Does Writing About Suicidal Thoughts and Feelings Reduce Them?

To assess whether writing with cognitive change or exposure instructions reduces depression or suicidality, 121 undergraduates screened for suicidality wrote for 20 minutes on 4 days over 2 weeks. They were randomly assigned to reinterpret or to write and rewrite traumatic events/emotions, or to write about innocuous topics. The three groups (N = 98) who completed pre-, post-, and 6-week follow-up were not different on suicidality or depression. All subjects reported fewer automatic negative thoughts over the 2 weeks; they also reported higher self-regard but more health center visits at follow-up. Suicidal thoughts may be more resistant than physical health to writing interventions.     

Does Hiv or Poverty Cause Aids? Biomedical and Epidemiological Perspectives

This paper contrasts biomedical and epidemiological approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and uses Collingwood's "principle of the relativity of causes" to show how different approaches focus on different causal factors reflecting different interests. By distinguishing between the etiology of a disease and an epidemic, the paper argues that, from an epidemiological perspective, poverty is an important causal factor in the African AIDS epidemic and that emphasizing this should not be considered incompatible with recognizing the causal necessity of HIV for the AIDS disease.     

Is it Push or Pull? Recent Evidence from Migration into Bangalore, India

Given urban areas contribute to more than 65 % of India’s gross domestic product (GDP), the sustainability of the rapid 8–9 % GDP growth India has experienced in the last decade, is dependent to a large extent on urban areas. With migration being one of the important factors contributing to the growth of urban population, we attempt to understand whether it is push (out of the rural area) or pull (toward the urban area due to its perceived benefits) which explains migration in India, taking the case of Bangalore, which has one of the largest proportions of in-migrants to total population. An examination of these factors is done using a primary survey of migrants in Bangalore. Using a probit model, we find that the lower the level of education of the migrant, the greater the importance of the push factors whereas with increasing level of education of the migrant, pull factors become more important in migration. Women are more likely to be “pulled” toward urban areas. We find migrants from within Karnataka are “pushed”. This suggests that nonfarm employment opportunities have to be increased, rural infrastructure improved, and the development of small and medium towns encouraged.     

The George Wilson Effect: Does Intergenerational Closure and Collective Efficacy Reduce Juvenile Delinquency in a Neighborhood?

A substantial amount of research found crime and delinquency to be lower in areas with stronger neighborhood communities, but the casual mechanism behind this association remains debated. The current study contributes to this debate by examining the association of two forms of social capital with rates of delinquency. The first, collective efficacy, has been widely studied, while the second, intergenerational closure has not. While the results support previous research indicating the primary role of collective efficacy as a proactive factor against delinquency, results for intergenerational closure suggest the influence of neighborhood community on delinquency does not always result in lower delinquency.     

Open Access Publishing in Psychology: An option in India?

Research serves to seek new ideas, establish existing ones, and gives direction for further investigations. Publication is a means to share and communicate research. Research in the field of clinical psychology in India has been growing; yet, the journals are limited not by number but also by providing access to research to the scholars. This paper discusses the need for increasing access to research in clinical psychology and explores the possibility of open access publishing of the clinical psychology journals.     

Poverty: absolute or relative?

ABSTRACT In recent decades poverty has been defined as a relative rather than absolute notion. Those in poverty have been seen as poor relative to a level of income, or social condition, accepted as average or normal for a society. Poverty has been redefined as 'relative deprivation'. This paper argues, first, that the redefinition of poverty as relative to social norms is a radical departure from the traditional notion of poverty. Secondly, it considers whether such a redefinition gives support to the view that the claims of those in poverty (relative) may be considered as morally equivalent to the claims of those in poverty (absolute). The paper concludes by arguing that the notion of relative poverty is advanced to give support to social and economic policies whose primary aim is equality rather than the relief of poverty.     

Does Gender Matter in Personality Psychology?

In this essay, we assess whether gender is important to personality in the eyes of mainstream personality psychologists and in the eyes of feminist psychologists. We discover that these two perspectives are in fact widely divergent. Most research on personality published today in top‐tier ‘mainstream’ personality journals does not take gender seriously. Moreover, frequently‐used textbooks on personality – whether focused on theories or themes – pay little attention to issues of gender. In contrast, most research on personality published in journals focused on the psychology of women and gender treats gender as an important feature of personality. In that research, gender is fully theoretically integrated into the research, testable hypotheses are developed, and analyses include considerable attention to gender. The current segregation of perspectives on the relevance of gender to personality strikes us as deeply problematic for progress in developing a complete picture of personality in context.     

