Doing Nothing is Sometimes Worse: Comparing Avoidant versus Approach Coping Strategies with Peer Victimization and Their Association to Depression and Suicide Ideation

ABSTRACT

Peer victimization is a major stressor adolescents often face in the school environment, and has been linked to depression and suicidal risk. This study analyzed the associations between three behavioral coping strategies (avoidance, seeking social support from adults/peers, and retaliation) and depression and suicidal ideation. Participants included 4,254 victimized students who were part of the Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE) study that compared three school-based prevention interventions and collected information on health risk behaviors in adolescents from 11 European countries. Results showed behavioral avoidance to be associated with an increase in levels of depression, as compared to the other coping strategies (adult social support, peer social support, retaliation). Seeking social support from adults was associated with lower depression and suicidal ideation rates. A more than 25% increase in suicidal ideation was associated with behavioral avoidance, compared to seeking social support from adults. By contrast, retaliation to peer victimization was not found to be associated with increased depression or suicidal ideation. The findings support the Coping Deficit model and may suggest that abstaining by doing nothing when victimized can be associated with certain adverse emotional outcomes.     

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy with Domestic Violence Populations

Domestic violence continues to be a significant social problem impacting our society. Battered women and their children experience a myriad of negative consequences as a result of domestic violence. Of the possible negative sequelae that mothers and children experience, the disrupted parent–child relationship has received relatively little attention in the literature. Though psychosocial interventions are available to treat women who experience violence and children who witness violence, few interventions focus on the parent–child relationship. This article describes parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), a relationship-based intervention. Although not initially developed to treat domestic violence, PCIT has unique characteristics that make it a promising intervention with this population. A rationale for the use of PCIT with battered women and their children is presented.     

Post factum clarity: failure to identify spontaneous threats

This study explores an information interpretation explanation of strategic surprises using a non-traditional national security threat: a popular uprising. To explain why this type of assessments fail, I emphasize the role of information relevance when evaluating intelligence about civilian unrest. I posit that the dynamic nature of relevance is crucial for signals of popular dissent becoming dominant indicators that are incorporated into security assessments. A case study and observational data analysis of the Palestinian uprising (Intifada, 1987) demonstrate how information relevance contributed to the Israeli intelligence failure and how it affects the potential for strategic surprises facing a civilian threat.     

Defense Conversion in Small Companies: Risk, Activities, and Success Assessment

The defense industry has been experiencing a large draw-down during the 1990s. This has left many companies, large and small, in a situation where they had to examine the viability and future of their businesses. While large and medium-size companies were somewhat assisted by government policies and support, small subcontractors were often left alone, facing higher risks and severe threats to their future. This research investigated the events, decisions, activities and success of small defense contractors, which had to face this new situation. It developed a specific framework, which may be used to help companies in assessing their conversion efforts. The study was conducted by utilizing a within-case and cross-case methodology for case study analysis. Results assert the difficulties for highly defense dependent companies to enter and succeed in the commercial market and explain why many conversion efforts have often failed in the past. Our findings show that to convert successfully, companies must streamline and improve their internal processes, develop a strategic plan, develop their marketing capabilities, and must have management and employee commitment to the process. Although such recommendations were expected, we found, that to many of these companies, they were completely new. As a by-product to this study, we found that managers in small businesses are typically not aware of modern concepts of strategic management and do not normally read the management literature. A new approach to educating such managers is needed, and thus suggested.     

Interethnic contacts in an alternative educational environment: The Israeli Shelef project

The purpose of the study was to examine the unique interethnic contact situation provided by the Israeli Shelef project and its consequences in changes of ethnic stereotypes among Shelef participants. The study population consisted of all 49 Shelef members during the academic year 1979–1980, who resided in seven different development towns. They responded to an anonymous questionnaire which solicited information concerning their personal background and measures of interethnic relations. The data indicate that the tendency to generalize and to relate to people categorically decreased over the year and was replaced by a more individualistic approach to people different than one's own. Also, Shelef members' valuation of eastern Jews and development townspeople became higher, and their readiness to associate with them became complete and unconditional at all levels of intimacy. The implications of the project for providing adolescents with meaningful experiences, bringing the school and the real world closer together, are also discussed.Received Ph.D. in sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Main interests are sociology of education, political socialization, and sociology of the family.Received M.A. in the sociology of education from Tei-Aviv University. Currently working in teachers' training in the social sciences.     

