Enhancing the assessment of verbal aggression through observational methodology

The assessment of verbal aggression in adolescent and young adult dating relationships has largely relied on self-report methodology. We investigated whether information on verbal aggression derived from an observational assessment would enhance the prediction of romantic relationship satisfaction and dissolution in a sample of young adult dating relationships (N = 113). Observationally assessed verbal aggression was moderately associated with self-reported verbal aggression. Consistent with previous findings, neither self-reported nor observationally assessed verbal aggression was associated with relationship dissolution. Observationally assessed verbal aggression and self-reported verbal aggression each uniquely accounted for a substantial amount of variability in romantic relationship satisfaction. The findings of this study provide additional support for conducting multimethod assessments of verbal aggression and incorporating observational methodology in the study of aggression in young adult dating relationships.     

On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World: Imitating the Behaviors of Others Reduces the Blaming of Innocent Victims

Innocent victims of crime are often blamed for what happened to them. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that victim blaming can be significantly reduced when people mimic the behavior of the victim or even a person unrelated to the crime. Participants watched a person on a video after which we assessed the extent of their spontaneous mimicry reactions (Study 1) or participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of this person (Study 2). Then, they were informed about a rape and criminal assault and judged the degree to which they thought the victims were responsible for the crime. One of the crimes happened to the same person as the person they previously did or did not mimic. The other crime happened to a person unrelated to the mimicry situation. Results of both studies revealed that previously mimicking the victim or an unrelated person reduced the degree to which victims were being blamed.     

Battering Men and Their Male Therapists: The Different and the Similar

This paper describes the process of change in attitudes of male social workers’ towards themselves and towards their clients who are male perpetrators of partner violence (PV). The process reveals a reconstruction of the therapist’s beliefs concerning key elements in their work related being, such as masculinity, aggression, perception of their clients and their own male identities. The sample includes 15 male social workers that worked with battering men in social services. Data collection was performed through semi-structured interviews. The therapists’ process of questioning the popular and accepted demonization of violent men clarifies what differentiates them from their clients, but also opens an authentic pathway to examining similarities they share as men, without the need to be politically correct or to conform. The implications for practitioners working in batterers’ intervention programs are addressed.     

Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change

Most policy-relevant work on climate change in the social sciences either analyzes costs and benefits of particular policy options against important but often narrow sets of objectives or attempts to explain past successes or failures. We argue that an ??applied forward reasoning?? approach is better suited for social scientists seeking to address climate change, which we characterize as a ??super wicked?? problem comprising four key features: time is running out; those who cause the problem also seek to provide a solution; the central authority needed to address it is weak or non-existent; and, partly as a result, policy responses discount the future irrationally. These four features combine to create a policy-making ??tragedy?? where traditional analytical techniques are ill equipped to identify solutions, even when it is well recognized that actions must take place soon to avoid catastrophic future impacts. To overcome this tragedy, greater attention must be given to the generation of path-dependent policy interventions that can ??constrain our future collective selves.?? Three diagnostic questions result that orient policy analysis toward understanding how to trigger sticky interventions that, through progressive incremental trajectories, entrench support over time while expanding the populations they cover. Drawing especially from the literature on path dependency, but inverting it to develop policy responses going forward, we illustrate the plausibility of our framework for identifying new areas of research and new ways to think about policy interventions to address super wicked problems.     

Understanding and Using the Rorschach Inkblot Test to Assess Post-Traumatic Conditions

Partially, in response to recent and current military conflicts, many forensic and clinical researchers and practitioners have devoted increasing interest to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the individual variations in response to trauma. Such efforts have produced a considerable amount of research and opinion supporting the assessment of post-traumatic conditions with the Rorschach Inkblot Test. Based on PTSD and Rorschach research and an appreciation as the Rorschach as a performance test, five interpretive considerations are presented (1) cognitive constriction, (2) trauma-related imagery, (3) trauma-related cognitive disturbances, (4) stress response, and (5) dissociation. These five provide a conceptual starting point for the understanding and application of the test to post-traumatic conditions. Implications for the clinical and forensic evaluation of post-traumatic conditions and for research are presented.     

Chinese Nationalism and its Political and Social Origins

Using the 2008 China Survey, this paper examines Chinese respondents' feelings toward their country and how such feelings are related to their democratic values. First, it compares Chinese nationalism with that of 35 countries and regions in the 2003 National Identity Survey. Second, it looks at the origins of Chinese nationalism as embedded in the social and political characteristics of individuals. Third, it further examines the impact of nationalism on people's political attitudes. The findings show that nationalism in contemporary China is better predicted by the political and economic characteristics of an individual rather than cultural attributes, and that nationalism serves as a powerful instrument in impeding public demand for democratic change.     

Assessing trait memory distrust: Psychometric properties of the Squire Subjective Memory Questionnaire

Purpose. When people suffer from memory distrust, they evaluate their memory in negative terms. Memory distrust plays an important role in police interrogations because it may underlie false confessions. The Squire Subjective Memory Questionnaire (SSMQ) intends to be a simple measure of trait memory distrust. To our knowledge, no data have been published about the psychometric properties of the SSMQ. Methods. Relying on five samples (Ns = 70–819) of healthy individuals and patients, we studied the psychometric characteristics of the SSMQ. Participants were recruited at the university, a neuropsychological unit or through advertisements in newspapers. They were asked to complete the SSMQ and several other tests. In this way, reliability and validity parameters could be assessed. Results. Principle component analysis showed that the SSMQ has a one‐dimensional structure referring to subjective memory evaluation. The SSMQ was found to have adequate reliability and good construct validity. Furthermore, it appears to correlate in a theoretically meaningful way with age and cognitive failures. Conclusions. All together, the SSMQ is a psychometrically sound screening tool that can be helpful in assessing subjective memory evaluations in the legal domain. In this way, vulnerable suspects can be identified in an early stage.     

Examining the Use of Disciplinary Segregation within and across Prisons

Prison officials have historically been afforded considerable discretion to administer sanctions designed to maintain order and security within a prison. Such discretion can generate disparate treatment of offender groups, but few studies have investigated whether sanction disparities exist within prisons, despite considerable research on sanctioning decisions made by other criminal justice actors. We use data collected from a nationally representative sample of inmates housed in state operated confinement facilities to examine potential influences of prison officials’ decisions to impose one type of sanction—disciplinary segregation. Multi-level analyses reveal that both legally relevant criteria such as prior misconduct history and extralegal factors such as age and holding a prison job affected whether an inmate was placed in disciplinary segregation for a rule violation. Also, prisons in which a greater proportion of the inmate population is involved in prison work and prisons with a higher density of inmates classified minimum-security use disciplinary segregation less frequently.     

Individual and Environmental Influences on Prison Officer Safety

Prison officers are exposed to violence and other safety risks at rates higher than workers in most occupations are, and indicators of workplace safety have been linked to a number of negative health and occupational outcomes among officers. Yet, few researchers have examined the sources of prison officer safety. Using data collected from over 1,800 officers working in 45 prisons, we apply a multi-level opportunity framework to examine the individual and environmental influences on objective and subjective measures of officer safety. Our analysis revealed that officer safety is affected by officers’ routines (e.g. frequency of contact with inmates) and characteristics that might reflect officers’ suitability as targets (e.g. age, race). We also observed that indicators of both micro- (e.g. coworker support) and macro-level (e.g. architectural design) guardianship influence prison officers’ safety.