Böcker utgivna av Sharddha

Research on women's competition, indirect aggression, and gossip has uncovered a perplexingpattern: women deny their own competitiveness and gossip, but openly acknowledge that ofother women. The current investigation proposed one solution to this paradox: women'sunawareness of their competitive and malicious motivations grants a competitive advantage infemale intrasexual reputation competition. Gossipers who express concern for their targets canpreserve their own social desirability while simultaneously transmitting information that harmstheir target's reputation. Two online studies tested this theory by examining the prevalence andefficacy of concern motivations within gossip. Study 1 tested the prediction that women wouldassert greater concern relative to malicious motivations for gossiping by comparing male andfemale participants' perceptions of their own and others' social conversation motivations.Indeed, compared to men, women endorsed stronger concern motivations and lower reputationharmingmotivations when gossiping. Moreover, women were especially likely to assertbenevolent intentions when discussing same-sex peers compared to men, suggesting thesemotivations characterize women's gossip about same-sex rivals. Study 2 tested the competitiveefficacy of ostensible concern motivations. Male and female participants evaluated femalegossipers and their targets across three hypothetical gossip scenarios. The framing of thegossiper's statement was experimentally manipulated such that she delivered her informationwith concern, with malice, or neutrally. Consistent with predictions, gossip delivered withconcern enhanced perceptions of the gossiper's trustworthiness, interpersonal desirability, andromantic desirability compared to gossip delivered neutrally or maliciously. Taken together,these findings suggest women's belief in their prosocial motivations for gossiping is a sociallyadvantageous strategy for female intrasexual reputation competition.

Moffints (1993) taxonomy of adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent offenders suggests, among other things, that an early onset of antisocial behavior a) increases the likelihood of a life- course persistent offending trajectory and b) is the product of neuropsychological deficits and familial risk factors working in concert. Over two decades of research has yielded a substantial amount of support for Moffitt's claims. Nevertheless, research has yet to significantly expand the repertoire of hiosocial processes that might influence the onset of antisocial behavior during childhood. For instance, only a handful of criminologists have considered the role that infant and early childhood nutrition might play in the development of antisocial behavior. Moreover, studies employing genetically sensitive methods to examine the link between nutrition and child antisocial behavior are virtually nonexistent. Scholars have also neglected to consider the socioemotional mediators of the nutrition-externalizing, relationship, as well as whether infants and children are differentially sensitive to nutritional intake depending on their level of genetic risk, perinatal risk, and security of attachment. Finally, researchers have vet to explore the ways in which nutritional factors across infancy and early childhood work together to influence externalizing behavior. This dissertation seeks to address these gaps in the literature by employing a large, nationally representative sample of twin pairs. The findings suggest that, even after accounting for the influence of genes and the shared ens irocument, nutritional factors Juring infancy and early childhood have both direct and indirect effects on externalizing behavior during kindergarten Furthermore, significant interactions between genetic and nutritional factors, as well as nutritional factors across life stages, were detected. The limitations. of the study are noted and recommendations for policy, theory, and future research are discussed.

Psychopathic individuals are distinct from non-psychopathic individuals in affective,interpersonal, and behavioral domains. A hallmark characteristic of psychopathic individuals islack of empathy. Gender differences have been identified with regards to psychopathy andempathy. The current study examined two factors of empathy, Cognitive and Affective Empathy,and employed a triarchic model of psychopathy, which included boldness, meanness, anddisinhibition as the three factors (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009). The current study examinedwhether gender and/or gender roles moderated the relationship between the empathy andpsychopathy factors. It was expected that gender roles, rather than gender alone, would moderatethe relationship between empathy and psychopathy, such that masculine individuals would bedeficient in empathy and endorse more psychopathic characteristics, whereas feminineindividuals were expected to have more empathy and endorse fewer psychopathic characteristics.As expected, in the current study, females demonstrated higher levels of femininity, as well asempathy and cooperation, whereas males demonstrated higher levels of psychopathy(specifically boldness and meanness) and the propensity to look out only for their best interestsand not cooperate with others. Further, masculine individuals demonstrated higher levels ofboldness and meanness. Results from an Exploratory Factor Analysis, Canonical Correlation,and Hierarchical Regression indicated that affective empathy factors, rather than cognitiveempathy factors, demonstrated the strongest negative relationship with boldness and meanness.Disinhibition demonstrated no relationship with either affective or cognitive empathy factors.Implications of these results are discussed.

Research on the cognitive basis of chess skill has focused primarily on chess knowledgestructures and their relevance in accounting for superior recall of briefly presented chesspositions by chess experts. The direct relevance of research on short-term recall of chess positionto superior move selection, is based on two theoretical assumptions that have not been fullytested. The first assumption is that the chess knowledge structures are automatically activatedduring the perception of a position in a similar manner for both tasks requiring short-term recalland selection of the best move. Because experts are thought to have greater knowledge and thisgreater knowledge is thought to be activated automatically it has been argued that experts areless harmed by reduction in available time for selecting a move than weaker players. The secondassumption is that the knowledge structures that mediate the selection of a chess move can beadequately captured by a memory task for briefly presented positions. This dissertationattempted to test these two assumptions. Study 1 found no general interaction between timegiven to solve a chess problem and chess skill on the strength of move selection, instead findinga relatively stable expert advantage across times. Additionally, it established this even for the 5 scondition typically used to study memory. Study 2 presented chess positions to players for 5 seither to select the best move or to recall the position. In the condition involving the selection ofa move, players were asked to recall the position after announcing their selected move. The studyfound substantial differences in the structure of recall between the two conditions. Additionally,certain expected features such as a bimodal distribution of response times were not found callinginto question some assumptions of chunking theory.