From Cross to Crescent: Religious conversion of Filipina domestic helpers in Hong Kong

This paper analyzes the religious conversion of the migrant Filipina domestic helpers in Hong Kong from Christianity to Islam. Religious conversion is found to result primarily from their romantic involvement or inter-marriage with Pakistani men. Their conversion behavior is analyzed in the light of the socio-political situation of their respective countries and the religious and cultural expectations of their community. Rambo's stage model of conversion is used to understand and explain the conversion processes.     

Think‐Aloud Process Superior to Thought‐Listing in Increasing Children's Critical Processing of Advertising

This study develops and tests a model of children's critical processing of advertising. Within this model, 2 paths to reduced advertising susceptibility (i.e., attitude toward the advertised brand) were hypothesized: a cognitive path and an affective path. The secondary aim was to compare these paths for different thought verbalization processes: think‐aloud and thought‐listing. The model was tested on a sample of 8‐ to 12‐year‐old children (N = 163). Structural equation modeling revealed that, for children in the think‐aloud group, both cognitive and affective paths were successful in reducing advertising susceptibility. However, for children in the thought‐listing group, only the affective path was successful. These findings suggest that the think‐aloud process increased children's motivation and ability to critically process advertising messages.     

Freedom in the Body: The Physical, the Causal, and the Possibility of Choice

Abstract. In Minding God Gregory Peterson takes a careful look at the kind of freedom that human persons have. He concludes that humans are constrained to be free and unpacks this into a version of compatibilism. That is, humans are not metaphysically free under current existence because of the causal determination inherent in their physical nature, but they can take credit for the origination of selfforming decisions because the causes occur inside of us. Peterson does advocate an eschatological hope looking forward to the breaking of causal determination by God's own action. Thus, Minding God presents an eschatologically limited compatibilism. Compatibilism of any kind, however, presents serious challenges to most Christian theologies and to many religious traditions broadly considered. After I interpret Peterson's position I make the argument that compatibilism is neither desirable nor required for a theological anthropology intent on serious engagement of cognitive science.     

An Updated Feminist View of Intimate Partner Violence

In this article, we explore intimate partner violence (IPV) from an intersectional, feminist perspective. We describe how an updated feminist view guides us to a perspective on IPV that is more strongly grounded in an antioppressive, nonviolent, socially just feminist stance than a second‐wave gender‐essential feminist stance that suggests that patriarchy is the cause of IPV. At the time we began to work together it seemed that a researcher had to be identified as a “family violence” researcher or a “feminist” researcher of violence against women, and that it wasn't possible to be a feminist researcher who looked beyond patriarchy as the cause of IPV. We advocate critically thinking about essentialist practices in clinical work so that we can maintain an antioppressive, socially just, nonviolent approach to working with clients who experience IPV.     

Plateaus,Dips, and Leaps: Where to Look for Inventions and Discoveries During Skilled Performance

The framework of plateaus, dips, and leaps shines light on periods when individuals may be inventing new methods of skilled performance. We begin with a review of the role performance plateaus have played in (a) experimental psychology, (b) human–computer interaction, and (c) cognitive science. We then reanalyze two classic studies of individual performance to show plateaus and dips which resulted in performance leaps. For a third study, we show how the statistical methods of Changepoint Analysis plus a few simple heuristics may direct our focus to periods of performance change for individuals. For the researcher, dips become the marker of exploration where performance suffers as new methods are invented and tested. Leaps mark the implementation of a successful new method and an incremental jump above the path plotted by smooth and steady log–log performance increments. The methods developed during these dips and leaps are the key to surpassing one's teachers and acquiring extreme expertise.     

Some Implications of Recent Research in Social and Developmental Psychology for Counseling Practice

Blocher sees four implications for counseling as a result of the additions to research and theory building of social, developmental, and general psychology. From social influence theory, from cognitive, behavioral, humanistic, and developmental research (and their hyphenated combinations) he offers a prototype “systematic eclectic” task-model directed toward implications (1) counseling is a social influence process, (2) counseling centers on the client's cognitive activity, (3) a major variable in the outcome of counseling is the level of the client's cognitive development, and (4) counselors may need intervention programs to raise cognitive levels.     

