Client dogmatism and perceived counselor attitudes

This study examined the relationship between client dogmatism and perceptions of the counselor's empathy, level of regard, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. Counselor dogmatism was held constant. It was hypothesized that the client's dogmatism would be negatively related to his perceptions of these four counselor attitudes. The analysis revealed small but significant negative correlations between client dogmatism and three of the four counselor-expressed attitudes (congruence, empathy, and unconditional positive regard).     

Effects of Role Expectations on Clients' Perceptions of Disclosing and Nondisclosing Counselors

The authors tested the hypothesis that regardless of whether a counselor self-discloses, a client's perceptions will be more favorable when the counselor's behavior is congruent with the client's precounseling expectations than when the client's expectations and the counselor's behavior are incongruent. Before listening to an excerpted interview, participants (a) were led to expect that counselors self-disclose, (b) were led to expect that counselors do not self-disclose, or (c) were given no expectation regarding counselor self-disclosure. Participants then listened to stimulus audiotapes in which the counselor did or did not reveal personal information. Dependent variables were participants' perceptions of the counselor on three social influence dimensions and two therapeutic relationship dimensions. Results indicated that the disclosing counselor was viewed more favorably than was the nondisclosing counselor, participants' expectations notwithstanding.     

Gender Self‐Confidence and Social Influence: Impact on Working Alliance

The authors investigated the relationships between the counselor's gender self‐confidence, the counselor's use of social influence within the counseling session, and the counselor's sex in relation to the counseling relationship. These attributes were studied with regard to how deeply a therapeutic working alliance developed between the counselor and the client. Results support the importance of counselor characteristics on the counselor–client alliance. Implications for teaching, research, and practice are presented.     

Empathy,honour, and the apprenticeship of violence: rudiments of a psychohistorical critique of the individualistic science of evil

Research seeking to explain the perpetration of violence and atrocities by humans against other humans offers both social and individualistic explanations, which differ namely in the roles attributed to empathy. Prominent social models suggest that some manifestations of inter-human violence are caused by parochial attitudes (attitudes characterized by interests centred on one's own community) and obedience reinforced by within-group empathy. Individualistic explanations of violence, by contrast, posit that stable intra-individual characteristics of the brain and personality of some individuals lead them to commit violence and atrocities. An individualistic explanation argues that the chief cause of violence is the perpetrator’'s lack of empathy with the victim. To offer the rudiments of a critique of the individualistic approach, I critically examine a model stating that violence is caused by empathy erosion (Baron-Cohen 2011). Specifically, the discussion of the empathy-erosion model is applied to the case of honour-based violence (HBV), a type of violence known for its communal character. Building from prior enquiries into violence and social cognition, I argue that an empathy-erosion explanation of HBV is defective because it does not consider important cultural and historical enablers of violence. Finally, as an alternative to individualism, I propose a psychohistorical approach to HBV in the migration context. This alternative combines psychological and philosophical enquiry with historical and ethnographical analysis. The psychohistorical approach hypothesises that distinct processes of cultural learning of honour codes both scaffold HBV and modulate the perpetrators’ emotions and empathy.

     

Relational Desires and Empirical Evidence against Psychological Egoism

Abstract: Roughly, psychological egoism is the thesis that all of a person's intentional actions are ultimately self‐interested in some sense; psychological altruism is the thesis that some people's intentional actions are ultimately other‐regarding in some sense. C. Daniel Batson and other social psychologists have argued that there are experiments that provide support for a theory called the ‘empathy‐altruism hypothesis’, which entails the falsity of psychological egoism. However, several critics claim that there are egoistic explanations of the data that are still not ruled out. One of the most potent criticisms of Batson comes from Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. I argue for two main theses in this paper: (1) we can improve on Sober and Wilson's conception of psychological egoism and altruism, and (2) this improvement shows that one of the strongest of Sober and Wilson's purportedly egoistic explanations is not tenable. A defense of these two theses goes some way toward defending Batson's claim that the evidence from social psychology provides sufficient reason to reject psychological egoism.     

Getting Emotional About Explanations: Social Explanations and Social Explanatory Styles as Bases of Prosocial Emotions and Intergroup Attitudes

We are interested in the bases of social emotions such as compassion and hostility. Our analysis centers on social explanations, or people’s answers to the question: Why does the target behave that way or experience those outcomes? Below, we review classic approaches to social explanation and then review work linking explanations to emotions. Finally, we focus on work from our lab that connects explanations to prosocial emotions and intergroup attitudes, including compassion for the disadvantaged and reduced vengefulness toward the violent. A crucial contribution of our work is to illuminate complex connections between explanations and emotions: A given explanation has different socio‐emotional implications depending on the explainer’s motives. Finally, we review our work suggesting that individuals have social explanatory styles, and that particular styles are predictive of dispositional compassion. A key implication of our work is that social explanations are another basis of prosociality, in addition to factors such as empathy and moral principles.     

