No abstract

According to recent research on laypersons' punitive attitudes people's sentencing decisions are primarily driven by a desire for retribution. The research designed to test this notion, however, can be criticized for suffering from several limitations. Three online-based studies were conducted with samples from Western Europe with the aim of replicating the findings of Carlsmith (J Exp Soc Psychol 42:437-451, 2006) in which participants' punishment motives were inferred from their behavior in a process tracing task. In the present research, this approach was adopted and modified in order to provide a more conservative test for the notion that people mainly care about retribution. Although these modifications strongly influenced the overall pattern of results, retribution still was the most important punishment motive in all three studies.

Although myofascial pain has often been described as being associated with psychosocial stress, detailed evidence in support of this assumption, either from standardized clinical examination or from validated chronic stress questionnaires, is absent. The hypothesis of the present study was that some stressors lead to higher scores in patients suffering from chronic myofascial pain than in pain-free controls and in patients suffering from chronic facial pain. One hundred and fifty subjects were included in the study, and depending on clinical findings, divided into three groups: exclusively chronic myofascial pain group, controls with chronic facial pain but without temporomandibular disorders (TMD), and controls without pain or TMD. Chronic stress was assessed on nine subscales by use of a validated questionnaire. Myofascial pain patients have a significantly higher stress score for "social isolation" than pain-free controls (t-test, p = 0.003). However, they do not have higher scores than patients suffering from facial pain (t test, p = 0.169). Thus, the hypothesis of this study could not be completely rejected.

Research has demonstrated that repeat offenders are generally punished more severely than first-time offenders. In the present article, we argue that this should particularly be true if the offender is a member of one’s own social category. A group of 86 students were told about a fellow student who hid books from the university library. The student was either an ingroup or an outgroup member and was either a first-time or a repeat offender. As expected, repeat ingroup offenders were more severely punished than first-time ingroup offenders; this effect was mediated by anger/outrage and societal concerns. If the offender was an outgroup member, however, criminal history did not influence punitive reactions.

No abstract

In this study, the impact of suggesting that pedophilia is immutable on a man's specific self-efficacy for modifying his sexual interest in children was examined in 94 men with a sexual interest in children. The participants were selected from differing contexts and included non-forensic patients, forensic patients, and participants from the Internet. Randomly distributed to two conditions, the mutable condition group received the information that experts consider pedophilia to be modifiable, whereas the immutable condition group received the information that experts consider pedophilia to be stable. Afterward, the participants' levels of specific self-efficacy for modifying their sexual interest in children were assessed. Non-forensic participants in the mutable condition reported higher levels of specific self-efficacy than those in the immutable condition. No differences in specific self-efficacy were revealed for the forensic and Internet participants when comparing the mutable and immutable conditions. It would appear appropriate to avoid generalized and absolute statements about the (im)mutability of sexual interest in children, as scientific research on this topic remains insufficient. Furthermore, given the present results, such statements might have serious consequences for an individual's belief in being able to change his sexual interest in children.

Among 26 pedophilic/hebephilic men, we investigated (1) the relationship between "specific self-efficacy for modifying a sexual interest in children" (SSIC) and actual sexual interest in children and (2) whether changes in SSIC are associated with changes in sexual interest in children. Results showed that the more clients believe they are able to influence their sexual interest in children, the less strong they perceive their sexual interest in children to be. Furthermore, an increase in SSIC is associated with a decrease in sexual interest in children. We suggest avoiding generalized statements about the immutability of sexual interest in children.

Dieser Band versammelt, teilweise in erweiterter Form, die Referate der 11. Tagung „Sanierung und Insolvenz von Unternehmen“, die das Europa Institut an der Universität Zürich im Juni 2020 online durchgeführt hat. Im Zentrum steht die aktienrechtliche Sanierung. Ein Schwergewicht liegt bei der Buchhaltung. Behandelt wird sodann mit dem Stillhalteabkommen eine wichtige Form aktienrechtlicher Sanierungsmassnahmen. Beleuchtet werden auch die Sanierung nach neuem Aktienrecht sowie die Sanierung und Einlagensicherung nach neuem Bankenrecht.