Loss Of Self-control Research Articles

The mental health and psychosocial effects of organized violence: A qualitative study in northern Haiti

Historically, organized violence has been a chronic pervasive problem in Haiti. We set out to elicit Haitians' views on its effects to guide the development of interventions. In March 2006 we studied a population in the slum area of Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second largest city, and the nearby towns of Milot and Limbe. A convenience sample of adults was asked to free list all current problems affecting victims of organized violence. Two major categories emerged: psychological problems and financial problems. The psychological problems of "feeling startled and loss of self control," "sadness/grief," "continuing to suffer from reliving/reexperiencing past events," "problems in the head/mental problems," "deep suffering in the heart," and "thinking too much" emerged as themes from key-informant interviews. These may correspond to constructs of depression, dysthymia, and anxiety disorders including posttraumatic stress disorder in psychiatric nosology. The development of effective interventions can therefore consider those known to be effective for these problems in other settings. However in selecting interventions, considerations must also include local acceptability, perceived causes of problems, and their social effects.

Understanding the Neural Circuitry of Appetitive Regulation in Eating Disorders

There has been much confusion and speculation about the reasons for abnormal eating behaviors and other symptoms in anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) (1). For example, individuals with AN dramatically restrict their caloric consumption and achieve severe emaciation yet are often preoccupied with food or cook for others. Moreover, food, or even the anticipation of eating, tends to be anxiogenic, whereas avoiding eating often reduces these uncomfortable feelings. Individuals with BN tend to alternate between restrictive eating and overeating with loss of self-control, followed by purging behaviors.

Deliberate Self-Indulgence versus Involuntary Loss of Self-Control: Toward a Robust Cross-Cultural Consumer Impulsiveness Scale

ABSTRACT There is neither a consensus about the dimensionality of the consumer impulsiveness construct nor sufficient evidence about the validity and cross-cultural measurement equivalence of its various scales. We address these gaps by using cross-cultural differences in control orientations as the conceptual foundation for a more robust consumer impulsiveness scale. Specifically, we demonstrate that unlike individualistic consumers, collectivistic consumers distinguish between deliberate self-indulgence and involuntary loss of self-control, as reflected in the three-factor structure (prudence, self-indulgence, and self-control) for the collectivists and a two-factor structure (prudence and hedonism) for the individualists. We also discuss some implications and limitations of this research.

Sailing Against the Tide? Sustaining Sexual Abstinence Among Christian Youth in a University Setting in South Africa

This qualitative study sought to understand the perceptions and experiences of abstinence among young Christians in a University in South Africa. Willingness to adhere to Christian teachings of sexual chastity is the primary motivation for sexual abstinence while spiritual, mental and physical health benefits of abstinence as well as enforcement of Christian teachings by members and peers are secondary motivations that help sustain sexual abstinence. Sexual pressures come from desire to satisfy sexual urge, subtle coercion, peer pressure, momentary loss of self-control. There is need for multi-pronged interventions aimed at empowering Christian youth to deal with sources of sexual pressures.

Loss of Self-Control in Intertemporal Choice May Be Attributable to Logarithmic Time-Perception

Impulsivity and loss of self-control in drug-dependent patients have been associated with the manner in which they discount delayed rewards. Although drugs of abuse have been shown to modify perceived time duration, little is known regarding the relationship between impulsive decision-making in intertemporal choice and estimation of time-duration. In classical economic theory, it has been hypothesized that people discount future reward value exponentially. In exponential discounting, a temporal discounting rate is constant over time, which has been referred to as dynamic consistency. However, accumulating empirical evidence in biology, psychopharmacology, behavioral neuroscience, and neuroeconomics does not support the hypothesis. Rather, dynamically inconsistent manners of discounting delayed rewards, e.g., hyperbolic discounting, have been repeatedly observed in humans and non-human animals. In spite of recent advances in neuroimaging and neuropsychopharmacological study, the reason why humans and animals discount delayed rewards hyperbolically is unknown. In this study, we hypothesized that empirically-observed dynamical inconsistency in intertemporal choice may result from errors in the perception of time duration. It is proposed that perception of temporal duration following Weber's law might explain the dynamical inconsistency. Possible future study directions for elucidating neural mechanisms underlying inconsistent intertemporal choice are discussed.

