Moral injury is a potentially deleterious mental health outcome that can result from exposure to morally challenging events. Treatment of moral injury is currently hindered by incomplete understanding of its underlying mechanisms. Theories of adaptation posit that maintaining a coherent sense of self while realigning one's sense of self with reality aids in adaptation following a disruptive life event.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnxiety Stress Coping
November 2024
Background: Moral injury is a potentially debilitating outcome of exposure to events involving transgressions against an individual's moral code. It is often observed in the context of PTSD; however, treatments that do not differentiate the two are often ineffective for moral injury, suggesting different mechanisms contribute to the conditions. The most widely accepted model of moral injury proposes an important role for self-discrepancy processes in generating and maintaining event-related distress, but this has yet to be examined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: COVID-19 and related travel and social restrictions caused significant stress for university students in Australia and globally. Learning quickly moved online and many students (particularly international students) were separated from social and economic support. This study examined the impact of the pandemic from pre-pandemic (2019) to the COVID-19 Omicron wave (2022) on domestic and international students' mental health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Occup Health Psychol
February 2021
While the consequences of not having access to supervisor support have been well established, little is known about the repercussions of actively asking a supervisor for social support but failing to receive it. Our research examines this phenomenon, termed unanswered support. Drawing from Self-Determination Theory, we expected that lower need satisfaction would mediate the negative relationship between unanswered support and its predicted outcomes (well-being, performance, and relational outcomes).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRape cases have a disproportionately high attrition rate and low conviction rate compared with other criminal offenses. Evaluations of a rape complainant's credibility often determine whether a case progresses through the criminal justice system. Even though emotional demeanor is not related to witness honesty or accuracy, distressed rape complainants are perceived to be more credible than complainants who present with controlled affect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFForensic science techniques are often used in criminal trials to infer the identity of the perpetrator of crime and jurors often find this evidence very persuasive. Unfortunately, two of the leading causes of wrongful convictions are forensic science testing errors and false or misleading forensic testimony (Saks and Koehler, 2005). Therefore, it is important to understand jurors' pre-existing beliefs about forensic science, as these beliefs may impact how they evaluate forensic evidence in the courtroom.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJurors often negatively evaluate complainants making allegations of rape when those complainants were intoxicated at the time of the assault. It is, therefore, essential that legal practitioners have effective methods of ensuring that jurors use evidence of intoxication for the legally permissible purpose, which is to determine the complainant's cognitive capacity to consent. This study examines whether providing judicial instructions about how jurors should make use of complainant intoxication evidence assists jurors to use this evidence appropriately.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychiatr Psychol Law
February 2018
Little is known about the potential for tattoos to bias how defendants are perceived. In Study 1, the participants ( = 30) viewed photographs of five men with a tattoo (prison or modern style) on the face and neck or arm. Individuals with prison-style tattoos were perceived more negatively, especially when the tattoos were located on the face and neck compared to the arm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch consistently shows that techniques currently used to simplify jury instructions do not always improve mock jurors' comprehension. If improvements are observed, these are limited and overall comprehension remains low. It is unclear, however, why this occurs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch has consistently shown that jurors are influenced by multiple schemas in cases of alleged sexual assault, including offense stereotypes and victim stereotypes. These schemas appear to be organized in a hierarchy, as victim stereotypicality seems to matter most in acquaintance assaults (counter-stereotypical offense). However, despite numerous studies demonstrating the impact of defendant stereotypes on juror perceptions of guilt for other crimes, to date, the impact of stereotypes about defendants (perpetrators) in cases involving sexual violence have been overlooked.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJurors rely on a range of schemas when evaluating allegations of rape and sexual assault. For example, they may be influenced by the prototypicality of the alleged offense, the stereotypicality of the victim, or gender-related stereotypes. These schemas have often been conflated however, making it difficult to determine the unique impact of each on jurors' perceptions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework the current study explored the beliefs of current blood donors (N=172) about donating during a low and high-risk phase of a potential avian influenza outbreak. While the majority of behavioral, normative, and control beliefs identified in preliminary research differed as a function of donors' intentions to donate during both phases of an avian influenza outbreak, regression analyses suggested that the targeting of different specific beliefs during each phase of an outbreak would yield most benefit in bolstering donors' intentions to remain donating. The findings provide insight in how to best motivate donors in different phases of an avian influenza outbreak.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Data from prior health scares suggest that an avian influenza outbreak will impact on people's intention to donate blood; however, research exploring this is scarce. Using an augmented theory of planned behavior (TPB), incorporating threat perceptions alongside the rational decision-making components of the TPB, the current study sought to identify predictors of blood donors' intentions to donate during two phases of an avian influenza outbreak.
Study Design And Methods: Blood donors (n = 172) completed an on-line survey assessing the standard TPB predictors as well as measures of threat perceptions from the health belief model (i.
Workers who experience fire in the workplace are faced with disruption to their work routine, as well as the emotional strain of the fire. In the broader occupational stress literature, researchers have suggested that social support will be most effective at reducing the negative effects of stressors on strain when the type of support matches the type of stressor being experienced (either instrumental or emotional). This study was a preliminary investigation into employee responses to less routine stressors, such as workplace fires, and the role of different sources of social support in predicting coping effectiveness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present research investigated three approaches to the role of norms in the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Two studies examined the proposed predictors of intentions to engage in household recycling (Studies 1 and 2) and reported recycling behaviour (Study 1). Study 1 tested the impact of descriptive and injunctive norms (personal and social) and the moderating role of self-monitoring on norm-intention relations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo studies investigated how both degree of identification and the individual's position within the group influence aspects of group loyalty. The authors considered ingroup position in terms of both the individual's current position within a group and expectations concerning the likelihood that one's position might change in the future. Peripheral group members learned that their acceptance by other group members would improve in the future or that they could expect rejection by other group members.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examined the extent to which people's private attitudes to gay law reform are influenced by the attitudes of others. Ninety-six university students were told that they were either in a minority or in a majority relative to their university group on their attitudes to gay law reform. Contrary to a number of assumptions made in the social psychological literature, participants who supported gay law reform were more prepared to act in line with their attitudes than were those who opposed gay law reform.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBr J Soc Psychol
September 2003
Most experiments on conformity have been conducted in relation to judgments of physical reality; surprisingly few papers have experimentally examined the influence of group norms on social issues with a moral component. In response to this, participants were told that they were either in a minority or in a majority relative to their university group in terms of their attitudes toward recognition of gay couples in law (Expt 1: N = 205) and a government apology to Aborigines (Expt 2: N = 110). In both experiments, it was found that participants who had a weak moral basis for their attitude conformed to the group norm on private behaviours.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF