Busy

I have been rather swamped the last few months, making blogging very difficult. After my last post, I received an invitation to write a chapter on aggression for the Encyclopedia of Mental Health. I recently completed that manuscript, and it is now under editorial review.

I also completed work on another manuscript for submission to a peer-review journal, and received an acceptance letter earlier this fall. Chasing the elusive left-wing authoritarian: An examination of Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Left-Wing Authoritarianism scales will appear in print in the National Social Science Journal sometime next year. I have also been working with one of my students to complete work on a manuscript on attitudes toward torture, based upon the data we've collected, and that I presented earlier this spring. We hope to have that manuscript ready for submission at some point over the winter break. And, of course, I am already preparing for next year's academic conference, busily collecting data, and beginning that particular write-up.

All of that is in addition to my normal teaching and advising load. So, yeah, I am a bit on the busy side. As time permits, I shall return to updating this blog.

Effectiveness framing and attitudes toward torture

A few weeks ago, I got to present some data that some students and I collected last fall semester. Our main interest was to examine how the way torture was framed could influence individuals' attitudes toward the sort of enhanced interrogation methods that usually fall under the rubric of torture.

Studying framing effects on attitudes is hardly new, although studying these effects on attitudes toward torture specifically is quite recent. A few years ago, Christian Crandall and colleagues published findings supporting the hypothesis that status quo framing would lead to more acceptance of torture than novelty framing. In essence, when torture was presented as something that had already been done by our soldiers over a long period of time, respondents showed more favorable attitudes toward torture than when torture was presented as a phenomenon unique to the War on Terror.

Our main interest for our experiment was effectiveness framing. There is some political science data (the work of Gronke and colleagues comes to mind) that suggests that Americans are rather ambivalent about the use of torture, but that they will accept its use if they believe it will prevent future terrorist attacks. It isn't much of a leap to suggest that if torture is presented as effective, respondents will show more favorable attitudes toward its use than if framed as ineffective. In our experiment, we presented participants with one of two statements that were equivalent except in terms of how torture was framed: for some participants, torture was framed as effective in leading to the location of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, whereas for other participants, torture was framed as ineffective. Afterwards, participants completed an attitudes toward torture questionnaire, and then some demographic questions, and were debriefed and dismissed. The bottom line was that participants who read the statement suggesting torture was effective were more favorably disposed to its use than those who read the statement suggesting torture was not effective.

One implication of our findings is that we need to be good consumers of how enhanced interrogation techniques are presented in mass media outlets. In the case of the story of how information leading to Osama bin Laden was presented, a number of news media outlets presented torture as the primary factor leading to a successful mission. However, a number of other media outlets deemphasized the role of torture and emphasized instead the primary role of conventional interrogation methods in leading to a successful mission. Depending on the sorts of media outlets one was viewing or reading, one could be led to a rather different set of ideas about the role torture played in obtaining crucial information about a major terrorist leader's location.

Our own research does not, of course, address the question of whether torture is actually effective. For a run-down on various opinions on that question, one might examine the work of such writers as Alfred McCoy, who published a book on the topic of torture a few years ago.

Boundaries: What is appropriate in the classroom?

Every so often, I will offer some thoughts about what I consider appropriate behavior for faculty who work in the behavioral and social sciences. One obvious truism is that we tend to assume multiple roles both within and outside our respective institutions. That is to be expected. Depending on the particular institution we may take on the role of instructors, advisors and mentors, colleagues, committee members, and potentially supervisors (depending on whether or not we have any administrative duties or if we have the ability to employ student workers in our offices). Outside of our professional lives, we of course may assume any of a number of other roles.

For today, I wish to focus on the classroom, whether in its traditional sense or the more virtual classroom of the standard online course. Regardless of setting, I view the classroom much like I view any other work setting. The overarching goal of any instructor should be to avoid creating conditions that would lead to a hostile workplace for students.

In my particular area within the behavioral and social sciences, much of the material that I might teach would be considered potentially controversial. Even in an introductory psychology course, some of what I teach within the scope of learning theory and research makes some assumptions that draw explicitly from Darwin's Theory of Evolution. And of course, there is plenty of material in social psychology that touches on sensitive topics such as prejudice, aggression, mortality salience, and whatnot. Depending on the particular brand of political correctness any individual student may subscribe to, it is quite likely that a few toes will get stepped on. It is unavoidable.

With that in mind, what I think is appropriate as a faculty member is to present the research, give examples of the research, but to avoid advocacy within the classroom students. The data presented will constrain what would be reasonable interpretations, and it is of course paramount that students are expected to understand what those limits would be. We cannot of course coerce them into explicitly adopting a set of beliefs that we ourselves may hold dearly ourselves, or to engage in behaviors that they themselves would ordinarily refrain from doing. Although there are occasions where faculty create learning environments that would be hostile, fortunately such incidents are fairly infrequent - certainly that has been the case where I have worked. Every once in a while a news story will come up that will understandably bug any of us - such as the instructor who insisted that every student in a class she was teaching sign a document promising to vote for Obama. Obviously, such behaviors on the part of any instructor would be inappropriate regardless of candidate or issue that a particular individual instructor might feel strongly about - and standard interpretations of academic freedom will not provide cover for said faculty members if and when students complain to administrators. My advice to any graduate student who is hoping to use his or her first post-grad-school position as a platform for recruiting activists and such should realize how badly they are misinterpreting the concept of academic freedom, and should ask themselves why they are even pursuing this career in the first place.

