Childhood memories of threatening experiences and submissiveness and its relationship to hallucination proneness and ideas of reference: The mediating role of dissociation

Recent studies have emphasized the importance of childhood memories of threatening experiences and submissiveness in a diversity of psychological disorders. The purpose of this work was to study their specific relationship with hallucination proneness and ideas of reference in healthy subjects. The ELES scale for measuring memory of adverse childhood experiences, the DES ‐II scale for measuring dissociation, the LSHS ‐R scale for measuring hallucination proneness, and the REF for ideas of reference were applied to a sample of 472 subjects. A positive association was found between childhood memories of adverse experiences and hallucination proneness and ideas of reference, on one hand, and dissociation on the other. A mediation analysis showed that dissociation was a mediator between the memory of adverse childhood experiences and hallucination proneness on one hand, and ideas of reference on the other. When the role of mediator of the types of dissociative experiences was studied, it was found that absorption and depersonalization mediated between adverse experiences and hallucination proneness. However, this mediating effect was not found between adverse experiences and ideas of reference. The relationship between these last two variables was direct. The results suggest that childhood memories of adverse experiences are a relevant factor in understanding hallucination proneness and ideas of reference. Similarly, dissociation is a specific mediator between adverse childhood experiences and hallucination proneness.     

Experience of Parental Marital Dissolution Earlier in Life and the Disposition to Forgive Among Older Violent and Non-Violent Prisoners

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in self-reported dispositional forgiveness types among older male prison inmates who experienced parental separation/divorce earlier in life. Participants included a sample of N = 261 incarcerated men, aged 45 and older, residing in state-managed prisons in Oklahoma. IBM/SPSS 22.0 was used to examine mean differences across forgiveness of self, situation, and others. Significant mean differences were evident only for forgiveness of situation. In particular, significant differences emerged relative to depressive affect F (1, 192) = 19.90, p < .001, and social support F (1, 192) = 18.64, p < .001. After controlling for age, race, religiosity, depression, social support, perceived health, crime type, and parental separation/divorce, one significant interaction (crime type X parental separation/divorce) emerged, F (1, 192) = 4.42, p < .05. It appears that the disposition to forgive the situation among older prison inmates depends on criminal offender type as well as whether the older inmate experienced parental dissolution earlier in life. Implications for pastoral counseling programing and forgiveness therapy treatment for older male prison inmates who experienced parental separation/divorce earlier in life are discussed.     

A systematic analysis of distressing near-death experience accounts

ABSTRACT

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are usually associated with positive affect, however, a small proportion are considered distressing. We aimed to look into the proportion of distressing NDEs in a sample of NDE narratives, categorise distressing narratives according to Greyson and Bush’s classification (inverse, void or hellish), and compare distressing and “classical” NDEs. Participants wrote down their experience, completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (assessing the phenomenology of memories) and the Greyson scale (characterising content of NDEs). The proportion of suicidal attempts, content and intensity of distressing and classical NDEs were compared using frequentist and Bayesian statistics. Distressing NDEs represent 14% of our sample (n?=?123). We identified 8 inverse, 8 hellish and 1 void accounts. The proportion of suicide survivors is higher in distressing NDEs as compared to classical ones. Finally, memories of distressing NDEs appear as phenomenologically detailed as classical ones. Distressing NDEs deserve careful consideration to ensure their integration into experiencers’ identity.     

Exposure to Unethical Career Events: Effects on Decision Making,Climate, and Socialization

An implicit goal of many interventions intended to enhance integrity is to minimize peoples' exposure to unethical events. The intent of the present effort was to examine if exposure to unethical practices in the course of one's work is related to ethical decision making. Accordingly, 248 doctoral students in the biological, health, and social sciences were asked to complete a field appropriate measure of ethical decision making. In addition, they were asked to complete measures examining the perceived acceptability of unethical events and a measure examining perceptions of ethical climate. When these criterion measures were correlated with a measure examining the frequency with which they had been exposed to unethical events in their day-to-day work, it was found that event exposure was strongly related to ethical decision making but less strongly related to climate perceptions and perceptions of event acceptability. However, these relationships were moderated by level of experience. The implications of these findings for practices intended to improve ethics are discussed.     

Environmental Influences on Ethical Decision Making: Climate and Environmental Predictors of Research Integrity

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed.     

