Personality and Communication Skills as Predictors of Hospice Nurse Performance

Based on a detailed job analysis, job-related personality dimensions and communication skills were used as predictors of hospice nurse performance. In particular, it was predicted that communication/social competence and certain dimensions of empathy (empathic concern, perspective-taking) would be positively related to hospice nurse performance, and that another type of empathy, personal distress, and trait dogmatism would be negatively associated with performance. Ninety-two hospice nurses were administered the battery of tests, and file drawer assessments of their performance were obtained. Possession of communication/social competence and certain dimensions of empathy led to good prediction of job performance. Implications for personnel screening and selection are discussed.     

Empathy and justice motivation

Empathic distress is defined as an aversive feeling contingent on another's physical, emotional, or economic distress. The paper (1) summarizes a developmental scheme consisting of four stages of empathic distress; (2) suggests that causal attributions may partly transform empathic distress into sympathy, empathic anger, feeling of injustice, and guilt feeling; (3) notes the evidence that these empathic affects often serve to motivate moral behavior, and therefore that they qualify as moral motives; (4) points up limitations of these affects/motives and the need to embed them in justice principles; (5) discusses links between empathic affects/motives and principles of distributive justice/ (6) argues that Rawls' theory of justice, which excludes empathy, may nevertheless require it for the difference principle to influence behavior in real life; (7) hypothesizes a functional equivalence between empathy and the veil of ignorance; and (8) speculates that the conjunction of empathic affect and justice-principle thinking — in life and in abstract didactic contexts like Rawls' original position — may produce a principle having the motivational and stabilizing properties of a hot cognition.     

Irrational and Evaluative Beliefs in Individuals with Anger Disorders

Evaluative beliefs have long been regarded as hot cognitions fundamental to the arousal of emotion. Previous research on anger has predominantly focused on inferential beliefs, with explorations of evaluative beliefs largely ignored. Therefore, this paper presents an investigation of the nature of evaluative beliefs in individuals with anger disorders. To investigate the experimental hypotheses that individuals with anger disorders will report high levels of hostile related evaluative beliefs, two methodologies were applied to a clinical sample of individuals with anger disorders. Individuals with anger disorders reported hostile evaluative beliefs, but interestingly it was evident that such individuals endorsed high levels of negative self-evaluation. The implications of these findings for future research and clinical work are discussed.     

The Moral Contours of Empathy

Morally contoured empathy is a form of reasonable partiality essential to the healthy care of dependents. It is critical as an epistemic aid in determining proper moral responsiveness; it is also, within certain richly normative roles and relationships, itself a crucial constitutive mode of moral connection. Yet the achievement of empathy is no easy feat. Patterns of incuriosity imperil connection, impeding empathic engagement; inappropriate empathic engagement, on the other hand, can result in self-effacement. Impartial moral principles and constraints offer at best meager protection against these perils, and hence serve poorly in securing morally contoured empathy. More nuanced and practical guidance should be sought in normatively substantive conceptions of our roles and relationships and their defining moral stakes. These, joined with more abstract moral tools, can facilitate rich, narratively textured interpretations of moralitys demands. While the content of our normative conceptions must be continually debated, engaging in this debate is vital to the achievement of proper empathy, and thus to effective, respectful, morally healthy care of dependents.This paper was originally presented at the conference on Reasonable Partiality at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, October 22–24, 2003. I wish to thank all those present for stimulating discussion. Special thanks go to Bert Musschenga, who organized the conference, and who has provided insightful feedback on this paper. Warm thanks as well to Brenda Almond and Bernie Rollin for lively exchanges on the issues addressed here and to Nancy Sherman for sharing with me an ongoing fascination with, and her own fantastic work on, empathy. Comments from an anonymous reviewer for the journal were challenging and helpful. Finally, I wish to express gratitude beyond normal bounds to Maggie Little both for her generosity, keen insight, and artful intervention at key points in this essays evolution and for her ground-breaking work on deontic pluralism that deeply influences the position I frame here.     

