Oscar Wilde in Singapore: Ambivalence,Enforcement, and the Criminalization of Homosexuality

The city state of Singapore, which recently celebrated 50 years of independence, still curiously retains a nineteenth century colonial penal code that criminalizes homosexuality. While state censorship discourages its citizens from engaging in public discourse that explores the implications of this penal code, colloquially known as 377A, discussions on the topic are still visible. High profile attempts to repeal the law through challenging the Singapore Constitution are reported in mainstream media outlets, and the artistic community also supports the repeal of the penal code. One of the most powerful instances of this was W!ld Rice’s 2013 all-male production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest followed by Moisés Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (the former played to international acclaim in Macau in 2014 and Brisbane in September 2015). This essay examines the relationship between art and state policy in Singapore by considering how artistic expressions that address social and cultural anxieties contribute to rather than subvert conversations about social policy-making. In this case, the seemingly comical Wilde plays produced an especially serious and nuanced analysis of the off-stage consensus problems in Singapore, among the LGBT community, heterosexual citizens, and the government. The plays effectively expose and articulate the deeply ambivalent sentiments that have come to characterize the 377A debate.     

Supervisor Humor and Employee Outcomes: The Role of Social Distance and Affective Trust in Supervisor

Purpose

To examine how social distance and affective trust in supervisor affect the relationships between supervisor humor and the psychological well-being and job performance of subordinates.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A survey was conducted among 322 matched supervisor–subordinate dyads in 14 South Korean organizations. Multi-level analyses were performed to test the research hypotheses, including the moderating effects.

Findings

Self-enhancing humor of supervisors was positively associated with the psychological well-being and job performance of subordinates. Affiliative humor was positively associated with psychological well-being, whereas aggressive humor was negatively associated with psychological well-being. In addition, supervisor humor was indirectly related to the psychological well-being of subordinates via social distance. Moreover, affective trust in supervisor significantly moderated the relationship between supervisor humor and social distance, such that the relationship between affiliative humor and social distance was stronger when affective trust in supervisor was high rather than low.

Implications

These findings are important in developing and refining humor theory on the responses of employees to various types of supervisor humor. Moreover, they provide practical implications for organizations. For example, organizations should note that supervisor humor may not always produce good results, and thus should encourage managers to use constructive humor. Similarly, supervisors should build a high-trust relationship with their subordinates to increase the effectiveness of their constructive humor.

Originality/Value

This study is one of the few studies that has examined the mechanism and boundary conditions of the effects of supervisor humor on employee outcomes.

     

Elderly offenders in a maximum security mental hospital

Elderly offenders aged 60 and above constitute less than 8% of the population in a maximum security mental hospital. These offenders fall into 2 groups: 1) first admission at or after the age of 50 and 2) first admission before 50. Fewer first time offenders committed homicide in the first group than those in the second group. Neuropsychiatric disturbance and sex offending was common among male first time offenders in the first group; in contrast, schizophrenia and violent offending against persons was found more often in the second group. It is argued that elderly first time offenders should be given adequate neuropsychiatric assessment. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Personality,Meta-Mood Experience,Life Satisfaction,and Anxiety in Australian versus Singaporean Students

This study explores two issues concerning the relationships between personality, meta-mood experience, life satisfaction, and anxiety. First, it explored the incremental value of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience in predicting the three components of meta-mood experience (that is, attention to feelings, emotional clarity, clarity of feelings and mood repair), after controlling for demographic variables across Australia and Singapore. Second, it explored the incremental value of the three meta-mood experience components in predicting life satisfaction and anxiety, after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables across the two countries. One hundred and eighty nine tertiary students from Australia and 243 tertiary students from Singapore participated in this study. First, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that Agreeableness and Neuroticism are the two most important personality predictors of meta-mood experience, emotional attention, and emotional repair. Second, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that emotional repair was a significant predictor for life satisfaction and anxiety, even after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables. These results have implications for therapeutic interventions with life satisfaction versus anxiety. Funding for this research is facilitated partially by a research grant from the National Institute of Education.     

Externalizing problems,internalizing problems,and suicidal ideation in Singaporean adolescents: Sex differences

Adolescent suicide is considered a worldwide problem and an increasing source of concern in Singapore. This study explores the relationships among four factors of maladjustment (that is, emotional distress, negative self, antisocial behavior, and anger control problems) and suicidal ideation in two hundred and seventy-one adolescents from Singapore. Findings from the study indicated that emotional distress, negative self-concept, and antisocial behavior significantly predicted suicidal ideation for the whole sample. Beta weight is largest for emotional distress, followed by negative self, and then antisocial behavior. For females, only emotional distress significantly predicted suicidal ideation. Implications of these findings with regard to working with adolescents with suicidal ideations are discussed. Funding for this research is facilitated by grant RP 1/01 APH.     

The relationship between rumination, avoidance and depression in a non-clinical sample

Recent commentaries have proposed conceptualizations of rumination in terms of both cognitive and behavioral avoidance. This study examined the relationship between rumination, avoidance and depression using a newly developed self-report measure of avoidance in depression, the Cognitive-Behavioral Avoidance Scale (CBAS) [Ottenbreit, N.D., & Dobson, K.S. (2004). Avoidance and depression: The construction of the cognitive-behavioral avoidance scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42, 293-313]. A non-clinical sample (N=104) of undergraduate students completed self-report measures of depression, anxiety, rumination and avoidance. Rumination, avoidance and depression were all significantly correlated. Rumination and behavioral avoidance remained intercorrelated when anxiety was controlled, confirming an association that is independent of anxiety. By contrast, the relationship between cognitive avoidance and rumination disappeared when anxiety was partialled out. Notably, avoidance predicted unique variance in depression scores, over and above anxiety and rumination. Consistent with the proposal of Ottenbreit and Dobson [Avoidance and depression: The construction of the cognitive-behavioral avoidance scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42, 293-313], our findings support the value of clinicians and psychopathologists giving consideration to avoidance in their conceptualization of depression.     

A randomized trial of employment-based reinforcement of cocaine abstinence in injection drug users

High-magnitude and long-duration abstinence reinforcement can promote drug abstinence but can be difficult to finance. Employment may be a vehicle for arranging high-magnitude and long-duration abstinence reinforcement. This study determined if employment-based abstinence reinforcement could increase cocaine abstinence in adults who inject drugs and use cocaine during methadone treatment. Participants could work 4 hr every weekday in a workplace where they could earn about $10.00 per hour in vouchers; they were required to provide routine urine samples. Participants who attended the workplace and provided cocaine-positive urine samples during the initial 4 weeks were invited to work 26 weeks and were randomly assigned to an abstinence-and-work (n = 28) or work-only (n = 28) group. Abstinence-and-work participants had to provide urine samples showing cocaine abstinence to work and maintain maximum pay. Work-only participants could work independent of their urinalysis results. Abstinence-and-work participants provided more (p = .004; OR = 5.80, 95% CI = 2.03-16.56) cocaine-negative urine samples (29%) than did work-only participants (10%). Employment-based abstinence reinforcement can increase cocaine abstinence.