The illusion of courage in self‐predictions: Mispredicting one's own behavior in embarrassing situations

People exhibit an “illusion of courage” when predicting their own behavior in embarrassing situations. In three experiments, participants overestimated their own willingness to engage in embarrassing public performances in exchange for money when those performances were psychologically distant: Hypothetical or in the relatively distant future. This illusion of courage occurs partly because of cold/hot empathy gaps. That is, people in a relatively “cold” unemotional state underestimate the influence on their own preferences and behaviors of being in a relative “hot” emotional state such as social anxiety evoked by an embarrassing situation. Consistent with this cold/hot empathy gap explanation, putting people “in touch” with negative emotional states by arousing fear (Experiments 1 and 2) and anger (Experiment 2) decreased people's willingness to engage in psychologically distant embarrassing public performances. Conversely, putting people “out of touch” with social anxiety through aerobic exercise, which reduces state anxiety and increases confidence, increased people's willingness to engage in psychologically distance embarrassing public performances (Experiment 3). Implications for self‐predictions, self‐evaluation, and affective forecasting are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Sociological View of the Counselor's Role: A Dilemma and a Solution

The school counselors struggle for role identity still continues. The counselor's commitment to counseling pupils is being questioned by those with a sociological view of the counselor's role. Several writers suggest that the counselor's role be changed so that the counselor will function as a “cultural architect” or “social engineer.” The main thesis of this article is that the facilitation of human potentiality calls for a complementary approach to the resolution of school and pupil problems and not the diminution and prostitution of one role for another. It is proposed that a new position be created in our schools—that of a school sociologist.     

Causal Relations and Explanatory Strategies in Physics

Many philosophers now regard causal approaches to explanation as highly promising, even in physics. This is due in large part to James Woodward's influential argument that a wide variety of scientific explanations are causal, based on his interventionist approach to causation. This article argues that some derivations describing causal relations and satisfying Woodward's criteria for causal explanation fail to be explanatory. Further, causal relations are unnecessary for a range of explanations, widespread in physics, involving highly idealized models. These constitute significant limitations on the scope of causal explanation. We have good reason to doubt that causal explanation is as widespread or important in physics as Woodward and other proponents maintain.     

Einstein's theory of theories and types of theoretical explanation

In this paper I draw on Einstein's distinction between “principle” and “constructive” theories to isolate two levels of physical theory that can be found in both classical and (special) relativistic physics. I then argue that when we focus on theoretical explanations in physics, i.e. explanations of physical laws, the two leading views on explanation, Salmon's “bottom‐up” view and Kitcher's “top‐down” view, accurately describe theoretical explanations for a given level of theory. I arrive at this conclusion through an analysis of explanations of mass—energy equivalence in special relativity.     

Child and family correlates of toddlers' emotional and behavioral responses to a mishap

This study evaluated the unique and joint contributions of internal state language, externalizing behavior, and maternal talk about emotions to the prediction of toddlers' empathy‐related responsiveness. The empathy‐based guilt reactions of 47 toddlers (27 boys) were observed in response to distress that they thought they had caused. In addition, mothers reported on the children's internal state language, externalizing behavior, and empathy‐based guilt. In a separate observation, the mothers discussed emotional expressions with their children, and the functional significance of their emotional discourse was considered. Results revealed that toddlers' internal state language ability was positively related to their attempts to comprehend another's affective state and to maternal reports of children's sympathy reactions. There was also an unexpected inverse relation between externalizing behavior and arousal level. In terms of the parent measures, maternal explanations of emotions were positively related to children's attempts to comprehend another's affective state, whereas mothers' directives for children to label emotions were positively related to children's expressed emotional concern for others. The implications of these findings for understanding empathy and guilt development in young children are discussed. ©2003 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

A Social Categorization Explanation for Framing Effects in Nested Social Dilemmas

This study developed and tested the idea that social categorization processes help to explain framing effects in social dilemmas. Using self-categorization theory, we predicted that members of a collective would cooperate more when they faced homogeneous rather than heterogeneous resource frames. We manipulated the starting point of resources for the members of each of two subgroups making up a larger collective in a nested social dilemma. The resources of the subject's own subgroup started at the individual, subgroup, or collective level, and the resources of the opposing subgroup also started at the individual, subgroup, or collective level. The condition in which both subgroups' resources began at the collective level was similar to a traditional commons dilemma, while the condition in which both subgroups' resources began at the individual level was similar to a traditional public goods problem. The other conditions were new to this research domain. We found higher allocations to the collective account when the initial resource location was the same for both subgroups (versus different for each subgroup), even when this initial location was the subgroup or individual level. Whereas previous explanations for framing effects cannot account for these results, social categorization processes provide a parsimonious explanation for the observed pattern of allocations.     

