Full of Sound and Fury,Signifying Something: The Impact of Autonomic Arousal on EGM Gambling

An experiment was conducted to observe the influence of autonomic arousal on subsequent gambling behavior. Thirty-seven male and 32 female regular Electronic Gaming Machine (EGM) players were recruited through newspaper advertisements. Participants were randomly assigned to either: (1) a control condition, or (2) an experimental condition that introduced a loud white-noise event (80 db) at fixed 120 s intervals throughout the 5-min EGM gambling session. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) measurements showed that the manipulation was successful in elevating autonomic arousal. The results showed differences in behavioral response to the manipulation based on prior experience with gambling problems. Persons with many gambling problems had lower average bet-sizes in the white-noise condition compared to the control, while those with few or no problems had higher average bet-sizes. The results suggest that arousal may provide different signals to gamblers with few versus many problems. Gamblers with many problems may interpret their arousal as a sign that they will soon lose money, while gamblers with few or no problems may associate feelings of arousal exclusively with winning.     

Male and Female Sexuality During Pregnancy:

We studied male and female sexual behavior and satisfaction during pregnancy. Expectant fathers were less emotionally satisfied than their wives through the pregnancy. Relative to their husbands, women experienced more conflict and guilt, but reported feeling peaceful and fulfilled in pregnancy, more self-accepting sexually, and derived more pleasure from sex. Both women and men underestimated how attractive their partner found the woman's pregnant body, with men finding their wives more attractive. There were no significant differences in level of sexual desire or sexual satisfaction between men and women. A series of multiple regressions identified a number of variables as predictive of male and female sexual satisfaction. Comparing pregnant couples expecting their first child with normative da:a, we found that expectant couples were less satisfied with the frequency of sex and also derived less sexual pleasure than nonpregnant couples.     

Patterns of Autonomic Arousal in Imaginal Situations of Winning and Losing in Problem Gambling

AIMS: To examine changes in skin conductance level (SCL), for problem gamblers in response to personally relevant imaginal tasks, representing winning or losing. SETTING, DESIGN, PARTICIPANTS AND MEASUREMENTS: SCL and subjective arousal were compared for problem poker machine gamblers (n = 13) and a control group (n = 20). Participants were asked to describe a situation in which they had (a) won and (b) lost during a period of gambling. Before and during the task, recordings of SCL were taken. FINDINGS: There were significant differences between responses of problem and social gamblers. A significant interaction indicated that social gamblers became more aroused in reaction to winning than losing, whereas problem gamblers became equally aroused in response to both tasks. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that it may be responses to losing, rather than winning that are paramount to the development and maintenance of problem gambling.     

论政治效能感的作用机制及其培养

论述了政治效能感的含义和意义,即政治效能感是指个体对自己能否影响政治活动的能力的信念或信心.政治效能感的高低会影响到一个国家政治文明的程度,影响到国家的政治稳定和政治民主化的实现.进一步详尽分析了政治效能感的作用机制:它能影响个体的政治选择过程;影响个体对政治活动的思维过程;影响个体执行政治活动的动机过程;影响个体对政治环境的情绪唤醒过程.相应地提出了培养政治效能感的途径:构建成功经验;重视积极的替代经验;实施现实化的言语劝说;控制负性情绪唤醒.     

Adolescents' Physiological Reactions to Their Parents' Negative Disclosures About the Other Parent in Divorced and Nondivorced Families

The purpose of this study was to determine how adolescents in divorced and nondivorced families respond psychologically and physiologically to their parents' negative disclosures when talking about their parents' relationship. The study also investigated how parents respond to their own disclosures about their relationship with the other parent. In general, the results illustrate the important role that adolescents' feelings of being caught can contribute to their well-being. The findings also supported the hypothesis that the valence of parental disclosures was a more important consideration than its frequency in the understanding of adolescents' reactions to their parents' disclosures, especially for adolescents from divorced families. Disclosure valence was also associated with parental anxiety, such that disclosure negativity predicted elevations in parents' anxiety during the discussion. Ultimately, children from divorced families who already felt caught between their parents and whose parents tended to disclose negative information about the other parent to them were more likely than other adolescents to report feeling anxious during that conversation. The results for changes in physiological arousal were not significant and were not consistent with the results for self-reported anxiety.     

