Keeping the Peace—Police Behaviour at a Mass Event

This study examined the collective behaviour of the police during a football match at the 2006 Football World Cup. What peacekeeping and aggravating processes could be identified and what were their consequences? Data were collected using observation and field interviews. Some critical situations could have escalated into riots; however, the police showed trust in the majority of the supporters' intentions to be peaceful. Distrust was reserved for selected individuals who were under surveillance. This, together with tactics involving using different forces for different tasks and an overall organisational strategy focusing on the festivity of the event, was the main reason for the peaceful outcome. A friendly but firm approach was successful in keeping the peace. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personality and Substance Use in Midlife: Conscientiousness as a Moderator and the Effects of Trait Change

Personality traits predict substance use in adolescence, but less is known about prospective substance use in middle age and beyond. Moreover, there is growing interest in how personality change and the multiplicative effects among personality traits relate to substance use. Participants included approximately 4000 adults aged 25-74 who participated in two waves of the Midlife in the US (MIDUS) study. Higher levels of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and lower levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness predicted longitudinal substance use. Increases in neuroticism and openness predicted increased substance use while increases in conscientiousness and agreeableness predicted decreased substance use. Higher levels of conscientiousness moderated two of the other trait main effects. Personality, trait change, and interactions among traits reliably forecasted 10-year substance-use behaviors.     

Intentions to participate in counselling among front-line,at-risk Irish government employees: an application of the theory of planned behaviour

ABSTRACT

The study set out to examine intentions to engage in counselling among at-risk Irish government employees and the differential utility of two alternative theory of planned behaviour (TPB) models of behaviour to explain intentions to participate in counselling. Individuals (N=259) employed in a front-line, at-risk occupation for the Irish government completed a TPB-based questionnaire. Quantitative analyses revealed that participants held positive to neutral intentions to participate in counselling, irrespective of gender. The original TPB model explained 49.9% of variance in intentions whereas an alternative TPB model, splitting the perceived behavioural control (PBC) construct between its internal and external control components, explained a further 8.9% of variance. Furthermore, self-efficacy was found to be the strongest predictor of intentions. This study therefore supports the use of the TPB in understanding counselling-seeking behaviour.     

Multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC): results from an independent replication

This study examines 24‐months post‐baseline outcomes for thirty‐five Swedish antisocial youths who received either treatment in multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) or treatment as usual (TAU). MTFC is a community‐based treatment programme that has been successful in treating chronic juvenile offenders in the USA. This study is the first randomized control study outside the USA. The youth treated in the MTFC programme consistently showed some statistically significant positive treatment effects compared to the youth exposed to TAU. The results suggest that MTFC might be an effective method in treating youth with severe behaviour problems in a Swedish context. The authors conclude that the programme ought to be of great interest for Swedish social services as an alternative to traditional care.     

What's in a cue? The role of cue orientation in object displacement tasks

The current study looked at two theoretical proposals explaining toddlers’ abilities to use cue information for recovering a hidden object that had rolled down a ramp behind an occluded screen. These two approaches, the theory of object directed attention and a landmark-based account, make different predictions regarding the efficacy of an obliquely aligned cue to object position. Accordingly, the search by forty 24-month olds, forty-two 30-month olds, and forty-one 36-month olds for a hidden toy that was cued using either a short versus a long cue, or a vertically aligned versus an obliquely aligned cue, were compared. Analyses of search accuracy revealed that children were more successful when faced with short as opposed to long cues, and when using vertical as opposed to oblique cues. These findings support a landmark-based approach, as opposed to an object-directed attention account, and are discussed with reference to their implications for spatial orientation more generally.     

