Criminal media such as dramas and movies are growing in popularity. However, the effects of criminal media as well as its psychological mechanism are not clearly examined. Based on social learning theory (Bandura, 1978), past studies showed that arrest and punishment to the criminal in media have a suppressing effect. The present research examined the ironic possibility that media coverage of punishment could increase the audience’s criminal intention and proposed the mediating role of counterfactual thinking in the effect. We hypothesized that when punishment was depicted as accidental rather than unavoidable in media coverage, perceived high mutability and counterfactuals focusing on the accidental factors could clarify the ways to commit the crime without being caught and subsequently increase future criminal intention. In this study, 95 college students read a story of plagiarizing either no, accidental, or inevitable punishment, and later asked to report their intention to plagiarize. An ANCOVA with participants‘ own history of plagiarism as a covariate found that the intention of plagiarism in future was significantly different. The results showed that the intention of plagiarism in the accidental punishment condition was higher than that in the inevitable punishment condition. Further, the intention of plagiarism in the accidental punishment condition was the same level with non-punishment condition. The findings suggest that whether criminals are caught or not is not enough to reduce criminal intentions of audience, but how criminals are caught matters.
The importance of helping behavior in our society has been increasing and this study aimed to find the practical strategies to increase helping behaviors with minorities and general public in our communities. Participants(N=156) were randomly assigned to respond to a scenario which measured the intention to help either foreign workers or general public. Also, participants were given the scale of fairness and empathy to respond. The findings of this study demonstrated that (1) empathy and fairness had main effect of the intention to help other persons and empathy and different targets in the unfair perception had interactional effect; (2) the intention to help foreign workers was positively related to fairness and the intention to help general public was affected by empathy. The results showed that according to the perceived unfairness in helping behavior situations, the role of fairness which empathy did not explain was founded. These findings suggest that empathy and fairness in helping behavior are complementary to each other.
The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of psychological factors on caregiver burden and depression among Korean spousal caregivers. 142 spousal caregivers (89 wives, 52 husbands) in Seoul and Incheon City were surveyed to determine the influence of objective factors of the care recipient, demographic of the caregiver, personality dimensions of extroversion and neuroticism of caregiver, social support, and pre-caregiving marital satisfaction on caregiver burden and depression of spousal caregivers. Hierarchical regression was used to determine the influence of the various factors on caregiver burden and depression. Finding suggest that care recipient’s activities of daily living(ADL) and caregiver neuroticism predicted caregiver burden, whereas pre-caregiving martial satisfaction and caregiver neuroticism predicted depression. In particular, psychological factors were better predictors of caregiver burden and depression compared with objective factors. Based on the results, the implications, interventions, limitations and future directions for research were discussed about the psychological factors on spousal caregiving.
This study investigated the differential interactive effects of the combination of driving confidence and sensation-seeking on driving anger among different age groups, by using correlation analysis, a hierarchical regression and ANOVAs for the data gathered through the questionnaires administrated in a form of face-to-face interview. The results showed the followings. First, males tended to show higher level in driving anger than females. Second, whereas sensation-seeking was positively correlated with driving anger, age and driving experience were negatively correlated with driving anger, respectively. Third, although there was no significant relationship between driving confidence and driving anger among the drivers aged under 40 years, the drivers aged over 40 years showed higher level of driving anger as their driving confidence increased. Forth, level of sensation-seeking was found to be a strong predictor of driving anger in all age groups. Fifth, driving confidence and sensation-seeking appeared to affect the level of driving anger interactively among drivers aged under 40 years or over 65 years, resulting in higher driving anger only when both the levels of driving confidence and sensation-seeking were high. In contrast, driving confidence and sensation-seeking affected driving anger independently among the drivers aged 30-49 years. Implication and suggestion were discussed.
This study was conducted in order to explain the effect of driving behavior determinants such as drivers’ personality and attitude that may induce risky driving behavior and to develop a valid method for discriminating risky drivers using the determinants. In the results of surveying 534 adult drivers, 5 driving behavior determinants (avoidance of problems, benefit/stimulus seeking, interpersonal anxiety, interpersonal anger, and aggression) were found to have a statistically significant effect on drivers’ various risky driving behaviors. Using these factors, drivers were grouped according to risk levels (normal drivers, unintentionally risky drivers, and intentionally risky drivers). This result suggests that drivers’ dangerous behavior level can be predicted using psychological factors such as their personality and attitude. Accordingly, if the driving behavior determinant model and the base score system used in this study are improved through further research, they are expected to be useful in predicting drivers’ recklessness in advance, identifying problems, and providing differentiated safe driving education services based on the results.