Predicting private and public helping behaviour by implicit attitudes and the motivation to control prejudiced reactions

The role of individual differences in implicit attitudes toward homosexuals and motivation to control prejudiced reactions (MCPR) in predicting private and public helping behaviour was investigated. After assessing the predictor variables, 69 male students were informed about a campaign of a local gay organization. They were provided with an opportunity to donate money and sign a petition in the presence (public setting) or absence (private setting) of the experimenter. As expected, more helping behaviour was shown in the public than in the private setting. But while the explicit cognitive attitude accounted for helping behaviour in both settings, an implicit attitude x MCPR interaction accounted for additional variability of helping in the public setting only. Three different mediating processes are discussed as possible causes of the observed effects

Development of a Cued Pro- and Antisaccade Paradigm: An Indirect Measure to Explore Automatic Components of Sexual Interest

We developed a cued pro- and antisaccade paradigm (CPAP) to explore automatic components of sexual interest. Heterosexual participants (n = 32 women, n = 25 men) had to perform fast eye movements towards and away from sexually relevant or irrelevant stimuli across a congruent (i.e. prosaccade towards sexually relevant stimuli, antisaccade away from sexually irrelevant stimuli) and an incongruent condition (i.e. prosaccade towards sexually irrelevant stimuli, antisaccade away from sexually relevant stimuli). We hypothesized that pro- and antisaccade performance would be influenced by the sexual interest-specific relevance of the presented stimulus (i.e., nude female or male stimulus) and the instructed task (i.e., pro- or antisaccade) and, thus, differ meaningfully between conditions. Results for prosaccades towards sexually relevant stimuli in the congruent condition showed that error rates were lower and latencies were shorter compared with prosaccades towards sexually irrelevant stimuli in the incongruent condition, but only for male participants. In addition, error rates for antisaccades away from sexually irrelevant stimuli in the congruent condition were lower than for antisaccades away from sexually relevant stimuli in the incongruent condition, for both female and male participants. Latencies of antisaccades, however, did not differ between conditions. In comparison with established indirect sexual interest paradigms, the CPAP benefits from measuring highly automated processes less prone to deliberate control. To this end, the CPAP could be applied to explore the interplay of early automatic and deliberate components of sexual information processing

Pro-criminal attitudes, intervention, and recidivism

We review the recent research literature on pro-criminal attitudes (PCAs) as dcausal factor of recidivism with a focus on studies on the effectiveness of offender treatment programs targeting PCAs to prevent recidivism. The main conclusions that can be derived from the literature are: (1) the evidence supports the hypothesis that PCAs are related to reoffending; (2) most investigated offender treatment programs tend to reduce PCAs, although the general lack of adequate control group designs does not rule out alternative explanations for this reduction; and (3) there is no conclusive empirical evidence that intervention programs designed to reduce PCAs are effective in reducing recidivism. Empirical research in this area lacks the theoretical and methodological rigor to test causal models of the influence of treatment on reducing PCAs, and effects of PCAs on recidivism. Limitations of the empirical evidence are related to inadequate research designs and/or suboptimal data analysis strategies. Recommendations concerning optimized research designs and data analysis strategies that are likely to provide more conclusive evidence on the relation of PCAs, PCA treatment, and recidivism are given. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Literaturübersicht zur prädiktiven Validität des Static-99 im deutschsprachigen Raum

<jats:title>Zusammenfassung</jats:title><jats:p>In diesem Artikel werden die Ergebnisse von 18 Studien aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz hinsichtlich der Rückfälligkeit von Sexualstraftätern und der prädiktiven Validität des Static-99 beschrieben. Auf dieser Grundlage wurden für den Static-99 gewichtete Mittelwerte der „area under the curve“ (AUC) berechnet. Es zeigt sich, dass der Static-99 im deutschsprachigen Raum valide Vorhersagen zu unterschiedlichen Rückfallstraftaten treffen kann (mittlere AUC = 0,68 bis 0,72). Die AUC-Werte werden für verschiedene Täter- und Altersgruppen nachgewiesen und variieren meist zwischen 0,67 und 0,76. Die Rückfallkategorien des Static-99 erweisen sich ebenfalls als gültig. Schwächere Werte werden für die Anwendung bei Personen, die wegen eines Sexualdelikts gegen Erwachsene verurteilt wurden und für die Vorhersage nichtsexueller Gewalttaten berichtet. Eine Diskussion der Ergebnisse sowie ein Ausblick auf die zukünftige Forschung werden gegeben.</jats:p&gt

Acoustic profiles in vocal emotion expression

Professional actors' portrayals of 14 emotions varying in intensity and valence were presented to judges. The results on decoding replicated earlier findings on the ability of judges to infer vocally expressed emotions with much-better-than-chance accuracy, including consistently found differences in the recognizability of different emotions. A total of 224 portrayals were subjected to digital acoustical analysis to obtain profiles of vocal parameters for different emotions. The data suggest that vocal parameters not only index the degree of intensity typical for different emotions but also differentiate valence or quality aspects. The data are also used to test theoretical predictions on vocal patterning based on the component process of model of emotion (K. R. Scherer, see record 1986-16849-001). Although most hypotheses are supported, some need to be revised on the basis of the empirical evidence. Discriminant analysis and jackknifing show remarkably high hit rates and patterns of confusion that closely mirror those found for listener-judges