Judgments of marital rape as a function of honor culture,masculine reputation threat,and observer gender: A cross-cultural comparison between Turkey,Germany, and the UK

Previous research has shown that there is higher tolerance of violence against women in cultures with salient gender-specific honor norms, especially when the violence occurs in intimate relationships and in response to threat to male honor. The present cross-cultural study (N = 398) extended these findings to sexual aggression (i.e., marital rape) by comparing participants from a culture that emphasizes honor (Turkey) and participants from cultures without strong honor traditions (Germany and Britain). Turkish participants blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more than did German and British participants. In all cultural groups, participants blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more when the husband's reputation was threatened than in the absence of such threat, and in all cultural groups, men blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more than women. Yet, the effect of masculine reputation threat and this pattern of gender differences were somewhat more pronounced among Turkish than German or British participants. Results exploring the predictive role of honor norms at the individual level beyond rape myth acceptance and traditional gender role attitudes revealed that honor norms were the primary predictor of rape perceptions and blame attributions in Turkey (an honor culture), but not in Germany and Britain (dignity cultures) where rape myth acceptance was the strongest predictor. These results provide insights into the cultural factors influencing marital rape judgments in ways that may undermine victim's well-being and fair handling of rape cases, and highlight the domains most urgently in need of potential intervention.     

Protecting Human Health and Security in Digital Europe: How to Deal with the “Privacy Paradox”?

This article is the result of an international research between law and ethics scholars from Universities in France and Switzerland, who have been closely collaborating with technical experts on the design and use of information and communication technologies in the fields of human health and security. The interdisciplinary approach is a unique feature and guarantees important new insights in the social, ethical and legal implications of these technologies for the individual and society as a whole. Its aim is to shed light on the tension between secrecy and transparency in the digital era. A special focus is put from the perspectives of psychology, medical ethics and European law on the contradiction between individuals’ motivations for consented processing of personal data and their fears about unknown disclosure, transferal and sharing of personal data via information and communication technologies (named the “privacy paradox”). Potential benefits and harms for the individual and society resulting from the use of computers, mobile phones, the Internet and social media are being discussed. Furthermore, the authors point out the ethical and legal limitations inherent to the processing of personal data in a democratic society governed by the rule of law. Finally, they seek to demonstrate that the impact of information and communication technology use on the individuals’ well-being, the latter being closely correlated with a high level of fundamental rights protection in Europe, is a promising feature of the socalled “e-democracy” as a new way to collectively attribute meaning to large-scale online actions, motivations and ideas.     

Applicant Reactions to Digital Selection Methods: A Signaling Perspective on Innovativeness and Procedural Justice

Research has shown that the use of digital technologies in the personnel selection process can have both positive and negative effects on applicants’ attraction to an organization. We explain this contradiction by specifying its underlying mechanisms. Drawing on signaling theory, we build a conceptual model that applies two different theoretical lenses (instrumental-symbolic framework and justice theory) to suggest that perceptions of innovativeness and procedural justice explain the relationship between an organization’s use of digital selection methods and employer attractiveness perceptions. We test our model by utilizing two studies, namely one experimental vignette study among potential applicants (N?=?475) and one retrospective field study among actual job applicants (N?=?335). With the exception of the assessment stage in Study 1, the positive indirect effects found in both studies indicated that applicants perceive digital selection methods to be more innovative. While Study 1 also revealed a negative indirect effect, with potential applicants further perceiving digital selection methods as less fair than less digitalized methods in the interview stage, this effect was not significant for actual job applicants in Study 2. We discuss theoretical implications for the applicant reactions literature and offer recommendations for human resource managers to make use of positive signaling effects while reducing potential negative signaling effects linked to the use of digital selection methods.

     

Sparking Anger and Anxiety: Why Intense Leader Anger Displays Trigger Both More Deviance and Higher Work Effort in Followers

While previous research has assumed that intense leader anger displays result in negative consequences, researchers have recently started to outline their potential for prompting followers to improve their performance. We explain these conflicting positions by demonstrating that leaders’ anger intensity positively affects both deviance and work effort through triggering anger and anxiety in followers. We conducted two critical incident studies, replicating our results with different methodologies and controlling for potential alternative explanations. In line with theories on reciprocal emotions, supervisor-directed deviance became more likely with higher leader anger intensity because followers reacted with correspondingly more anger. However, in line with theories on complementary emotions, leaders’ anger intensity was also positively related to followers’ work effort due to followers’ anxiety. These results were replicated when taking leaders’ anger appropriateness into account as a potential moderator of the deviance-related path and when controlling for followers’ feelings of guilt (an alternative explanation for followers’ work effort). Our paper provides evidence that intense anger displays increase followers’ work effort but also cautions leaders to show these, as the work effort caused by them is based on followers’ intimidation and likely to be accompanied by deviant reactions. By considering the affective reactions triggered in followers, our paper integrates diverging theoretical perspectives on followers’ reactions to leaders’ anger intensity. Moreover, it is one of the first to disentangle the interpersonal effects that different expressions of the same emotion may have.     

