Verläufe bei sexuellen Tötungen

This article summarizes main results of studies on forensic psychiatric court reports on 166 men who had been persecuted between 1963 and 1991 for a sexual offence leading to the death of the victim. Comparing perpetrators with a single victim and those with multiple victims we found similar results as in two previous studies with smaller samples: Multiple sexual homicide perpetrators showed more often sexual sadism and other paraphilias, as well as antisocial, schizoid and sadistic personality disorders. Follow-up data from the federal criminal records could be obtained for 139 offenders. Ninety perpetrators had been released after a mean detention of 12.2 years, whereas the 49 offenders who were still in prison or forensic psychiatric hospitals had been detained for a mean period of 20.6 years. The non-released offenders showed more often paraphilias as well as antisocial and sadistic personality disorders than the released perpetrators. Paraphilias and antisocial personality traits are empirically well proven risk factors for criminal recidivism with sexual reoffences. In addition, the non-released sexual homicide perpetrators had higher scores in all applied risk assessment instruments (PCL-R, HCR-20, SVR-20, Static-99). Among the released offenders only 1.1% (n=1) reoffended with a completed homicide and 2.2% (n=2) with attempted homicide. The recidivism rates with sexual and other violent reoffences in this sample of sexual homicide perpetrators were similar to those in a large meta-analysis on recidivism in sexual offenders by Hanson and Morton-Bourgon (4). Since well established risk factors had apparently been “used-up” for the decisions about release or non-release, in the follow-up data about the released offenders only age at the sexual homicide and age at the time of release were found as risk factors for recidivism with any violent (sexual or non-sexual) reoffence, i.e. the younger the offender at the time of the homicide and the younger at the time of release, the more likely is the risk of violent reoffending.     

Worship and the Eucharist in Luther Studies

Abstract : In German as well as in international ecumenical discussions Luther's liturgical decision to delete most of the eucharistic prayer and emphasize the words of institution has been regarded as a problematic move. On the other hand, prominent Lutheran theologians continue to argue that this move is theologically sound, and that the ecumenical characterization of the Lord's Supper as the Eucharist is problematic because it stresses the human activity. This paper steers a middle course between these extremes, arguing that Luther's texts also show new possibilities for conceiving the sacrament in terms of thanksgiving and active response.     

Why dieters fail: Testing the goal conflict model of eating

A new theory of eating regulation is presented to account for the over-responsiveness of restrained eaters to external food-relevant cues. According to this theory, the food intake of restrained eaters is characterized by a conflict between two chronically accessible incentives or goals: eating enjoyment and weight control. Their difficulty in weight control is due to their behavioral sensitivity to eating enjoyment and its incompatibility with the eating control goal. Accordingly, exposure to food-relevant stimuli primes the goal of eating enjoyment in restrained (but not unrestrained) eaters, resulting in an inhibition of weight control thoughts. Three studies are reported that support these assumptions. Study 1 demonstrates a substantial relation between Eating Restraint and measures of ambivalence towards eating. Studies 2 and 3 show that priming eating enjoyment decreases the accessibility of eating control concepts. The results are discussed in the context of current research on the psychology of obesity and restrained eating.     

Scham und Berührung

The problem

Are there correlations between shame and touch in healthy persons?

Methods

Data from a questionnaire survey with the Skin Satisfaction Questionnaire (HautZuf) with 140 healthy persons were validated with TAS 26, HADS and the Adult Attachment Scale.

Results

There are significant correlations in the scale shame with all other scales of the used questionnaires TAS-26, AAS and HADS. There was a negative correlation between the scale ?physical closeness“ and ?confidence“ of the AAS, but all other scales correlated positively with the shame scale.

Conclusions

More emotions of shame seem to be present with anxiety, depression and disturbances in the sense of an alexithymia concept. Also high feelings of shame correlated with decreased confidence in the personal environment and greater intolerance for personal nearness. The significant correlations between shame affects and self-touch or touch by partner point to important factors in self-perception also for the psychotherapeutic context.     