Devil's advocate versus authentic dissent: stimulating quantity and quality

Given the relationship between uniformity of views, premature adoption of a preferred solution and poor decision making, many suggestions have been aimed at fostering dissent, including the usage of a ‘devil's advocate.’ The hope is that such a mechanism will stimulate the kinds of reconsideration, better information processing and decision making as has been found to be stimulated by authentic dissent. In a prior study comparing these two processes, devil's advocate appeared to foster thinking that was primarily aimed at cognitive bolstering of the initial viewpoint rather than stimulate divergent thought. While that study left the actual position of the DA unknown, the present study compared conditions where the devil's advocate position was known (and consistent or inconsistent with the assigned position) or unknown. It further utilized quantity and quality of solutions as a dependent measure rather than simply cognitive activity. Results indicated that the authentic minority was superior to all three forms of ‘devil's advocate,’ again underscoring the value and importance of authenticity and the difficulty in cloning such authenticity by role‐playing techniques. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Being in‐between: The relevance of ethnography and auto‐ethnography for psychotherapy research

Aims: This paper proposes that ethnography and auto‐ethnography can make important contributions to counselling and psychotherapy research. Auto‐ethnography is a recent methodological approach that focuses on the subjective experiences of the researcher. It is informed by anthropology, which encourages the researcher to journey alongside the persons being observed and to make meaning of complex symbolic systems in their lives. Method: Examples from a study of therapeutic processes in a mental health setting for women are examined. Discussion: If auto‐ethnography situates the researcher with the insider's perspective and ethnography is from the outsider's perspective, the researcher is caught ‘in‐between’ these two approaches. Acknowledging the concept of ‘in‐between‐ness’ can both cause discomfort and transform the experience of all who engage in the process and enhance the quality of the research.     

Improving Decision Making by Means of Dissent1

Antidotes to problems associated with uniformity of viewpoints have generally involved dissent in one form or another (Katzenstein, 1996), one being “devil's advocate.” Research on authentic dissent has documented additional advantages in that it stimulates divergent and original thought (Nemeth, 1995). In this study, authentic disscnt was compared with devil's advocate and with no dissent. Findings indicate that authentic dissent was superior in (a) stimulating a greater proportion of original thoughts, (b) considering the opposite position, and (c) direct attitude change. Devil's advocate was found to stimulate cognitive boistcring of the initial position, thus raising concerns about the unintended consequences of techniques such as devil's advocate and the subtle task facing attempts to foster original thought and yet maintain cohesion.     

Adapting Strauss and Corbin's grounded theory in clinical case study research in the field of counselling

Case study can be adopted when aiming to understand an individual's lived experience. Such experience produces rich and complex qualitative data for analysis, conducive to counselling and psychotherapy research. Furthermore, grounded theory (GT) can be adopted to produce a theory from qualitative data, fitting well with case study research that explores complex experiences regarding social, psychological and phenomenological processes. This paper aims to guide the counselling researcher to incorporate Strauss and Corbin's model into the main arena of qualitative counselling research. In addition, this paper draws on a multiple case study that adopted Strauss and Corbin's method and identified various phases in the GT process. The aim is to inform the reader how to put the iterative process and pragmatic theoretical sampling into practice to produce a robust theory from clinical case study data.     

Toward a more complete understanding of the reciprocity of liking effect

It is proposed that the reciprocation of interpersonal attraction is a multifaceted process involving affective, cognitive, and behavioral elements, and that reciprocation can be interpreted using interdependence theory. Two studies investigated whether expressed attraction implies benevolent intentions and whether such intentions are differentially critical to reciprocated affective and behavioral attraction. Study 1 (N = 52) demonstrated that (a) an admirer's expressed attraction suggests an admirer's benevolent intentions toward the target, and (b) that benevolent intentions mediate reciprocated affective and behavioral attraction. Study 2 (N = 173) found a difference between affective and behavioral attraction: affective attraction was reciprocated in all cases; but behavioral attraction was not reciprocated when stated behavioral intentions were not consistent with intentions implied by the expressed attraction. Results support an interdependence theory perspective as particularly important for understanding why and what type of reciprocated attraction will occur. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

COMMUNICATION PATTERNS OF FOREIGN IMMIGRANTS IN THE PROCESS OF ACCULTURATION1

This paper reports the theoretical development and testing of a causal model of communication patterns of foreign immigrants in the process of acculturation. Communication patterns are conceptualized on two levels: cognitive and behavioral. The cognitive level is observed by the complexity of an immigrant's perception of the host society; the behavioral level by the immigrant's involvement in the host society through interpersonal and mass communication. Three causal factors are identified as major determinants of the immigrant's communication patterns: language competence, acculturation motivation, and accessibility to host communication channels. The theory consists of nine propositions which explain the relationship among the three causal factors, behavioral participation in host communication channels, and cognitive structure in perceiving the host society. The theory was tested and supported by a survey among 400 randomly selected Korean immigrants in the Chicago area.     

