Apostates as a Hidden Population of Abuse Victims

The term “apostate” describes the term used by the religious to describe individuals raised within religious families who once identified as religious, but who have ceased to believe in the existence of God, gods or follow their religious belief, and now identify as non-religious. Given the strong feelings families can have about the rejection of their shared faith, and the difficulty that police forces may have in identifying and understanding the complexities of violence toward the apostate, this study sought to examine the possibility that apostates represent a hidden population of abuse victims within religious households. We recruited 228 persons (102 males, 119 females) from an online survey with the support of “Faith to Faithless”—a service within Humanists UK, which supports people that leave their religious faith. Individuals were screened using a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale to quantify their experience of assault and negotiation. It was found that persons who identified as apostates experienced more assault (i.e., harmful violence) than non-religious persons. Within this sample, Muslim apostates were significantly more likely to be victimized than Christian apostates. Disclosure of being abused for identifying as an apostate within a religious household to law enforcement was extremely uncommon, thereby preventing detection or prosecution of abusive acts committed by family members and limiting public awareness of this issue. These results are discussed in the context of the broader culture of honor-based (izzat) violence, which occurs across the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa, and is also seen in some Protestant Christian subcultures, and common to all Abrahamic religions, rather than Islam alone. This study highlights that within a multicultural society, there remain hidden populations of abuse victims who are vulnerable due to religious, cultural, and traditional constraints made by abusive family members

Investigating gender differences in the factor structure of the Gudjonsson Compliance Scale

Purpose: The Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS) remains, in terms of its psychometrics, an under-researched instrument, in which gender differences in particular have been insufficiently examined. The aim of this research was to therefore investigate the effect of gender on the factor structure of the GCS. Method: The GCS was administered to 441 females and 250 males. The data were factor-analysed, with 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-factor solutions tested and compared. Procrustean rotation was applied to the male factor loading matrix to investigate structural equivalence across gender. Results: Although a 3-factor solution was the best fit to the male GCS data, a 4-factor solution was the most acceptable fit to the female data. Whilst each of the factors had a high degree of determinacy, the identity coefficients indicated that these factors differ non-trivially across gender. Conclusion: The GCS may measure different aspects of compliance across males and females, which may explain the gender differences in compliance found within the literature to date. The work also allows insight into why males and females may end up complying with police requests, which might ultimately help to inform strategies, implemented by police, to manage vulnerable general population suspects and witnesses. There is a need now to further investigate the structure of compliance across ethnic groups and/or countries where the GCS is administered

Myths and legends: the reality of rape offences reported to a UK police force

Rape myths affect many aspects of the investigative and criminal justice systems. One such myth, the‘real rape’ myth, states that most rapes involve a stranger using a weapon attacking a woman violently atnight in an isolated, outdoor area, and that women sustain serious injuries from these attacks. The presentstudy examined how often actual offences reported to a central UK police force over a two year periodmatched the ‘real rape’ myth. Out of 400 cases of rape reported, not a single incident was found withall the characteristics of the ‘real rape’ myth. The few stranger rapes that occurred had a strong link tonight-time economy activities, such as the victim and offender both having visited pubs, bars, and clubs.By contrast, the majority of reported rape offences (280 cases, 70.7%) were committed by people knownto the victim (e.g., domestic and acquaintance rapes), occurred inside a residence, with most victimssustaining no physical injuries from the attack. The benefits of these naturalistic findings from the fieldfor educating people about the inaccuracy of rape myths are discussed

Sexual behaviour as a natural laboratory for understanding individual differences

As bonding primates, human sexuality is fundamental to existence and well-being as a species and for most individuals. Sexual behaviour can be diverse or prosaic, as are the antecedent and consequent pathways, indicating individual differences are an influence. Biological dynamics such as puberty, independence, sexual preference, and the move from mating to parenting effort also influence these processes. Key findings observed by Eysenck and Wilson – extroverts are sociosexual, those high in neuroticism have more sexual problems, persons high in psychoticism (i.e., low Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, or high psychopathy/Machiavellianism) have impersonal, loveless, or deviant sexual expression – remain axiomatic. Sexual offenders and risk takers have this dispositional foundation, but are also troubled by sexual preoccupation, use sex for mood management, and have disturbed attachments, all of which are reconviction and relapse risk indicators. Intelligence is also relevant to human sexuality. Arousal and desire can overwhelm even the highly intelligent, as indicated by the risks and bad choices made by mostly rational and prudent individuals. Research into sexual behaviour (however operationalised), personality, and intelligence (and the multiple theories, models, methods, and forms of analysis it requires) helps inculcate an interest in differential psychology and its many applications

