February 9th, 2021
By Eileen Weber
Across the country, reports of domestic abuse have been on the rise during the pandemic. In December 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine cited this increase, calling it a “pandemic within a pandemic.” Although calls for help dropped as much as 50 percent in some regions, that didn’t mean the violence stopped. It just wasn’t being reported. Isolated at home, many victims were trapped inside with their abusers. The National Domestic Violence Hotline issued a snapshot in the spring. In March 2020, volume had decreased by six percent in comparison to the same time the previous year. But by [More]
Tags: violence, Connecticut, pandemic, survivors, domestic abuse, National Domestic Violence Hotline, shelter
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July 16th, 2020
By Eileen Weber
The most recent Black deaths at the hands of police have fueled protests across the country. But for some psychologists, their interests lie not in what they are protesting, but why they protest in the first place. And when they protest, why does it sometimes turn violent? As we have seen from a few of the recent George Floyd protests, there has been some rioting and looting. A 2018 collaborative study between the University of South Carolina, Stanford University, and the University of Toronto, posed that question: does violent protest backfire? In it, the researchers theorized that when things become [More]
Tags: psychologists, rage, violence, research, protesters, George Floyd, rioting, looting, mob mentality
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November 4th, 2019
By Eileen Weber
Puerto Ricans experience higher rates of depression and anxiety on the U.S. mainland than when at home. After nearly 20 years of research and about 2,000 people interviewed, the Boricua Youth Study discovered that fact. The study compared kids ages five to 13 as they transitioned to early adulthood from 15 to 29 under similar conditions of income and exposure to violence in both Puerto Rico and the South Bronx, a region with one of the highest Puerto Rican populations on the U.S. mainland. Research focused on four categories that influence mental health: environmental/social factors, cultural and minority stress, parent/peer [More]
Tags: depression, anxiety, violence, research, Puerto Ricans, United States, interviews, poverty, tight-knit community
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October 9th, 2019
By Catherine Robertson Souter
Following recent mass shooting tragedies that killed 31 people in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump condemned the “glorification of violence in our society,” specifically “the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.” This claim of a link between the tragedies and the use of video games was repeated by other lawmakers, who claimed that the rise of video game use is directly linked to the rise in gun violence. But is it true? Does playing violent video games cause violent behavior? Or, maybe more importantly, would removing these types of games from our culture curb [More]
Tags: kids, aggression, link, video games, violence, teens, mass shooter, moral compass
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March 8th, 2019
By Phyllis Hanlon
Unlike other niche areas, political psychology eludes precise definition. Rather, the practice could probably best be described as a smorgasbord of disciplines that includes anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics, communications, and political science. And within the realm of political psychology, practitioners engage in a wide range of research projects, depending on their particular interests. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 proved to be influential in steering Elizabeth Nugent, Ph.D, assistant professor in the department of political science at Yale University, into this career path as she became more aware of the political and psychological implications resulting from trauma. As a student at [More]
Tags: violence, traumatic events, Elizabeth Nugent Ph.D, Johanna Vollhardt Ph.D, Rose McDermott Ph.D, Political Psychology, group identity, victimization, oppression, experimental social psychologist
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April 6th, 2018
By Eileen Weber
Contentious debate continues over whether video games and other forms of media promote violent behavior, particularly in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. Games like “Resident Evil,” “Manhunt,” and “Mortal Kombat” top the list. But, is there a one-size-fits-all answer to the question? “I don’t think you are going to find any media effects researchers willing to suggest that violent video games lead to school shootings,” said Kirstie Farrar, Ph.D, associate professor of communications at the University of Connecticut. “However, most media effects researchers agree there is a small but significant relationship between violent media exposure and outcome [More]
Tags: school shooting, aggression, link, connection, video games, violence, young males, Resident Evil, Manhunt, Mortal Kombat”
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