Stigmatised Identity and Service Usage in Disadvantaged Communities: Residents', Community Workers' and Service Providers' Perspectives

The impact of community stigmatisation upon service usage has been largely overlooked from a social identity perspective. Specifically, the social identity‐mediated mechanisms by which stigmatisation hinders service use remain unspecified. The present study examines how service providers, community workers and residents recount their experience of the stigmatisation of local community identity and how this shapes residents' uptake of welfare, education and community support services. Twenty individual and group interviews with 10 residents, 16 community workers and six statutory service providers in economically disadvantaged communities in Limerick, Ireland, were thematically analysed. Analysis indicates that statutory service providers endorsed negative stereotypes of disadvantaged areas as separate and anti‐social. The awareness of this perceived division and the experience of ‘stigma consciousness’ was reported by residents and community workers to undermine trust, leading to under‐utilisation of community and government services. We argue that stigmatisation acts as a ‘social curse’ by undermining shared identity between service users and providers and so turning a potentially cooperative intragroup relationship into a fraught intergroup one. We suggest that tackling stigma in order to foster a sense of shared identity is important in creating positive and cooperative service interactions for both service users and providers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Traffic safety climate attitudes of road users in Germany

This paper validates traffic safety climate attitudes based on a representative sample of road users of all travel modes. We use the German version of the Traffic Climate Scale (TCS) which was applied in a large-scale road safety survey in 2010. A total of 1680 people were surveyed. The sample is representative for socio-demographic characteristics and travel mode choice in Germany. Factor analysis reveals a three-factor structure of traffic safety climate with the factor ‘External affective demands’ describing emotional engagement in traffic, the factor ‘Internal requirements’ representing individual skills and abilities to successfully participate in traffic, and the factor ‘Functionality’ describing requirements for a functional traffic system. The less emotionally demanding and the more functional traffic is perceived to be, the safer people feel in traffic. External affective demands are consistently related to the perception of others’ driving/riding style but not to one’s own, whereas internal requirements are consistently related to one’s own driving/riding style but not to the perception of others. There is no relation between traffic safety climate and accidents or near accidents. Contrary to our expectations, a positive traffic safety climate is associated with more secondary tasks while driving and traffic violations. Behavioural control beliefs may mediate the traffic climate–traffic behaviour relationship. The results are discussed with reference to attitude research and the theory of planned behaviour in particular.     

It’s how you say it – The extended Theory of Planned Behaviour explains active transport use in cardiac patients depending on the type of self-report in a hypothesis-generating study

Physical activity (PA) plays an essential part in the secondary prevention of persons with coronary heart disease (CHD). A substantial amount of PA can be gained through increasing the use of active transport modes (walking or cycling for at least 10 min/day) in CHD patients’ daily routine, benefiting the mortality and morbidity rate as well as the environment. The current study aims to investigate the utility of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) framework extended with habit strength, in understanding the behavioural intention and the behaviour of using active transport modes during the daily travel routine of CHD patients. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from 131 CHD patients. The behaviour was measured using three self-report methods; 1) scale measure, the walking or cycling frequency, 2) direct ATS (Active Travel Score, PA calculated by the directly reported aggregated time spent per day for walking or cycling for travel purposes), and 3) indirect ATS (PA calculated by combining the duration spent on trips by walking and cycling from the self-reported one-day travel diary). Additionally, the participants completed surveys on the direct measures of TPB constructs and habit strength. The results indicated that the TPB constructs explained a 38% variance in the intention to use active transport modes of CHD patients, by which the variance increased to 59% with the addition of habit strength. On the contrary, different behavioural measures were explained differently by TPB and habit strength. The scale measure of behaviour was best predicted (up to 21%) by TPB and habit strength. However, the direct and indirect measures of behaviour were poorly explained (up to 3% and 10% only, respectively). Habit strength moderated the relationship between behaviour (scale measure) and behavioural intention. Surprisingly, higher behavioural intention resulted in a lower behavioural frequency when the habit strength to be active is low. This suggests a limited control over the behaviour thus indicating the intention-behaviour gap. The current study findings highlight the inconsistent predictive utility of TPB across different types of behavioural self-report measures, targeted at the use of active transport modes in CHD patients. However, considering this study as hypothesis-generating, further research is necessary to replicate and extend these findings.