Empathy‐induced altruism in a prisoner's dilemma

Can empathy‐induced altruism motivate a person to cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma? To answer this question, 60 undergraduate women were placed in a one‐trial prisoner's dilemma, and empathy for the other person was manipulated. Regardless of whether the dilemma was framed as a social exchange or as a business transaction, cooperation was significantly higher among those women led to feel empathy for the other than among those not led to feel empathy. Among those not led to feel empathy, the business frame reduced cooperation, lending support to the idea of an exemption on moral motivation in business transactions. Lack of a business exemption on empathy‐induced altruism supported the suggestion that altruism is not simply a type of moral motivation, but is a distinct form of prosocial motivation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sex Differences in Psychological Factors Associated with Social Discounting

The social discounting paradigm is a powerful means of quantifying altruism in humans, who are typically willing to forgo some amount of personal earnings in exchange for increased earnings for another person. The amount of money that people are willing to forgo decreases with increasing social distance. In this study, we examined variables related to sex, intolerance of uncertainty, and empathy, all of which are theorized to affect the social discounting rate. Participants (27 men and 28 women) completed measures of intolerance of uncertainty, empathy, and social discounting. We found sex differences in psychological predictors of social discounting: in women, empathy (but not intolerance of uncertainty) predicts the social discounting rate, while in men, social discounting is associated with intolerance of uncertainty (but not empathy). Possible neurobiological, social, and cognitive explanations for this sex difference are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Young children's psychological explanations and their relationship to perception‐ and intention‐understanding

The present study examined two key aspects of young children's ability to explain human behaviour in a mentalistic way. First, we explored desires that are of a level of difficulty comparable with that of false beliefs. For this purpose, the so‐called ‘alternative desires’ were created. Second, we examined how children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. A perception‐understanding task, an intention‐understanding task and a psychological‐explanation task were administered to 80 three‐year‐olds. Results offer support for the thesis that the level of difficulty of belief and desire explanations is comparable. Moreover, children's psychological explanations are related to their understanding of perception and intention. The results lend support to the idea that mentalistic explanations are an explicit manifestation of children's level of theory of mind. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Humean explanations in the moral sciences

There is an essential tension in Hume's account of explanation in the moral sciences. He holds the familiar (though problematic) view that explanations of action are causal explanations backed by the laws of human nature. But he also tenders a rational and historical model of explanation which has been neglected in Hume studies. Developed primarily in the Essays and put into practice in the History of England, this model holds that explanations in the moral sciences cite agents’ reasons for acting in definite historical situations. Such explanations are context‐dependent, social (not psychological) in content, essentially post hoc, and provide insufficient grounds for prediction. The tension between Hume's two models is considerable, not to say inconsistent. We would best understand him as trying to reconcile the two. Each provides different and equally important kinds of intelligibility. Until this is appreciated, the one‐sided interpretation of Hume as a psychological reductionist and a covering‐law theorist will continue.     

Eliciting Empathy for Adults in Chronic Pain through Autobiographical Memory Sharing

Two studies (N = 80; N = 91) investigated whether sharing an autobiographical memory increases empathy for a person experiencing chronic pain. Across studies, empathy was assessed after reading a pain‐related narrative of either a 25‐ or 85‐year‐old target and again after assignment to one of two recall conditions. Conditions involved recalling a pain‐related autobiographical memory (Studies 1 and 2), or as comparisons, recalling the target's pain narrative (Study 1) or recalling a character in pain from a movie (Study 2). Looking across both studies, empathy levels appear to increase after sharing an autobiographical memory but not in the comparison conditions. Increases in empathy were related to trait‐level agreeableness. When target‐age differences emerged (Study 2), participants felt greater empathy for the older person. Findings are discussed in terms of the function of autobiographical memory in eliciting pro‐social emotions such as empathy and implications for training empathic responding. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Women's Reactions to Rape Victims: Motivational Processes Associated With Blame and Social Support1

A study was conducted with 128 female college students to test the hypothesis that when observers feel vulnerable to rape, they are more likely to blame a rape victim³ and are less willing to offer social support. Similarity and empathy were expected to moderate the effects of perceived vulnerability on blame and predict greater social support. Assumptions about the world were predicted to be associated with greater blame. A multivariate model was tested with structural equation modeling techniques. Perceived vulnerability did not directly or indirectly predict blame. However, similarity directly predicted less blame and indirectly predicted greater social support through associations with blame, perceived vulnerability, and empathy. World assumptions directly predicted greater blame and indirectly predicted less social support through blame. These findings suggest that blame and social support are interrelated processes which are associated with social observers' perceptions of the victim and their basic assumptions about the world.     

Declines in Major League Batting Performance as a Function of Game Pressure: A Drive Theory Analysis1

Zajonc's (1965) drive theory explanation argues that greater arousal tends to impair performance on difficult tasks. The hypothesis that arousal generated by “pressure situations” during major league baseball games would hinder batting performance—a difficult task—was tested by examining such performance during the 1989 season. Six “pressure situations” were identified, some occurring during the late innings of close games and others occurring throughout the game when there were two outs. Two measures of batting performance (batting average and slugging average) were employed. Results indicated broad support for the hypothesis. Reasons for this pattern are discussed, as are possible alternative explanations for these findings.