Studies in social influence VI: Is Lenin orange or red? Imagery and social influence

Two experiments dealing with the effects of a majority or a minority source influence, solely on the recognition of a portrait, let us study the generalization of the influence to a portrait symbolically linked to a colour. According to the theory of conversion, the bringing into play of the validation process of the stimulus when the source is a minority should allow such a generalization cognitive association. When the source is a majority, a social comparison process should lead to compliance about the portrait, without any cognitive investigation of the whole stimulus. In the first experiment, four slides were shown successively using material similar to Luchins' (1945) and progressively drawing the portrait of Lenin, with a red-orange background for each phase. The dependant variables are: (1) the drawing, (2) the colour of the background, (3) the after-image. On the two last slides for which the answer ‘Lenin’ is given by the source, changes towards red (and the complementary colour green), in the absence of the source under the minority influence, and changes towards orange under majority influence in the absence of the source are registered. Moreoever, the most significant changes of the colour judgment are due to the subjects who refuse to answer ‘Lenin’ during the interaction. In the second experiment, only the fourth slide, on which Lenin's portrait completely appears is shown. The subjects submitted to majority influence answer ‘Lenin’ more than the control group does, only in the presence of the source and change their judgment on the colour of the after-image towards the complementary of orange in the absence of the source. When the source is a minority a sinificant effect towards the red and its complementary colour is shown.     

Counterfactual thinking in mock juror assessments of negligence: A preliminary investigation

This Research Report presents an initial attempt to apply the theory of counterfactual thinking to study the cognitive processes that underlie judgments of negligence. Subjects reviewed a summary of an appellate case involving a work accident and listed all the ways in which the accident could have been undone (mutated). Participants' evaluations of the defendant's behavior were influenced by the ease of mutation of the negligent act and other mutations of the defendant's behavior, but not by the number of mutations of the plaintiffs conduct. Exploratory path analysis suggested that counterfactual thinking may have its greatest impact not as a direct influence on verdicts and damages, but rather as an indirect influence impacting verdicts through lower level judgments about the normality of the defendant's behavior and the standard of care. The results also suggest that contrary to the law, subjects base their negligence verdicts on assessments of normal care along with due care.     

LIVING RESEARCH: THE EXPERIENCE OF RESEARCHING SELF,OTHER, AND DISCOURSE

Although there is widespread agreement among psychologists that the self needs to be studied in context, how to actually study the interconnections between the self and environment can be challenging. This article describes a process of engaging in socially-embedded research by providing an inside view of the researcher's experience of working with such abstract concepts as culture, discourse, and the self. The background study consisted of three main layers of analysis, including (a) a narrative of one woman's reconstitution of self while recovering from anorexia nervosa, (b) an analysis of dominant discourses surrounding the discourse of recovery and treatment, and (c) a narrative of the research process including the discursive relationships of the researcher. This article focuses on this last phase and discusses the difficulties encountered when attempting to understand one's own relationship to various discourses. The researcher builds on constructivist conceptualizations of the self as the foundation for interpreting the texts selected as the data.     

Spinoza's Essentialist Model of Causation

Spinoza is most often seen as a stern advocate of mechanistic efficient causation, but examining his philosophy in relation to the Aristotelian tradition reveals this view to be misleading: some key passages of the Ethics resemble so much what Suárez writes about emanation that it is most natural to situate Spinoza's theory of causation not in the context of the mechanical sciences but in that of a late scholastic doctrine of the emanative causality of the formal cause; as taking a look at the seventeenth‐century philosophy of mathematics reveals, this is in consonance also with Spinoza's geometrical cast of mind. Against this background, I examine Spinoza's essentialist model of causation according to which each thing has a formal character determined by the thing's essence and what follows from that essence. In the case of real things this essential causal architecture results in efficacy, i.e. in bringing about real effects, the key idea being that without the essential, formally structured causal thrust there would be no efficacy in the first place. I also explain how this model accounts for efficient causation taking place between finite things.     

The Frequency with which a Group of Unselected College Students Experience Colored Dreaming and Colored Hearing

The principal aim of this report has been to clear the air with regard to number development theory and research. We began with a brief overview of the status of the number concept in pure mathematics and psychology. It was argued that although there are clear methological differences between pure mathematical and psychological approaches to the study of number, the two approaches are substantively complementary. Both are attempts to found the number concept on underlying psychological processes.

Three influential mathematical theories of number and three metamathematical criteria by which such theories are judged (consistency, completeness, categoricalness) then were summarized. The first theory, originally proposed by Peano (30) and von Neumann (49), postulates that the number concept may be reduced to a wholistic property of the natural numbers: viz., their inherent ordering. It was found that Peano-von Neumann's ordinal theory allows one to construct natural numbers without contradiction (consistency) and to construct all the natural numbers (completeness). However, the ordinal theory is not only a theory of number; it is a theory of all ordered progressions. The second theory, originally proposed by Russell (39, 40, 41, 42, 51, 52) and Frege (15), postulates that the number concept may be reduced to an atomistic property of the natural numbers: viz., the fact that each natural number is a class which includes all classes containing a particular number of elements. It was found that Russell-Frege's class theory does not allow one either to construct natural numbers without contradiction (inconsistency) or to construct all the natural numbers (incompleteness). The third theory, originally proposed by Piaget (31, 32), is a combination of the Peano-von Neumann and Russell-Frege theories; i.e., it founds number simultaneously on the wholistic property of order and the atomistic property of class. Piaget's theory was found to be contradictory (inconsistent) and to contain a superfluous undefined concept. A comparative analysis of the three theories revealed that although none of them is universally accepted as an ultimate theory of number, Peano-von Neumann's ordinal theory is by far the most satisfactory of the three by metamathematical criteria.

