Exposure to pornography,permissive and nonpermissive cues,and male aggression toward females

The present study examined the role of permissive and nonpermissive cues in mediating the relationship between exposure to erotica and aggression. Male subjects viewed either neutral slides with a silent female or erotic slides with a female who made permissive, nonpermissive, or no comments about the slides. The males rated the slides and subsequently rated the female confederate. Male subjects were then given an opportunity to administer their choice of several intensities of shock to the female in a competitive reaction-time task. Subjects in the permissive cues condition rated the erotic slides as more arousing, saw the female as more reasonable and accepting, and selected more intense shocks for the female than did subjects in the other conditions. One explanation of these results is that permissive cues in the presence of erotica led the male to believe that other normally inappropriate behaviors would be tolerated.     

The new qualification in careers guidance in higher education: A collaborative partnership

The raison d'être for the new Certificate and Diploma in Careers Guidance in Higher Education is outlined. The different perspectives of the partners in this enterprise–the Department of Community Studies at the University of Reading and the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS)–are discussed. The initial difficulties and successes are explored and a suggested strategy is offered for other such collaborative ventures.     

A defense of local miracle compatibilism

David Lewis has offered a reply to the standard argument for the claim that the truth of determinism is incompatible with anyone’s being able to do otherwise than she in fact does. Helen Beebee has argued that Lewis’s compatibilist strategy is untenable. In this paper I show that one recent attempt to defend Lewis’s view against this argument fails and then go on to offer my own defense of Lewis’s view.

Associations Between Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder,Externalizing Disorders,and Suicide-Related Behaviors

Borderline personality disorder and externalizing disorders are associated with suicide-related behaviors. The present study examined whether symptoms of borderline personality disorder mediate the relationship between externalizing disorders and suicide-related behaviors. Diagnostic interviews were administered to 344 participants (n = 233 women). Results indicated that symptoms of antisocial personality disorder, alcohol use disorders, and drug use disorders each were significantly associated with suicide threats and self-injurious behavior in women and symptoms of antisocial personality disorder were associated with suicide attempts in women. With the exception of the association between symptoms of alcohol dependence and self-injurious behaviors, borderline personality disorder symptoms mediated or partially mediated all associations between externalizing disorders and suicide-related behaviors in women. These results highlight the importance of assessment and treatment of borderline personality disorder symptoms in individuals with externalizing disorders, particularly in the presence of suicide-related behaviors.

Equity, justice, and altruism

According to traditional equity theory, justice is motivated by selfishness. However, critics of equity have argued that it is only one rule of justice that people can apply, and that sometimes other rules of justice are used, such as equality and need, that appear to be altruistically based; that is, they involve sharing and caring in a way that ignores contributions or “inputs” and the probability of receiving outcomes in return. Disagreements have arisen, however, as to the status of these alternative rules as elements of justice, the roles of altruism and selfishness within them, and the relative status of altruism and justice as moral principles. The main aim of this article is to help resolve some of these difficulties by examining the relationship between altruism and justice from the perspective of Wagstaff s theory of Equity as Desert (EAD). This theory integrates a number of allocation rules (including those related to the treatment of offenders) with the concepts of equal opportunity and personal responsibility. One of the advantages of this position is that it enables a conceptual and an empirical distinction to be made between helping and responsiveness to need as altruistic norms, and helping and responsiveness to need as justice norms. It is concluded that there may be something to be gained from viewing core rules of justice in the form of EAD as the sophisticated descendants of the sociobiological concept of reciprocal altruism, that is, a set of algorithms designed to limit both unbridled selfishness and indiscrimi-nate altruism.     

Reflections on "Nursing considered as moral practice

This response to the preceding article by Gastmans, Dierckx de Casterle, and Schotsmans challenges the notion of "good care" as the ultimate goal of nursing practice, explores further the possible goals of nursing and how they may be identified, and presents six elements of professional caring along with their related virtues and moral obligations.     

