Effects of short‐term cosmetic versus long‐term health fear appeals in anti‐smoking advertisements on the smoking behaviour of adolescents

A field study exposed 235 high school students to anti‐smoking advertisements over a five‐month period to test the effectiveness of short‐term cosmetic versus long‐term health fear appeals in preventing or reducing smoking. The study was a longitudinal experiment with two experimental groups and a control group. Smoking behaviour was measured prior to message exposure on television, in magazines and on the internet, and at the end of the study period. The primary results were that average smoking declined for subjects exposed to either type of anti‐smoking fear appeal but not for the control group and short‐term cosmetic fear appeals were more effective for males but long‐term health fear appeals were more effective for females. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

How Do I Treat My Hungry Lion: A Model for Violence Management in Prison

This theoretical model for the management of violence relies on the notion that there are fundamentally only two kinds of prison violence—provoked and unprovoked—and that all violence is caused by the influence of some fear-causing agent which triggers the autonomic nervous system's Fight or Flight Response (FFR) which in turn causes the release of FFR chemicals to create and enable an action potential for violence in the actor. Provoked violence is an act of violence which occurs in response to an FFR instigated by some external, independent contemporaneous, real or imagined fear causing agent. Treating provoked violence must include suppressing the production of an excess of FFR stimulant chemicals, which at the same time employing psychodynamic therapy to modify the negative behavior learned from a lifetime of excessive responses to FFR chemical releases. Unprovoked violence is the result of an actor's addiction to FFR chemicals. This addiction leads the actor to experience an apperceptive compulsion to engage in thrill seeking as a method of exposing himself to fear causing agents that are calculated to cause the release of FFR chemicals. In order to treat unprovoked violence you must treat both the chemical addiction and the negative pattern of behavior which was learned to support the habit of self-triggering an FFR. Thus any successful treatment of violence must employ both energetic and psychodynamic models for development of fear management strategies.     

Preventing School Violence by Promoting Wellness

This paper presents a framework for school-based health promotion and prevention programming that can serve to guide planning and action. Rather than separating specific prevention programs (such as violence prevention, substance abuse prevention, etc.) from more broad-based youth development efforts, this approach provides an integrated framework that: (a) identifies benchmarks of healthy development and strategies to support this development across contexts; (b) specifies additional factors that contribute to identified problems that are not directly linked to healthy development; and (c) provides for matching services to individual needs. Suggestions for application of this framework are discussed, with a particular focus on its application to the development of school-based Wellness Centers.     

学习支持对儿童在多媒体语境中学习英语词汇的影响

该研究旨在考察中文翻译与主题提示两种学习支持对儿童在多媒体语境中学习英语词汇的作用,为此设计了三种学习条件：无支持条件、中文翻译条件和中文翻译 主题提示条件。对学龄初期儿童在上述三种学习条件下学习英语词汇的过程和结果进行的考察和分析表明：儿童在无支持条件下的学习效果较差;中文翻译可以明显促进儿童对语句的理解,但无法提高儿童对目标词的掌握;中文翻译 主题提示条件下儿童对单词语义的掌握最好,他们表现出了较多的跟读行为,并更倾向于认为学习任务较为容易。     

Teasing,rejection, and violence: Case studies of the school shootings

Media commentators have suggested that recent school shootings were precipitated by social rejection, but no empirical research has examined this claim. Case studies were conducted of 15 school shootings between 1995 and 2001 to examine the possible role of social rejection in school violence. Acute or chronic rejection—in the form of ostracism, bullying, and/or romantic rejection—was present in all but two of the incidents. In addition, the shooters tended to be characterized by one or more of three other risk factors—an interest in firearms or bombs, a fascination with death or Satanism, or psychological problems involving depression, impulse control, or sadistic tendencies. Implications for understanding and preventing school violence are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 29:202–214, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Do beliefs about aggression predict physical aggression to partners?

Three hypotheses concerning the association between instrumental (I) and expressive (E) beliefs about aggression and physical aggression were assessed among a sample comprising students (n=40), women from a domestic violence shelter (n=29), and male prisoners (n=46), all of whom had committed at least one act of physical aggression to a partner. Participants completed an adapted version of the EXPAGG [Archer and Haigh (1997a): British Journal of Social Psychology 35:1–23] to measure I and E beliefs about aggression, the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) [Straus (1979): Journal of Marriage and the Family 41:75–88] for themselves and their partner, and measures of fear and injuries resulting from partner violence. I beliefs predicted self‐reported physical aggression to the partner, most CTS acts of physical aggression, and injuries to the partner, with only minor and limited associations for E beliefs. Correlations for the student and prisoner samples, and for men and women, showed different strengths. The findings supported a general link between I beliefs and aggression but offered no support for the predictions that the link would be restricted to men or to men who showed a persistent pattern of violence to their partners. Aggr. Behav. 29:41–54, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Destructiveness, atrocities and healing: epistemological and clinical reflections

In this paper, destructiveness is approached as a multi-dimensional phenomenon where the mental health perspective addresses only one of these dimensions. An attempt is made to locate this phenomenon in the context of epistemological and societal considerations. Critical of mono-dimensional explanations based on causal-reductive epistemology, the paper instead proposes the idea of an 'ecology of destructiveness', according to which mental health professionals cannot possibly continue to assume the role of detached observers. The ordinariness and archetypal fascination of destructiveness are discussed as preventing the psychologizing and pathologizing of it. In addition, it is suggested that 'destructiveness may be a tragic facet of the human condition', without this implying any justification of it. Based on my work with a group of Bosnian ex-camp prisoners, some basic principles of how one can work with survivors of atrocities are derived and discussed. A central feature of this work is the attempt to create an appropriate therapeutic context within which a 'therapeutic presence' and 'therapeutic witnessing' can be developed. Finally, the relevance of Jungian insights to this kind of work is reviewed and the emergence of new types of defences of the self is identified.