In the media

Since I've been a bit on the busy side, I neglected to update you regarding the interview I had with The Guardian's Daniel Hernandez, where he tapped into some of my expertise on the weapons effect. Mr. Hernandez published his article at the end of November: Vegas gun ranges target thrill-seeking tourists with ever bigger weapons. Other than reversing my name - I've contacted him to see if he would be kind enough to correct that error - he did capture the essence of the weapons effect based on our conversation. Given the recent string of massacres involving firearms here in the US, the research on the weapons effect is timely - and it is a topic I shall return to in my next post.

Mental Illness and Violence

Since I am not a clinical or counseling psychologist, I typically avoid discussions of mental illness. However, since I am a social psychologist who studies aggression, I do occasionally get questions about the potential link between "subject variables" such as mental illness and aggressive behavioral outcomes. The question has been again brought to the fore in the aftermath of the most recent gun-related massacre, since the young man who committed the mass murder appeared to have had a troubled life. My main concern is that this latest incident will merely perpetuate a stereotype of the mentally ill as "psycho killers" rather than lead to a much needed discussion of the factors that facilitate gun-related violence in the US relative to other nations.

Recently, a woman blogged about her own kid, under the title "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother: A Mom's Perspective On The Mental Illness Conversation In America". When someone close to me asked me my opinion of the article, I told her that I thought it missed the point. The author managed to make a number of assertions about her son's future as a potential violent criminal that I found quite harmful to the kid in question, and could amount to something of a self-fulfilling prophesy to the extent that her behaviors toward her kid (given her apparent attitude) likely betrays any of a number of hostile appraisal biases (in particular hostile expectancy and perception biases). That aside, the author makes an assertion about mental illness and violence that does not hold up under careful scrutiny. In essence, it would appear that having a mental illness is not in and of itself sufficient as a predictor of violence. One needs to consider other factors, such as socioeconomic status, age, substance abuse, etc. as well.

I want to close with some lines from "You Are Not Adam Lanza's Mother," as it expresses quite nicely a perspective that I share:

3)      The article complains about mental illness stigma while reinforcing it by explicitly tying it to violence, and in particular, mass killings. The reality is that there is no such observed link: “after analysing a number of killers, Mullen concludes, ‘they had personality problems and were, to put it mildly, deeply troubled people.’ But he goes on to add: ‘Most perpetrators of autogenic massacres do not, however, appear to have active psychotic symptoms at the time and very few even have histories of prior contact with mental health services.’” And most people with mental illness are not violent, although they are far more likely to be victims of crime (see here, for instance).

4)      The article, with this link established, implies a desire to stop violent crime allegedly perpetrated by those with mental illness should motivate better care and provision for those with mental illness, and not, say, the lower life expectancy, unemployment, isolation, suicidality, homelessness, victimization or in general the suffering endured by those with it. The continual disregard for this reality perpetuates stigma on all levels of society and further exposes those with mental illness to harm.

5)      Antipsychotics and antidepressants are not designed for children and most of them are not indicated for disruptive behaviour in children. Zyprexa, the prescription given to the child in the article, is not indicated for disruptive behaviour or autism in the US.  This sort of willy-nilly prescribing with little real knowledge of or regard for the long-term consequences, particularly for those whose brains are not fully developed yet, is potentially extremely damaging, and it’s not unlikely that a forever-changing cocktail of unwise psychotropic prescriptions contributes to worsening psychological problems. However, there is no criticism of psychiatric or pharmaceutical practice in the article: merely a cry for more of the same.

6)      You are NOT Adam Lanza’s mother. The sort of quasi-solidarity expressed in “We are [oppressed people]” or “I am [dead person]” appropriates the experiences of people who are unheard, in this case the victim of a mass homicide, and uses that to bolster a narrative that doesn’t even attempt to discover or represent the experiences of those they claim to speak for. Don’t do that.

Speaking of authoritarianism

I would be remiss if I did not make some mention of Bob Altemeyer's research. Altemeyer's work is, after all, the reason I got interested in authoritarianism in the first place. Most of his original research can be found in a number of peer-review journal articles, as well as in three books: Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Enemies of Freedom, and The Authoritarian Specter. The first two of those titles are out of print, but any decent university library will have them in its collection (or at least can get them to you via interlibrary loan). The last of those titles is still sold via Amazon and other book dealers. Altemeyer also has a free ebook, The Authoritarians, which provides a nice capsule summary of his work and its importance for a lay audience. Actually, even his scholarly work can be easily handled by those whose background might consist of little more than an introductory psychology course - he really is that good of a writer. Of course his own work builds upon the groundbreaking research of Adorno et al. (1950), whose book, The Authoritarian Personality, summarized their own extensive research program. A number of researchers still use their F-Scale, although its psychometric properties are somewhat questionable.

For a long time, I used Altemeyer's RWA questionnaire, although in recent years I have switched to the one developed by Funke (2005) - namely because the latter is briefer, and has better psychometric properties than either Altemeyer's RWA scale or the F-Scale. I have found from some pilot data that findings obtained with Funke's scale largely replicate findings I have obtained using Altemeyer's scale (plus I have the benefit of actually directly measuring authoritarian aggression, submission, and conventionalism).

References:

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Row.

Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Funke, F. (2005). The dimensionality of right-wing authoritarianism: Lessons from the dilemma between theory and measurement. Political Psychology, 26, 195-218.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Since this is an area of interest for me as a social psychologist, I thought it would be worthwhile to bookmark this particular page. In general the author of the wiki does a decent job of providing the gist. The same author appears to be in the process of conducting some qualitative research that might be relevant to those interested in better understanding authoritarianism. Of course my own work is strictly quantitative. Speaking of which, I will probably have a few things to say about authoritarianism and some of my own data once I can clear some time in my schedule, and can take a look at some more of the data that I and my research team have gathered this semester.