Experiencing Shared Inquiry Through the Process of Collaborative Learning

This article is based on an analysis of a qualitative research case study involving three British adult educational‐theological sites which were experimenting with collaborative learning. The focus of this practice‐based research was listening to and observing adults engaged in collaborative learning in order to elucidate what they perceived to be some integral values inherent in this learning approach. ‘Experiencing Shared Inquiry’ emerged as one of the hallmarks of collaborative learning. The dynamic engagement of hearts and minds in collaborative learning harnesses the collective wisdom of God's people. Two movements are enfolded within ‘Experiencing Shared Inquiry’: stimulating thinking through dialogue process and drawing upon the resources of the learning community.     

Inferring Others' Hidden Thoughts: Smart Guesses in a Low Diagnostic World

People are biased toward believing that what others say is what they truly think. This effect, known as the truth bias, has often been characterized as a judgmental error that impedes accuracy. We consider an alternative view: that it reflects the use of contextual information to make the best guess when the currently available information has low diagnosticity. Participants learnt the diagnostic value of four cues, which were present during truthful statements between 20% and 80% of the time. Afterwards, participants were given contextual information: either that most people would lie or that most would tell the truth. We found that people were biased in the direction of the context information when the individuating behavioral cues were nondiagnostic. As the individuating cues became more diagnostic, context had less to no effect. We conclude that more general context information is used to make an informed judgment when other individuating cues are absent. That is, the truth bias reflects a smart guess in a low diagnostic world. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clinical Interventions With Women Experiencing the Impostor Phenomenon

No abstract available for this article.     

Shared Traumatic Reality and Boundary Theory: How Mental Health Professionals Cope With the Home/Work Conflict During Continuous Security Threats

ABSTRACT

In a shared traumatic reality, mental health professionals and their clients are exposed to the same communal disaster. Both living and working in the same high-stress community can create a conflict between the professional's work and his or her private life. The author analyzed three focus groups consisting of 30 mental health professionals who worked with traumatized populations in a missile-stricken area in southern Israel. The professionals’ experience was explored through the lens of boundary theory by examining the ways in which they created and maintained boundaries between the different domains of their lives. Findings demonstrated that these professionals presented a continuum of segmentation and integration of the domains as suggested by boundary theory, when both living and working in a highly stressed environment. The discussion deals with possible costs and benefits of the boundary theory continuum.     

Research in a Shared Traumatic Reality: Researchers in a Disaster Context

Shared traumatic reality (STR) is a situation in which helping professionals and clients are exposed to the same traumatic, life-threatening circumstances in the course of the therapeutic relationship. Based on the findings of studies conducted in a shared traumatic reality, the present article will examine the complex and unique aspects of conducting research in these contexts, and raise questions about the ability of researchers to conduct studies in STR situations. Practical recommendations for dealing with these situations will be offered.     

Affective Forecasting: Predicting and Experiencing Satisfaction With Public Transportation1

Affective forecasting in public transport was investigated in 2 studies. Study 1 revealed differences in satisfaction between users (n = 870) and non‐users (n = 137). Users were more satisfied than were non‐users with regard to reliability and safety, as well as with regard to overall satisfaction. It was also found that non‐users mispredicted their satisfaction with public transport. Study 2 revealed that habitual car users (n = 106) reported greater satisfaction after using public transport for 1 month than they had predicted initially, which provided additional support for the hypothesis that habitual car users would mispredict their satisfaction with public transport. Satisfaction with public transport also increased in comparison with a random sample of car users (n = 63).     

After Adversity Strikes: Predictions, Recollections and Reality Among People Experiencing the Onset of Adverse Circumstances

Numerous studies on affective forecasting have demonstrated that people frequently underestimate their ability to adapt to adverse circumstances. But to date, these studies have not assessed people’s affective forecasts early in the experience of these new circumstances. We present two longitudinal studies of people experiencing new adversities. In the first study 54 patients experiencing new limb amputations were recruited to participate in a mailed survey. Patients assessed their well-being, functioning and general health (1) two weeks after discharge from the hospital and (2) three months later. At the first time point patients also predicted their well-being, functioning and general health at three months. In the second study 55 patients experiencing new colostomies were recruited and received mailed surveys at three time points; (1) at baseline (within one week after leaving the hospital), (2) one month after baseline, and (3) seven months after baseline. Again we assessed their actual and predicted well-being, functioning and general health. In both studies the actual change was compared to the change expected by patients. Across both studies, patients expected to significantly improve on all three domains but reported little actual improvement. Together, these studies demonstrated that people with new disabilities overestimate hedonic adaptation—they expect their overall well-being to improve more than it actually does.     

