Steven Muncer
Biographic Data
| ID | 309714 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven Muncer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Muncer |
| SIGNATURE | MUNCER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 108 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Investigating the link between sleep quality and belief in conspiracy theories
Two studies examined the link between sleep quality and conspiracy theory beliefs, as well as the underlying mechanisms. In Study 1 ( n = 540), participants with poorer sleep quality over the past month reported higher conspiracy beliefs about the 2019 Notre Dame fire when exposed to Notre Dame fire conspiracy theories compared to non-conspiracy information. Study 2 ( n = 575) investigated the underlying psychological mechanisms connecting poor s…
Men and the Meaning of Violence
Men and the Meaning of Violence - 1
Bigram Frequency, Number of Syllables and Morphemes and Their Effects on Lexical Decision and Word Naming
Violence, Teenage Pregnancy, and Life History: Ecological Factors and Their Impact on Strategy-Driven Behavior
The Role of Syllables in Anagram Solution: A Rasch Analysis
Anagrams are frequently used by experimental psychologists interested in how the mental lexicon is organized. Until very recently, research has overlooked the importance of syllable structure in solving anagrams and assumed that solution difficulty was mainly due to frequency factors (e.g., bigram statistics). The present study uses Rasch analysis to demonstrate that the number of syllables is a very important factor influencing anagram solution …
The Syllable Effect in Anagram Solution: Unrecognised Evidence from Past Studies
Psychometric analysis of the systemizing quotient (SQ) scale
The psychometric properties of the systemizing quotient (SQ) developed by Baron-Cohen (2003) are investigated in three studies. Furthermore, we examine the notion that the ability to systemize should be independent of intelligence. In Studies 1 and 2, confirmatory factor analyses are used to examine the factor structure of the SQ. Study 3 examines the relationship between systemizing, mental rotation and intelligence. Studies 1 and 2 indicate tha…
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 p…
Comparing the perceived causes of the second Iraq war: A network analysis approach
The objective of this research was to examine the representation by British students of 11 perceived causes of the invasion of Iraq. We used network analysis to develop a network of the pattern of causes that are involved. Overall most participants identified a nexus of causes that reciprocally linked religious prejudice, racism and the history of conflict in the Middle East. They identified a reciprocal link between religious prejudice and Septe…
A study from a ‘rational actor’ perspective
Authors have noted that young people like to use the Internet and mobile phones for communication purposes. This paper reports results concerning use of the Internet and mobile phones for communication from a survey of 1340 English secondary schoolchildren conducted in 2002 and examines whether the use of either of these forms of communication technologies occurs at the expense of the other amongst this group. In agreement with background literat…
The causes of low back pain: A Network Analysis
Beliefs regarding the cause of low back pain differ between individual sufferers and health care professionals. One consequence of this is the potential acquisition of maladaptive attitudes and behaviour in relation to pain, and increases in the utilisation of primary care services (Health Expect.3(3) (2000) 161). Methods that have been used to elicit the causal interpretation of social phenomena are varied yet they are unable to categorically de…
Gender Differences in the Use of the Internet by English Secondary School Children
Confirmatory factor analysis and the factor structure of expagg in context: A reply to forrest et al., 2002
It has been suggested that confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) can be used to investigate the construct validity of psychometric scales and Forrest et al. [2000] specifically query the factor structure of Expagg using this technique. In this paper we report unsuccessful attempts to confirm the factor structure of three widely used scales using CFA criteria. In the fourth study, a two‐factor model of Expagg, which has been derived from previous stu…
Sense-making in the wake of September 11th: A network analysis of lay understandings
The objective of this research was to document and explore British university students' immediate understanding of the events of September 11th. A network analysis of lay causal perceptions procedure was employed to capture the social perceptions and sense-making of respondents at a time when they and the world struggled to impose meaning and coherence on the events. The study also examined the possible effects of 'belief in a just world' and 'ri…
Lay and Professional Perspectives of the Causes of Health: A Comparative Network Approach
Lay and professional interpretations of the structure of causal factors previously demonstrated to be influencing health were examined through network analysis. Fifty-three first level registered nurses and sixty-three social science students were asked to complete network adjacency grids for factors that affect health. There is considerable agreement between the lay and professional view – with stress , lifestyle , health knowledge , work and ho…
Ladettes,” Social Representations, and Aggression
Virtual Community Care? Social Policy and the Emergence of Computer Mediated Social Support
This article argues that the emergence and growth of internet use in Britain has important implications for the analysis of social policy. It attempts to outline a research agenda for social policy in relation to one particular aspect of internet use, that of on-line self-help and social support – what we term here virtual-community care . The article presents data on patterns of home based internet use in Britain and outlines some contemporary d…
Births, deaths, sex and marriage… but very few presents? A case study of social support in cyberspace