Intertemporal choice and nonadditive capitalization functions

Many papers on finance are interested in studying the preferences of a certain group of individuals about the choice of several rewards available at different time instants. Usually these works are conducted from an experimental point of view by means of samples to be passed to a control group. One of the most important issues in this research is nonadditivity when describing the behavior in experimental intertemporal choice. For instance, subadditivity in behavioral finance means that a certain subject prefers to divide the duration of an investment as many times as possible because this choice leads to an increase in profitability. Another context is medical research on impulsivity and loss of self-control in drug-dependent patients because there is a relationship between impulsive decision-making in intertemporal choice and estimation of time duration. Here subadditivity appears when administering some drugs in a group of substance abusers because they can feel a slight improvement when the same dose is divided into several parts. The problem arising here is how to measure the degree of subadditivity or superadditivity perceived by a group of individuals who are not experts in finance or medicine, respectively. So, our research will be addressed from a nonlinearity of time-perception perspective. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Anger and Fear as Justifiable Preludes for Loss of Self-Control

Following the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, s. 56, the common law defence of provocation, which depended on a sudden and temporary loss of self-control (following R v Duffy1), is now abolished, as is s. 3 of the Homicide Act 1957. In its place is substituted a statutory defence of loss of self-control, which relies on some of the principles that constituted the grounds for provocation, its predecessor. For the first time fear qualifies as a new ground for loss of self-control (2009 Act, s. 55(3)). This article examines the new partial defence of ‘loss of self-control’ and considers what distinguishes the new defence from its predecessor and the features which are retained. It also evaluates whether the overarching objectives of restricting the ambit of the earlier defence and providing a new defence for battered women, shared by both the Law Commission and the government, are well considered and likely to be achievable. The new partial defence will be considerably restricted both by the new criteria and by returning the power to the judge, as ‘gatekeeper’, to prohibit an un***meritorious defence from going to the jury (2009 Act, s. 54(6)). The inclusion of fear as a new ground for loss of self-control will continue to present difficulties as long as the definition of ‘extremely grave’, a requisite of the qualifying trigger to this loss of self-control, is a jury question, and also insofar as ‘justifiable sense of being seriously wronged’ is to be judged on objective grounds. Further difficulties are presented by the requirement that the capacity for self-control, now expressed as the ‘tolerance’ and ‘restraint’, required of the defendant, is to be decided on objective grounds.

Loss of Self-Control as a Defence: The Key to Replacing Provocation

Keywords Provocation, Loss of control, Partial defences to murder, Reform, Coroners and Justice Act 2009

Increased error-related thalamic activity during early compared to late cocaine abstinence

Altered cognitive control is implicated in the shaping of cocaine dependence. One of the key component processes of cognitive control is error monitoring. Our previous imaging work highlighted greater activity in distinct cortical and subcortical regions including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), thalamus and insula when participants committed an error during the stop signal task ( Li et al., 2008b). Importantly, dACC, thalamic and insular activity has been associated with drug craving. One hypothesis is that the intense interoceptive activity during craving prevents these cerebral structures from adequately registering error and/or monitoring performance. Alternatively, the dACC, thalamus and insula show abnormally heightened responses to performance errors, suggesting that excessive responses to salient stimuli such as drug cues could precipitate craving. The two hypotheses would each predict decreased and increased activity during stop error (SE) as compared to stop success (SS) trials in the SST. Here we showed that cocaine dependent patients (PCD) experienced greater subjective feeling of loss of control and cocaine craving during early (average of day 6) compared to late (average of day 18) abstinence. Furthermore, compared to PCD during late abstinence, PCD scanned during early abstinence showed increased thalamic as well as insular but not dACC responses to errors (SE > SS). These findings support the hypothesis that heightened thalamic reactivity to salient stimuli co-occur with cocaine craving and loss of self control.

