Teachers’ Perceptions of Bullying: A Focus Group Approach

The current qualitative study used a focus group approach to examine teachers’ perceptions of student aggressors and victims. Participants in the current study included 35 teachers from public elementary, middle, and high schools. Teachers’ responses to five questions about risk factors for aggression and victimization, adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies, and advice for victimized youth were analyzed using thematic analysis. Teachers frequently identified family factors as a risk factor for becoming an aggressor. Appearance-based factors, shyness, and emotional reactivity were commonly mentioned as risk factors for victimization. Teachers believed that strong displays of emotions, physical retaliation, and ignoring the situation were ineffective means for victims to respond to peer aggression. Reporting the aggression to an adult, appropriately standing up for oneself, and seeking support from friends were viewed as more effective strategies for responding to peer victimization. Directions for future research and implications for intervention are discussed.     

Criminal justice policy and the psychology of peacemaking

Psychology which once was a primary influence on the development of criminal justice policy has, in recent decades, lost much of its ability to inform how laws and policies are made that concern punishment and social control. The reason for psychology's loss of inluence can be traced to the war on crime political rhetoric adopted by politicians and criminal justice administrators. This paper argues that an emerging peacemaking perspective in the criminal justice system allows the discipline of psychology to once again inform the discourse on criminal justice policy. Issues such as drug abuse, gun control, and capital punishment are appropriate subjects for a psychological perspective in the national debate on criminal justice policy.     

The Suggestibility of Children's Memory for Being Touched: Planting,Erasing, and Changing Memories

Investigates recent claims that it is relatively easy to suggestively plant false memories in children, by comparing the relative vulnerability to suggestibility of changed, planted, and erased memories. 80 4-year-olds and 80 10-year-olds either were touched in a specific way or were not touched at all, and it was later suggested that a different touch, a completely new touch, or no touch at all had occurred. The suggestibility effect occurred only in the changed memory condition; the difference between the experimental changed condition and the corresponding control condition was significant. In the planted and erased memory conditions no suggestibility effect occurred; there was no significant reduction in the experimental groups relative to the corresponding control conditions. Thus, although it is relatively easy to suggest to a child a change in an event that was experienced, it is less likely that an event can be planted in or erased from memory. It is thus inappropriate to provide courtroom testimony regarding the probability of suggestively planting false memories based on the classic suggestibility research, which has largely been restricted to the study of suggestively changing memories.     

Reviews

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