Betrayal and repetition: Understanding aggression in sexually abused girls

Betrayal by a significant object is seen as primary in causing behavioral and emotional disturbances in incest victims, leading to a pervasive identification with the aggressor and disturbances in object relations development. Identification with the aggressor is understood not as a uniform defense mobilized against a specific affect but as a complex compromise formation which defends against anxiety, while also providing libidinal, aggressive and superego gratifications. Far from simply attempting to overcome the past, identifications thus preserve affects that have become pleasurable and self-defining. Two case studies of adolescent girls illustrate how treatment can help victims recognize and begin to forego the sadomasochistic pleasure derived from these identifications, a relinquishment necessary for true mastery.     

Goodness‐of‐fit methods for matched case‐control studies

The authors propose graphical and numerical methods for checking the adequacy of the logistic regression model for matched case‐control data. Their approach is based on the cumulative sum of residuals over the covariate or linear predictor. Under the assumed model, the cumulative residual process converges weakly to a centered Gaussian limit whose distribution can be approximated via computer simulation. The observed cumulative residual pattern can then be compared both visually and analytically to a certain number of simulated realizations of the approximate limiting process under the null hypothesis. The proposed techniques allow one to check the functional form of each covariate, the logistic link function as well as the overall model adequacy. The authors assess the performance of the proposed methods through simulation studies and illustrate them using data from a cardiovascular study.     

Domains of convergence for the EM algorithm: a cautionary tale in a location estimation problem

The EM algorithm is a popular method for maximizing a likelihood in the presence of incomplete data. When the likelihood has multiple local maxima, the parameter space can be partitioned into domains of convergence, one for each local maximum. In this paper we investigate these domains for the location family generated by the t-distribution. We show that, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, these domains need not be connected sets. As an extreme case we give an example of a domain which consists of an infinite union of disjoint open intervals. Thus the convergence behaviour of the EM algorithm can be quite sensitive to the starting point.     

TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF CULT FILMS: Reading Rocky Horror

This article provides a sociological reading of cult films, in particular, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Cult films are secular documents, celebrated as sacred texts by audiences and used as shared foci to collectively create rituals and belief systems. They differ from popular re-releases, fad films, films with cult qualities, and critical cult films in that they involve typical people in atypical situations, sympathetic deviance, challenges to traditional authority, reflections of societal strains, and paradoxical and interpretable resolutions. Examination of the Rocky Horror text and the cult activities that occur during its viewing, reveal it as a paradoxical indictment and validation of traditional societal arrangements.     

HPV vaccine acceptance among a sample of Southern men who have sex with men: A comparison of younger and older men

Objectives: Do short, online educational messages about the human papillomavirus (HPV) influence younger and older men who have sex with men (MSM) differently? Second, what are the HPV knowledge levels and risk perceptions of Southern MSM living outside of major metropolitan areas? Methods: This study draws on participants who completed an anonymous online survey asking about their knowledge, risk assessment, and vaccine acceptance regarding HPV. Results: Knowledge about HPV was low among the MSM in this study. After reading a one-page information intervention, vaccine acceptability increased by a statistically significant amount among both a Younger and Older cohort but risk perception only increased among the younger respondents. Single men regardless of age cohort reported sharper increases in perceived risk after the intervention, but relationship status did not produce significant differences in vaccine acceptability. Conclusion: Online, brief interventions may be effective means of increasing motivation to vaccinate among Southern MSM.     

An Examination of the Communication Styles Associated with Psychopathy and Their Influence on Observer Impressions

