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In this study we are looking at the effects of victim sex, participant sex, belief in a just world, dark triad personality traits, sexual attitudes, and sociosexuality on judgments of technology-facilitated sexual violence (in the form of revenge pornography and upskirting).

Materials used in both surveys.

An initial look at perceptions of implicit malevolent intent across the ideological spectrum

Manuscript Preparation

An examination of the identification, ascription, and reception of 'fake news' across the ideological spectrum.

An examination of the identification and reception of 'fake news' across the ideological spectrum.

In this study, we will assess the differences in ideological responses to when political figures break social and physical distancing guidelines in response to the novel coronavirus disease-2019. In the UK, several government officials across the political spectrum have broken these guidelines, and here we explore if the political ideology (liberal vs. conservative) of both the perpetrators and the subjects influences their judgments about the severity of the breaches.

This study aims to investigate whether individual judgments about COVD-19 vaccinations are predicted by age, sex, political ideology, bullshit receptivity, fear of COVID, lockdown attitudes and adherence, and scientific knowledge.

Data and Analyses

An examination of the identification, ascription, and reception of 'fake news' across the ideological spectrum.

Ethics and Funding Applications/Decisions

Slides from all presentations given at academic conferences by Dr. Craig Harper from 2018 onwards.

In June 2016, British voters elected to leave the European Union by a margin of 52% to 48%. Emerging work has begun to characterize ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ voters in the context of increasing unrest and polarization between the two sets of voters. We investigated whether increasing empathy might reduce polarization, and whether such effects were consistent across voter groups. A final sample of 262 British voters completed measures of cognitive and affective empathy, ingroup identification, and outgroup polarization. Political polarization was predicted by higher levels of cognitive empathy, and was greater in ‘Remain’ voters. However, the relationship between ingroup identification and polarization was not moderated by empathy or vote choice. As such, polarization in the Brexit debate appears to be tribal in nature and symmetrical across ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ voters. Nonetheless, we do provide evidence that increasing cognitive empathy for one’s political outgroups may reduce polarization in highly politicized contexts.

To understand the lived experience of service users and multi-disciplinary staff within the offender personality disorder pathway this includes: challenges, benefits, therapeutic interventions, training, relationships with staff/service users, environment, perceived effectiveness of OPD pathway, interactions with colleagues and views towards individuals with mental health difficulties. It will include and exploration of the convergence and divergence of the lived experiences of service users and staff. In order to generate evidence based practical recommendations for staff and service users within the OPD pathway.

Exploring the potential for concept creep across the ideological spectrum. Replication of an initial study in an American sample.

For a long time, sexual offences have been common conversation topics in social, political, and academic circles, however this has been exacerbated by social media, and in particular, the #MeToo movement (Askanius & Hartley, 2019; Palmer et al., 2021; PettyJohn et al., 2019). High profile cases (Reynhard Sinaga), celebrity scandals (Bill Cosby), and social movements (#metoo) have thrust sexual violence into the zeitgeist (Askanius & Hartley, 2019; Palmer et al., 2021; PettyJohn et al., 2019). Evidence suggests some individuals may have distorted, or misconceived views of non-consensual penetrative sex and related legislation (Adams-Clark & Chrisler, 2018; Haugen et al., 2018; Javaid, 2015; Loney-Howes, 2018; Siegel et al., 2021). Further, these misconstructions may permeate those who work with or around sexual offences, such as police officers, medical professionals, and psychologists (Javaid, 2015a; O’Neal & Hayes, 2020a; Sleath & Bull, 2010; Dworkin et al., 2021). Offence Supportive Beliefs, Offence Stereotyping and Victim Blaming support this notion, as they are observed among both public (Jaffe et al., 2021; Hills et al., 2020; Reed et al., 2020) and professional populations (Grandgenett et al., 2020; Javaid, 2019; O’Neal & Hayes, 2020). Little research has undertaken the task of gauging understanding and attitudes towards sexual offence legislation or discovering how the individuals construct and define sexual offences in their view. Misrepresentation of legislation, or a lack of correct knowledge about non-consensual penetrative sex and the corresponsive legislation could be exacerbating issues of secondary victimisation, low reporting rates, and low prosecution rates (Adams-Clark & Chrisler, 2018; Hamby, 2017; Haugen et al., 2018; Javaid, 2015). The present research aims to explore knowledge, understanding, and attitudes of sexual offence law; constructions and definitions of sexual offences; and evaluate the presence of psychosocial factors (e.g. victim blaming, cognitive distortions, and implicit biases) that may influence the prior elements among both the ‘professional’ and ‘public’ samples.