Experiencing Job Burnout: The Roles of Positive and Negative Traits and States

Extending recent research efforts on the effects of personality and moods at work, this study examined the impact of personality traits and mood states in job burnout. Specifically, the field study examined the role of 2 personality traits and positive and negative moods (states) in burnout among nurses working at 2 hospitals. Results indicate that extra-version significantly predicted the diminished accomplishment component of burnout, and neuroticism significantly predicted the exhaustion and depersonalization components. Thus, the findings indicate that personality dimensions predict burnout components differentially. Further, positive moods mediated the relationship between extraversion and accomplishment, while negative moods partially mediated between neuroticism and exhaustion. Thus, moods exhibited both direct and mediating effects. Implications for management and suggestions for future research are offered.     

The Inner World of the Genetic Counselor

The external experience of genetic counselors reflects and is processed in their personal inner worlds. A small window into that private interior is opened here revealing the strengths and frailties, vulnerabilities and sensitivities professionals bring to bear in their work. The relational, human interplay—between counselor and colleagues, counselor and clients, counselors in their nonprofessional roles relative to others—is the primary focus of the interior experience.     

Shared Reality,System Justification,and the Relational Basis of Ideological Beliefs

Although it is tempting to think that one's political convictions reflect independent and unbiased thinking, research increasingly suggests that ideologies reflect motivational processes. The present paper integrates system justification and shared reality theories to propose that ideologies may function as prepackaged units of interpretation that spread because of basic human motives to understand the world, avoid existential threat, and maintain valued interpersonal relationships. The authors review evidence suggesting that affiliative motives may influence ideological beliefs to align with the progressive or conservative views shared within a given relationship or group. At the same time, such motives may lead disproportionately to the adoption of system‐justifying worldviews. Implications for the context dependence of ideological convictions, the role that shared reality may play in group conflicts, and the relational bases of revolutionary change are discussed.     

How Infants Learn About the Visual World

The visual world of adults consists of objects at various distances, partly occluding one another, substantial and stable across space and time. The visual world of young infants, in contrast, is often fragmented and unstable, consisting not of coherent objects but rather surfaces that move in unpredictable ways. Evidence from computational modeling and from experiments with human infants highlights three kinds of learning that contribute to infants' knowledge of the visual world: learning via association, learning via active assembly, and learning via visual-manual exploration. Infants acquire knowledge by observing objects move in and out of sight, forming associations of these different views. In addition, the infant's own self-produced behavior-oculomotor patterns and manual experience, in particular-are important means by which infants discover and construct their visual world.     

Bio‐Theoacoustics: Prayer Outdoors and the Reality of the Natural World

What does it mean to pray when the Earth—the fabric of our bodies’ lives, and indeed of the incarnation itself—is profoundly endangered from human action? What would Christian prayer look like that was not “losing track of nature” but following its tracks, physically and spiritually immersed in the actual, present, threatened and wild life of the more‐than‐human world? Using categories outlined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics, this essay asserts that prayer and worship that take place entirely within the wall‐, speech‐, and screen‐mediated bubble of anthropocentrism risk becoming an abstraction. The essay explores this assertion in three moves: first, it delineates Bonhoeffer's assertion of the “abstraction” created by forms of Christian life in which God is conceived in separation from the world. Next, it shows how these categories—“God” and “world”—come together in prayer outdoors, understood both literally and metaphorically. And finally, it proposes how prayer outdoors might take shape for individuals or communities: a bio‐theoacoustics of prayer for the life of the world.     

The Attitudes About Reality Scale: A New Measure of Personal Epistemology

The Attitudes About Reality Scale (AAR) was constructed by Unger, Draper, and Pendergrass (1986) to measure implicit causal assumptions about the relationship between persons and their physical and social reality. The scale was presumed to assess a single dimension of personal epistemology, ranging from a social constructionist view of reality of a logical positivist view. The factor structure and convergent and discriminant validity of the AAR Scale were examined in this research. Results indicated that the AAR Scale measures at least two dimensions of personal epistemology, labeled societal determinism and individual determinism. A third dimension, labeled variable determinism, was also suggested by the results. Intercorrelations between AAR scale scores and measures of conceptually similar and conceptually distinct constructs supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale. Directions for future research on the predictive utility of the personal epistemology construct and on its socialization antecedents are discussed.