Promoting fan engagement: An exploration of the fundamental motives for sport consumption amongst premier league football spectators

The aim of this study was to examine whether fan engagement could be predicted by the motivational dimensions of sport consumption. A sample of 806 football sport fans (African = 85%, male = 67.4%, part of an organised supporters club = 57.6%) were participants. They completed the Fan Engagement Scale (FES), the Motivation Scale for Sport Consumption (MSSC) and a biographical questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was applied to evaluate the postulated regressive paths between the motivational dimensions for sports consumption and fan engagement. The motivational dimensions for sport consumption were clustered into personal and game-related factors. Both these clusters of factors were predictive of fan engagement. Customer engagement (CE) theory appears to explain the findings.     

Personality Disorders in Older Adult Inpatients with Chronic Mental Illness

It has been hypothesized that some types of personality disorders tend to remit with age whereas others may become more prominent. The present study determined the prevalence and nature of 13 personality disorders with a self-report inventory (Coolidge Axis II Inventory) in an older group of chronically mentally ill inpatients (N = 30, mean age = 63 years) and a younger group of similar patients (N = 30, mean age = 39 years). All patients met DSM-IV criteria for either Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, or recurrent severe Major Depression with psychotic features. The prevalence rate of personality disorders was high for both groups: 58% for the older sample and 66% for the younger group. The younger group was more likely to be diagnosed Antisocial, Borderline, Passive-Aggressive, Sadistic, and Schizotypal, but the groups were not different in the rates of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This study supports the hypothesis that some personality disorders remit with age. However, no evidence was found to suggest that other personality disorders become more prominent in older adult psychiatric populations. Suggestions for future research are offered.     

Telling Others to Do What You Believe Is Morally Wrong: The Case of Confucius and Zai Wo

Can it ever be morally justifiable to tell others to do what we ourselves believe is morally wrong to do? The common sense answer is no. It seems that we should never tell others to do something if we think it is morally wrong to do that act. My first goal is to argue that in Analects 17.21, Confucius tells his disciple not to observe a ritual even though Confucius himself believes that it is morally wrong that one does not observe the ritual. My second goal is to argue against the common sense answer and explain how Confucius can be justified in telling his disciple to do what Confucius thought was wrong. The first justification has to do with telling someone to do what is second best when the person cannot do what is morally best. The second justification has to do with the role of a moral advisor.     

EEG microstates during different phases of Transcendental Meditation practice

Two phases of Transcendental Meditation (TM)—transcending and undirected mentation—were compared to each other and to task-free resting using multichannel EEG recorded from 20 TM practitioners. An EEG microstate analysis identified four classes of microstates which were labeled A, B, C and D, based on their similarity to previously published classes. For each class of microstates, mean duration, coverage and occurrence were computed. Resting and transcending differed from undirected mentation with decreased prominence of Class A and increased prominence of Class D microstates. In addition, transcending showed decreased prominence of Class C microstates compared to undirected mentation. Based on previous findings on the functional significance of the microstate classes, the results indicate an increased reference to reality and decreased visualization during resting and transcending compared to undirected mentation. Also, our results indicate decreased saliency of internally generated mentations during transcending compared to undirected mentation reflecting a more detached and less evaluative processing. It is proposed that the continuous cycling through these two phases of meditation during a TM session might facilitate and train the flexible modulation of the parameters of these microstates of these particular classes which are known to be altered in psychiatric disorders. This might promote beneficial stabilizing effects for the practitioner of TM.     

The role of spatial frequency in emotional face classification

Previous studies with emotional face stimuli have revealed that our ability to identify different emotional states is dependent on the faces’ spatial frequency content. However, these studies typically only tested a limited number of emotional states. In the present study, we measured the consistency with which 24 different emotional states are classified when the faces are unfiltered, high-, or low-pass filtered, using a novel rating method that simultaneously measures perceived arousal (high to low) and valence (pleasant to unpleasant). The data reveal that consistent ratings are made for every emotional state independent of spatial frequency content. We conclude that emotional faces possess both high- and low-frequency information that can be relied on to facilitate classification.     

From the Couch to the Chair: Applying Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice in Counseling

In this article, the authors offer a contemporary perspective on psychoanalytic theory. The authors present a clinical vignette that illustrates how one analyst applied the principles of transference, countertransference, and resistance in a modern clinical setting. The authors describe how analysis is similar to and different from humanistic counseling and conclude by describing how analytic insights might be applied in the clinical practice of counselors.     

Commitment in romantic relationships as a function of partners’ encoding of important couple-related memories

The purpose of the present study was to investigate how significant couple-related events are encoded in the episodic memory of each partner of a romantic relationship and how they relate to each of these partners’ level of commitment in an independent and additive fashion. Each partner of a couple reported a significant couple-related memory and rated their level of need satisfaction experienced during the event of the memory. In addition, each partner was shown his/her partner’s memory and also rated their own level of need satisfaction for this event. Results showed that partners need satisfaction ratings of their own memory positively predicted their own commitment to the relationship directly (for women) as well as through their need satisfaction generally experienced in the relationship (for men). In addition, men’s need satisfaction ratings of their own memory were associated with women’s commitment while controlling for women’s need satisfaction ratings of men’s memory, but no such cross-partner effects were found for women. Overall, the findings shed light on an initial understanding of how a person’s own memory of an event can impact another person’s attitudes even when taking into account this other person’s memory encoding of that same event.     

Career specialty choice: A combined research-intervention project

This research describes and evaluates a workshop aimed at promoting career specialty choice and examines relationships between measured career specialty interests, work values, and personality type. Three consecutive classes of second-year medical students (N = 161) participated in a two-session specialty choice workshop. All participants in the study rated the usefulness of the workshop and reported their level of specialty choice certainty and satisfaction. They also responded to measures of medical specialty preference, work values, and personality type. Results indicated two distinct student subgroups of career-specialty-decided and -undecided students. The former subgroup evidenced more stability and certainty of specialty choice as well satisfaction with their choice. Both groups of students reported having benefited from the workshop. Significant gender differences in the relationships between scores on a measure of medical specialty preference and scores on measures of work values and personality emerged. Implications are discussed in terms of the differential career counseling needs of students either decided or undecided about their career specialty choices.