Migration for love? Love and intimacy in marriage migration processes

According to Australian regulations, the right to marriage migration applies only to genuine relationships. Marriage migration couples must demonstrate to state agents the authenticity of their romantic attachments in order to achieve a positive outcome in their applications. This article examines how love and intimacy in the context of Australian immigration regulations are interpreted by Thai women who originate from a non-Western culture. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with 15 Thai women marriage migrants, this article illustrates the ways in which the practical actions of caring and sharing are mobilized as important strategies for expressing real love and intimacy in marriage migration processes. Thus, although these women narrate their migration experiences as based on love and intimacy, such narratives are not free from global economic and structural inequalities. Women's constructions of love and intimacy presented here can transform over time in response to new personal experiences, changing social contexts and fluctuating circumstances in the processes of marriage migration.     

Does personality matter in exercise participation?

This research extends previous work by demonstrating how the relationships between social cognition and exercise are influenced by different personality types. The theory of planned behaviour forms the basis of our theoretical model, and the Big Five personality framework was used to determine personality types. Data were collected from a quota sample of 512 Malaysian adults. The results suggest that an individual's personality can prevent him or her from exercising. For example, an extrovert is likely to be driven by affect and self‐confidence in their capability to exercise, and thus are more likely to participate in exercise. Those who are more conscientious (and less neurotic) feel more in control and thus possess a greater ability to exercise in comparison with their less conscientious and more neurotic counterparts. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering personality factors in exercise research and caution us about underestimating the relationship between perceived control, attitude and its potential behavioural outcomes that could lead to a misinterpretation of its true impact. Our core contribution lies in identifying the underlying causes of social cognition differences in a moderating capacity, which has potential to yield important theoretical and practical implications. This study sets the ground for social marketers to improve their understanding of exercise behaviour and, in turn, consumer welfare. Ultimately, they could be in a better position to develop effective health intervention and educational programmes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family Therapy in India: A New Profession in an Ancient Land?

This paper examines the need for family therapy in India and its evolution as an integrated academic discipline and widespread form of clinical practice. Included is a discussion of the numerous factors placing Indian families at risk today, both common and more serious child, marital, and family difficulties, the current status of mental health services and minimal emphasis on family-based treatment, and the potential benefits of family therapy to such a radically diverse and rapidly changing society. Targets of and settings for family therapy training are highlighted, and a brief outline of a training-the-trainer approach is provided.     

Is Global Poverty a Philosophical Problem?

Peter Singer’s groundbreaking call to action in 1972, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” drew philosophical attention to the topic of famine and the associated suffering or preventable death of many throughout the world. Yet despite the volume of philosophical work Singer’s paper inspired, it would still be easy to suppose that global poverty is not a problem for philosophers to take seriously in itself but is rather a particularly stark illustration or instance of a more general problem, whether in ethics or in political philosophy. The aim of this paper is to argue that the philosophical landscape of global poverty is both sui generis and sufficiently complex that the topic should be considered not as an instance of a more general philosophical problem but as a distinct area of normative inquiry.     

Does Information That a Suicide Victim Was Psychiatrically Disturbed Reduce the Likelihood of Contagion?1

For example, psychological disturbance is stigmatizing, so knowledge that the suicide victim was psychiatrically disturbed may decrease the possibility that others will imitate the act. To assess this possibility, 306 undergraduate volunteers read a fictitious newspaper article about a 16-year-old high school sophomore, Pat, who committed suicide. There were 7 variations of the article, 4 containing negative circumstances (psychiatric disturbance, romantic relationship breakup, parents’ divorce, alcohol problems), and 2 containing positive circumstances (being a varsity athlete, being an honors student). A control group received no information about circumstances. Knowledge of Pat's life circumstances had no effect on respondents’ estimates of the possibility of the suicide being imitated, but did affect attitudes about the suicidal act itself and attitudes toward Pat's family. Apparently the circumstances surrounding the suicide have no affect on respondents’ estimates of themselves following suit, but do affect how they see the victim and bereaved family.     

Does Proximity Matter in Promoting Interfaith Dialogue?

This paper explores the role of physical proximity of places of worship in facilitating interfaith dialogue. The research focuses on a religious cluster within the Greater Toronto Area, which emerged due to incremental zoning changes over time. Using key informant interviews as the method and Allport’s contact hypothesis as the guiding theoretical framework, it explores the effects of proximity and contact (interaction or encounters) on intergroup relations. The findings suggest that physical proximity is not a strong factor in facilitating interfaith dialogue initiatives. However, proximity does seem to have an effect in creating a space for interactions and encounters to occur, which can lead to attitudinal shifts concerning the religious “other.”     

