Category: Anger Management

New research has analysed the mood of Twitter users in the UK and detected various changes in the mood of the public.

In particular, the researchers observed a significant increase in negative mood, anger and fear, coinciding with the announcement of spending cuts and last summer's riots together with a possibly calming effect during the royal wedding.

The study by academics at the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory is presented at the International Workshop on Social Media Applications in News and Entertainment (SMANE 2012) held in Lyon, France.

In this study the researchers focused on measuring the mood, and changes, using standard tools for mood detection, of a large sample of the UK population. A collection of 484 million tweets generated by more than 9.8 million users from the UK were analysed between July 2009 and January 2012, a period marked by economic downturn and some social tensions.

The findings present intriguing patterns that can be explained when events and social changes are taken into account. The researchers found that a significant increase in negative mood indicators coincided with the announcement of the cuts to public spending by the government, and that this effect is still lasting. They also detected events such as the riots of summer 2011, as well as a possible calming effect in the run up to the royal wedding. Intriguingly, a rise in public anger seems to have already been under way in the days before the riots.

Nello Cristianini, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, speaking about the research, said: "Social media allows for the easy gathering of large amounts of data generated by the public while communicating with each other.

"While we leave the interpretation of our findings to social and political scientists, we observed how the period preceding the royal wedding seems to be marked by a lowered incidence of anger and fear, which starts rising soon after that. Of course, other events also happened in early May 2011, so they may also be responsible for that increase."

The aim of the study was to see if the effects of social events could be seen in the contents of Twitter. The first part of the researchers analysis provides a sanity check, in that it corroborates their assumption that word-counting methods can provide a reasonable approach to sentiment or mood analysis.

While this approach is standard in many applications, the researchers felt that a sanity check in the domain of mood detection via Twitter was necessary. By making use of lists of words that are correlated with the sentiments of joy, fear, anger and sadness, they observed that periodic events such as Christmas, Valentine's Day and Halloween evoke the same response in the population, year after year.

The main part of the analysis focused on a visible change-point occurring in October 2010, when the government announced cuts to public spending, testing its statistical significance. The study shows that the change point is real, and that its effects can still be observed. In other words, public mood has still not recovered from that announcement.

The same testing technique shows another important period, that of summer 2011, when riots broke out in various UK cities, leading to looting and even loss of life. The researchers method seems to suggest that some increase in public anger preceded, and not followed, these events, although the significance of this finding is a matter for social scientists to discuss.

Future work will include the comparison with social media content with traditional media content, as well as the comparison of both with traditional opinion polls methods.

It is important to remark that the real-time detection of social trends via the analysis of social media content, presents various possible limitations. Social media analysis can only be accomplished with text mining technologies, which are less accurate than human assessment, but can be applied to vast amounts of data. Also the population that is assessed is necessarily that of Twitter users, which is a biased subsample of the general population. Particular care needs to be paid when extracting information but also when reporting it.

Further information: https://patterns.enm.bris.ac.uk/publications/effects-of-the-recession-on-public-mood-in-the-UK

Violence in men can be explained by traditional theories of sexual selection. In a review of the literature, Professor John Archer from the University of Central Lancashire, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, points to a range of evidence that suggests that high rates of physical aggression and assaults in men are rooted in inter-male competition.

These findings are presented April 18 at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference held at the Grand Connaught Rooms, London (18-20 April).

Professor Archer describes evidence showing that differences between men and women in the use of physical aggression peak when men and women are in their twenties. In their twenties, men are more likely to report themselves as high in physical aggression, and to be arrested for engaging in assaults and the use of weapons, than at any other age. They also engage in these activities at a phenomenally higher rate than women.

Professor Archer highlights that sex differences in aggression are not observed in relation to indirect forms of aggression but become larger with the severity of violence. Indeed, at the extreme end of violence, there are a minimal number of female-female homicides in the face of a high male-male homicide rate. Interestingly, men are also much more likely to engage in risky behaviour in the presence of other men.

