Background and aimSocial factors may be of importance causally and act as maintenance factors in patients with anorexia nervosa. Oxytocin is a neuromodulatory hormone involved in social emotional processing associated with attentional processes. This study aimed to examine the impact of oxytocin on attentional processes to social faces representing anger, disgust, and happiness in patients with anorexia nervosa.MethodA double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subject crossover design was used. Intranasal oxytocin or placebo followed by a visual probe detection task with faces depicting anger, disgust, and happiness was administered to 64 female subjects: 31 patients with anorexia nervosa and 33 control students.ResultsAttentional bias to the disgust stimuli was observed in both groups under the placebo condition. The attentional bias to disgust was reduced under the oxytocin condition (a moderate effect in the patient group). Avoidance of angry faces was observed in the patient group under the placebo condition and vigilance was observed in the healthy comparison group; both of these information processing responses were moderated by oxytocin producing an increase in vigilance in the patients. Happy/smiling faces did not elicit an attentional response in controls or the patients under either the placebo or oxytocin conditions.ConclusionOxytocin attenuated attentional vigilance to disgust in patients with anorexia nervosa and healthy controls. On the other hand, oxytocin changed the response to angry faces from avoidance to vigilance in patients but reduced vigilance to anger in healthy controls. We conclude that patients with anorexia nervosa appear to use different strategies/circuits to emotionally process anger from their healthy counterparts.
This study examined episodic measures that assess frequency and magnitude of perceived threat of hate crime over the last six months compared to standard methods that address diffuse threat. Framing effects of question wording, worry- versus fear- versus safety-based, were also assessed. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a sample of 1,824 adults vulnerable to hate crime completed one of the three randomly assigned survey questionnaires that varied the question wording. Results show that standard measures tend to yield higher levels of perceived threat of hate crime across different bias motivations than episodic measures. Worry- and fear-based questions were also associated with higher odds of perceived threat of hate crime than safety-based questions. Findings, implications, and future directions are discussed.
Despite growing interest in public confidence in criminal justice, robust confidence measures have not yet been established. Two studies were conducted to develop multidimensional measures of public confidence in criminal justice. Study 1 involved two-phased construction of scales in which a preliminary inventory was generated and then finalized after psychometric evaluations. Six multidimensional scales (62 items) were constructed for measuring efficiency-, finality-, fairness-, lawfulness-, accuracy-, and transparency-oriented confidence. Study 2 tested the predictive ability of the scale scores for cooperation with criminal justice institutions. Results highlight that higher confidence in authorities’ accurate fact-finding and fair treatment predicted greater willingness to assist institutions. Higher confidence in authorities’ lawfulness predicted greater compliance with the law. The six scales developed are a reliable and valid tool for measuring confidence in criminal justice and predicting cooperation with criminal institutions.
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