Training Psychologists for a Future in Evolving Health Care Delivery Systems: Building a Better Boulder Model

Recent and dramatic changes in the demand for and reimbursement of psychological services and expertise in health care delivery systems have radical implications for the preparation of psychologists at the predoctoral, internship, and postdoctoral levels. In order to respond to these changes effectively and advance the profession, training programs must realize the expanded and potential role of psychological expertise in evolving health care delivery systems. In this paper, we review several limitations and unfortunate consequences of traditional training programs that have confined the scope of research and practice to the realm of mental health. We propose that future psychologists be recognized and trained from a broader perspective as behavioral scientists, prepared to operate at the highest levels of health care delivery systems. Specific recommendations for training and education are discussed.     

The Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut: What's It All About Theologically?

As a psychoanalytic thinker who offered by means of his self psychology a new paradigm of psychological development and functioning, Heinz Kohut was also a theologian manqué. With the help of the method of interpretation devised by Paul Tillich and David Tracy, Kohut's limit-concepts of tragic man, the self-object, and empathy, all set within his theory of narcissism, are elucidated as theological constructs. These are critiqued for adequacy from a Christian perspective. The conclusion is that Kohut's understanding of the human dilemma and of the way of salvation correlates well with Christianity, while his view of empathy as the means of salvation has created some confusion. Kohut has thus left an unfinished, profoundly important, agenda for theologians and clinicians.     

Distinctions between subgroups of asthmatic children: Parental reactions to experimental separation

Parental reactions to experimental separation were analyzed for two groups of asthmatic children, those for whom behavioral factors were judged highly relevant to asthma and those for whom such factors appeared unimportant. The former group of 13 (predicted positives) had shown a highly significant improvement in asthma during separation from their families; the latter group of 12 (predicted negatives) had not. Coding of standardized interviews conducted around the time of separation disclosed that parents (mothers, especially) of predicted positives scored significantly higher than parents of predicted negatives on such scales as fussing over the child at the time of leave taking, missing child, experiencing pain and discomfort during the separation, being anxious over child's welfare, etc. Psychological test data did not discriminate between the parents' or childrens' groups as clearly as the more focused separation interviews but the test results were consistent with interview differences. The separation elicited very strong emotional reactions from several mothers.This study was supported by United States Public Health Service Grant No. HD01060 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Kirk Brady, John Means, loan Muser, and Claire Purcell contributed to data collection and/or data analysis.     

A partially ordered extention of the integers

This paper presents a monotonic system of Post algebras of order +* whose chain of Post constans is isomorphic with 012 ... -3-2-1. Besides monotonic operations, other unary operations are considered; namely, disjoint operations, the quasi-complement, succesor, and predecessor operations. The successor and predecessor operations are basic for number theory.The editing of this unified version of two previous papers [Epstein, Rasiowa 1990, 1991] by the authors was completed, except for footnotes, while the first author visited at Warsaw University during June–July, 1994. The footnotes were added by the first author in September, 1994.Presented byRyszard Wójcicki     

Expletives and woman's place

This study empirically examined the relationship between the expletives, bitch and bastard, and sex-role stereotyping. The expletives were rated by 68 men and 68 women on 80 trait adjectives as to how typical or characteristic each trait was of the stereotypic bitch or bastard in our society. The sex-role implications of the 10 trait terms judged most characteristic of each expletive were then examined. For male subjects, the most distinguishing feature between the two expletives was the inclusion of the stereotypically masculine trait dominant, in their characterization of bitch. Female subjects, on the other hand, did not ascribe such opposite sex-role stereotype traits to bitch, but rather emphasized stereotypically masculine traits in their characterization of bastard. These results are discussed in terms of the regulatory and expressive nature of language, as well as the differential sanction value of the terms bitch and bastard for out-of-role behavior.     

The Client Is the Most Important Common Factor: Clients' Self-Healing Capacities and Psychotherapy

I first briefly review the dodo bird verdict and suggest that we should be responding to it by looking for a new way to conceptualize how therapy works. Then I describe the dominant medical or treatment model of psychotherapy and how it puts the client in the position of a dependent variable who is operated on by supposedly potent therapeutic techniques. Next I argue that the data do not fit with this model. An alternative model is that the client is the most important common factor and that it is clients' self-healing capacities which make therapy work. I then argue that therapy has two phases—the involvement phase and the learning phase—and that the involvement phase is the most important. I next review the five learning opportunities provided by therapy. Finally, I argue that a relational model of therapy focused on consultation, collaboration, and dialogue is better than a treatment model.     