Professor Archer says that a range of male features that develop during adolescence arising from hormonal changes in testosterone accentuate aggressive behaviour. Examples include the growth of facial hair, voice pitch and facial changes such as brow ridge and chin size. He implicates height, weight and strength differences between men and women as further evidence of male adaptation to engage in fighting.

How does the environment influence aggression and violence? Professor Archer suggests there are two key principles — unequal wealth and a high ratio of sexually active men to women — that may increase physical aggression and violence in young men.

Professor Archer says: "The research evidence highlights that societal issues such as inequality of wealth and competition between males may contribute to the violence we see in today's society."

University of British Columbia research comparing traditional bullying with cyberbullying finds that the dynamics of online bullying are different, suggesting that anti-bullying programs need specific interventions to target online aggression.

"There are currently many programs aimed at reducing bullying in schools and I think there is an assumption that these programs deal with cyberbullying as well," says Jennifer Shapka, an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC who is presenting this research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in Vancouver.

"What we're seeing is that kids don't equate cyberbullying with traditional forms of schoolyard bullying. As such, we shouldn't assume that existing interventions will be relevant to aggression that is happening online."

Shapka is presenting a study that involved 17,000 Vancouver, B.C. students in Grades 8 to 12 and a follow-up study involving 733 Vancouver, B.C. youth aged 10-18.

Results of the studies show that about 25-30 per cent of youth report that they have experienced or taken part in cyberbullying, compared to 12 per cent of youth who say they've experienced or taken part in schoolyard bullying. However, "Youth say that 95 per cent of what happens online was intended as a joke and only 5 per cent was intended to harm," says Shapka. "It is clear that youth are underestimating the level of harm associated with cyberbullying."

According to Shapka, the findings suggest that in cyberbullying adolescents play multiple roles — as bullies, victims, and witnesses — and "downplay the impact of it, which means that existing education and prevention programs are not going to get through to them."

"Students need to be educated that this 'just joking' behaviour has serious implications."

Being victimized online can have consequences for a person's mental health, developmental well-being, and academic achievement, according to Shapka. In extreme cases, there have been reports of suicide.

Traditional bullying, or schoolyard bullying, is often associated with three main characteristics: a power differential between bully and victim, a proactive targeting of a victim, and ongoing aggression.

Shapka says, research is beginning to show that cyberbullying does not necessarily involve these three characteristics. Traditional power differentials — size and popularity — do not necessarily apply online. There also seems to be more fluid delineation between the roles youth play; it is not unusual for an individual to act in all capacities — bullies, victims, and witnesses — online.

Previous work by Shapka and her colleagues has shown that in contrast to traditional bullying, cyberbullying is rarely associated with planned targeting of a victim.

A number of Internet safety campaigns suggest parents keep an eye on their children's online activity but Shapka says this kind of micro-managing can undermine healthy adolescent development.

"An open and honest relationship between parents and children is one of the best ways to protect teenagers from online risks related to cyberbullying, Internet addiction, and privacy concerns related to disclosing personal information online."

 Study explores how men's mental faculties continue to respond to their physical strength and fighting ability

Fighting ability, largely determined by upper body strength, continues to rule the minds of modern men, according to a new study by Aaron Sell from Griffith University in Australia and colleagues. Their work explores the concept that human males are designed for fighting, and shows how this fighting ability drives both their behavior and attitudes to a range issues, including political orientation. For example, their research demonstrates that among Hollywood actors, those selected for their physical strength, i.e. action stars, are more likely to support the Republican position on foreign policy.

The study is published online in Springer's journal Human Nature, and is part of a special issue on the evolution of human aggression.

Multiple research disciplines have found evidence that our male ancestors used physical aggression to compete for status. The evidence shows how this competition led to the evolution of numerous physical and psychological sex differences. Sell and team's review highlights the sheer number of physical and mental features that show evidence of special design for physical aggression in men, compared to women. These features include abilities to dissipate heat, perceive and respond rapidly to threats, estimate the trajectory of thrown objects, resist blunt-force trauma and accurately intercept objects.

While fighting ability was undoubtedly essential when man was a hunter-gatherer, how important and influential is it today? According to Sell and colleagues' work, man's fighting ability is still a major influence on his attitudes and behavioral responses.