This paper examines the functioning of a Usenet newsgroup designed to provide social support for people suffering from depression. Using a commonly used taxonomy of different sorts of social support - social companionship, informational support, esteem support and instrumental support - the paper examines a random sample of ‘postings' made to the group. Detailed illustrative examples of different types of ‘posting’ are provided and an analytic co…
On-Line with the Friends of Bill W: Social Support and the Net
The Internet is now being used as a mechanism for the delivery of social support on a global scale, chiefly through the formation of self-help groups. Most of the research that has been undertaken on these groups has focussed on Usenet and the use of newsgroups for social support. This paper examines the use of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) 'room', by a self-help group composed of problem drinkers. The group had an international membership and adv…
Instrumental and expressive representations of aggression: One scale or two
The Expagg questionnaire was developed to measure a subject's view of their own aggression as a relatively instrumental or relatively expressive act. Two issues have been raised pertaining to the dimensional structure of the questionnaire: the use of principal components analysis on dichotomous responses and the possibility that instrumental and expressive representations might be independent dimensions rather than opposite ends of a single conti…
Aggression and testosterone: Testing a bio-social model
Based upon reports of a positive correlation between circulating testosterone levels and aggression, we draw upon evolutionary psychology to place the action of testosterone in a broader perspective. We propose that testosterone affects competitive status-seeking and that under certain circumstances (including youth) this is expressed as aggression. Involvement in aggression in turn is associated with adherence to an instrumental social represent…
Social representations of aggression: Crossing the sex barrier
Controversy over Moscovici's concept of social representations has focused upon the extent to which they can be viewed as enduring cognitive structures characterizing social groups and whether individual members are ‘prisoners’ of their social representations, unable to duplicate the social representations of other social groups. Previous research has established a consistent gender difference in orientation toward aggression with men viewing it …
A Disagreement Index for Network Analytic Studies of Perceived Causes
A method for computing a disagreement index for network analytic studies of perceived causes is presented
Sex differences in the perceived causal structure of date rape: A preliminary report
The present study examines the perceived causes of date rape by the use of network analysis. The 142 subjects in the study were presented with grids containing 9 causes listed by row and column. They were asked to indicate if they belived there was a causal link between each of the 72 causal pairings. The resulting network placed emphasis on male and female drunkenness, norms of dating, and society's attitude to date rape as distal causes of date…
Sex and social representations of aggression: A communal-agentic analysis
Previous research [Campbell and Muncer: Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 17: 489–512, 1987; Campbell et al.: Aggressive Behavior 18: 95–108, 1992] suggests that men and women hold different social representations or implicit theories of their own aggression. Men view it is an instrumental act (a means of obtaining and exercising power to gain social rewards), while women view it an expressive act (a cathartic discharge of anger). In the …
Models of anger and aggression in the social talk of women and men
Ladettes,” Social Representations, and Aggression
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 p…
Them and us: A comparison of the cultural context of American gangs and British subcultures
We examine and compare two distinct forms of social deviance which have emerged in two western societies. The United States has been the home of the street gang while Great Britain since World War II has produced several waves of national subculture. We examine the history, geography, educational experience, structure and implicit ideologies of gangs and subcultures in relation to their host countries. United States gangs sprang historically from…
Violence, Teenage Pregnancy, and Life History: Ecological Factors and Their Impact on Strategy-Driven Behavior
Confirmatory factor analysis and the factor structure of expagg in context: A reply to forrest et al., 2002
It has been suggested that confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) can be used to investigate the construct validity of psychometric scales and Forrest et al. [2000] specifically query the factor structure of Expagg using this technique. In this paper we report unsuccessful attempts to confirm the factor structure of three widely used scales using CFA criteria. In the fourth study, a two‐factor model of Expagg, which has been derived from previous stu…
Sense-making in the wake of September 11th: A network analysis of lay understandings
The objective of this research was to document and explore British university students' immediate understanding of the events of September 11th. A network analysis of lay causal perceptions procedure was employed to capture the social perceptions and sense-making of respondents at a time when they and the world struggled to impose meaning and coherence on the events. The study also examined the possible effects of 'belief in a just world' and 'ri…
The causes of low back pain: A Network Analysis
Beliefs regarding the cause of low back pain differ between individual sufferers and health care professionals. One consequence of this is the potential acquisition of maladaptive attitudes and behaviour in relation to pain, and increases in the utilisation of primary care services (Health Expect.3(3) (2000) 161). Methods that have been used to elicit the causal interpretation of social phenomena are varied yet they are unable to categorically de…
The Role of Syllables in Anagram Solution: A Rasch Analysis
Anagrams are frequently used by experimental psychologists interested in how the mental lexicon is organized. Until very recently, research has overlooked the importance of syllable structure in solving anagrams and assumed that solution difficulty was mainly due to frequency factors (e.g., bigram statistics). The present study uses Rasch analysis to demonstrate that the number of syllables is a very important factor influencing anagram solution …
