Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore if a ringing cell phone could impact cognitive performance as well as being agitating to provoke aggressive reactions. The study investigated variables that could impact a participant’s willingness to aggress and retaliate, such as sensitivity to arousal and dark personalities (DRPs), Machiavellianism, narcissism, and subclinical psychopathy and sadism.

There were 128 participants (77 women and 51 men). The cognitive load task consisted of forming anagrams while being in a high or low provocation condition. Participants were subsequently asked how willing they would be to allow one out-group member to be harmed in favor of saving several in-group members. Three personality measures were used: two measuring DRPs and one measuring arousal sensitivity.

The authors discovered that older age and subclinical psychopathy were significant predictors for the willingness to aggress. Those in the high provocation condition retaliated the most against the experimenter, and a participant’s English ability was the only variable that predicted good performance on the cognitive task.

The results warrant further research into how personality types, aggression, and everyday, multiple arousal sources intertwine to inform personalized evidence-based interventions. Organizational and educational psychologists could also use this research to in form how offices and schools are run.

Applying social identity theory, the social identity-brand equity model and excitation-transfer theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine effects of game outcome (win/loss) and location (home/away) on sport fans’ brand attitude and purchase intention toward a brand endorsed by their favorite sport team on Facebook, as well as the mediating role of team identification.

A two (win/loss) by two (home/away) full-factorial between-subjects experiment was conducted during the US National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football season over a four-month period. Participants (n=338), who were Facebook users and fans of a NCAA division I football team, completed an online questionnaire assessing brand attitude and purchase intention toward a team-endorsed brand on Facebook, during weeks after the team: won a home game, lost a home game, won an away game, or lost an away game. Results were analyzed using analysis of variance and bootstrapping mediation methods.

Results revealed a significant main effect for game outcome (win/loss), and a significant interaction effect between game outcome (win/loss) and game location (home/away). Team identification also mediated between game outcome (win/loss) and game location (home/away) to influence brand attitude, but not purchase intention.

Implications for use of social networking site (SNS)-based brand endorsements as an integral part of brands’ advertising strategies were discussed. Specifically, brands utilizing SNSs to advertise to sport fans should highlight team endorsements, particularly after home game wins, and also target highly identified fans, to maximize positive SNS-based brand evaluations.

The signal detection theory has evolutionary foundations such that our ancestors who were able to detect signals of aggression survived, while those who could not were extinguished. The paper examines the detection of conflict escalation signals in a domestic argument in a married couple as a consequence of history with prior victimization and perpetration of violence. The purpose of this paper is threefold: escalation detection differences between a trained special victim’s detective and untrained individuals; escalation detection for individuals with domestic violence victimization; and physiological arousal during escalation detection.

Subjects with various histories of victimization and perpetration using the Straus conflict tactics scale watched a video of an argument that escalated in conflict while their heart rate and electrodermal activity (EDA) was measured. Participants were asked to pause the tape and write any verbal and non-verbal signal of escalating conflict. The signal coding used deductive, a prioi coding based on Gottman’s (1994, 2011) corrosive behaviors indicative of conflict. A repeated measures general linear model in sex and conflict initiation using two measures of physiological arousal revealed significant effects on EDA while watching escalating conflict as a function of victimization history.

A series of hypotheses and research questions tested untrained people’s signal detection abilities with a trained, special victim’s unit police investigator as a consequence of male and female-initiated conflict. Untrained viewers reported fewer aggression signals than the police investigator. A repeated measures general linear model using two measures of physiological arousal revealed significant effects on EDA while watching escalating conflict as a function of victimization history. Results are discussed in terms of the signal detection and excitation-transfer theories toward explaining responses to escalating conflict.

A limitation of this study was asking participants to document all abuse while not differentiating between different forms (i.e. emotional, verbal, physical). A future study could investigate how well participants can detect different forms of abuse. This area of research could be beneficial especially in the form of past history. For example, if an individual has been a recipient of emotional abuse, do they detect significantly more signals of emotional abuse than they would for physical abuse?

The findings of our study have could practical publications for advising people who cope with conflict as they vary in their use of negotiation and physical force. The fact that physiological arousal was heightened after exposure to the conflict escalation video as a function of victimization due to physical force has ramifications for watching media with violent content. Therapists could ask survivors if they feel based on their experience, that they could help others to recognize aggressive signals or if they are immune to these signals, given the debate over victim desensitization vs heightened sensitivity.