Multiple studies conducted from the US, East India, Bolivia and the Central African Republic show that physically strong men have a greater sense of entitlement, a shorter fuse on anger, and are more likely to turn aggressive when angry. The effects are quite substantial, often two to four times larger than the known effect of testosterone on aggression.

The authors applied the same analysis to attitudes on warfare and found that stronger men, compared to weaker men, were more likely to believe in the utility of political aggression as a means of resolving conflicts of interest. Using a sample of Hollywood stars they demonstrated that those actors known for their physical strength and formidability, among them Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone, were more likely to support military action. Generally speaking, Hollywood actors are left wing, but the action stars among them were more likely than not to support the Republican position on foreign policy.

The authors conclude: "Upper body strength in adult males is a crucial variable that appears to have impacts on a wide range of mental mechanisms. These mechanisms were designed by natural selection at a time when personal physical aggression was far more common and individual differences in fighting ability were far more relevant for the resolution of conflicts. Despite the steady decline in physical aggression and violent deaths that have accompanied Western civilization, the human mind is still designed for ancestral environments."

The personality trait narcissism may have an especially negative effect on the health of men, according to a recent study published in PLoS ONE.

"Narcissistic men may be paying a high price in terms of their physical health, in addition to the psychological cost to their relationships," says Sara Konrath, a University of Michigan psychologist who co-authored the study.

Earlier studies by Konrath and others have shown that the level of narcissism is rising in American culture, and that narcissism tends to be more prevalent among males. The personality trait is characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, overestimations of uniqueness, and a sense of grandiosity.

For the new study, Konrath and colleagues David Reinhard of the University of Virginia, and William Lopez and Heather Cameron of the University of Michigan examined the role of narcissism and sex on cortisol levels in a sample of 106 undergraduate students. Cortisol, which can be measured through saliva samples, is a widely used marker of physiological stress.

The researchers measured cortisol levels at two points in time in order to assess baseline levels of the hormone, which signals the level of activation of the body's key stress response system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Participants were not asked to complete any tasks that would elevate their stress. Elevated levels of cortisol in a relatively stress-free situation would indicate chronic HPA activation, which has significant health implications, increasing the risk of cardiovascular problems.

To assess participants' narcissism, the researchers administered a 40-item narcissism questionnaire that measures five different components of the personality trait. Two of these components are more maladaptive, or unhealthy — exploitativeness and entitlement; and the other three are more adaptive, or healthy — leadership/authority, superiority/arrogance, and self-absorption/self-admiration.

"Even though narcissists have grandiose self-perceptions, they also have fragile views of themselves, and often resort to defensive strategies like aggression when their sense of superiority is threatened," says Reinhard. "These kinds of coping strategies are linked with increased cardiovascular reactivity to stress and higher blood pressure, so it makes sense that higher levels of maladaptive narcissism would contribute to highly reactive stress response systems and chronically elevated levels of stress."

Reinhard, Konrath and colleagues found that the most toxic aspects of narcissism were indeed associated with higher cortisol in male participants, but not in females. In fact, unhealthy narcissism was more than twice as large a predictor of cortisol in males as in females.

They also found that there was no relationship between healthy narcissism and cortisol in either males or females.

"These findings extend previous research by showing that narcissism may not only influence how people respond to stressful events, but may also affect how they respond to their regular day-to-day routines and interactions," says Konrath. "Our findings suggest that the HPA axis may be chronically activated in males high in unhealthy narcissism, even without an explicit stressor."

Why should narcissism affect males differently? "Given societal definitions of masculinity that overlap with narcissism — for example, the belief that men should be arrogant and dominant — men who endorse stereotypically male sex roles and who are also high in narcissism may feel especially stressed," Konrath suggests.

In future research, she hopes to examine why narcissism is not as physiologically taxing for women as it is for men, and also to examine the potential links between maladaptive narcissism and other physiological responses related to stress and poor coping, including inflammatory markers such as C-Reactive Protein.

A new position statement issued by the American Academy of Neurology calls on neurologists to begin screening their patients for abusive or violent treatment by family, caretakers or others.