The moral foundations theory (MFT) is an influential multifactorial model that posits how decision-making in the moral context originates from a set of six intuitive moral foundations: care, fairness, authority, loyalty, purity, and liberty. The established measure of these foundations – the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) – has been used extensively in a range of empirical projects. However, recent analyses of its factor structure and the internal consistency of the each of the foundation clusters have called its validity into question. In this paper, data from a large sample of British voters (N = 428) was used to re-examine the component structure of the MFQ. As opposed to a six-component structure, only three meaningful clusters emerged: traditionalism, compassion, and liberty. Concurrent validity was established via correlations with measures of ‘social change’ and ‘systemic inequality’ insecurities, while significant differences on each of the three components of the revised MFQ (MFQ-r) were observed between the voters of different political parties. Implications for moral foundations theory and its measurement are discussed.

The stigmatization of people with pedophilic sexual interests is the topic of growing academic and professional consideration, owing to its potential role in moderating pedophiles’ emotional wellbeing, and motivation and engagement in child abuse prevention schemes. Thus, improving attitudes and reducing stigmatization toward this group is of paramount importance. Prior research has suggested that narrative humanization – presenting personal stories of self-identified non-offending pedophiles – could be one route to doing this. However, this work has only been conducted with students or trainee psychotherapists, meaning the public generalizability of this method is still unknown. In this study, we tested whether narratives reduce stigma toward people with pedophilic interests more effectively than an informative alternative (scientific information about pedophilia). Using a longitudinal experimental design (initial N = 950; final N = 539), we found that narratives had consistently positive effects on all measured aspects of stigmatization (dangerousness, intentionality), whereas an informative alternative had mixed results, and actually increased perceptions of pedophiles’ levels of deviance. These effects were also still present four months after the initial presentation. We discuss these data in relation to ongoing debates about treating pedophilia as a public health issue requiring a broad societal approach to wellbeing and child abuse prevention.

In recent times there has been an upturn in the rates of polarization in contemporary democracies, with increasing unrest and incivility between those of different voting factions. In this paper, we investigated whether higher levels of empathy might be associated with reduced levels of polarization, and whether such effects were consistent across different voter groups. A final sample of 262 British voters (Study 1) and 385 American partisans (Study 2) completed measures of cognitive and affective empathy, ingroup identification, and outgroup polarization. Across both studies, lower levels of polarization were predicted by higher levels of cognitive empathy and were greater in ‘Remain’ and ‘Democrat’ voters. However, the significant relationship between ingroup identification and polarization was not moderated by empathy or vote choice. As such, we believe that polarization in these contexts may be conceptualized as being tribal in nature, and symmetrical across different and opposing groups of voters. Nonetheless, we do provide evidence that higher levels of cognitive empathy for one’s political outgroups may reduce polarization in highly politicized contexts.

Background: The relationship between psychopathic personality and problematic alcohol consumption could be important for understanding risk and potential interventions. This existing work on psychopathy and alcohol abuse is typically conducted in criminal and hospitalised populations and little attention has been paid to investigating the general populations’ psychopathic personality and problematic consumption of alcohol. The psychopathy-focused Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and the more general Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality (RST) focus on individual differences related to low self-control and sensation seeking, and could relate to problematic alcohol consumption in non-forensic samples. The current study brings together RST and psychopathic personality traits to predict alcohol use disorders. We hypothesise that impulsivity and anxiety predict problematic alcohol consumption and related risk appraisal.Methods: We analysed data from a sample of 349 general population participants who had completed measures of the TriPM, RST, alcohol use disorders (AUDIT) and their perceived negative outcomes of high risk behaviour with the Cognitive Appraisal of Risky Events (CARE) measure.Results: We find some evidence that TriPM’s disinhibition and RST’s anxious personality traits relate to AUDIT scores. We find limited evidence that personality traits predict the negative appraisal of risky events, but alcohol use was related to increased perceptions of the negative outcomes of alcohol consumption.Conclusions: Overall this study shows that individual differences do relate to problematic alcohol consumption but not the appraisal of risks related to alcohol consumption. This has implications for the structuring of intervention for those at risk of problematic consumption of alcohol.

