Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,Dissociation, and Neuropsychological Performance in Latina Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse

This study compared the memory, attention/concentration, and executive functioning of 12 women with histories of child sexual abuse with a control group of 12 women without childhood abuse. Participants completed a neuropsychological test battery and various instruments assessing post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation. The child sexual abuse group had lower performance than the control group on long- and short-term visual and verbal memory and presented more limited performance on executive functioning tasks. Functioning in these areas showed a negative correlation with post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative symptoms. These findings suggest that child sexual abuse is associated with memory and executive functioning deficits and supports the idea that people with trauma histories and increased post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation symptoms may have alterations in neuropsychological functioning.     

Colonialism at the margins: politics of difference in Europe as seen through two Icelandic crises

Scholars have for some time emphasised destabilising the boundaries between colonised and colonisers, in addition to calling for more nuanced analyses of colonialism. I focus here on the politics of difference on a global scale and how the internal logic dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘other’ is still significant, using two cases revolving around an Icelandic struggle with ‘otherness’ at different times in history: one in 1905 and the other in 2008. I claim that the analysis of those at the margins of the dualistic divide of colonised and coloniser clearly brings out the oppositions at play within historical and contemporary global relationships of power and how participation in colonial ideologies involved multiple politics of identity and selfhood within Europe. Both cases show Icelandic anxieties about being classified with the ‘wrong’ people and their attempt to situate themselves within the ‘civilised’ part of the world.     

Mystification as an Artistic Strategy in Milan Kundera's Work

ABSTRACT

Using close reading of Kundera's texts, Jan ?ulík argues that many arguments in Milan Kundera's literary works are deliberate provocations. Kundera's approach is undoubtedly related to post-modernism, although he used his mystification techniques long before the arrival of postmodernism, as early as in the Stalinist 1950s when he published fake quotes from Lenin in official Stalinist publications. In Jan ?ulík's view, it is the purpose of Milan Kundera's systematic use of false facts, distortions and disrupted logic to warn his readers against against the unreliability of words and human communication. Kundera seems to argue that the world in its complexity is basically unknowable and the only thing that is left for us is, in despair, in our ignorace of what is going on around us, to carry out pranks.     

Linking Disconnected Spaces or Venue Shopping? Trade-Offs in Participatory Opportunities in the EU

This article discusses why national civil society organisations (CSOs) use or abstain to use the participatory opportunities that the EU has developed in the last years. This is done by analysing the role of French and Spanish civil society groups in the debates on participatory democracy during the drafting and the referendum debates of the European Constitution (2002–2005). The paper departs from existing assessments of the role of national civil society in the Convention and demonstrates that national organisations built on their expertise on certain EU policies, on access to EU-level political actors and on contacts and alliances with other CSOs. It also differs from previous studies in finding that participation does not entail sharing the interpretive frame promoted by the EU. The finding that access opportunities do not fundamentally influence the frames of the organisations is related to their ability to strategically choose to participate in European and national venues. The paper finds that because of their scepticism on the constitution's participatory framing, French organisations preferred a stronger role at the national level, whereas Spanish organisations did not have real incentives to develop a campaign at the national level. While it is expected that dialogue with CSOs can contribute to bridging the gap between the EU and its citizens, this paper finds that the institutional setting provided incentives for national organisations to get involved only in one of the levels rather than to link them.     

La Funcion del Bostezo en la Comunicacion Social de un Grupo de Babuinos

Resumen

La adecuación entre el perfil que ofrecen las mujeres altamente cualificadas que quieren acceder a puestos de dirección y la demanda de las organizaciones de un comportamiento directivo, horizontal y centrado en las personas, alternativo al que impera en la actual cultura empresarial, es el punto de partida del presente estudio. Diversas teorías asocian el estilo directivo transformacional con características prototípicamente femeninas. Este trabajo se plantea dos propósitos. Por un lado, comprobar en una amplia muestra representativa de hombres y mujeres que desempeñan puestos de dirección si existen diferencias en su estilo directivo; y por otro lado, si es así, analizar su correspondencia con los estilos transaccionaly transformational a partir del cuestionario de liderazgo de Bass y Avolio. La interpretación de los resultados demuestra la necesidad de fomentar la incorporación de las mujeres a cargos de dirección, no únicamente por razones humanitarias basadas en la igualdad de derechos y oportunidades, sino por la contribución del estilo directivo femenino a la eficacia organizational.     

Introducción

Resumen

El análisis de los tres estilos de liderazgo más investigados, es decir, autocrático-democrático, orientado a la tarea-orientado a las relaciones, transformacional-transaccional, sirve como punto de partida de un análisis más profundo de las implicaciones del concepto de ‘estilo de liderazgo’ para el proceso de liderazgo en general y, muy especialmente, como una introducción a la cuestión emergente de las relaciones entre ‘liderazgoy cultura’. Se pidió a noventa estudiantes de psicología que indicaran la similitude percibida en varios pares de items previamente seleccionados que representaban en unos casos un mismo estilo de liderazgo, y en otros, diferentes estilos de liderazgo, y que posteriormente los evaluaran como representativos de un estilo u otro de liderazgo. En una clara muestra de su correcta percepción de cada estilo, los participantes no tuvieron problemas para ajustar correctamente cada ítem a la categoría original ni para hacer la evaluación esperada. La parte final del trabajo explora y discute otras posibilidades de investigación en este dominio.     

Effects of fear of negative social evaluation in interaction with potential partners: experimental study of first encounters / Efectos del temor a la evaluación social negativa en interacción con parejas potenciales: estudio experimental de los primeros encuentros

Abstract

This study used an experimental procedure to evaluate the effects of fear of negative social evaluation (FNSE) on courtship strategies and the ability to interact with the opposite sex. 108 university students participated in this study with a mean age of 19.6. Prior to the experimental procedure, FNSE levels were measured. Then two photographs of people of the opposite sex were shown, one more attractive than the other, and the participants were informed that they would meet one of them. Levels of anxiety and self-presentation motivation (SPM) were measured before the planned interaction. Results show that people with low levels of FNSE have positive expectations of reciprocity when they are about to meet a person that they find attractive. Women, but not men, with high levels of FNSE report higher SPM with less attractive people than with more attractive people. High levels of FNSE are associated with a loss of calm in the situation of meeting a person of the opposite sex. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of courtship strategies.