Provocation: Psychological Precursors for Loss of Self-Control as a Mitigatory Claim

New Zealand faces the prospect that the statutory defence of provocation could be repealed as a result of recommendations made by the Law Commission. In that event sentencing judges would have the task of weighing claims of loss of self-control resulting from provocation as a factor in mitigation of penalty in sentencing for murder. There are many psychological precursors to homicidal loss of self-control which are, as yet, poorly understood by legal professionals. Yet if they are to be effective advocates in sentencing in homicide cases involving loss of self-control, a more informed understanding of the diverse mental conditions underlying resort to homicidal violence is necessary. This may reduce the risk of harsh retributive sentences being imposed in cases where a closer investigation of the offender's aberrant mental state at the time of the homicide might have disclosed a significant mitigatory claim.

O discurso sobre a adesão de adolescentes ao tratamento da dependência química em uma instituição de saúde pública

Promoting adherence to chemical dependence (CD) treatment has been a challenge in several contexts, especially regarding adolescents. Such challenge has been related to assumptions about who adolescents are, what is understood by dependence and about its treatment. Twelve professionals from a CD outpatient service in the region of Ribeirão Preto (SP) were interviewed about the meanings they attributed to the following subjects: adolescence, substance use/abuse and its treatment and adherence to such treatment. It was observed that the interviewees considered several determinants for explaining adolescence; however, there was a predominance of individualizing arguments regarding this subject. Chemical Dependence was understood as the individual's loss of self-control; consequently the aim of the treatment was favoring this individual's reflection about the role of substance use in his/her life. The interviewees showed a critical discourse, seeking for institutional and staff-related factors as well as for external factors to explain treatment adherence. The discourses of the interviewees are discussed in terms of their interrelations with the literature about the subjects approached in the interviews and its implications for CD treatment.

Introduction: David Zarefsky and Reasonable Argument

Michael Burlingame began his magisterial new biography of Lincoln with this passage culled from a letter of October, 1863: No man resolved to make most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all consequences, including vitiating of his temper, and loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give path to dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for right. Even killing dog would not cure bite. (Burlingame, 2008, p. 1; Burlingame is quoting from a letter to James Madison Cutts, October 26, 1863). Lincoln offered these remarks as advice to another person, but Burlingame, quite reasonably, regarded them as self-reflexive--as precepts to which Lincoln subscribed and by which he attempted to make the most of himself. As we all know, David Zarefsky is a devoted student of Lincoln's writings, and it is likely that he has read this letter and even possible that, at some point in his career, he adopted its advice for his own personal guidance. More likely, match between scholar and writer he studies arises not from conscious appropriation but from a coincidence of character and temperament. In any case, Zarefsky's biography reads much like an embodiment of Lincoln's credo. Zarefsky has traveled at length along our disciplinary pathways, has made much of himself, and has had to confront a good many snarling obstacles. Yet, as he now enters retirement, he leaves no dead beasts on trail behind him, and his mind and spirit remain as they were four decades ago--unscarred and unblemished. This happy condition is hardly result of reticence or timidity. As essays in this issue demonstrate, Zarefsky has a consistent record as a controversialist, sometimes as an advocate of change, sometimes as a preservationist, but always as someone who has a position and who does not shrink from expressing it. The pattern of this involvement in controversy indicates a capacity to shift, balance, and modulate positions, and in this respect, we can detect a quality that distinguishes Zarefsky from many other controversialists in field and that helps to explain why he has been able to argue for so vigorously and for so long without engendering destructive hostility. Each of our essays provides a notable example that illustrates this point. In domain of forensics, where Zarefsky first made his mark, Tom Goodnight and Gordon Mitchell report that he developed and promoted a remarkably bold hypothesis when he argued that debate specialists should expand their interests beyond tournament setting. Debate, Zarefsky maintained, offered a basis for exploring and developing major theoretical issues about argumentation and its role in academic inquiry. Willard also notes and emphasizes this attempt at innovation, and he regards it as nothing less than revolutionary. In Zarefsky's conception, however, it was a velvet revolution. He was not attempting to minimize or displace contest debate but to preserve it by building upon and expanding virtues it already possessed. He argued forcefully for major change but in a way that duly recognized and respected value of existing practices and people who engaged in them. Zarefsky's contributions to critical study of public address have been steady and significant, and it is difficult to locate anything revolutionary in this body of work. Nevertheless, as Angela Ray observes, he has shown considerable dexterity in shifting perspectives as cases demand, and he has also played an important role in synthesizing argumentation theory and rhetorical criticism. Here Zarefsky has encouraged innovation by combination, bringing two established traditions into a better, more detailed, and more disciplined relationship with one another. These innovations entail respect for both sides of fence he crosses, and his scholarship, to borrow Ray's nicely turned phrase, is situated within recognizable traditions while it also productively augments and alters foci of those traditions. …