On becoming a prostitute: An exploratory case‐comparison study

We examined the effects of sexual arousal on cortical somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) elicited by electrical stimulation delivered to the skin over either the dorsal penile or posterior tibial nerve. The electrical stimuli were initiated by the subject pressing a button. In Experiment 1, a single stimulus was delivered immediately upon button press. In Experiment 2, a randomly spaced train of stimuli was delivered after a randomly varying delay. SEPs were obtained during (1) a baseline condition during which subjects viewed a non‐erotic videotape, (2) an arousal condition in which subjects viewed an erotic videotape, and (3) a post‐orgasm condition during which subjects again viewed the non‐erotic videotape. Amplitudes of SEP components elicited by stimulation of either nerve decreased with sexual arousal and tended to return towards baseline values in the post‐orgasm condition. The SEP components that showed these changes included slow potentials generated before and after stimulus delivery, as well as the vertex potentials, N100 and P200.     

All I Need is Shoe: An Investigation into the Obligatory Aspect of Sexual Object Fetishism

Using a mixed-methods approach, the authors explored whether individuals reporting sexual object fetishism require the presence of their fetish for sexual activity. In Study 1 (n = 63), a qualitative study, the majority of participants reported enjoying sexual activity without the fetishized object. However, sexual activities involving their fetish were preferred. In Study 2 (n = 195), the majority of participants reported having engaged in both fetish and nonfetish sexual activities, and that the fetish was not required for sexual arousal. On average, both fetish and nonfetish sexual activity were rated as sexually satisfying, although fetish sex was rated as more satisfying.     

Enhanced Experience of Emotional Arousal in Response to Dynamic Facial Expressions

In this study, we investigated the emotional effect of dynamic presentation of facial expressions. Dynamic and static facial expressions of negative and positive emotions were presented using computer-morphing (Experiment 1) and videos of natural changes (Experiment 2), as well as other dynamic and static mosaic images. Participants rated the valence and arousal of their emotional response to the stimuli. The participants consistently reported higher arousal responses to dynamic than to static presentation of facial expressions and mosaic images for both valences. Dynamic presentation had no effect on the valence ratings. These results suggest that dynamic presentation of emotional facial expressions enhances the overall emotional experience without a corresponding qualitative change in the experience, although this effect is not specific to facial images.

Emergence of Nonsexual Crimes and Their Relationship to Sexual Crime Characteristics and the Deviant Arousal of Male Adolescent Sexual Offenders: An Exploratory Study

In this study, we explore nonsexual crimes committed by a sample of 437 incarcerated adolescent sexual offenders as well as deviant arousal and its relationships to nonsexual and sexual crimes. Over 50% of the juvenile sexual offenders in this sample have committed nonsexual offenses. In addition, nonsexual crimes, particularly general delinquency, were significantly correlated to a number of characteristics of sexual crimes committed by the youth. Previous research has shown that sexually abusive youth are more likely to recidivate nonsexual crimes, and among the implications of this study is the need for treatment providers and service delivery systems to address nonsexual as well as sexual crimes.     

Subjective sexual arousal and involvement: Development of multiple indicators

Three measures of subjective sexual arousal were observed across four erotic conditions in a sample of 241 college men and women (a) to refine two multi‐item scales of subjective sexual arousal, (b) to determine the convergent and discriminant validity of three measures of sexual arousal, and (c) to relate these operational definitions of subjective sexual arousal to the construct of subjective sexual arousal within Mosher's (1980) involvement theory. From the perspective of involvement theory, subjective sexual arousal is conceived to be an affect‐cognition blend, consisting of awareness of physiological sexual arousal, sexual affects, and affect‐cognition blends, which is transmuted into consciousness and deepens involvement by amplifying the perception of sexual stimulation, sexual cognitions, sexual behavior, physiological sexual response, and itself. Evidence of convergent validity was strong with a median validity coefficient of .51 for the three measures across the four conditions.