Offending Patterns,Control Balance,and Affective Rewards among Convicted Sex Offenders

We present results from a survey of 125 incarcerated sex offenders enrolled in a residential sex offender treatment program that reveal their offending behaviors, reasons for offending, and the affective states they say they experienced while committing their crimes. We supplement this survey information with qualitative data from audio-taped focus groups with these same offenders. Results provide a unique glimpse of the self-reported offending patterns of these offenders, as well as characteristics of their victims and the relationship of the offenders to their victims. Employing concepts from locus of control and control balance perspectives, we argue that many sex offenders, particularly high-volume and high-frequency offenders, are motivated to commit crimes due to an externalized locus of control (a control deficit), which reflects a perceived lack of control over events in their own lives. Their crimes can be viewed as a strategy or device that allows them to experience positive affect and sensations of power and control—even if only temporarily. Findings with regard to offending patterns, motivations, and affective rewards common to these offenders lend qualified support to control balance theory and the locus of control concept and help us understand what drives people to commit sex offenses.     

Think ahead before you regulate: A focus on future consequences predicts choices of and beliefs about strategies for the down-regulation of negative emotions

Considering future consequences predicts many self-regulatory behaviors. Moreover, emotion regulation choices often involve trade-offs between immediate hedonic benefits and future well-being and mental health. We propose that focusing on future consequences may also predict emotion regulation choices. We examined whether people who consider future consequences of their actions are more likely to choose adaptive strategies and less likely to choose maladaptive strategies (Study 1) and whether people believe that adaptive and maladaptive strategies have differential short- and long-term consequences (Study 2). In Study 1, consideration of future consequences was related to choosing more adaptive and fewer maladaptive strategies for regulating negative emotions. In Study 2, participants believed that adaptive strategies are more effective in the short-term than in the long-term and that maladaptive strategies are more effective in the long-term than in the short-term. Moreover, commonalities in favored strategies were observed across the two studies. Taken together, the findings suggest that trait future time focus plays a significant role in emotion regulation preferences and that people have some knowledge about the varied temporal consequences of different strategies.     

Associations Between Lower Order Facets of Personality and Dimensions of Mental Disorder

Although there is a plethora of research documenting the relations between broad personality traits and psychopathology, there is decidedly less on the relations between lower order facets and psychopathology. In the current study, we explored the associations between lower order personality traits and dimensions of mental disorder. A combined sample of undergraduates and outpatients completed self-reports of personality and mental disorder. Symptom counts of mental disorders were factor analyzed, and a higher order three-factor solution emerged. One factor was substance use disorder (SUD), and internalizing branched into distress and fear. These dimensions were regressed on facets from the Big Five model of personality. SUD was significantly predicted by high excitement-seeking from the extraversion domain and low self-discipline from conscientiousness. Distress and fear were indistinguishable from one another but showed a different pattern of relations from SUD. High anxiety and depression from neuroticism, low gregariousness from extraversion, high aesthetics and low actions from openness, low trust and high tender-mindedness from agreeableness, and low self-discipline from conscientiousness significantly predicted distress and fear. The findings demonstrate that lower order traits within a single domain have complex relations with psychopathology, which are shrouded when examining broad, higher order traits. Assessment and treatment implications are discussed.     

How Do Chemistry Faculty and Graduate Students Engage in Decision Making on Issues Related to Ethical and Responsible Conduct of Research Including Authorship?

Science and Engineering Ethics - This article explores the impact of an Increase in the average Number of Authors per Publication (INAP) on known ethical issues of authorship. For this purpose, the...     

Transfer of responding during serial conditioning in the rat

In three experiments rats were conditioned with the sequence tone-light-food. In the first experiment the source of the light was a bulb located on the wall of the conditioning chamber. Serial conditioning resulted in subjects approaching the bulb during the tone, even though it was not illuminated. The strength of this activity was greater when the tone was intermittently rather than consistently followed by the light. For Experiments 2 and 3 the source of the light was placed in the food magazine, and this resulted in greater magazine activity during the tone when it was intermittently rather than consistently paired with the light. It is suggested that the level of orientation to the light during the tone is, in part, a reflection of the amount of attention paid to the tone. It is further suggested that the tone receives more attention when it is an inaccurate rather than accurate predictor of its consequences.