies to prevent the initial development of problem behavior. We conducted a 2‐part case study, the purposes of which were to illustrate the use of sensitivity tests as the bases for intervention (Study 1) and subsequently to assess the efficacy of a prevention strategy using a single‐subject design (Study 2). Results showed that the sensitivity tests identified establishing operations that may set the occasion for the development of problem behavior and that interventions based on differential reinforcement prevented increases in the severity of problem behavior relative to untreated and control baselines. Benefits and limitations to this individualized approach to prevention are discussed.     

Whose Side Are You On? Exploring the Role of Perspective Taking on Third-Party’s Reactions to Workplace Deviance

We introduce perspective taking as an antecedent of third-party reactions to different forms of workplace deviance. Varying the perspective taken by third-parties, the target and the type of workplace deviance, we show that third-parties who take the perpetrator’s perspective perceive the incident as less of a moral violation, make less internal, and more external attributions for the perpetrator’s behavior, which in turn reduces endorsement of punishment. Findings were consistent across four studies, and the mediating mechanisms supported by the instrumental variable method and the concurrent double randomization design.