Longitudinal associations between people's cessation-related experiences and their satisfaction with cessation

We sought to determine whether different social, psychological, emotional, and physiological experiences associated with quitting smoking related to people's satisfaction with cessation systematically, and whether the strength of the relations changes at different points during the cessation process and for different people (e.g., optimists). Using data from smokers enrolled in a cessation program, we used mixed models to assess the average longitudinal relation between people's experiences and satisfaction measured at seven time points and whether the relations were moderated by key variables. Eight of nine experiences were related to people's satisfaction (ps < 0.05) and the models accounted for 39–44% of the within-person variance in satisfaction. Current smoking behavior was more strongly related to people's satisfaction during their early efforts to quit, whereas some experiences (e.g., feedback from others) had a stronger relation with satisfaction during people's later efforts to quit or maintain abstinence (ps < 0.05). Individual differences in optimism and prior cessation experience moderated some of the relations (ps < 0.05). The findings mark the first evidence of factors that might influence how people determine their satisfaction with smoking cessation. The implications for tailoring interventions and potentially increasing the likelihood that people maintain abstinence are discussed.     

Knowledge does not necessarily make the heart grow fonder: The moderating role of knowledge on accessibility experiences

Accessibility experiences have been a subject of interest since Tversky and Kahneman (1973) published their account of the availability heuristic—specifically, individuals often utilize the phenomenological experience of ease or difficulty of recall in constructing a judgment (Schwarz, 1998). The reported studies contribute further to work in this area by examining the moderating role of knowledge on accessibility experiences and their use in evaluative judgments. We argue that knowledgeable individuals are more likely to experience interference effects in early stages of recall. This would result in a reversal of the usual phenomenon such that while low knowledge individuals would find recalling larger sets effortful, which would lead them to form more negative evaluations when recalling larger amounts of information, high knowledge individuals would find recalling smaller sets effortful and would form more negative evaluations when recalling smaller amounts of information. We discuss potential explanations and draw attention to the distinction between generating a response and the appropriateness of the response in accessibility experiences.     

Health Outcomes by Closeness of Sexual Abuse Perpetrator: A Test of Betrayal Trauma Theory

Summary

In this chapter, practicing attorney Brooks Cooper illuminates how the legal tradition of applying different standards to the ad-missibility of expert and lay opinions as evidence in litigation complicates delayed-discovery sexual abuse cases. Admissibility standards have long been a source of controversy, and recent developments in law, such as the pre-trial evidentiary hearings that invoke the “gatekeeper” function of the judge under the standard enunciated in Daubert v. Mer-rell-Dow Pharmaceuticals, have become a favored strategy by the defense in an effort to bar delayed memory testimony by characterizing it as the product of unreliable science. To overcome this litigation hurdle, Mr. Cooper contextualizes the present controversy in the history of scientific evidence admissibility, tracing emerging trends in judicial opinion on scientific evidence from expert witnesses from the 1923 case Frye v. United States through the present, and offers strategies and techniques to maintain admissibility of the evidence before and during all phases of the trial.     

Deliberate Self-Harm and State Dissociation: An Experimental Investigation

The purpose of this study was to test the relation between deliberate self-harm (DSH) and state dissociation. Participants (N = 85) were randomly assigned to self-administer either a very mild electric shock below their pain threshold (a no-self-harm control condition) or an electric shock they were told could “cause minor tissue damage that would heal quickly,” but which was in fact equal to a predetermined pain threshold (a DSH condition). After task completion, 42 participants rated the extent of their dissociation before the shock and 43 rated the extent of their dissociation after the shock. Results indicated that women in the DSH group experienced more dissociation compared to men, but only after the shock. Potential reasons for this gender effect are discussed.     

Images of God and the imaginary in the face of loss: a quantitative research on Vietnamese immigrants living in Canada

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationships between images of God, the imaginary and experiences of loss among Vietnamese immigrants living in Canada. One hundred twenty-nine participants completed four sets of questionnaires: a demographic questionnaire, a Questionnaire on God Image, the Brief Symptom Inventory, the Davidson Trauma Scale. In the second phase, 32 participants were administered the AT.9 test (an archetypal test with nine elements). In this test, participants are asked to draw, using nine symbolic elements, and then write a story based on their drawing. Results showed that a positive perception of God negatively correlated with somatisation, anxiety and hostility, whereas negative God image was significantly related to high levels of emotional distress. Results also showed that the synthetic categories of the imaginary were associated with a positive perception of God; and were negatively associated with somatisation, intrusion and hyper-vigilance. Further discussions on the main findings will address cultural implications in the fields of Mental Health, Religion and Culture.