Gender differences in evaluation of performance and leadership ability: Autocratic vs. democratic managers

This laboratory experiment involved 290 undergraduate seniors (130 females and 160 males) who were taking the capstone course in business policy in the college of business at a large university. The population of business seniors from which the random sample was drawn consisted of approximately 3.7% African Americans, 7% Asians, 1% Hispanics, and 88.3% white Americans. The study investigated the impact of autocratic and democratic leadership styles on the perception of how well male and female managers perform as well as the leadership ability attributions made to them. It was found that, in general, democratic managers are perceived to be much higher performers, and superior leaders when compared to autocratic managers. There was some support for the gender contrast effect in that the autocratic female managers were perceived to be higher performers than autocratic male managers. Further, the study found support for the perceptual similarity thesis. Male subjects tended to evaluate other male managers higher while female subjects were partial to female managers in their evaluations. In particular, female subjects gave autocratic male managers very low evaluations on performance and judged them to be inferior leaders. The female subjects, however, gave female autocratic managers substantially higher evaluations in terms of both performance and leadership ability.     

Working briefly with reluctant clients: child protective services as an example

Therapists and counsellors often are faced with reluctant clients and constraining circumstances. Such difficulties are especially prevalent and severe in casework in child protective services - the parents of abused or neglected children are all involuntary clients, case loads are large, and time is limited.
Drawing on experience in applying and modifying prior work at the Brief Therapy Center of MRI to work in child protective services of a Northern California county, this article suggests general principles for effective intervention in such difficult circumstances and illustrates these with specific case examples.
Since consideration of extreme conditions is often helpful in dealing with parallel but less extreme ones, the authors' aim and hope is that readers will find this article helpful not solely in child protective work but also in the much wider territory where similar obstacles to effective counselling also occur.     

Parental control in child rearing and multidimensional locus of control.

272 French-Canadian adolescent boys and 286 girls took part in a study of the association between parental control in child-rearing and Levenson's locus of control dimensions. Analysis showed relations between parental control and the two external dimensions but not with the internal one. Age and gender did not contribute to the various relationships.     

Early child rearing in Japan: Cross-cultural and intra-cultural perspectives

Within the field of cross-cultural developmental psychology, examinations of parenting serve to focus attention on development in the proximal context of the family and the distal context of the culture. Even though Japan is economically in the mainstream of the industrialized Western world, there are many cultural differences between Japan and Western countries; these include differences in cultural values, beliefs about children, parental behaviours and differences in the children themselves. The focus of this special issue is observational studies of early child rearing in Japan; included are cross-cultural comparisons with the United States, Germany and France, as well as studies within Japan. The contexts of the observations reported in this special issue include homes, laboratory playrooms, and day care centres. With intra-cultural and cross-cultural perspectives, an updated view of Japanese child rearing in the early years is presented.     

Enduring and different: a meta-analysis of the similarity in parents' child rearing

The assessment of child-rearing beliefs and behavior has predominantly focused on qualities and characteristics believed to reflect consistent, enduring qualities of parenting--the similarity in child rearing. This review evaluates the evidence for similarity and differences among 3 types of child-rearing data and includes comparisons across time, children, and situations. Both relative stability and mean level differences were found in all 3 domains. The most similarity was found in the across-time and across-children domains, although it depended on the child-rearing construct and methodology used. It is argued that attention to the variability and change in child rearing must be incorporated into theoretical models of parenting to better understand the nature of child rearing and, in turn, parental influence on children's development.     

Another way to think about psychological change: experiential vs. incremental

The traditional pre-post treatment difference reflects an incremental notion of change, where a quantity of some psychological function is added to (or subtracted from) a pretreatment quantity. This study presents a complementary, experiential notion of change. Rather than a difference, change is a feeling or experience of having changed, a feeling that one is different than before. Based on a post-treatment interview the Change after Psychotherapy (CHAP) is a method to quantify/rate such ‘differentness’ in terms of how extensively or radically the patient feels having changed. A pre-post quasi-experimental study (N = 49) comparing the CHAP with ratings on the Global Assessment of Functioning, the Karolinska Psychodynamic Profile and the Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale-Self-Affective is reported. The results showed the CHAP to be a reliable, valid and sensitive way to assess an experiential kind of CHAP.     

New democrats: religious actors, social change and democratic consolidation in Turkey

I analyze the positive and leading role religious actors play in democratic consolidation in Turkey in recent years. I argue that major social changes might lead to such outcomes. Empirically, I show that two major religious actors in Turkey—the Gulen Movement and the Justice and Development Party (AKP)—have adopted favorable positions on EU membership, ethnic and religious minorities, and pluralism in the last decade. This remarkable transformation owes its existence to the economic liberalization reforms initiated in the early 1980s, and the “post-modern coup” of 1997. This transformation reflects the need of both religious actors for greater democracy from a purely self-interested perspective. The Gulen Movement prefers an open and democratic system to sustain its organizational existence. The AKP responds to the preferences of its own constituency. These unique conditions have made two religious actors catalysts of democratization along with some liberal democrats in Turkey. Empirically, I rely on European Union’s Turkey progress reports and a recent analysis of religious Turkish media to support the argument.     

The relationship between false confessions and perceptions of parental rearing practices

The main aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between a history of having made a false confession and reported parental rearing practices. It was hypothesized that the reporting of rejection and absence of warmth by parents would be associated with the making of a false confession. The participants were 804 college students in Iceland. Each was asked about false confessions made to teachers and parents in the past, as well as about false confessions made to the police during questioning. The participants completed questionnaires relating to perceived parental rearing practices (EMBU), proneness to antisocial behavior (the Gough Socialization Scale), personality (EPQ), self-esteem (Rosenberg), and compliance (GCS). Only eight participants (1% of those interrogated) claimed to have made false confessions to the police, whereas 10% claimed to have made false confessions to teachers or parents. False confessions were significantly associated with proneness to antisocial behavior and the EMBU Rejection and Warmth scales for both fathers and mothers.     

Haunted by parents--a literary example of change meaning loss: Edna St. Vincent Millay

The author uses the life and personal history of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, as revealed through her diaries and letters and in biographies, to illustrate a particular type of psychoanalytic patient. Such patients are resistant to change, particularly when it involves letting go of the internalization of early parental figures. Although some of these patients fail to achieve successful analytic outcomes, Millay is an example of someone with similar circumstances who nevertheless made significant creative contributions.