Offending Patterns of Serial Sex Offenders: Escalation,De‐escalation,and Consistency of Sexually Intrusive and Violent Behaviours

A series of stranger sexual assaults poses considerable obstacles for law enforcement officials. One such preoccupation is concerned with whether or not the offender will escalate in the severity of his behaviours with subsequent victims. The current study uses transition matrices to address whether or not the offending patterns of 72 serial stranger sex offenders change from one victim to the next as it pertains to their sexual acts and level of physical force used during the crime. Findings indicate that stability, specifically the offender's intrusive sexual acts and use of physical force, and versatility are present in this sample's offending patterns. To explain changes in offending patterns between victims, multinomial regression analyses indicate that situational factors and modus operandi strategies are important considerations. Implications for investigations are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“My natural environment has provided me with about fifty different ways of expressing frustration”: Mining the visceral angst of Australian Rules football followers

Modern spectator sports provoke intense bodily passions in fans as well as athletes yet the embodied emotions of sports fans are understudied. This paper explores the frustrations of Australian Rules football supporters. Drawing on psychoanalysis and religious studies it traces the expressions and possible causes of their frustration by mining material from a set of interviews with fans along with the comments of Australian Rules football followers in books, articles and internet forums. An underlying question is how the frustrations of these football supporters might reveal something of the intersections of emotion, bodies and sport that spectator sports provoke.     

Exploring career decision-making styles across three European countries

Career decisions are amongst the most important we make. Unsurprisingly, much published research exists on this particular aspect of career behaviour. However, the overwhelming majority of studies have been carried out on young people making initial career decisions. This paper extends our understanding by examining how mid-career adults in three European countries (Denmark, France and Italy) actually make career decisions. Characteristic patterns of behaviour recur when individuals approach points of transition or of crisis; each of these transitioning styles is illustrated by an iconic case. Emergent findings support the growing body of evidence that challenges the dominant policy and practice orthodoxy, which places rationality at the centre of the process, by recognising the importance of emotion and context.     

The effect of red and blue uniforms on competitive anxiety and self-confidence in virtual sports contests

IntroductionThe present study aimed to examine the effect of blue and red uniform colors on competitive anxiety and self-confidence in virtual sports competitions.ObjectiveWe hypothesized that blue is related to higher levels of self-confidence (a feeling related to the approach motivational system), whereas red is related to higher levels of anxiety (a feeling related to the avoidance motivational system).MethodParticipants were confronted with an opponent dressed in either blue or in red.ResultsResults revealed that participants who were exposed to an opponent in blue reported a higher level of self-confidence, while those who were exposed to an opponent in red reported a higher level of cognitive anxiety, supporting the view that blue (red) is related to the approach (avoidance) motivational system.ConclusionOur findings incite a pursuit of the examination of the relationship between blue, red, competitive anxiety, and self-confidence in sport competitions.     

Stories that move? Peer athlete mentors' responses to mentee disability and sport narratives

BackgroundHow people respond to the stories people tell matters. Past research demonstrates that there are varied responses to the narratives individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) use. Yet, no research has explored how peer athlete mentors with SCI respond to their mentees' stories about sport participation that are framed in different disability narratives.PurposeTo explore how peer athlete mentors respond to four mentees' vignettes representing various attitudes towards adapted sport.MethodsThirteen peer athlete mentors discussed these vignettes in hour-long interviews; their responses were analysed using a dual narrative analysis.ResultsPeer athlete mentors tailored their responses to each individual vignette. Specifically, responses to the most open vignettes were tailored to the mentees' disability narratives and provided a variety of resources and sport information. This type of response to mentees' stories can support and validate these mentees' experiences and increase the likelihood that mentees will try sport. In contrast, peer athlete mentors' responses to the heavily resistant vignettes contained limited information about sport. These responses also challenged the mentees' disability narratives. These types of responses may be counter-productive as they invalidate the mentees' experiences with sport and SCI and may further deter sport participation.ConclusionWhile peer athlete mentors tailored the information they would provide to mentees who use different disability narratives, they expressed difficulties responding to the heavily resistant narrative. Future peer athlete mentor training should address this difficulty by providing practice around how to communicate with individuals expressing resistant narratives.     