Whose Fault Is it Anyway? Political Orientation, Attributions of Responsibility, and Support for the War in Iraq

Political orientation has been shown to be a strong predictor of attitudes toward war. Specifically, political conservatism has been associated with increased support for war and with decreased attribution of responsibility for war to one’s own government. The present research aims to test whether the relationship between political orientation and support for the war in Iraq is mediated by attributions of government responsibility. In Study 1, survey data showed that the relationship between political orientation and support for the Iraq war was mediated by beliefs about the US government’s motivations for the war. Study 2 provided a conceptual replication of the proposed mediation model and extended the findings from beliefs about US government motivations to perceived threat from the pre-war Iraqi government. Study 3 used an experimental paradigm to manipulate perceived threat to show that such beliefs directly affected support for the war. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Invited commentary: applying psychodynamic developmental assessment to explore mental functioning in adolescents

Recent publications in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence present a variety of topics exploring adolescents' mental functioning in the twenty first century. Conceptually, many of the articles address the intriguing, though rarely explicit, question of developmental continuities and change from adolescence to adulthood. Such investigations, which are particularly prominent in articles that discuss personality dispositions such as impulsivity or lack of empathy and their relationship to emotionally disturbed or maladaptive interpersonal behaviors, examine interactional effects of these dispositions within the personality-context matrix. From a methodological perspective, however, the major tools used for assessing personality dispositions are self-report inventories while performance-based methods, previously defined as projective tests, are not used at all despite the wide range of empirical studies that provide support for their psychometric properties. This commentary suggests that applying a theoretically based, multi-method assessment procedure in empirical research would be most fruitful for any study aimed at exploring mental functioning in adolescents. As an example, I would use the Rorschach Inkblot Method, currently being internationally considered as the most frequently applied personality test for assessing adolescents. Implications for research, practice and policy decision-making are discussed.     

The Longitudinal Effects of Chronic Mediated Exposure to Political Violence on Ideological Beliefs About Political Conflicts Among Youths

This study examines the effects of chronic (i.e., repeated and cumulative) mediated exposure to political violence on ideological beliefs regarding political conflict. It centers on these effects on young viewers, from preadolescents to adolescents. Ideological beliefs refers here to support of war, perception of threat to one’s nation, and normative beliefs concerning aggression toward the out-group. A longitudinal study was conducted on a sample of Israeli and Palestinian youths who experience the Israeli-Palestinian conflict firsthand (N = 1,207). Two alternative hypotheses were tested: that chronic exposure via the media increases support for war and aggression and elevates feeling of threat, or that chronic exposure via the media strengthens preexisting beliefs. Results demonstrated that higher levels of exposure were longitudinally related to stronger support for war. Regarding normative beliefs about aggression and threat to one’s nation, mediated exposure reinforced initial beliefs, rendering the youths more extreme in their attitudes. These results mostly support the conceptualization of the relation between media violence and behaviors as “reciprocally determined” or “reinforcing spirals.” The results are also discussed in light of the differences found between the effect of exposure to political violence firsthand and exposure via the media.     

The Psychology of Terrorism: “Syndrome” Versus “Tool” Perspectives

ABSTRACT

Two psychological perspectives on terrorism are distinguished, approaching it as a “syndrome” and as a “tool,” respectively. According to the “syndrome” view, terrorism represents a psychologically meaningful construct with identifiable characteristics on individual and group levels of analysis. According to the “tool” perspective, terrorism represents a strategic instrument that any party in a conflict with another may use. Research thus far has found little support for the “syndrome” view. Terrorists do not seem to be characterized by a unique set of psychological traits or pathologies. Nor has research uncovered any particular “root causes” of terrorism. The vast heterogeneity of terrorism's users is consistent with the “tool” view, affording an analysis of terrorism in terms of means-ends psychology. The “tool” view implies conditions under which potential perpetrators may find terrorism more or less appealing, hence offering guidance for the “war on terrorism.”