Does luck have a place in epistemology?

Some epistemologists hold that exploration and elaboration of the nature of luck will allow us to better understand knowledge. I argue this is a mistake.     

Does probability weighting matter in probability elicitation?

One of the most widely used methods for probability encoding in decision analysis uses binary comparisons (choices) between two lotteries: one that depends on the values of the random variable of interest and another that is contingent on an external reference chance device (typically a probability wheel). This note investigates the degree to which differences in probability weighting functions between the two types of events could affect the practice of subjective probability encoding. We develop a general methodology to investigate this question and illustrate it with two popular probability weighting functions over the range of parameters reported in the literature. We use this methodology to (a) alert decision analysts and researchers to the possibility of reversals, (b) identify the circumstances under which overt preferences for one lottery over the other are not affected by the weighting function, (c) document the magnitude of the differences between choices based on probabilities and their corresponding weighting functions, and (d) offer practical recommendations for probability elicitation.     

Does familiarity change in the revelation effect?

The revelation effect describes the increased tendency to call items "old" when a recognition judgment is preceded by an incidental task. Past findings show that d' for recognition decreases following revelation, evidence that the revelation effect is due to familiarity change. However, data from receiver operating characteristic curves from 3 experiments produced no evidence of changes in recognition sensitivity. The authors illustrate how the use of a single-point measure like d' can be misleading when familiarity distribution variances are unequal. Also investigated was whether the effect depends on the revelation materials used. Neither the memorability of the revelation items, their similarity to recognition probes, nor the difficulty of the task changed the size of the effect. Thus, the revelation effect is not the result of a memory retrieval mechanism and seems to be generic and all-or-nothing. These characteristics are consistent with response bias rather than familiarity change.     

Does Exposure to Stereotype‐Disconfirming Politicians Reduce the Effect of Stereotypes on Voting? Evidence From Seven Plagiarism Scandals in Germany

We examine whether exposure to several salient counterexamples reduces the effect of stereotypes on voting. By taking advantage of a series of seven plagiarism scandals in Germany—a country with high regard for academic credentials where academic titles (Dr. and Prof.) get printed on ballot papers—we test whether the tendency to vote for candidates with a doctor's title decreased in the wake of the scandals. Using cross‐sectional and longitudinal estimators and controlling for a large range of potential confounders, we find that the electoral advantage of candidates with a doctor's title shrinks from a good half of a percentage point before the scandals down to a third after the scandals. In line with a subtyping hypothesis, the reduction is stronger for candidates from traditional middle‐class parties (i.e., the parties of the politicians who were implicated in the scandals). Neither of these effects turns out to be strong enough to reach statistical significance, however. We conclude that seven negative examples in one legislative term had no noticeable effect on the tendency to select candidates based on academic titles. Our study provides a rare opportunity to test the effect of stereotype‐disconfirming information on electoral behavior. Our results contribute to a literature demonstrating the resilience of stereotypes to disconfirming information. They also suggest that plagiarism affairs are unlikely to reduce electoral incentives for politicians to obtain a fake doctorate.     

Caregivers in day-care centers: Does training matter?

Training for caregivers in day-care was investigated for its relationship to caregivers' attitudes toward children and their behavior in interactions with children. The sample consisted of 59 caregivers in 22 day-care centers on the island of Bermuda. Four different levels of training were included: 1) no training; 2) two courses of the Bermuda College training program; 3) the entire four-course Bermuda College training program; and 4) a 4-year college degree in Early Childhood Education. Caregivers with half or all the Bermuda College training were less authoritarian in their childrearing attitudes than caregivers with no training, and were rated higher on Positive Interaction and lower on Detachment in their interactions with children. Caregivers with a 4-year ECE degree were different from the other three groups; their childrearing attitudes were less authoritarian, and in interactions with children they were rated higher on Positive Interaction and lower on Punitiveness and Detachment.     

Does theory have value in clinical child psychology?

Examines the value and importance of theory in child psychology, particularly with respect to clinical practice. Although it is readily apparent that theory is not an essential element of treatment, the role of theory is to provide a coherent framework for clinical intervention. Theory provides a foundation for understanding the presenting pathology, the factors that affect it, the patient's and therapist's roles within the context of treatment, and the specific intervention strategies to be utilized. Therapeutic commonalities are considered as they may affect treatment outcome, but they are not viewed as the essential factors in efficacy. The value and meaning of eclecticism are also discussed.