Self-compassion and women athletes' responses to emotionally difficult sport situations: An evaluation of a brief induction

ObjectivesTo examine self-compassion as a way to promote healthy responses in women athletes when faced with emotionally difficult sport-specific situations.DesignPhase I, cross-sectional; Phase II, experimental.MethodsIn Phase I, participants (N = 101; M_age = 20.0, SD = 2.8 years) completed measures of self-compassion, self-esteem, and narcissism, as well as reactions, thoughts, and emotions in response to hypothetical (i.e., responsible for a team loss) and recalled scenarios. Participants returning for Phase II were randomly assigned to a brief self-compassion induction (n = 21), self-esteem induction (n = 20), or writing control (n = 18) group. Following the induction, they responded to the same hypothetical scenario as in Phase I.Phase I resultsAfter partialling out self-esteem and narcissism, self-compassion was related (p < .01) to negative affect (r = −.40), catastrophizing thoughts (r = −.30), personalizing thoughts (r = −.32), and behavioral equanimity (r = .28) for the hypothetical scenario. A similar pattern was found for the recalled scenario.Phase II resultsA MANOVA with Phase I self-compassion, self-esteem, and narcissism as covariates resulted in a non-significant group by time interaction, Wilks' Lambda = .75, F(12,96) = 1.27, p = .25. Follow-up hierarchical regression analysis showed Phase I levels of self-compassion as the only significant predictor for negative affect, personalizing thoughts, and behavioral equanimity.ConclusionsWomen athletes with higher self-compassion levels generally responded in healthier ways to emotionally difficult hypothetical and recalled situations in sport than their less self-compassionate counterparts. However, future research needs continued focus on evaluating self-compassion inductions and interventions for use in sport.     

Team activity recognition in Association Football using a Bag-of-Words-based method

In this paper, a new methodology is used to perform team activity recognition and analysis in Association Football. It is based on pattern recognition and machine learning techniques. In particular, a strategy based on the Bag-of-Words (BoW) technique is used to characterize short Football video clips that are used to explain the team’s performance and to train advanced classifiers in automatic recognition of team activities. In addition to the neural network-based classifier, three more classifier families are tested: the k-Nearest Neighbor, the Support Vector Machine and the Random Forest. The results obtained show that the proposed methodology is able to explain the most common movements of a team and to perform the team activity recognition task with high accuracy when classifying three Football actions: Ball Possession, Quick Attack and Set Piece. Random Forest is the classifier obtaining the best classification results.     

Les effets de la motivation sur la performance sportive au regard de la théorie de l’autodétermination : vers une approche intra-individuelle

The main purpose of the present article is to review studies in the self-determination framework (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2008) examining the effects of athletes’ motivation on sport performance. This work consists of three different sections. First, we detail the main postulates of self-determination theory. Second, we present results of recent studies examining the influence of motivation on performance by shedding light on research with a person-centered approach at different levels of generality (Vallerand, 1997). Finally, future research directions and practical implications are proposed to enhance athletes’ sport performance. We suggest that athletes’ autonomous motivation should be increased to attain success in sport.     

Développement et validation en langue française de l’Échelle de Mesure de l’Efficacité AutoRégulatrice des Affects en Sport (EARAS)

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the affective self-regulatory efficacy scale (EARAS) in a French sample. The instrument was developed from an adaptation to the sport context of a scale measuring this construct in everyday life (Bandura et al., 1996, 2001, 2003). A series of four complementary studies was carried out with a total sample of 669 students to: (a) develop a preliminary version of EARAS (study 1), (b) confirm the factorial structure of the instrument and examine its invariance (study 2), (c) evaluate the stability of the instrument (study 3), and (d) examine the construct validity of the scale (study 4). The bifactor model of affective self-regulatory efficacy provided the best fit. The EARAS presents satisfactory psychometric properties and constitutes a reliable and valid instrument for developing future research on the role of affective self-regulatory efficacy with in the sports activities of French people.