The Maltreatment : Aggression Link among Prosecuted Males : What about Psychopathy?

Criminal offenders constitute a high-risk sample regarding experiences of childhood maltreatment and engagement in severe aggression. Moreover, psychopathic traits are more common in samples of offenders than non-offenders. Although research has underlined the relationship between childhood maltreatment and adult aggression, the influence of psychopathy on this link is still unclear. We examined the dynamics of maltreatment, aggression, and psychopathy in a mixed sample of 239 male violent, sexual, and other offenders using latent factor structural equation modeling. We found a consistent positive association of maltreatment with aggression. Psychopathy did not mediate this relation. Maltreatment was not associated with psychopathy, although psychopathy had a positive effect on aggressive behavior. These dynamics appeared similar for violent, sexual, and other offenders. However, latent variables were constructed somewhat differently depending on the offender status. For instance, sexual abuse appeared to be of specific importance in sexual offenders. Violent offenders showed high rates of psychopathy compared to sexual and other offenders. The current findings may inspire future research to focus more closely on the different subtypes of psychopathy when examining its role in the prediction of aggression based on childhood maltreatment. Moreover, childhood maltreatment must not be neglected in treatment and prevention approaches aimed at reducing the risk of aggressive behavior

Teaching History on the Scale of the Anthropocene: Three Ethical Challenges

The Anthropocene strikes at the heart of the principle that making moral judgements involves a rich understanding of historical context. This article elaborates three subsequent challenges for history educators. First, locating human beings in geological time requires us to upscale our temporal conceptions of the human while downscaling our existential conceptions of the human. Second, we must make sense of a humanity that has combined an overwhelming power with a frightening loss of control, reviving the question of whether historical agents are to be morally judged by reference to their purposes and intentions. Third, history educators must be on guard against conceptions of the future that dispense with important notions of human and political agency. The challenges amount to a need to rethink the categories of scale employed by history educators to situate and explain human experience in time and space.publishedVersio

Emissionsreduktion bei Haltung auf Spaltenböden: Bewertung eines neuartigen Reinigungsverfahrens

Die Laufstallhaltung von Rindern trägt in hohen Maß zu den Gesamtemission von Ammoniak bei. Als eine wichtige Quelle können Laufflächen wie Spaltenböden angesehen werden. Daher war das Ziel der Untersuchungen, die Auswirkungen eines Reinigungssytems für Spaltenboden auf die Ammoniakemissionen in der Rinderhaltung zu bewerten. Das Reinigunsgerät stellt eine Kombination von Hochdruck- Wasserdüse, mechanische Sternewalze und einem Gummischieber dar

The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common in community samples and are associated with various dysfunctional physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences. In this regard, criminal offenders are at specific risk, considering their elevated ACE rates compared with community samples and the associations of ACEs with criminal behaviors. However, assessing ACEs in offender samples by self-reports has been criticized with regard to their validity and reliability. We examined the suitability of ACE-self-reports using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) in a sample of 231 male offenders involved in the German criminal justice system by comparing self-reported to externally rated ACEs to externally rated ACEs based on the information from the offenders’ criminal and health-related files and on interviews conducted by forensically trained psychological/psychiatric experts. The accordance between self-ratings and expert ratings was examined considering mean differences, correlations, inter-rater agreement measures, and regression analyses. Offenders themselves reported a higher ACE burden than the one that was rated externally, but there was a strong relationship between CTQ self-assessments and external assessments. However, associations were stronger in offenders seen for risk assessment than in those evaluated for criminal responsibility. Overall, the CTQ seems suitable for use in forensic samples. However, reporting bias in self-reports of ACEs should be expected. Therefore, the combination of self-assessments and external assessments seems appropriate