Culture and Cognitive Theory: Toward a Reformulation

In a provocative and important recent article Anthony Marsella (1998) makes an eloquent plea for the forging of a new metadiscipline of psychology that he labels global-community psychology. Marsella argues that we need a radical rethinking of the fundamental premises of psychology, rooted as they are in Western cultural traditions. Features of an emergent global-community psychology include an emphasis on multicultural and multidisciplinary approaches to human behavior that draw attention to the importance of context and meaning in human lives. Marsella's call for a global-community psychology reflects, in part, a growing body of literature that demonstrates the importance of cultural factors in a diver-sity of psychological domains such as cognition, emotion, social behavior, and psychopathology

A natural history of mind: the role of evolutionary explanations in psychology

Evolutionary theory has been employed to explain psychological and social phenomena for over a hundred years. However, despite various claims that evolutionary theory should be considered the dominant theoretical framework for psychology, mainstream psychologists have resisted the widespread use of evolutionary explanations in their domain. This thesis aims to clarify the role of evolutionary explanations in psychology. In particular, I demonstrate that a clearer understanding of the role of evolutionary explanations in psychology is obtained by drawing on some recent literature in the philosophy of science. Evolutionary theory, I argue offers a coherent, unifying, explanatory framework for psychology, and evolutionary explanations should have a more prominent role in psychological science than they have had in the past. However, mainstream psychological theory will not be entirely replaced by theories drawn from the evolutionary research programme. The relationship between evolutionary explanations and other sorts of explanations in psychology is clarified, and some suggestions as to what evolutionary theory offers the future of psychology are forwarded

News coverage of sexual offending in New Zealand, 2003.

The objective of this study was to assess the extent and nature of newspaper coverage of sexual offending in New Zealand in 2003. All news stories relating to sexual offending published in three daily newspapers (The New Zealand Herald, The Press, and The Dominion) were coded on a range of variables including article type, topic and frame of article, any reference to treatment, sources quoted in the report, and the type of offence mentioned. Overall there were 377 articles relating to sexual offending in the three newspapers. Most articles were either descriptions of offences/court reports (31.6%) or were related to specific offences or offenders (35.3%), with few articles focusing on either treatment (3.2%) or education and prevention (2.4%). The most frequent source for the articles were police or legal representatives (N=220) with few articles drawing on the comments and opinions of either mental health specialists (N=56) or academics (N=12). Consistent with prior research on crime reporting, there were a disproportionate number of high profile cases covered in the news, with nine cases capturing 22% of the total news coverage on sex offending in New Zealand in 2003. Some implications of these findings for clinicians and academics are discussed

THE ROLE OF EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATIONS IN CRIMINOLOGY Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT Criminology is widely accepted to be an interdisciplinary subject. However, evolutionary approaches are conspicuous by their absence in mainstream criminological contexts. Although the reasons for this theoretical lacuna are no doubt varied, we argue that the time is apposite for a measured consideration of the role of evolutionary explanations in criminology. By drawing on the idea of vertical integration and through recognition of how different theories are typically pitched at different levels of analysis we describe how evolutionary approaches might be integrated with mainstream criminological theories. The integration of evolutionary approaches with strain, control, and developmental approaches are given specific consideration. We illustrate how this integrated perspective can inform our understanding of one substantive area in criminology, the nature of punishment. We conclude that the growing literature in evolutionary forensic psychology and recent developments in the application of evolutionary theory to human behavior provide a valuable opportunity for criminologists to broaden their theoretical horizons and more fully consider how evolutionary approaches may contribute to their discipline

Mutable memories : the misinformation effect and blended memory responses

The finding that misleading post-event information can impair subjects' reporting of originally presented items has led to numerous theoretical explanations: It is alternatively being suggested that the effect is due to demand characteristics, response bias (McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985a), overwriting of information (Loftus, 1975), retrieval impairment (Christiaansen & Ochalek, 1983), trace integration (Loftus, 1977), or source misattribution (Lindsay & Johnson, 1988). Two experiments were conducted which demonstrated that when a misleading, interpolated face was presented after an original event face subjects most frequently selected a blend face option on the recognition test, representing aspects of both faces shown. It is argued that demand characteristics, response bias, source misattribution or overwriting cannot account for the results found. Instead, a summed similarity exemplar model or a prototype model are suggested as the most cogent theoretical frameworks for explaining the misinformation effects found

Evolutionary explanations in the social and behavioral sciences : introduction and overview

Despite a growing acceptance of the value of evolutionary approaches to understanding the natural world there has been relatively little attention paid to evolutionary ideas in sociology, socio-cultural anthropology, and — of particular relevance for this special issue — criminology and forensic/correctional psychology. The aim of this paper is to provide an introductory overview of evolutionary approaches to human behavior with a focus on illuminating the role they can play in enriching our understanding of criminal and antisocial behavior. We begin with an overview of the main approaches to applying evolutionary theory to human behavior and we suggest that a pluralistic perspective is most likely to advance conceptual and empirical work in the field. We then turn to a brief discussion of some common, but misguided criticisms of this approach. Some of the more substantive conceptual and methodological issues that evolutionary approaches need to address are then explored. Finally, we engage with the broader issues that relate to the role of evolutionary explanations in the social and behavioral sciences

Evolutionary psychology and the rehabilitation of offenders : constraints and consequences

The mainstream view in criminology and correctional psychology is that evolutionary perspectives have little to offer researchers or practitioners and may in fact lead to overly reductionist and crude responses to the complex issue of crime and its consequences. However, in our view all the major evolutionary approaches to the explanation of human behavior have something of value to contribute, with niche construction providing a particularly useful lens upon crime and its management. In this paper we analyze the concept of rehabilitation and describe the key features of effective rehabilitation. We argue that niche construction is responsive to the cognitive versatility and behavioral flexibility of human beings and can also accommodate the important role of social and cultural scaffolding in the rehabilitation process