The position statement is published in the January 25, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Types of abuse include elder abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, cyberbullying and violence.

"Neurologists see patients with neurologic disorders that may make them more susceptible to abuse or neglect," said lead author Elliott A. Schulman, MD, of Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Penn., and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. "They also see patients with neurologic issues that may be either directly or indirectly related to mistreatment."

More than 90 percent of all injuries from intimate partner violence occur to the head, face or neck region, and can lead to traumatic brain injury, according to the position statement. People with neurologic disorders such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease or stroke may be at higher risk for abuse and neglect.

"By routinely asking about violence and abuse, the neurologist increases the opportunity for both identifying ongoing abuse and intervening when appropriate," Schulman said. "In addition to further physical and emotional harm, consequences of not asking about abuse might include failure of treatments and, when children are exposed to abuse, perpetuation of the cycle of abuse from generation to generation."

The position statement outlines 10 principles of intervention by the neurologist when meeting with patients, beginning with integrating questions about abuse into the medical history and routinely screening all patients for past and ongoing violence.

The Academy is also offering free training to members interested in seeking to help address domestic violence issues in their communities.

The position statement also includes a list of resources for patients, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-SAFE (7233) or www.thehotline.org.

Children who display multiple psychosomatic symptoms, such as regular aches and pains and sleep and appetite problems, are more than twice as likely to be experiencing physical abuse at home than children who do not display symptoms, according to a study in the March edition of Acta Paediatrica.

Swedish researchers who studied 2,510 children aged 10, 12 and 15 from 44 schools found a strong association between reported physical abuse and three or more psychosomatic symptoms. The association was highest in children who were physically abused and also witnessed intimate partner violence (IPV). However, there was no significant association between IPV on its own and multiple symptoms.

"The children were asked if they had experienced any of the following symptoms at least twice in the last month: stomach ache, headache, sleeplessness, dizziness, back pain and loss of appetite" explains co-author Professor Staffan Janson from the Division of Public Health Sciences at Karlstad University, Sweden.

"They were also asked about 13 common chronic conditions, bullying and school performance, to eliminate any other factors that could cause the symptoms, and about whether they had been physically abused and witnessed IPV at home."

The study sample was equally split between girls and boys, with approximately one third of the sample coming from each of the three age groups.

Key findings of the study included:

• Most of the children were born in Sweden (89%) and living with both biological parents (74%). Just under half (42%) had at least one chronic condition, 10% had two chronic conditions and 4% had three or more.
• One in six of the children (16%) had suffered physical abuse or witnessed IPV in the home — 9% reported just physical abuse, 4% reported IPV alone and 3% reported both.
• Two-thirds of the children (66%) reported at least one psychosomatic symptom and just over a third of these children (35%) reported three symptoms or more.
• The most common symptoms were headache (38%), sleeplessness (36%) and stomach ache (31%).
• 86% of the children who reported that they were physically abused and had witnessed IPV at home reported at least one psychosomatic symptom, with 41% reporting three or more, compared with 17% of the non-abused children.
• 82% of the children who reported physical abuse only reported at least one symptom, with 35% reporting three or more symptoms compared with 17% of the non-abused children.
• There was no significant difference in the symptoms reported by children who did or did not report just IPV.
• When confounding factors, such as chronic conditions, bullying and school performance were taken into account, the odds of a child suffering physical abuse, with or without IPV, was 112% higher (OR 2.12) than a child who was not being abused. When IPV was added into the equation, this rose to 171% higher (OR 2.71)
• The odds for a child suffering physical abuse only was 72% higher (OR 1.72) and the odds for IPV only was 9% higher (OR 1.09).
• Abused children with chronic conditions reported significantly more psychosomatic symptoms than abused children without chronic conditions.

"Our study demonstrates a clear association between high levels of psychosomatic symptoms and an increased risk of physical abuse" says Professor Janson. "The association was even stronger in abused children who also witnessed intimate partner violence at home.

"The findings suggest that healthcare professionals should consider the possibility of physical abuse if a child presents with three or more regular psychosomatic symptoms a month.