Human aging compromises attentional control of auditory perception

Older adults often experience hearing difficulties in multitalker situations. Attentional control of auditory perception is crucial in situations where a plethora of auditory inputs compete for further processing. We combined an intensity-modulated dichotic listening paradigm with attentional manipulations to study adult age differences in the interplay between perceptual saliency and attentional control of auditory processing. When confronted with two competing sources of verbal auditory input, older adults modulated their attention less flexibly and were more driven by perceptual saliency than younger adults. These findings suggest that aging severely impairs the attentional regulation of auditory perception.     

The Effects of Experimentally Induced Rumination Versus Distraction on Analogue Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms

Rumination has been suggested to be an important factor maintaining posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using an analogue design, this study aimed to experimentally test the hypothesis that trauma-related rumination maintains PTSD symptoms. Fifty-one participants were first asked to give a detailed narrative of a negative life event and were then randomly assigned to a rumination or distraction condition. In line with the hypotheses, rumination about the event resulted in the maintenance of negative mood and intrusive memories immediately after the manipulation whereas distraction resulted in symptom reduction. However, this effect was reversed during a subsequent symptom provocation task, in which distraction led to a greater increase in some of the symptoms than rumination. Results are in line with the idea that rumination is involved in the maintenance of PTSD but may suggest a complex relationship between rumination and posttraumatic stress symptoms.     

A role for Synapsin in associative learning: the Drosophila larva as a study case

Synapsins are evolutionarily conserved, highly abundant vesicular phosphoproteins in presynaptic terminals. They are thought to regulate the recruitment of synaptic vesicles from the reserve pool to the readily-releasable pool, in particular when vesicle release is to be maintained at high spiking rates. As regulation of transmitter release is a prerequisite for synaptic plasticity, we use the fruit fly Drosophila to ask whether Synapsin has a role in behavioral plasticity as well; in fruit flies, Synapsin is encoded by a single gene (syn). We tackled this question for associative olfactory learning in larval Drosophila by using the deletion mutant syn^97CS, which had been backcrossed to the Canton-S wild-type strain (CS) for 13 generations. We provide a molecular account of the genomic status of syn^97CS by PCR and show the absence of gene product on Western blots and nerve-muscle preparations. We found that olfactory associative learning in syn^97CS larvae is reduced to ~50% of wild-type CS levels; however, responsiveness to the to-be-associated stimuli and motor performance in untrained animals are normal. In addition, we introduce two novel behavioral control procedures to test stimulus responsiveness and motor performance after “sham training.” Wild-type CS and syn^97CS perform indistinguishably also in these tests. Thus, larval Drosophila can be used as a case study for a role of Synapsin in associative learning.     

Shedding light on words and sentences: near-infrared spectroscopy in language research

Investigating the neuronal network underlying language processing may contribute to a better understanding of how the brain masters this complex cognitive function with surprising ease and how language is acquired at a fast pace in infancy. Modern neuroimaging methods permit to visualize the evolvement and the function of the language network. The present paper focuses on a specific methodology, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), providing an overview over studies on auditory language processing and acquisition. The methodology detects oxygenation changes elicited by functional activation of the cerebral cortex. The main advantages for research on auditory language processing and its development during infancy are an undemanding application, the lack of instrumental noise, and its potential to simultaneously register electrophysiological responses. Also it constitutes an innovative approach for studying developmental issues in infants and children. The review will focus on studies on word and sentence processing including research in infants and adults.     

Health care practitioners' perceptions of public mental health care in the Eastern Cape,South Africa

This qualitative study explored the perceptions of health care practitioners (HCPs) concerning public mental health care in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data were collected from thirteen purposively selected HCPs using in-depth unstructured interviews (males?=?6, females?=?7). Data were transcribed verbatim and later thematically analysed. The findings suggest that mental health professionals perceive mental health services to be both inadequate and of suboptimal quality. Specifically, they perceived public mental health care to have lower priority, to be poorly resourced and lacking in patient-oriented care qualities.