Each of the mathematical theories of number was translated into a cognitive developmental theory by substituting “developmental priority” of “mathematical priority.” The first theory postulated that children's number concepts derive from a prior understanding of the quantification of ordinal relations (ordination). The second theory postulated that children's number concepts derive from a prior understanding of the quantification of classes (cardination). The third theory postulated that children's number concepts derive from a prior understanding of both ordination and cardination. Published research which pertains to the postulates of each of these theories was reviewed (2, 8, 9, 10, 23, 33, 45, 46). Because of incomplete data analyses and poor operational definitions, it was concluded that the existing evidence does not clearly support any of the three theories.

Behavioral methods of assessing ordination, cardination, and natural number competence in children's thinking then were constructed. Care was taken to insure that each behavioral test was the most obvious counterpart of the mathematical definition of the notion that the test was designed to measure. It was argued in this regard that scrupulously precise operational definitions—as opposed to the loose operational definitions that characterize Piaget's (33) original studies of number development—are essential if we hope to decide which of the competing theories of number development is the most tenable. Two developmental studies were reported. In the first study, there were three principal findings: (a) Ordination was found to emerge in three stages (no ordering, spatial ordering, ordination). (b) Cardination was found to emerge in three stages (no correspondence, one-to-many and many-to-one correspondence, one-to-one correspondence). (c) Ordination was found to emerge long before cardination. In the second study, there were three principal findings: (a) The major findings of the first study were replicated. (b) Ordination was found to emerge prior to natural number competence. (c) Cardination was not found to emerge prior to natural number competence. It was concluded that the theory of number development which corresponds to the most satisfactory of the three mathematical theories—namely, the ordinal theory—is consistently supported by the developmental findings.

Possible explanations of the cognitive-developmental sequences reported in the two studies were considered. It was suggested that Flavell's (14) notion of item structure probably accounts for all the sequences. Flavell's notion of item structure specifies that a developmental sequence of the form X₁ → X₂ obtains between two cognitive items when the use of X₂ logically presupposes the use of X₁. It was argued in this regard that the sequences reported in the two studies each reflect logical relationships mentioned in the earlier review of mathematical number theories. Finally, the epistemological question of why such a close relationship exists between logical priorities and cognitive-developmental sequences was considered. It was concluded that there must be at least some structural isomorphism between the domains of cognition and pure mathematics.     

Multicultural Counseling and Qualitative Research: Shared Worldview and Skills

In this article, similarities are identified between multicultural counseling competencies and the basic assumptions and methodology of qualitative research. Having an understanding of one's own biases, assumptions, and worldviews possessing knowledge and understanding of the culturally different client's (participant's) worldview; and using appropriate strategies and skills are characteristics that are shared by multicultural counseling and qualitative research. These characteristics are addressed under aspects of qualitative research, namely, selection of the research question; researcher as instrument; relationship between researcher and participants; and data collection, analysis, and validity.     

Parental death,depression and beck's theory of cognitive vulnerability: A critical appraisal and suggestions for research

An adequate model of depression should be able to (i) specify the origins of the disorder; (ii) explain the maintenance of depressive behaviour and (iii) result in effective therapy. The adequacy of Beck's cognitive theory of depression has been increasingly questioned (e.g. Alagaratnam, 1984; Alladin, 1985; Bebbington, 1985; Power & Champion (1986); Beidel & Turner (1986); Power (1987) and fundamental questions remain unexplored. In this paper, we focus on the assumption that early parental death results in the development of depressive schemas which constitute a cognitive vulnerability to depression. Bereavement is the most severe psychological trauma most people will encounter in the course of their lives (cf. Parkes & Weiss, 1983). Thus a most stringent test of Beck's hypothesis that depressive schemas are formed in early childhood by loss experiences such as parental death may be conducted by assessing the relationship between adult depression and parental death in childhood. In this paper the evidence will be considered briefly, within the context of Beck's theory of cognitive vulnerability. The specificity of parental loss to depression is questioned. Then, the role of schemas in cognitive theory is explored critically. Problems with Beck's idiosyncratic conceptualisation of depressive schemas are highlighted. A more adequate conceptualisation of the concept of loss is suggested. Finally, suggestions for future research into the origins of depression are offered.