"However, it is also important that they rule out any confounding factors, such as chronic illness, bullying and school performance when assessing the child."

In this world, there are winners and losers — and, for your own safety, it is best to fear the winners. A new study found that winners — those who outperformed others on a competitive task — acted more aggressively against the people they beat than the losers did against the victors.

"It seems that people have a tendency to stomp down on those they have defeated, to really rub it in," said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

"Losers, on the other hand, don't really act any more aggressively than normal against those who defeated them."

Bushman said this is the first study to examine whether winners or losers were more likely to act aggressively.

There were reasons to believe either side could have been more in a fighting mood, Bushman said. Losers might be the bigger aggressors, because they would be angry against those who prevented them from feeling competent. However, other research suggests that people are more aggressive when they feel powerful, as they may when they win a competition.

These results, though, suggest "losers are the ones who get the brunt of the aggression," he said.

Bushman conducted the study with three French scholars: Dominique Muller and Emmanuelle Ceaux of Pierre Mendès-France University in Grenoble and Baptise Subra of University Paris Descartes. Their results appear online in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science and will appear in a future print edition.

They conducted three related studies.

The first study involved 103 American college students who were told they would be paired with a partner who they would be competing against on two tasks. (In actuality, there was no partner).

In the first task, participants were shown patterns of simple shapes on a computer screen for just a fraction of a second (70 milliseconds) and they had to decide whether a dollar sign was present or absent.

After 80 trials, all students were told their scores. Half of them were told they did better than their supposed partner, and half were told they did worse. In other words, half were winners and half were losers.

The second task was a competitive reaction time task which is used to measure aggression. Participants were told that they and their partner (supposedly the same person they competed against in the first task) would have to press a button as fast as possible on each of the 25 trials and that whoever was slower would receive a blast of noise through headphones.

The winner of the task would decide how loud the blast would be and how long it would last.

Results showed that participants who won in the first competition blasted their partners longer and louder than did those who lost the competition.

"People were more aggressive when they were better off than when they were worse off than others," Bushman said.

One possible limitation of this study, Bushman said, was that participants might have thought that someone who was good at the first task would also be good at the second task. If that was true, the losers in the first task may have been afraid to act aggressively because they were afraid their partner would again win a lot of trials and punish them with loud blasts.

So in a second study, conducted with 34 French college students, the researchers repeated the same experiment, except that the researchers told participants that the two tasks tested different capacities, and that those who did well on the first task do not necessarily perform well on the second.

The results were the same as those in the first experiment, providing further evidence that winners are more aggressive than losers, Bushman said.

Another question, though, is whether winners really were more aggressive against losers, or whether losers were actually just less aggressive than normal against winners.

A third study, involving 72 French college students, answered that question by adding a control group to the study. As in the previous experiments, one group was told their partner did better than they did on the first competitive task, and one group was told their partner did worse. However, there was also a third group that told there was a computer error during the first task and they couldn't tell who was the winner.

This study also used a different measure of aggression. In an earlier part of the study, the participants filled out a "Food Preference Form" which was shared with their supposed partner, reportedly as part of a study on how people form impressions of others.

Participants were then told they were randomly assigned to drink a sweet beverage and their partner was assigned to drink a tomato juice beverage. Participants were told they could add Tabasco sauce and salt to their partner's beverage — which they knew their partner strongly disliked from the food preference form.

Results showed that participants who were winners in the first task added more Tabasco sauce and salt to their partner's drink than losers did.

In addition, the losers acted about as aggressively as did those in the control group, who didn't know if they were winners or losers. That suggests winners do indeed act particularly aggressively, while losers aren't particularly nonaggressive.

Bushman said the fact that the findings were repeated in three different studies, in two different countries, suggest that there really is something about winning that makes people more aggressive.

"Losers need to watch out," he said.

The next step, he said, is to find out if winners act more aggressively toward everyone, or just toward people they defeat. That's the subject of an upcoming study.

 In the past few years, the video game industry has grown from a niche market into a major part of mainstream media. This increase in popularity and use of technology has allowed video game developers to insert more detail and nuance into the storylines of their games. Many video games have begun incorporating religion as a key aspect to plot points and story lines. Greg Perreault, a doctoral student in the University of Missouri School of Journalism, found that the many newer-generation video games equate religion with violence in the game narratives.