Eugenic and sexual folklores and the castration of sex offenders in the Netherlands (1938–1968)

This contribution questions the positive/negative eugenics dichotomy that typifies the historiography on the eugenic movement in the Netherlands and the claim that this movement was mostly marginal because only positive eugenics was pursued. From 1938 to 1968 in the Netherlands, after a decade of debates, 400 sex offenders who had been committed to asylums for the criminally insane were ‘voluntarily’ and ‘therapeutically’ castrated. For political reasons debates on castration, meant to create consensus, eliminated any reference to or connotation with eugenics, yet these policies were unthinkable without them. This article shows that thinking about social and sexual problems and their solutions in the 1930s were permeated by eugenic folklore which in turn was informed by sexual folklore. Both eugenic and sexual lore, as common sense, or as ways of knowing, were about individual and collective loss of self control which was referred to with a catch-all phrase: ‘hypersexuality’. Although sexual classifications used in diagnosing sex offenders suggested the existence of discrete sexual categories, homosexuality for instance was not seen as a sexual alternative or as an identity but as the extent to which an offender suffered from a form of hypersexuality that threatened the fabric of society.

Intent to harm or injure? Gender and the expression of anger

Gender differences in aggressive behaviour but not in anger suggest that women may express anger through behaviours that lack intent to harm or injure. Angry behaviours (injurious and noninjurious) were rated in terms of their likelihood of use when angry (N=888). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a direct aggression factor and two further scales: explosive acts (e.g. throwing objects when alone) and defusing acts (e.g. talking to a third party). Men exceeded women on direct aggression and explosive acts, whereas women exceeded men on defusing acts. Expressive beliefs about aggression (as a loss of self-control) were higher among women and strongly associated with use of defusing acts and the avoidance of direct aggression. Instrumental beliefs about aggression (as a means of control over others) were higher among men and showed the opposite pattern of associations. We highlight the need for further work on actors' intention in relation to angry behaviours and the impact of context on these intentions.

Integrated continence services and the female Bangladeshi population

Continence services should be developed to cater for the needs of the entire population, including those of ethnic minority groups. This study undertook focus groups and meetings with the local Bangladeshi community and with local GPs to assess the needs for continence care provision and to assess current understanding of the problem in this community. The aim was to identify appropriate models for provision of care. Questionnaires were devised which related to access to services for bowel and bladder problems for women and GPs. Focus groups which people's views and suggestions on improving service accessibility were ascertained. A 50% return was achieved for the GP questionnaire. GPs did not routinely enquire about bladder and bowel function and did not feel that Bangladeshi women needed any different service to that in the white population. The majority of the women in the focus groups considered bladder weakness as a loss of self-control, and emphasized the major impact on everyday life. There was little awareness of available services. Despite the cultural differences this study found that women tended to accept their bladder problem; did not consider it important enough to discuss with their doctor (who may also not take the problem seriously) and considered bladder problems as a normal part of womanhood or ageing.

