Letter From the Editor

American Journal of Criminal Justice -     

Personality Correlates of Aggression: Evidence From Measures of the Five-Factor Model, UPPS Model of Impulsivity, and BIS/BAS

Although many studies of personality and aggression focus on multidimensional traits and higher order personality disorders (e.g., psychopathy), lower order, unidimensional traits may provide more precision in identifying specific aspects of personality that relate to aggression. The current study includes a comprehensive measurement of lower order personality traits in relation to three forms of aggression: reactive, proactive, and relational. Traits related to interpersonal antagonism and impulsivity, especially impulsive behavior in the context of negative affect, were consistently related to aggression across multiple indices. These findings suggest that certain lower order traits are of critical importance to understanding who engages in aggressive behavior and why this behavior occurs.     

Love Between East and West

Despite many Chinese people being very pragmatic when it comes to matters of the heart, Chinese culture also caters to us diehard romantics with the Butterfly Lovers, Madame White Snake, and, of course, the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, just to name a few. The Qixi Festival, also known as the Double Seventh Festival, is so named be-cause it falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. This year, it falls on August 17. The festival is rooted in one of the most romantic myths: Niulang, the Cowherd, and Zhinü, the Weaver Girl from the heavens. These two lovers were separated by a giant river in the sky because love between a mor-tal and a goddess was not allowed.     

The association between Ugandan adolescents’ viewing of specific television genres and sex-related normative beliefs and behaviours

Growing evidence in Western nations indicates that exposure to high levels of sexual media content influences adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviours in those countries. Although media in many sub-Saharan markets contain increasingly higher levels of sexual content, little research has investigated the effects of that content on adolescents’ HIV-related risk and protective behaviours. This project used cultivation theory to examine Ugandan adolescents’ media use, and to test the relationship between their exposure to specific television genres and their sex-related normative beliefs and behaviours. Three hundred and sixty secondary school students from four purposively sampled schools filled out a questionnaire about their television viewing, their beliefs about the prevalence of sexual intercourse among their peers, and their own sexual behaviours. Preliminary evidence of relationships between watching comedy and cartoon programming, and high estimates of the proportion of adolescents who engage in sexual intercourse, were observed. Watching comedy programming and non- African programming was associated with the higher likelihood to have ever had sexual intercourse.