Europe’s Journal of Psychology (PsychOpen)
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Criminal Attitudes, Recidivistic Behaviour, and the Mediating Role of Associations with Criminal Friends: An Empirical Investigation within a Prison Sample of Violent Offenders
No full textPrevious studies suggested a significant interaction between criminal attitudes, associations with criminal friends, and criminal behaviour. The purpose of the current investigation was to provide the possible mediating role of associations with criminal friends between criminal attitudes, and criminal behaviour. Based on a sample of 133 violent offenders, the proposed mediation model tested was found to be a good fit of the observed data, with each of the respective fit indices exceeding the criteria for a good fitting model. Thus results suggest that the presence and influence of criminal friends has a significant mediating effect on the interaction between criminal attitudes and recidivistic behaviour. Further implications in relation to research and theory are discussed
Parent – Adolescent Communication and Delinquency: A Comparative study in Kolkata, India.
No full textThe present study assessed the impact of one of the dimension of parenting practices, that is, parent- adolescent communication and its influence on the development of delinquent behavior. The data was collected from 200 adolescents (100 delinquents and 100 non- delinquents) aged 11- 18 years. Results indicated that there exists a significant difference between delinquent and non- delinquent adolescents, in their perception of satisfactory parental communication. Further analyses revealed that both mother’s and father’s separate communication as well as their interaction effect was linked to the development of delinquent behavior. It was further noted that a satisfactory mother- adolescent communication was much more important compared to the father- adolescent communication in the present context. Furthermore, age of the adolescent was also related to delinquency and it was observed that early adolescence was a richer breeding ground of delinquency, although a satisfactory parental communication was crucial all throughout the adolescent period to serve as a protective factor against delinquency. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed
Introductory Comments: Special Issue of EJOP (May 2012) on Memory
No full textThis issue will focus entirely on research in the memory field and present a diverse range of studies within this area
Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) in a Sample of Cypriot High School Students: The Rasch Measurement Perspective
No full textAs Greek Cypriot senior high school teachers, the researchers believe that instruments assessing Internet addiction should be developed and validated for use wherever there are adolescents (the most at-risk population) and Internet access. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). A sample of 604 randomly selected high school students from five high schools in Limassol, Cyprus participated in the study. The Rasch Rating Scale Model was used for the analyses of the data collected. Results suggested the modification of the IAT in two ways. First, the 5-point rating scale was replaced by a 3-point scale, which was found to be optimal in the pilot study. Second, item 8 was replaced by a self-rating item because it was found to be identical to item 6 both statistically and semantically. The respondents’ reliability was satisfactory (0.86) and item reliability very high (0.99). All 20 items were sufficiently spread out and describe distinct levels along the variable and do define a linear continuum of increasing difficulty. All the evidence collected supports the unidimensionality and the high degree of construct validity of the scale. Finally four recommendations for the modification of the scale and future research are proposed
Predictors of Social and Educational Mobility in Mexican Recipients of a Governmental Welfare Program: A Psychosocial Approach
No full textThe aim of this study is to identify the factors predicting social and educational mobility in persons living in extreme poverty in Mexico by analyzing a broad set of personal, familial, educational and social variables. A total of 913 adults were interviewed, 65.2 percent of whom were women, with an average age of 43.71 years. A regression analysis has identified depression, religiosity, locus of control, verbal skills, social support, and age as predictors of intra-generational social mobility, while parents’ educational attainment and parenting style as well as individuals’ intelligence, school grades, time spent on homework, and age predicted inter-generational educational mobility. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for this segment of the population
Which Are the “Best” Cities for Psychology Research Worldwide?
No full textWe present scientometric results about worldwide centers of excellence in psychology. Based on Web of Science data, scientific excellence can be identified for cities from where highly-cited papers originate. Data refer to all psychology articles published in 2007 which are documented in the Social Science Citation Index and to their citation frequencies from 2007 to May 2011. 218 cities are visualized with an article output of at least 50 in 2007. Statistical z tests are used for the evaluation of the degree to which an observed number of top-cited papers (top-10%) for a city differs from the number expected on the basis of randomness in the selection of papers. The map points at excellence centers in cities at the East and West Coast of the USA as well as in Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Australia, and Taiwan. These results indicate that highly-cited psychological research articles come from the Anglo-American countries and some of the non-English European countries in which the number of English-language publications has increased during the last decades. Implications of the results for the publication strategies of psychologists in non-English speaking countries are discussed as well as the neccessity to care for qualitative criteria in evaluations in addition to quantitative, scientometric criteria
Context-Dependence, Visibility, and Prediction Using State and Trait Individual Differences as Moderators of ESP in a Ganzfeld Environment
No full textIn this paper we present a method for participant classification, based on trait and state, in the experimental evaluation of ESP (extrasensory perception). We conducted three Ganzfeld experiments with a sample of 237 participants. In experiment I (N = 60) twenty participants ranked the target stimulus in the first position, achieving a non-significant rate of correct guesses of 33.3% (z = 1.48, p = .07, one tailed). In experiment II (N = 90) only 26.6% of the participants’ guesses were correct (z = .35, p = .36, one tailed). Weighting trials in the second experiment on the basis of the most successful predictors of the participants’ performance in the first experiment increased the rate of correct guesses from 26.6% to 36.4%. Results in a confirmatory experiment (N = 87) were not significant (32.7%, z = 1.32, p = .09, one tailed). However, overall results in this study were consistent with the effects sizes data reported in previous meta-analyses
Did Curiosity Kill the Cat? Relationship Between Trait Curiosity, Creative Self-Efficacy and Creative Personal Identity
No full textThe main objective of the study presented in this article was to examine the relationship between trait curiosity and two self-concept constructs which are gaining popularity in the creativity literature – creative self-efficacy (CSE) and creative personal identity (CPI). Although the role of curiosity in creativity seems well established, in fact there is little empirical evidence of the relationship between curiosity treated as a trait and both CSE and CPI. In a study conducted on a sample of middle and high school Polish students (N = 284; 55% female, aged 13–18, M = 14.74, SD = 1.14), curiosity was measured by the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI-II; Kashdan, Gallagher, Silvia, Winterstein, Breen, Terhar, & Steger, 2009) and CSE and CPI by the Short Scale of Creative Self (SSCS; Karwowski, Lebuda, & Wiśniewska, in press). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed the existence of substantial correlations between measured constructs. Latent factor of CSE correlated strongly with a tendency to seek out new experiences (stretching, r = .72) and an acceptance of unpredictability (embracing, r = .67), while CPI correlated substantially with stretching (r = .62) and slightly less with embracing (r = .48) – all correlations were highly reliable (p < .001). Hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis showed the existence of a strong relationship between the higher-order factor of curiosity (composed of stretching and embracing) and creative self (composed of CSE and CPI): r = .75, which may indicate common basis of creativity and curiosity. The consequences of curiosity for the development of CSE and CPI are discussed
Facial Memory: The Role of the Pre-Existing Knowledge in Face Processing and Recognition
No full textFaces are visual stimuli full of information. Depending upon the familiarity with a face, the information we can extract will differ, so the more familiarity with a face, the more information that can be extracted from it. The present article reviews the role that pre-existing knowledge of a face has in its processing. Here, we focus on behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging evidence. The influence of familiarity in early stages (attention, perception and working memory) and in later stages (pre-semantic and semantic knowledge) of the processing are discussed. The differences in brain anatomy for familiar and unfamiliar faces are also considered. As it will be shown, experimental data seems to support that familiarity can affect even the earliest stages of the recognition