Empirical estimation of consistency parameter in intertemporal choice based on Tsallis’ statistics

Impulsivity and inconsistency in intertemporal choice have been attracting attention in econophysics and neuroeconomics. Although loss of self-control by substance abusers is strongly related to their inconsistency in intertemporal choice, researchers in neuroeconomics and psychopharmacology have usually studied impulsivity in intertemporal choice using a discount rate (e.g. hyperbolic k ), with little effort being expended on parameterizing subject's inconsistency in intertemporal choice. Recent studies using Tsallis’ statistics-based econophysics have found a discount function (i.e. q -exponential discount function), which may continuously parameterize a subject's consistency in intertemporal choice. In order to examine the usefulness of the consistency parameter ( 0 ⩽ q ⩽ 1 ) in the q -exponential discounting function in behavioral studies, we experimentally estimated the consistency parameter q in Tsallis’ statistics-based discounting function by assessing the points of subjective equality (indifference points) at seven delays (1 week–25 years) in humans ( N = 24 ) . We observed that most ( N = 19 ) subjects’ intertemporal choice was completely inconsistent ( q = 0 , i.e. hyperbolic discounting), the mean consistency ( 0 ⩽ q ⩽ 1 ) was smaller than 0.5, and only one subject had a completely consistent intertemporal choice ( q = 1 , i.e. exponential discounting). There was no significant correlation between impulsivity and inconsistency parameters. Our results indicate that individual differences in consistency in intertemporal choice can be parameterized by introducing a q -exponential discount function and most people discount delayed rewards hyperbolically, rather than exponentially (i.e. mean q is smaller than 0.5). Further, impulsivity and inconsistency in intertemporal choice can be considered as separate behavioral tendencies. The usefulness of the consistency parameter q in psychopharmacological studies of addictive behavior was demonstrated in the present study.

Rewriting the event of murder: Provocation, automatism and the law’s use of a narrative of insult

Affectively speaking, I think that words can be much more harmful than actions. There’s a sting in words which no action can replicate (Cummins J Leonboyer Nov 1999: 1168). The opening quote to this article reflects a legal moment in which there is a movement or passage from the dead body to the legal text. The above statement was made by Cummins J during legal argument in the absence of the jury in Leonboyer, a case I observed. Counsel for the defence had asked his Honour to make a ruling that the partial defence of provocation be left for the jury on the ground that words allegedly spoken by the deceased caused the defendant, her fiancé, to feel insulted and lose all self-control. While under the influence of that loss of self-control, he inflicted at least 24 stab wounds to her head, back, groin and shoulder thereby causing her death. The words allegedly spoken by the deceased were that she had been ‘fucking’ another man, which she followed with a taunt, in Spanish, about the defendant’s sexual prowess (‘he did it better than you did’).

Sowing Seeds in an Untilled Field: Temperance and Race, Indeterminacy and Recovery in Frances E. W. Harper's Sowing and Reaping