Psychopathic individuals are characterized as “intra-species predators”—callous, impulsive, aggressive, and proficient at interpersonal manipulation. For example, despite their high risk for re-offending, psychopathic offenders often receive early release on parole. While reputed to be social chameleons, research suggests that even naive observers can accurately infer high levels of psychopathic traits in others with very brief exposures to behavior, but accuracy degrades with extended observation. We utilized a lens model approach to examine the communication styles (emotional facial expressions, body language, and verbal content) of offenders varying in levels of psychopathic traits using “thin slice” video clips of psychological assessment interviews and to reveal which cues observers use to inform their evaluations of psychopathy. Psychopathic traits were associated with more (a) Duchenne smiles, (b) negative (angry) emotional language, and (c) hand gestures (illustrators). Further, psychopathy was associated with a marked behavioral incongruence; when individuals scoring high in psychopathic traits engaged in Duchenne smiles they were also more likely to use angry language. Naïve observers relied on each of these valid behavioral signals to quickly and accurately detect psychopathic traits. These findings provide insight into psychopathic communication styles, opportunities for improving the detection of psychopathic personality traits, and may provide an avenue for understanding successful psychopathic manipulation.     

Deep Uncertainties in Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surge Projections: Implications for Coastal Flood Risk Management

Sea levels are rising in many areas around the world, posing risks to coastal communities and infrastructures. Strategies for managing these flood risks present decision challenges that require a combination of geophysical, economic, and infrastructure models. Previous studies have broken important new ground on the considerable tensions between the costs of upgrading infrastructure and the damages that could result from extreme flood events. However, many risk-based adaptation strategies remain silent on certain potentially important uncertainties, as well as the tradeoffs between competing objectives. Here, we implement and improve on a classic decision-analytical model (Van Dantzig 1956) to: (i) capture tradeoffs across conflicting stakeholder objectives, (ii) demonstrate the consequences of structural uncertainties in the sea-level rise and storm surge models, and (iii) identify the parametric uncertainties that most strongly influence each objective using global sensitivity analysis. We find that the flood adaptation model produces potentially myopic solutions when formulated using traditional mean-centric decision theory. Moving from a single-objective problem formulation to one with multiobjective tradeoffs dramatically expands the decision space, and highlights the need for compromise solutions to address stakeholder preferences. We find deep structural uncertainties that have large effects on the model outcome, with the storm surge parameters accounting for the greatest impacts. Global sensitivity analysis effectively identifies important parameter interactions that local methods overlook, and that could have critical implications for flood adaptation strategies.     

Determinants and effects of formal target agreements: an empirical investigation of German firms

We investigate organizational determinants and performance effects of formal target agreements for employees based on the IAB establishment panel, a representative panel of German establishments. The results show that establishments with a high employee turnover rate, a large proportion of temporary workers, and a highly qualified workforce are significantly more likely to implement target agreements. Also, establishments with works councils installed are more likely to do so, controlling, among others, for firm size. Concerning organizational performance, we apply a first-difference and a fixed effects approach and find that establishments that implement target agreements achieve around 5 % higher total sales compared to firms that did not introduce this practice. Hence, organizations seem to benefit from the implementation of formal target agreements for employees.     

Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Same-Sex Marriage: A Community Structure Approach

Using the community structure approach to compare coverage of same-sex marriage in leading U.S. newspapers in 35 major cities nationwide, all articles of 250+ words were sampled from a 5-year span of January 1, 2007, to June 23, 2011, for a total of 577 articles. Articles were coded for “prominence” and “direction,” and then combined into a “Media Vector” score for each newspaper, ranging from .4523 to ?.1067. Initial Pearson correlations revealed three clusters had significant relationships: stakeholder (stakeholder proportions correlating with favorable coverage of stakeholder concerns), buffer (privilege correlating with favorable coverage of human rights issues), and vulnerability (vulnerable populations correlating with coverage favoring their perspectives). The stakeholder cluster includes: (percentage 25–44: r = .506, p = .001; gay market index: r = .432, p = .005; percentage 65+: r = ?.397, p = .009; percentage voting Democratic: r = .335, p = .025; percentage voting Republican: r = ?.330, p = .026). The buffer hypothesis was also confirmed (percentage college educated: r = .465, p = .002; percentage family income of $100,000+: r = .383, p = .012; and percentage professional/technical occupations: r = .300, p = .040). One vulnerability indicator, percentage below the poverty line, was also confirmed (r = ?.297, p = .041). A varimax rotated factor analysis and regression yielded 2 factors accounting for more than 29% of the variance: privilege/gay marketing/political identity, 24%, and Evangelicals, 5%.