Psychometric analysis of the systemizing quotient (SQ) scale
The psychometric properties of the systemizing quotient (SQ) developed by Baron-Cohen (2003) are investigated in three studies. Furthermore, we examine the notion that the ability to systemize should be independent of intelligence. In Studies 1 and 2, confirmatory factor analyses are used to examine the factor structure of the SQ. Study 3 examines the relationship between systemizing, mental rotation and intelligence. Studies 1 and 2 indicate tha…
Comparing the perceived causes of the second Iraq war: A network analysis approach
The objective of this research was to examine the representation by British students of 11 perceived causes of the invasion of Iraq. We used network analysis to develop a network of the pattern of causes that are involved. Overall most participants identified a nexus of causes that reciprocally linked religious prejudice, racism and the history of conflict in the Middle East. They identified a reciprocal link between religious prejudice and Septe…
On-Line with the Friends of Bill W: Social Support and the Net
The Internet is now being used as a mechanism for the delivery of social support on a global scale, chiefly through the formation of self-help groups. Most of the research that has been undertaken on these groups has focussed on Usenet and the use of newsgroups for social support. This paper examines the use of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) 'room', by a self-help group composed of problem drinkers. The group had an international membership and adv…
The Syllable Effect in Anagram Solution: Unrecognised Evidence from Past Studies
Gender Differences in the Use of the Internet by English Secondary School Children
Sensitivity to propositional units in good reading
In and behind a Lenneberg paradigm
Taxonomies of aggressive behavior: A preliminary report
It has been widely and regularly suggested that aggression is not a unitary concept but rather an omnibus term concealing important and distinct subclasses of behavior. Psychologists have offered various categorical schemes highlighting motivation and form as distinguishing criteria. Many writers have also noted the social relativity of dermitions of classes of aggression and called for a consideration of lay conceptions of aggressive behavior. T…
Sorting out aggression: Dimensional and categorical perceptions of aggressive episodes
Taxonomies of aggressive behavior have largely been based upon social scientist' common sense or theoretical notions of forms of aggression and have received no formal empirical testing. In the present study, college students nominated a pool of real-life aggressive episodes which they had observed or in which they had been involved. A representative sample of 24 of these situations were given back to a subset of the subjects who were asked to so…
Models of anger and aggression in the social talk of women and men
Them and us: A comparison of the cultural context of American gangs and British subcultures
We examine and compare two distinct forms of social deviance which have emerged in two western societies. The United States has been the home of the street gang while Great Britain since World War II has produced several waves of national subculture. We examine the history, geography, educational experience, structure and implicit ideologies of gangs and subcultures in relation to their host countries. United States gangs sprang historically from…
Dimensions of aggression: A replication with offenders
In a previous study (Muncer et al.: Aggressive Behavior 12:327–336, 1986) real-life aggressive situations nominated by undergraduate subjects were used in a sorting task to uncover the judgmental dimensions underlying discriminations between episodes. Three dimensions emerged: physical-verbal form, acquainted-unacquainted combatants, and an equity or fairness dimension. To examine the generality of this schema, offenders on probation were asked t…
Social representation of aggression as an explanation of gender differences: A preliminary study
Academic theories of aggression can be dichotomized as expressive (in which aggression results from a failure of self control) or instrumental (in which aggression represents the exercise of control over others). We propose that the two sexes hold a parallel distinction in their social representations of aggression; women subscribe to an expressive model, men to an instrumental model. A 20-item questionnaire was generated by systematic comparison…
Sex and social representations of aggression: A communal-agentic analysis
Previous research [Campbell and Muncer: Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 17: 489–512, 1987; Campbell et al.: Aggressive Behavior 18: 95–108, 1992] suggests that men and women hold different social representations or implicit theories of their own aggression. Men view it is an instrumental act (a means of obtaining and exercising power to gain social rewards), while women view it an expressive act (a cathartic discharge of anger). In the …
A Disagreement Index for Network Analytic Studies of Perceived Causes
A method for computing a disagreement index for network analytic studies of perceived causes is presented
Sex differences in the perceived causal structure of date rape: A preliminary report
The present study examines the perceived causes of date rape by the use of network analysis. The 142 subjects in the study were presented with grids containing 9 causes listed by row and column. They were asked to indicate if they belived there was a causal link between each of the 72 causal pairings. The resulting network placed emphasis on male and female drunkenness, norms of dating, and society's attitude to date rape as distal causes of date…
Social representations of aggression: Crossing the sex barrier
Controversy over Moscovici's concept of social representations has focused upon the extent to which they can be viewed as enduring cognitive structures characterizing social groups and whether individual members are ‘prisoners’ of their social representations, unable to duplicate the social representations of other social groups. Previous research has established a consistent gender difference in orientation toward aggression with men viewing it …