The authors feel it is imperative to note that our current study was designed to gain a deeper understanding of domestic violence in order to ultimately benefit victims in the recovery process and to (ideally) prevent recurrence of domestic violence in the future. This research is not intended to implicate victims in anyway as being responsible for the consequences of domestic violence due to an inability to detect signals of aggression. Indeed, future research should examine how to skillfully advise domestic violence victims while protecting their already vulnerable self-images.

Every day, people are exposed to violence through social media, news, movies and television. Hence, we may become either sensitized to violence or desensitized. These are competing hypotheses that we tested in conjunction with physiological arousal. It is important to analyze reactions to viewing violence due to the sheer amount that is readily disseminated.

This review collates the empirical evidence on the behavioural effects of media violence. It assesses the content of different forms of media to which patients in secure services could be exposed. Numerous explanations for behaving aggressively are examined, using a variety of theoretical backgrounds. The effect of viewing different forms of violence on individuals' behaviour is also examined. The review includes positive influences of exposure to media violence, though the main findings are that exposure to aggressive and violent material increases aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour. The review presents research on violence depicted in films, video games, comic books and song lyrics, and assesses its impact on aggressive and inappropriate behaviour; it also addresses exposure to weapons. We conclude by outlining how this research could influence policy on the resources made available to forensic populations, advocating assessment of the suitability of presenting a particular piece of media violence to the individual rather than a whole population, and the possibility that individual responses to media violence can be a useful assessment tool.

This paper aims to discuss the dilemma of terrorism as a political phenomenon that many political scientists care about; however, they find themselves incapable of explaining some of its aspects and they resort to other disciplines. The second part of the dilemma is related to the incapability of well-established disciplines to provide political scientists with much help. This raises the following question: Will political scientists be able to enhance their knowledge of terrorism with the help of scholars from consolidated and well-established disciplines or with the help of scholars from interdisciplinary fields?

This research depends on the main theories of psychology and of social psychology and adopts a comparative approach to assess the effectiveness of both disciplines in providing political scientists with the knowledge they lack.

In spite of being a well-established and consolidated discipline, psychology is not the perfect discipline that can help political scientists know who a terrorist is. Social psychological theories of aggression provide political scientists with greater ability to understand what psychological and sociological factors motivate a person to turn to aggression and terrorism. Moreover, social psychology developed the “terror management theory” which clarifies various aspects of the phenomenon.

This research paper calls the attention of scholars of terrorism to the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to understand the various aspects of a complex phenomenon such as terrorism. The interdisciplinary field adopted will differ according to the research question that a researcher needs to answer.

Purpose: Media violence theorists made five methodological errors, which have muddled theory construction. As such, the validity of the claim that media violence must share blame for a rise in aggression in society is suspect.

Approach: Here, the authors explain those five errors: (1) Subclinical psychopathologies interact with media messages in detectable ways. Media violence researchers never paid attention to the composition of their participant samples. Consequently, they were never aware of the inherent vulnerabilities, or immunities, to media violence of their participants. (2) Media violence researchers used convenience samples when they should have used random samples to study media violence. The nature of the research questions they were asking required the use of random samples. But, with the use of convenience samples, those samples never matched the populations they were designed to examine. (3) Media violence researchers used expansive variable lists that probably triggered family-wise interaction effects, thus reporting interactions between independent and dependent variables that were meaningless. (4) Most media violence data are correlational. So, researchers used converged data from correlational studies to infer causation. But their convergence procedures were improperly executed, which led to incorrect interpretations. (5) Media violence researchers, from the outset of their work in the 1980s, pathologized media violence first, then set about trying to find out how it presumably harmed society. Those researchers should have considered the idea that media violence is nothing more than mere entertainment for most people.

Value: In addition to questioning the claims made by media violence researchers, these five errors serve as a cautionary tale to social media researchers. Scholars investigating the effects of social media use might consider the possibility that social media are nothing more than new modes of communication.