Perreault examined five recent video games that incorporate religion heavily into the storyline. The video games he studied were "Mass Effect 2," "Final Fantasy 13," "Assassin's Creed," "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow" and "Elder Scrolls: Oblivion." Perreault found that all of these video games problematize religion by closely tying it in with violence.

"In most of these games there was a heavy emphasis on a "Knights Templar" and crusader motifs," Perreault said. "Not only was the violent side of religion emphasized, but in each of these games religion created a of problem that the main character must overcome, whether it is a direct confrontation with religious zealots or being haunted by religious guilt."

While Perreault observed a relationship between violence and video games, he does not believe video game developers are creating an intentional commentary on religion.

"It doesn't appear that game developers are trying to purposefully bash organized religion in these games," Perreault said. "I believe they are only using religion to create stimulating plot points in their story lines. If you look at video games across the board, most of them involve violence in some fashion because violence is conflict and conflict is exciting. Religion appears to get tied in with violence because that makes for a compelling narrative."

Perreault presented his findings at the Center for Media Religion and Culture Conference on Digital Religion.

Couples who are married or living together will probably have more trouble parenting as a team if they have been violent toward one another during pregnancy, according to a team of psychologists.

"This finding is helpful because working as a parenting team, in what we call the co-parenting relationship, is a key influence on everything from mothers' postpartum depression to sensitive parenting to the children's emotional and social adjustment," said Mark E. Feinberg, research professor, Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State.

Researchers interviewed 156 expectant couples at three different times — once before the baby was born, again about six months after the birth of the child and a final time, when the baby was approximately 13 months old. The interviews determined the degree of physical violence between couples prior to the birth of the baby and how well couples were able to act as a team while parenting, after the baby was born.

"The results suggest that working with couples to curtail or prevent violence in their relationships before the birth of their child may have positive implications for the development of co-parenting relationships after the child is born," said the researchers.

The researchers reported in the current issue of the Journal of Family Issues that 29.8 percent of mothers acted violently at least once in the past year, while 17.3 percent of fathers acted violently. Finding mothers to be more violent than fathers is not an uncommon discovery in average community samples, according to the researchers.

"In our sample it seemed to be the 'common couple' type of violence that occurred, not the controlling and severe abuse that people think of when they think of domestic violence," said Marni L. Kan, Ph.D. recipient in human development and family studies at Penn State, now a research psychologist with RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Common couple violence incidents are fairly high, especially for couples with young children, Feinberg said. This type of violence is characterized by actions like shoving, slapping and hitting and is usually not intended to control the partner but occurs out of frustration in the middle of an argument. Both partners are equally likely to participate in common couple violence.

"It is important to pay attention to prenatal violence and risk, because low levels of violence among couples may get worse with the stress of parenting small children," said Feinberg. "And there's a lot of overlap between couple violence and child maltreatment."

Only expectant couples were eligible to enroll in the study. Each individual completed a form that asked a series of questions about physical aggression and behavior in the couple's relationship — such as, did you push or shove your partner? Did you choke your partner? Did you twist your partner's arm?

Questions were each answered with a frequency measure — did this behavior happen zero times in the past year? Five times in the past year? More than 20 times in the past year?

The participants answered questions pertaining to both their own behavior and their partner's behavior.

After the child was born, participants filled out another survey that looked at the co-parental alliance. Participants were asked to rate whether statements were true for their relationship, such as, "My partner and I have the same goals for our child," "My relationship with my partner is stronger now than before we had a child," and "My partner does not trust my parenting abilities." The higher the score a couple received, the better they were determined to be at parenting as a team.

"A unique element of our research is that we included couples," said Kan. "A lot of research on violence focuses on female victims. Also, having both parents followed after the birth of the child is unique. Often the moms are reporting, but the dads don't have a say."

Anna R. Solmeyer, doctoral student in human development and family studies, Penn State, also worked on this research.

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Mental Health supported this research.