Visual discrimination and response programming

Summary Choice reaction time (RT) depends on the relationship between responses, and these dependencies are usually interpreted in terms of the advance-specification assumption. According to this assumption characteristics that are the same for the choice responses can be specified in advance of the response signal, thus allowing faster RTs. Since the advance-specification assumption is called into question by some of the available data, an alternative interpretation is suggested and formalized in terms of an accumulator model. According to the programming-interactions assumption, stimulus processing is tightly linked to response programming, so that both the possible responses are programmed as long as there is uncertainty with regard to stimulus identity. This gives rise to interactions between simultaneous processes of motor programming. Predictions of this assumption for the joint effects of signal similarity and the relationship between responses are tested and confirmed.This research was supported by grant no. He 1187/3–1 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft     

Heidegger's Brightness as a Responsibility of the Therapist in Existential Family Therapy

The author reflects upon the Heideggerian concepts of thrown-ness, death imagery, arrogance and brightness and their usefulness in existential family therapy. The article describes and illustrates with clinical material the process of helping a couple or family to move from an arrogance response to thrownness and death imagery to the response of brightness as attendants of Being. The responsibilities of the therapist in facilitating such a process are also described.Director of the Worthington Logotherapy Institute, co-director of Lantz and Lantz Counseling Associates, and a professor at The Ohio State University. College of Social Work     

Interventions for Children with Anger Problems

Anger in children has received a lot of attention. This article is a review of several rational-emotive behavioral interventions for children struggling with anger problems. The first step discussed in this article involves helping children learn to recognize their internal signals that they are becoming angry. Children can be taught that there are certain physiological events that occur immediately preceding anger. Another important component of anger management involves the use of distraction, in which children are encouraged to substitute a happy or funny mental image to interrupt the anger producing thoughts. Finally, a detailed analysis of rational-emotive imagery is provided for children needing more extensive interventions with their anger problems.     

Counseling the abortion patient: A pastoral perspective

Unplanned pregnancies are common among women in every congregation. Ministers have an opportunity to offer pastoral abortion counseling to those who wish it that is different from secular problem pregnancy counseling; the minister can offer a value context and facilitate a deep investigation of the decision-making process in a personal way. Concrete information regarding abortion procedures, situational factors important in problem pregnancy decisions, and emotions associated with problem pregnancies are discussed under the headings healing, guiding, and reconciling.She has been involved professionally in the family planning field for six years.     

“Minimax length links” of a dissimilarity matrix and minimum spanning trees

A theorem is proved stating that the set of all minimax links, defined as links minimizing, over paths, the maximum length of links in any path connecting a pair of objects comprising nodes in an undirected weighted graph, comprise the union of all minimum spanning trees of that graph. This theorem is related to methods of fitting network models to dissimilarity data, particularly a method called Pathfinder due to Schvaneveldt and his colleagues, as well as to single linkage clustering, and results concerning the relationship between minimum spanning trees and single linkage hierarchical trees.Acknowledgments: The author thanks Phipps Arabie, Lawrence J. Hubert, and K. Christoph Klauer for a number of helpful suggestions and comments on various aspects of this paper.     

Emotional,Cognitive, Behavioral,and Temperament Characteristics of High-Empathy Children

Recent research has suggested that individual differences in young children's capacity for empathy and altruism has heritable components and may be related to early temperament. These individual differences, like other human capacities such as intelligence, may be distributed normally. Thus, high-empathy children may exhibit cognitive, emotional, and behavioral precocity in empathic and altruistic responding, and begin expressing these capacities early in life. Twenty-seven 2- to 8-year-old (M = 53 months), primarily Euro-American high-empathy children (10 male) were identified by childcare center staff. Ethnographically oriented interviews of their mothers provided detailed accounts of the children's empathic and altruistic responding in everyday interactions at home and school. As a group, the children were described as emotionally positive, especially sociable individuals whose empathic and altruistic responses were highly spontaneous, occurred more frequently, and differed from peers in depth, intensity, and persistence. Parallels were drawn between these capacities and temperamental dispositions for self-regulation and emotional reactivity. Limitations of the methodology and directions of future research are discussed.     