Pressure pulsations and vibration working condition lead to dynamic troubles in hydraulic devices. It is highly desirable to be able to estimate the durability at the design stage so that appropriate maintenance period can be determined for safety and reliability. The purpose of this paper is to propose a quantitative evaluation method for pulsation and vibration based on reliability.

Pressure pulsations are approximately treaded as a stationary random process. The principle of transform function and fluid network chain rules are used to disassemble the hydraulic power unit into the series‐system. Mean square deviation of dynamic stress under the pumping source white noise exciting was calculated based on frequency responses. Statistical regularity of displacement and stress responses of pipelines under external random vibration are obtained by the spectrum analysis. Both the first‐passage failure criterion and fatigue damage accumulation failure criterion are adopted to analyze the dynamic pressure reliability of hydraulic pipelines.

The terminal joint, bellow pipe and pipe clamps are verified as the weak location of the pipelines. The mean square deviations of pulsations and vibration response influence the pipelines reliability. The results indicated that the preventative design method of controlling the pressure below 10 per cent of rated pressure does not meet the security specification of the hydraulic power unit.

The paper proposes a quantitative evaluation method for random pressure pulsation and external vibration based on reliability, which provides a new approach for the safety assessment and design of hydraulic pipelines.

This review aims to examine how aggression is portrayed in the media and how it can influence behavior and attitudes regarding aggression.

The authors reviewed the relevant literature and examined both physical and relational forms of aggression in multiple media forms (television, film, video games, music, books).

Across media types, evidence is found that both physical and relational aggression are portrayed frequently and in ways that may contribute to subsequent aggression. Furthermore, though there are studies finding no effect of exposure to media aggression, evidence is found that watching physical and relational aggression in the media can contribute to aggressive behavior. Prominent media aggression theories are reviewed and some of these theories are applied to relational aggression media effects.

Researchers should no longer ignore relational aggression in terms of the media, in terms of content and associations with aggressive behavior. Researchers should also focus on understudied media forms, such as music and books.

Policy makers should take careful note of the research on media and aggression when deciding on public policy and clinicians should inquire about media habits when clients show problematic aggressive behavior (physical or relational).

This paper is a valuable source of information regarding current research on media and aggression. Unlike other reviews, it focuses on multiple types of aggression (physical and relational) and multiple media types (TV, movies, video games, music, and books).

In two experiments on reactions to persistent annoyance from another person, participants employed a very orderly verbal escalation sequence that fit a cascading Guttman scale. This began with requests and moved on to demands, and then to complaints, angry statements, threats, harassment, and abuse, in that order. The more escalated the tactic, the fewer people used it. People seldom skipped a step on the way to their most escalated tactic. Two possible explanations for this pattern seemed plausible in light of the data, that it is due to either a widely snared try‐try‐again script or a declining hierarchy of thresholds. Verbal escalation was associated with a negative view of the annoyer's character, while physical escalation was associated with blame and feelings of frustration and anger. Escalation was discouraged by membership in the same group as the annoyer. Loud noise did not encourage escalation in general but promoted the use of angry statements.

This study aims to investigate the potential moderating effect of the average annual ambient temperature in 24 European countries on the relationship between criminal thinking (reactive vs proactive) and juvenile offending (violent vs property).

The average annual ambient temperatures found in 24 European countries were correlated with measures of reactive vs proactive criminal thinking and violent vs property offending in 56,518 students (50.4% female) from the second International Self-Reported Delinquency Study. These data were analyzed using a multilevel model comprising three Level 1 (student) predictors – age, sex and family structure – one Level 2 (country) predictor – ambient temperature – and two outcome measures – a reactive: proactive criminal thinking index (RPI) and a violent: property offending index (VPI).

The RPI and VPI correlated significantly with the Level 1 predictors, and the annual ambient temperatures from these 24 countries (Level 2 predictor) correlated positively with RPI and VPI and moderated the effect of reactive criminal thinking (RCT) on violent offending.

These findings indicate that ambient temperature correlates with violent/aggressive offending after the effects of property/non-aggressive offending have been controlled and suggest that ambient temperature may moderate the relationship between RCT and violent offending by affecting the decision-making process.

The contribution made by this study to the literature is that it illustrates how a macro-level influence in the form of average annual temperature can impact on micro-level processes in the form of criminal thinking and violent behavior.