The behaviour of police officers in conflict situations: how burnout and reduced dominance contribute to better outcomes

Dominance plays an important part in police-civilian interactions. However, burnout is associated with a reduction in dominance, and this might, paradoxically, lead to more effective outcomes in conflict situations. There is a lack of knowledge about the effects of burnout in professional practice, and this multi-method study was conducted to better understand these dynamics. It is unique in that it combined self-reported burnout with observed behaviour in interactions with civilians. In this study, the relationships between the imbalance between demands and rewards, occupational burnout and police officers’ behaviour in conflict situations (in terms of dominance and effectiveness) were examined. A questionnaire was used to assess job demands, rewards and burnout among 358 Dutch police officers. In addition, police officers’ interactions with civilians were observed over 122 days. The results of structural equation modelling analyses showed that the imbalance between job demands and rewards was predictive of burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization). Burnout, in its turn, predicted a decrease in dominant behaviour in conflict situations and, consequently, more effective conflict outcomes. These findings show that reduced dominance associated with burnout could in fact have positive consequences for professional behaviour in conflict situations. The benefits of reduced dominance in these situations should be taken into account in the training of professionals.     

Climate,class and culture: political issues as cultural signifiers in the US

Since the 1970s, social scientists have argued that general pro‐environmental attitudes have diffused throughout American society, rendering socio‐demographics largely irrelevant in predicting support for such issues. The public reaction to the issue of climate change, however, is an exception to this narrative. While media bias, ideological framing, and business influence are often invoked to explain public apathy, I argue that ignoring class and culture in determining why climate change is so divisive is a potentially significant oversight. Using the cultural theory of Bourdieu, I examine how the conception of and reaction to climate change varies with economic and cultural capital using data from 40 interviews of Boston‐area respondents. The results suggest that climate change may indeed be a ‘classed’ issue – both in how the respondents conceive of it in the first place, and how they speak of social class in the context of it. The results suggest that social scientists should go beyond rational‐choice and media framing explanations, to take two prolific examples, in exploring how disagreements on the importance of climate change persist in the US.     

The contribution of supervisor behaviour to employee psychological well-being

Many employees affirm that supervisors affect employee well-being, and research has demonstrated associations between supervisor behaviour and employee psychological well-being. However, what hasn't been clear is the extent to which the association with supervisor behaviour compares with that of other variables known to affect well-being. This exploratory study addresses that issue. Our hypothesis was that supervisor behaviour can contribute to the prediction of psychiatric disturbance beyond the contribution of other influential variables. We created a new, questionnaire-based instrument to measure supervisor behaviour. We tested our hypothesis using stepwise regression with a convenience sample of 167 men and women working in a variety of organizations, occupations, and industries in the USA. Results supported our hypothesis: supervisor behaviour made a statistically significant contribution to the prediction of psychiatric disturbance beyond a step-one variate comprised of age, health practices, support from other people at work, support from home, stressful life events, and stressful work events. This provides additional evidence that supervisor behaviour can affect employee well-being and suggests that those seeking to create healthier workplaces should not neglect supervision. We believe that there is now ample justification for those concerned with psychosocial working conditions to consider supervisor behaviour as a potentially influential variable.

Furthermore, we believe that we have presented a new instrument for assessing supervisor behaviour that has the potential to be of value in future studies.     

On the asymptotic behaviour of selector statistics

Adaptive procedures proposed by Hogg are based on selector statistics for the skewness and the tails. The asymptotic properties of several proposed selector statistics are investigated. Since ail these statistics have under some assumptions asymptoti¬cally a normal distribution, their properties depend on the asymptotic bias and variance. The reasonable concept to compare the different selector statistics is based on the selection probabil¬ities in discriminating the type of the underlying distribution. These values are numerically calculated and analyzed in detail for a number of underlying distributions.     

Bayes inference for the modulated power law process

The Modulated Power Law process has been recently proposed as a suitable model for describing the failure pattern of repairable systems when both renewal-type behaviour and time trend are present. Unfortunately, the maximum likelihood method provides neither accurate confidence intervals on the model parameters for small or moderate sample sizes nor predictive intervals on future observations.