Personality correlates with problematic alcohol consumption are important for understanding who is an at-risk individual and how we may build successful interventions. Previous research has found mixed results relating psychopathic personality traits to alcohol abuse. This existing work is typically conducted in criminal and hospitalised populations and little attention has been paid to investigating the general populations’ personality and disordered use of alcohol. Theories of personality, like the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory of personality (RST) focus on individual differences related to low self-control and sensation seeking, and could relate to disordered alcohol use in non-forensic samples. The current study builds on the previous research to investigate the extent to which these trait models predict disordered alcohol consumption and risk appraisal. We analysed data from a sample of 349 general population participants who had completed measures of the TriPM, RST, disordered alcohol use (AUDIT) and their perceived negative outcomes of high risk behaviour with the Cognitive Appraisal of Risky Events (CARE) measure. We find some evidence that TriPM’s disinhibition and RST’s anxious personality traits relate to disordered alcohol consumption. We find limited evidence that personality traits predict the negative appraisal of risky events, but disordered alcohol use was related to increased perceptions of the negative outcomes of alcohol consumption. Overall this study shows that individual differences do relate to disordered alcohol use but not the appraisal of risks related to alcohol consumption.

According to recent analyses, Bumby’s RAPE scale of cognitive distortions about women and sexual assault is comprised of two factors. Excusing rape serves to reduce abusers’ culpability for their offending, and ascribe blame to victims, while justifying rape is associated with a sense of sexual entitlement. The distinct effects of these factors on rape judgements have not yet been investigated. We examined whether these distortion clusters differentially predicted judgements of perpetrator innocence after priming cues related to each of them. We used a cross-sectional design (N = 217) to test our hypotheses. As predicted, we found that excusing rape distortions predicted exaggerated innocence judgements when the victim paid the bill on a first date (potentially indicative of romantic or sexual interest). However, contrary to expectations there was no evidence that participants justified rape when the perpetrator paid the bill. Implications for conceptualising the functions of cognitive distortions are discussed.

Microaggressions–subtle slights that communicate implicit bias–have become a widespread concern in recent years.However, the empirical credibility of microaggression theory has been questioned due to a lack of conceptual clarity and the prevalence of methodological biases within microaggression research. Challenging the empirical validity of the traditional demographics-based microaggression concept, this study examined the potential for cross-spectrum microaggression perception being a method for derogating opposition viewpoints, consistent with existing work on ideological prejudice. Using an experimental online survey (N= 404), there was a significant association between participants’ ideological orientation and their judgements of the ‘perpetrators’and ‘victims’of microaggressions when ‘victims’were associated with leftist causes, but not right-wing causes. These associations were not moderated by emotional investment in ideological orientation (i.e., collective narcissism). Implications for microaggression theory, diversity training programs, and the study of politically-salient individual differences are subsequently discussed.

IntroductionThe ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders, and competitive sport. Despite recognition that such performance depends on a range of cognitive factors, how common these factors are across performance domains remains unclear. The current study sought to integrate existing knowledge in the performance field in the form of a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie performance under pressure.MethodsInternational experts were recruited from four performance domains [(i) Defense; (ii) Competitive Sport; (iii) Civilian High-stakes; and (iv) Performance Neuroscience]. Experts rated constructs from the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework (and several expert-suggested constructs) across successive rounds, until all constructs reached consensus for inclusion or were eliminated. Finally, included constructs were ranked for their relative importance.ResultsSixty-eight experts completed the first Delphi round, with 94% of experts retained by the end of the Delphi process. The following 10 constructs reached consensus across all four panels (in order of overall ranking): (1) Attention; (2) Cognitive Control—Performance Monitoring; (3) Arousal and Regulatory Systems—Arousal; (4) Cognitive Control—Goal Selection, Updating, Representation, and Maintenance; (5) Cognitive Control—Response Selection and Inhibition/Suppression; (6) Working memory—Flexible Updating; (7) Working memory—Active Maintenance; (8) Perception and Understanding of Self—Self-knowledge; (9) Working memory—Interference Control, and (10) Expert-suggested—Shifting.DiscussionOur results identify a set of transdisciplinary neuroscience-informed constructs, validated through expert consensus. This expert consensus is critical to standardizing cognitive assessment and informing mechanism-targeted interventions in the broader field of human performance optimization.