Aggression and testosterone: Testing a bio-social model
Based upon reports of a positive correlation between circulating testosterone levels and aggression, we draw upon evolutionary psychology to place the action of testosterone in a broader perspective. We propose that testosterone affects competitive status-seeking and that under certain circumstances (including youth) this is expressed as aggression. Involvement in aggression in turn is associated with adherence to an instrumental social represent…
Instrumental and expressive representations of aggression: One scale or two
The Expagg questionnaire was developed to measure a subject's view of their own aggression as a relatively instrumental or relatively expressive act. Two issues have been raised pertaining to the dimensional structure of the questionnaire: the use of principal components analysis on dichotomous responses and the possibility that instrumental and expressive representations might be independent dimensions rather than opposite ends of a single conti…
Virtual Community Care? Social Policy and the Emergence of Computer Mediated Social Support
This article argues that the emergence and growth of internet use in Britain has important implications for the analysis of social policy. It attempts to outline a research agenda for social policy in relation to one particular aspect of internet use, that of on-line self-help and social support – what we term here virtual-community care . The article presents data on patterns of home based internet use in Britain and outlines some contemporary d…
Births, deaths, sex and marriage… but very few presents? A case study of social support in cyberspace
This paper examines the functioning of a Usenet newsgroup designed to provide social support for people suffering from depression. Using a commonly used taxonomy of different sorts of social support - social companionship, informational support, esteem support and instrumental support - the paper examines a random sample of ‘postings' made to the group. Detailed illustrative examples of different types of ‘posting’ are provided and an analytic co…
On-Line with the Friends of Bill W: Social Support and the Net
The Internet is now being used as a mechanism for the delivery of social support on a global scale, chiefly through the formation of self-help groups. Most of the research that has been undertaken on these groups has focussed on Usenet and the use of newsgroups for social support. This paper examines the use of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) 'room', by a self-help group composed of problem drinkers. The group had an international membership and adv…
Lay and Professional Perspectives of the Causes of Health: A Comparative Network Approach
Lay and professional interpretations of the structure of causal factors previously demonstrated to be influencing health were examined through network analysis. Fifty-three first level registered nurses and sixty-three social science students were asked to complete network adjacency grids for factors that affect health. There is considerable agreement between the lay and professional view – with stress , lifestyle , health knowledge , work and ho…
Ladettes,” Social Representations, and Aggression
Gender Differences in the Use of the Internet by English Secondary School Children
Confirmatory factor analysis and the factor structure of expagg in context: A reply to forrest et al., 2002
It has been suggested that confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) can be used to investigate the construct validity of psychometric scales and Forrest et al. [2000] specifically query the factor structure of Expagg using this technique. In this paper we report unsuccessful attempts to confirm the factor structure of three widely used scales using CFA criteria. In the fourth study, a two‐factor model of Expagg, which has been derived from previous stu…
Sense-making in the wake of September 11th: A network analysis of lay understandings
The objective of this research was to document and explore British university students' immediate understanding of the events of September 11th. A network analysis of lay causal perceptions procedure was employed to capture the social perceptions and sense-making of respondents at a time when they and the world struggled to impose meaning and coherence on the events. The study also examined the possible effects of 'belief in a just world' and 'ri…
A study from a ‘rational actor’ perspective
Authors have noted that young people like to use the Internet and mobile phones for communication purposes. This paper reports results concerning use of the Internet and mobile phones for communication from a survey of 1340 English secondary schoolchildren conducted in 2002 and examines whether the use of either of these forms of communication technologies occurs at the expense of the other amongst this group. In agreement with background literat…
The causes of low back pain: A Network Analysis
Beliefs regarding the cause of low back pain differ between individual sufferers and health care professionals. One consequence of this is the potential acquisition of maladaptive attitudes and behaviour in relation to pain, and increases in the utilisation of primary care services (Health Expect.3(3) (2000) 161). Methods that have been used to elicit the causal interpretation of social phenomena are varied yet they are unable to categorically de…
Comparing the perceived causes of the second Iraq war: A network analysis approach
The objective of this research was to examine the representation by British students of 11 perceived causes of the invasion of Iraq. We used network analysis to develop a network of the pattern of causes that are involved. Overall most participants identified a nexus of causes that reciprocally linked religious prejudice, racism and the history of conflict in the Middle East. They identified a reciprocal link between religious prejudice and Septe…
Psychology (31 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Developmental psychology (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Aggression (10 works) · Poison control (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression (6 works)