[Woman's] individuality must be recognized before the evils of intemperance can cease to exist. How absurd the idea--how degrading the idea that woman, before marriage, can enjoy freedom of thought; but afterward that she must endorse her husband's sentiments, be they good or bad. Call you not this slavery? Amelia Bloomer In an 1853 speech to temperance proponents in New York's Metropolitan Hall, Amelia Bloomer directly connected women's temperance mission to female subordination. (1) Authors often equated intemperance and women's oppression with slavery without recognizing how disingenuous such symbolic comparisons were. Of course, the realities of slavery in the South and nominal freedom in the North belied such equations. troubled relationship between the mainstream temperance movement and African Americans--illustrated by temperance rhetoric and antislavery discourse--occasioned responses by African American writers who had multiple approaches to race-ing temperance. (2) They displayed innovative means by which race, whether foregrounded or situated as subtext, always already operated as a social factor. Because of the prolific racial pejoratives found in mainstream temperance rhetoric, African Americans had to counter these images while simultaneously engaging in temperance activism. Black-authored temperance literature often presented an alternative anti-drink paradigm in which the drunkard's race was either explicitly white or so ambiguous as to destabilize racial categories altogether. Frances E. W. Harper's Sowing and Reaping and another serialized novel, A Tale of New England Life, demonstrate one way that racial identification functioned, for each uses racially indeterminate characters and historical figures from outside the purview of the novel as a way of enhancing the text for various readerships. In this manner, these tales offer textual interrogations of race and racial categories while examining larger social issues of women's liberation and anti-drink reform. approach to temperance reform or writing in these texts is significant because it opens up what might otherwise be narrowly understood as domestic temperance novels without any relation to larger racial and gender politics. Although the author of A Tale of New England Life is unknown, because of textual similarities that include this particular strategic method, I speculate that the author could be Harper. Whether or not we can confirm this to be the case, Harper's existing work offers an example that scholars of nineteenth-century African American women's writings can use to evaluate, understand, and identify newly recovered works first published during the period. In this essay, I will explore the intersections of racial discourse and temperance rhetoric in Sowing and Reaping and A Tale of New England Life, as well as the challenges literary historians and critics face in recovering texts with racial and authorial ambiguities. In the antebellum period, many African American reformers regarded temperance commitment as a necessary component of antislavery advocacy. Although in 1843 William Lloyd Garrison proclaimed, The temperance and abolition enterprises are the hope of our country, identical in principle, based on the same broad foundation of human brotherhood, and animated by the same spirit of Christian benevolence and charity (qtd. in Hamilton 259), many white temperance activists failed to connect the two enterprises--failed to join human equality, freedom, and self-determination as the foundation of their temperance agenda and the inspiration of their abolitionist work. In fact, Frederick Douglass was strongly criticized by white American temperance delegates at the 1846 World's Temperance Convention in London for speaking out against slavery. (3) Without disregarding certain racist and pro-slavery factions in the temperance movement, Douglass identified the relation between the degradation of enslavement and intemperance--between the freedom of self-control denied by slavery and the loss of self-control caused by drunkenness. …

Hyperbolic discounting may be reduced to electrical coupling in dopaminergic neural circuits

Loss of self-control in drug addicts (e.g. cocaine and amphetamine dependent patients) has been associated with hyperbolic discounting of delayed rewards (i.e., inconsistency in intertemporal choice). Neurobiophysical mechanisms underlying hyperbolic discounting are still unknown in spite of recent extensive work in neuroeconomics. Understanding of neuronal mechanisms of hyperbolic discounting is important for establishing neuropharmacological treatment of addiction. At the cognitive level, previous studies have indicated that psychophysics of time-estimation (i.e., Weber-Fechner law and Steven's power law of time-perception) may explain inconsistency in intertemporal choice. Regarding neuronal substrates of time-estimation, drugs of abuse dramatically change time-estimation, indicating that dopaminergic activities may mediate time-estimation. With respect to neuronal changes induced by drugs of abuse, recent studies have revealed that gap junction proteins (e.g., connexin 36) in dopamine neurons are increased by an self-administration of dopaminergic drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine. However, it has been yet to be examined how the enhanced electrical coupling due to substance administration induces addiction. Furthermore, a recent biophysical modelling study has demonstrated that the effect of the psychophysical laws are potentiated by non-synaptic electrical coupling between neurons via gap junctions. Based on these current findings, we hypothesized that hyperbolic discounting may be reduced to biophysical characteristics of dopamine neural circuits, that is, electrical coupling between time-encoding dopaminergic neurons via gap junctions. The present hypothesis states that drugs of abuse may induce addiction by exacerbating subject's impulsivity (a discount rate) and inconsistency (hyperbolicity) in intertemporal choice partly due to enhanced expression of gap junction proteins in dopaminergic neurons. Possible psychopharmacological treatments of impulsivity in drug addicts implied by our present hypothesis, e.g., administration of a gap junction blocker, are discussed.

Interpersonal Rejection as a Determinant of Anger and Aggression

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between interpersonal rejection and aggression. Four bodies of research are summarized: laboratory experiments that manipulate rejection, rejection among adults in everyday life, rejection in childhood, and individual differences that may moderate the relationship. The theoretical mechanisms behind the effect are then explored. Possible explanations for why rejection leads to anger and aggression include: rejection as a source of pain, rejection as a source of frustration, rejection as a threat to self-esteem, mood improvement following aggression, aggression as social influence, aggression as a means of reestablishing control, retribution, disinhibition, and loss of self-control.