Tuning Fermi-surface properties through quantum confinement in metallic meta-lattices: New metals from old atoms

We describe a new class of nanoscale structured metals wherein the effects of quantum confinement are combined with dispersive metallic electronic states to induce modifications to the fundamental low-energy microscopic properties of a three-dimensional metal: the density of states, the distribution of Fermi velocities, and the collective electronic response.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Everyday sadism, dark triad, personality and disgust sensitivity

Research into dark personalities has advocated for the addition of sadism due to its close relationship with other dark traits (Book et al., 2016). Lower disgust for atavistic and animalistic tendencies may provide an objective marker of the greater predatory tendencies and desire for power represented by everyday sadism. In the present study, we explored self-reported personality and disgust traits underlying non-sexual ‘everyday’ sadism (Buckels, Jones & Paulhus, 2013). In line with previous research, it was predicted sadism would be negatively correlated with the honesty-humility, agreeableness and emotionality dimensions of the HEXACO, and positively correlated with psychopathy and Machiavellianism from the Dark Triad. As an added dimension, the study also investigated disgust sensitivity’s relationship to sadism. A total of 235 participants (66.4% female, 31.1% male; mean age 31.35 years (SD = 13.97 years)) completed an online survey comprising a series of psychometric measures. Results indicated that extraversion, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and animal reminder disgust were significant predictors of sadism scores. Future studies may want to include a measure of disgust sensitivity (including behavioral indices) to investigate its relationship with sadism and the DT

The dark triad and intimate partner violence

Psychological abuse within intimate partner violence (IPV) is poorly researched. We investigated the impact of dark triad (DT) traits and personality on psychological, physical and sexual abuse, and whether DT traits have incremental validity over general personality dimensions in the prediction of IPV expressed psychologically, physically, and sexually. IPV was measured via the Multidimensional Measure of Emotional Abuse (MMEA) and the short form of the revised Conflict Tactics Scale, version 2 (CTS2S) in a general community sample (N = 128). Correlation and regression analysis indicated that low agreeableness and psychopathy had the strongest associations and most predictive relationships with both psychological abuse and physical/sexual abuse. Low agreeableness was predictive of both the participants' and their partners' perpetration of physical/sexual abuse. A significant positive relationship was also found between high scores on the MMEA and high scores on the CTS2S. A significant positive relationship was found between participants' high psychopathy scores and perpetration of psychological abuse, but this had a smaller effect than a measure of agreeableness alone. We did not find that the DT provides incremental validity for the prediction of either psychological abuse or physical/sexual abuse over basic low Agreeableness

Everyday sadism, dark triad, personality and disgust sensitivity

Research into dark personalities has advocated for the addition of sadism due to its close relationship with other dark traits (Book et al., 2016). Lower disgust for atavistic and animalistic tendencies may provide an objective marker of the greater predatory tendencies and desire for power represented by everyday sadism. In the present study, we explored self-reported personality and disgust traits underlying non-sexual ‘everyday’ sadism (Buckels, Jones & Paulhus, 2013). In line with previous research, it was predicted sadism would be negatively correlated with the honesty-humility, agreeableness and emotionality dimensions of the HEXACO, and positively correlated with psychopathy and Machiavellianism from the Dark Triad. As an added dimension, the study also investigated disgust sensitivity’s relationship to sadism. A total of 235 participants (66.4% female, 31.1% male; mean age 31.35 years (SD = 13.97 years)) completed an online survey comprising a series of psychometric measures. Results indicated that extraversion, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and animal reminder disgust were significant predictors of sadism scores. Future studies may want to include a measure of disgust sensitivity (including behavioral indices) to investigate its relationship with sadism and the DT