Capacity for Self-Control and Individuals' Interest in Exercising Self-Control

We identify and elaborate a conceptual distinction between capability for self-control and the desire to exercise it, and employ data from a city survey to explore the empirical viability of such a differentiation. Separate scales measuring ability and desire to exercise self-control both prove to be significant and moderately strong predictors of several measures of criminal/deviant behavior, showing independent, cumulative, and interactive relationships with each other. For some measures of crime/deviance, self-control capability is most effective when the individual's interest in exercising self-control is low but its effect is greatly reduced or eliminated when desire to exercise self-control desire is high. Combinations of capability for self-control and interest in exercising it prove to be particularly good predictors of the absolute level of misbehavior.     

论我国刑法中刑事被害人保护的缺失——兼及检察机关公诉权与刑事被害人保护的利害冲突

刑事被害人在犯罪行为结构中的重要地位表明,刑事被害人在刑事立法和司法中应当得到与其所遭受的犯罪侵害相适应的刑法保护。但是,由于扭曲的犯罪观和群体主义本位价值观的制约,以检察机关的公诉权为代表的公众利益却侵蚀了刑法对刑事被害人的保护。     

新型毒品滥用与反社会人格——一个犯罪心理学的透视

如果从犯罪心理学的视角,分析新型毒品滥用群体的人格特征,结合考察新型毒品与传统毒品之间的区别,则不难发现,新型毒品的心理依赖性背后,事实上反应了吸毒者群体中一种共性人格特征;而这种共性人格特征实际又与反社会人格障碍之间有着千丝万缕的联系,其深层原因,在于新型毒品对于反社会人格障碍者而言,是一种释放自身被规范所压抑的人格的最具吸引力,且最少责任的媒介。这就为我们提供了一条矫治新型毒品滥用者的新思路。     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

Is delusional ideation a critical link in the nexus between personality disorder and violent offending?

Evidence suggests that consideration of personality disorder (PD) severity, incorporating both externalising and internalising features of PD, might help to clarify the PD – violence relationship; moreover, that separate developmental pathways might link externalising and internalising personality pathology with criminal violence. This study of 96 forensic patients with confirmed PD and a history of violent offending addressed the question of whether delusional ideation, measured by the Peters Delusions Inventory, might play a significant role in the link between severe PD and criminal violence. Severe PD, defined by summing scores across DSM-IV PD criteria, was significantly associated with delusional thinking, with violence, and with high levels of both externalising and internalising personality features. Delusional thinking was associated with violence via internalising but not externalising PD features, suggesting that the link between severe PD and violence may be partly mediated by delusional thinking.     

Collateral report of psychopathy: convergent and divergent validity of the psychopathic personality inventory-short form

Psychopathy is a personality syndrome comprised of interpersonal, affective, and behavioral features that has emerged as a correlate of intimate partner violence perpetration. One commonly used self-report measure of psychopathy is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Short Form (PPI-SF). The current study employed a multi-trait, multi-method approach to test convergent and discriminant validity of the measure in partner-violent couples by comparing males’ self-report of psychopathy to the informant report of their female partner (N = 114). It was hypothesized that the female partner report of the male’s psychopathy would be highly correlated with the male report of his own psychopathy, thus providing evidence for the construct validity and interrater reliability of the PPI-SF. Analyses found that male and female reports were correlated significantly on the two major factors of the PPI-SF. Furthermore, the female report explained a significant amount of variance over and above men’s self-report on PAI scales designed to indicate antisocial personality traits.     

DELINQUENCY AND GENDER MODERATION IN THE MOVING TO OPPORTUNITY INTERVENTION: THE ROLE OF EXTENDED NEIGHBORHOODS

A long history of research has indicated that neighborhood poverty increases youth's risk taking and delinquency. This literature predominantly has treated neighborhoods as independent of their surroundings despite rapidly growing ecological evidence on the geographic clustering of crime that suggests otherwise. This study proposes that to understand neighborhood effects, investigating youth's wider surroundings holds theoretical and empirical value. By revisiting longitudinal data on more than 1500 low‐income youth who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized intervention, this article explores the importance of extended neighborhoods (neighborhoods and surroundings) and different concentrated disadvantage configurations in shaping gender differences in risk taking and delinquency. The results from two‐stage, least‐squares analyses suggest that the extended neighborhoods matter and they matter differently by gender. Among girls, extended neighborhoods without concentrated disadvantage were associated with lower risk‐taking prevalence than extended neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage. In contrast, among boys, localized concentration of disadvantage was associated with the highest prevalence of risk taking and delinquency. Interactions between the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods were similarly associated with differential opportunity and social disorganization mediators. Among the more critical potential mediators of the link between localized disadvantage and boys’ risk taking were delinquent network ties, strain, and perceived absence of legitimate opportunities for success.     

205例高坠案件局部机械性损伤与死亡性质关系分析

目的探讨高坠案件中局部机械性损伤行为心理分析与死亡性质的关系,为此类案件的定性提供参考。方法收集2008—2013年高坠死亡案件311例,其中存在高坠难以形成的局部机械性损伤案例205例。对损伤形成特点、现场痕迹、高坠致命伤、文字信息等进行分析。结果 205例中,根据初步现场痕迹、高坠致命伤、文字信息等分析后,明确自杀86例,意外24例,性质不明95例。95例性质不明案例经对局部机械性损伤进行行为心理分析后,认定自杀80例,意外11例,他杀4例。结论高坠难以形成的局部机械性损伤与死亡性质具有关联性,根据局部机械性损伤行为心理分析推断高坠死亡性质基本准确。     

Animal Scavenging and Scattering and the Implications for Documenting the Deaths of Undocumented Border Crossers in the Sonoran Desert,

Since 1998, over 5500 people have died while attempting to cross the U.S.–Mexico border without authorization. These deaths have primarily occured in the Arizona desert. Despite the high volume of deaths, little experimental work has been conducted on Sonoran Desert taphonomy. In this study, pig carcasses were used as proxies for human remains and placed in different depositional contexts (i.e., direct sunlight and shade) that replicate typical sites of migrant death. Decomposition was documented through daily site visits, motion-sensitive cameras and GIS mapping, while skeletal preservation was investigated through the collection of the remains and subsequent faunal analysis. Our results suggest that vultures and domestic dogs are underappreciated members of the Sonoran scavenging guild and may disperse skeletal remains and migrant possessions over 25 m from the site of death. The impact of scavengers and the desert environment on the decomposition process has significant implications for estimating death rates and identifying human remains along the Arizona/Mexico border.