Physicians' values and physician-value neutrality

For years articles have decried the lack of empathy in physicians' relationships with patients. In addition to being empathetic, physicians are called upon to assume the posture of value neutrality, i.e., not imposing one's values when dealing with patients. Empathy is clearly an expression of deeply held values; even the language used to define it is value-laden. Physicians are consistently called upon to exhibit traits which are expressions of their underlying values. However, if proponents of value-neutrality are to be taken literally one must not impose any of one's values on one's patients. But then one wonders how empathy could ever be expressed; further, it is hard to imagine what a truly value neutral physician would be like. It is time we recognize that any relationship between two persons requires the expression of values from both parties. These values help shape that relationship and define its further history. Physicians are not excluded from this process just because they consider themselves professionals. Divulging personal values to patients is both more honest and more in keeping with the concepts of justice, beneficence, non maleficence, and autonomy than to feign value-neutrality. A presentation of some type statement of values is timely and would give patients an idea of where a physician stands on a myriad of issues. Rather than being value-neutral, value non-neutrality seems a more right and reasonable posture for physicians to assume.     

Coreference processing and levels of analysis in object-relative constructions; Demonstration of antecedent reactivation with the cross-modal priming paradigm

This paper is concerned with two related issues in sentence processing-one methodological and one theoretical. Methodologically, it provides an unconfounded test of the ability of the cross-modal lexical priming task, when used appropriately, to provide detailed evidence about the time-course of antecedent reactivation during sentence processing. Theoretically, it provides a study of the nature of the representation that is examined when a reference-seeking element is linked to its antecedent during the processing of object-relative clause constructions. In these studies, subjects heard sentences which contained a lexical ambiguity placed in a strong biasing context. In one study this ambiguous word was the moved or fronted object of the verb in an object-relative construction. A cross-modal lexical priming (CMLP) naming task was used to determine whether one or more of the meanings of the ambiguity are activated at three temporally distinct points during the sentence: (1) immediately after the lexical ambiguity (Study 1); (2) a later point that was 700 milliseconds before the offset of the main verb (Study 2); (3) immediately after this main verb (at the gap in this filler-gap construction) (Study 2). The probes in the CMLP task were controlled for potential confounds. The results demonstrate the following: At Test Point 1, all meanings of the ambiguity were activated; at Test Point 2, neither meaning of the ambiguity was (still) activated; at Test Point 3, only a single (context-relevant) meaning of the ambiguity was reactivated. It is concluded that an underlying (deep; non-surface-level) memorial representation of the sentence is examined during the process of linking an antecedent to a structural position requiring a referent, and that the CMLP task provides an unbiased measure of this reactivation. Further, it is concluded that this effect cannot be accounted for under a compound cue (Ratcliff & McKoon, 1994) explanation.The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions and changes in this paper, and the support of a fellowship to the first author from grant T32 DC 00041 and NIH grant ROI DC00494 (to the second author) for this work.     

Another Side to Downsizing: Survivors' Behavior and Self-Affirmation

Downsizing is one of the terms used to describe the efforts of companies to gain a competitive edge. The effects of global competition, mergers, market saturation, and automation are forcing the streamlining of the American workforce. This study addresses the gap in empirical data on the effects of self-affirmation opportunities to employee survivors and victims. Specifically, the conceptual model developed in this research examines the interactive effects of self-affirmation and the perception of procedural justice, distributive justice, and job insecurity on the induced psychological states of the individuals involved with companies engaged in downsizing. The conceptual model suggests that layoffs have an impact on the induced psychological states of the individuals affected. At play in the model is the moderating variable of re-affirmation. This, in turn, will affect the attitudes and work behaviors of those same individuals and their ability to maintain their self-image. Specific recommendations to management, based on these findings, conclude the study.     

Minimizing subject loss in a longitudinal study of deviant behavior

A number of techniques are described to prevent attrition of four different categories of subjects in a longitudinal study of deviant behavior.Difficult to schedule subjects required persistence, empathy and flexibility to ensure their continued participation.Reluctant subjects were persuaded to participate by taking special care to build rapport with that family.Subjects who initially refused were turned around by assuming that a subject's refusal one year was circumstantial, and approaching that subject the following year with personalized correspondence that emphasized the importance of their contribution to the research. Persistence was an important factor in successfully locating and recruitingtransient subjects.