Encoding the goal of an object-directed but uncompleted reaching action in 6- and 9-month-old infants

Infants start to interpret completed human actions as goal-directed in the second half of the first year of life. In a series of three studies, the understanding of a goal-directed but uncompleted action was investigated in 6- and 9-month-old infants using a preferential looking paradigm. Infants saw the video of an actor's reaching movement towards one of two objects. This reaching movement was only presented until the hand passed the midpoint between the starting position and the position of the target object. Subsequently, two final states of the reaching movement were presented simultaneously. In the plausible final state, the hand grasped the object to which the reaching movement was geared; in the implausible final state, the hand grasped the other object. In Studies 1 and 3, infants watched the actor from an allocentric perspective, and in Studies 2 and 3 from an egocentric perspective. Results indicate a discrimination of the two final states if the scene was presented from an allocentric perspective: both 6- and 9-month-olds looked longer at the implausible final state. This was not the case if infants saw the action from an egocentric perspective. The presented findings show that using this paradigm, 6-month-olds are already able to infer the goal of an uncompleted action without seeing the achievement of the goal itself. However, they encoded the goal of the reaching action only when it was presented from an allocentric perspective but not from an egocentric perspective.     

Different responses in two strains of chickens (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Gallus gallus</Emphasis>) in a magnetic orientation test

Previous studies demonstrated that layer strain domestic chicks bred for egg production can orient using directional cues from the magnetic field; here we report that chicks from a broiler strain bred for meat production do not use magnetic cues for orientation. We imprinted both strains of chicken on a red ball and subsequently trained them in a featureless testing arena. Between rewarded trials in the geomagnetic field, we inserted unrewarded tests under the following conditions: (1) in the geomagnetic field, (2) in a magnetic field with North shifted by 90 degrees and (3) in a magnetic field with the inclination inverted. The layer chicks made a correct axial response in 75-80% of the tests, shifting their choices following a rotation of magnetic North. Chicks of the broiler strain, in contrast, performed at chance level with between 47 and 60% of choices on the correct axis. This difference between the strains does not appear to be due to substantial strain differences in motivation to perform the task. It therefore appears possible that the selection of the broiler strain has led to the elimination of the specific ability to respond to magnetic cues in the test situation.     

The illusion of group productivity: a reduction of failures explanation

It has consistently been found that people produce more ideas when working alone as compared to when working in a group. Yet, people generally believe that group brainstorming is more effective than individual brainstorming. Further, group members are more satisfied with their performance than individuals, whereas they have generated fewer ideas. We argue that this ‘illusion of group productivity’ is partly due to a reduction of cognitive failures (instances in which someone is unable to generate ideas) in a group setting. Three studies support that explanation, showing that: (1) group interaction leads to a reduction of experienced failures and that failures mediate the effect of setting on satisfaction; and (2) manipulations that affect failures also affect satisfaction ratings. Implications for group work are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Frobenius Quantales,Serre Quantales and the Riemann–Roch Theorem

Studia Logica - The Riemann–Roch theorem for algebraic curves is derived from a theorem for Girard quantales. Serre duality is shown to be a quantalic phenomenon. An example provides a Girard...     

Method effects due to social desirability as a parsimonious explanation of the deviation from unidimensionality in LOT-R scores

Dispositional optimism measured by the Life Orientation Test (Revised; LOT-R, Scheier et al., 1994) was originally proposed as a unidimensional construct pertaining to individual differences in positive outcome expectancies. However, factor analytic research has suggested two separate “optimism” and “pessimism” factors associated with positively and negatively worded items respectively. Using confirmatory factor analysis with data from N = 658 students it is shown that a general optimism model with method effects of the positively worded items fits even better than the “optimism–pessimism” model in terms of the AIC statistic, which accounts for both model parsimony and model fit. Furthermore, an attempt is made to explain the method effects by social desirability: impression management, one of two components of socially desirable responding, correlates significantly with the method factor whereas the other component, self-deceptive enhancement, is related to the general optimism factor. Thus it is shown that the deviation from unidimensionality of observed scores does not imply deviation from unidimensionality of optimism when method effects are incorporated in the model.