This paper proposes a Bayes approach, based on both non-informative and vague prior, as an alternative to the classical method. Point and interval estimation of the parameters, as well as point and interval prediction of future failure times, are given. Monte Carlo simulation studies show that the Bayes estimation and prediction possess good statistical properties in a frequentist context and, thus, are a valid alternative to the maximum likelihood approach.

Numerical examples illustrate the estimation and prediction procedures.     

REVERSING A SPIRAL OF DEPRIVATION: WORKING TO AMELIORATE THE RELATIONSHIP OF STAFF AND BOYS IN A RESIDENTIAL HOME

This paper discusses the work of a consultation to a staff group at a residential home for adolescent boys. The work discovered that each encounter increased each group's sense of deprivation. This escalation is understood as their relationship being based upon a spiral of deprivation. In this situation the staff's capacity to think in terms of their training in Winnicott's ideas about residential care, and that behaviour has meaning, was lost. By using himself as the container of staff emotional states, through recognising their communications in terms of Bion's concept of normal projective identification, the consultant was better able to understand the nature of the difficulties in the boys' and staff relationship. Hence, the attempt to engage staff through the consultation was successful and their capacity to think was restored. The material discussed shows this development enabled staff to better contain their own and the boys' feelings, thus allowing the spiral to reverse.     

Winners and Losers: Segmenting a Casino Loyalty Programme

Abstract

As the competition within the gaming industry continues to grow exponentially, casinos are using players club programmes as a key component of their marketing and loyalty programmes. This study investigates the relationships between casino players’ club programmes and its members. Through the use of data collected from a mail survey of 3,000 players’ club members, analyses were conducted to explore the impacts of these programmes on the creation of behavioural and attitudinal loyalty. The findings suggest fnr a number of loyalty programme members, these programmes have little impact on creating loyalty and their subsequent gaming behaviour.     

Patterns of Masturbatory Behaviour

Abstract

In 1966, 1981 and 1996 the Department of Sex Research at Hamburg University, Germany, carried out three surveys into the sexual behavior of university students. Taken as a longitudinal study they provide information on the social history of sexuality over the past three decades for well-educated young adults (20 to 30 years old) in Germany. The samples consist of 8,641 men and women. In this paper data from the studies is analyzed under two aspects:

1. Shifts in masturbatory behavior 1966–1981–1996. Men and especially women begin to masturbate considerably earlier than used to be in the eighties, not to mention in the sixties. As a consequence, most young women nowadays have already experienced masturbation when having their first heterosexual intercoursethus following a pattern of sexual socialization that traditionally was typical for boys. In addition, in 1996, more students of both sexes had masturbated in the year preceding the investigation. The more relevant point is, however, that young adults (according to active incidence during the last 12 months) now masturbate almost irrespective of whether they have intercourse often or rarely, whether they are singles or live in a steady relationship or whether or not they are satisfied with their current relationship. So masturbation peacefully coexists with sex between partners and a loving relationship more often than it did in 1981 and 1966.

2. Masturbation in steady relationships, 1996. A detailed analysis of masturbation frequencies during the last four weeks also shows small differences between students who live in a sexually satisfying relationship and those without relationship. Only a minority feels the need to justify masturbation on the grounds that they lack sex with their partner. Three-quarters expressly state that masturbation is a form of sex in its own right and, therefore, does not interfere with partner sex. Furthermore, there is a tendency that students living in steady relationships experience masturbation slightly more positively than those living alone.     

近代土匪变态行为浅析

土匪行为的基本特征就是暴力,各种文献资料大量地记载了土匪的暴行。对这些暴行分析后发现,有些是土匪出于满足生存需要而采取的属于这一群体特有的正常犯罪行为,有些则属于有悖人伦道德的变态行为。变态行为在土匪的日常生活中也时有所见。     

企业偷税行为分析

改革开放以来,我国企业的偷税现象呈现出不断上升的趋势,严重影响了我国经济的正常发展.为了有效地打击企业偷税行为,应加强对企业纳税行为的研究.本文试图通过建立税收征纳博弈模型,分析税收征管环境对企业偷税行为的影响,讨论抑制企业偷税行为的方法和措施.