Delusions and decision-making style: use of the Need for Closure Scale

Clinicians and researchers have suggested that rapidity in belief formation, due to having a high 'need for closure' (NFC), may contribute to the acceptance of delusional explanations. The aim of the study is to determine whether NFC has such a direct link with delusions. A secondary aim is to examine if NFC is related to the delusion-associated reasoning process of 'jumping to conclusions'. One hundred and eighty-seven patients with psychosis, recruited for a treatment trial of psychological therapy (the PRP trial), completed the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS), symptom measures, and probabilistic reasoning tasks. The NFCS was considered in terms of its two dimensions: a desire for simple structure and a preference for quick, decisive answers. The individuals with psychosis reported being poor at making quick, decisive answers but required a greater need for simple structure. NFC was associated with levels of anxiety and depression. There were weak links between NFC and both positive and negative symptoms of psychosis, but these were explained by differences in affect. NFCS scores were unrelated to jumping to conclusions. Contrary to the argument that NFC is directly linked to delusions, individuals with delusions actually perceive themselves as indecisive. There was no evidence that NFC-at least as assessed by the NFCS-could be a proximal cause of delusions. Any potential effect on psychotic symptom presentation is indirect, mediated through affect. The use of the NFCS on its own in the study of psychotic symptoms cannot be recommended.     

Work-Induced Changes in Feelings of Mastery

ABSTRACT

Past theory and research indicate that conditions of work can have lasting effects on job incumbents. R. A. Karasek and T. Theorell (1990) Karasek, R. A. and Theorell, T. 1990. Healthy work: Stress, productivity, and the reconstruction of working life, New York: Basic Books.  [Google Scholar], for example, proposed that workers’ feelings of mastery increase with levels of job demands and job control, and that these effects are mediated by the process of active learning. To test these propositions, 657 school teachers completed scales assessing job demands, control, active learning, and mastery on 2 occasions, 8 months apart. As hypothesized, job control predicted change in mastery, an effect that was mediated by active learning. Job demands had a weaker effect on change in mastery. The demands–mastery relationship was moderated by job control, so that under conditions of high control, but not low control, increasing job demands were associated with gains in mastery. The findings partially support R. A. Karasek and T. Theorell's (1990) predictions regarding the main, interactive, and mediated effects of job conditions on employee mastery.     

Explanation of Two Anomalous Results in Statistical Mediation Analysis

Previous studies of different methods of testing mediation models have consistently found two anomalous results. The first result is elevated Type I error rates for the bias-corrected and accelerated bias-corrected bootstrap tests not found in nonresampling tests or in resampling tests that did not include a bias correction. This is of special concern as the bias-corrected bootstrap is often recommended and used due to its higher statistical power compared with other tests. The second result is statistical power reaching an asymptote far below 1.0 and in some conditions even declining slightly as the size of the relationship between X and M, a, increased. Two computer simulations were conducted to examine these findings in greater detail. Results from the first simulation found that the increased Type I error rates for the bias-corrected and accelerated bias-corrected bootstrap are a function of an interaction between the size of the individual paths making up the mediated effect and the sample size, such that elevated Type I error rates occur when the sample size is small and the effect size of the nonzero path is medium or larger. Results from the second simulation found that stagnation and decreases in statistical power as a function of the effect size of the a path occurred primarily when the path between M and Y, b, was small. Two empirical mediation examples are provided using data from a steroid prevention and health promotion program aimed at high school football players (Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids; Goldberg et al., 1996), one to illustrate a possible Type I error for the bias-corrected bootstrap test and a second to illustrate a loss in power related to the size of a. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Life events and psychological well-being in old age

Abstract

Although life event research has burgeoned in recent years, little attention has been paid to the prevalence of events among the elderly or their relationship to psychological well-being. This paper presents data from a three-wave longitudinal study of community elderly in Aberdeen. Negative life events were highly prevalent among both survivors [N=349) and non-survivors [N=108], but the relatively small differences between the groups indicate that attrition does not seriously affect longitudinal findings. Longitudinal analysis of survivors' data was performed using LISREL and yielded a model with a goodness of fit index of 0.918, demonstrating a close fit between the data and the model. The model parameters indicate that those in poor psychological state were more likely to report serious non-health events than health events, although the latter were more likely than the former to result in a decline in psychological well-being, even after prior psychological state was taken into account. While elderly people with low social integration experienced more severe reactions to life events in the short term than those with high social integration, there were no significant long term effects, even for those reporting highly stressful events. There was no evidence of a sub-group of elderly people lacked into a cycle of serious life events. However life events were not random occurrences; serious health events were more often reported by those with low education while women and those in lower social classes were more likely to report serious non-health events. Overall, long term disruption, directly attributable to life events, was minimal when viewed within the context of the community elderly's stable psychological state.