Why do even satisfied newlyweds eventually go on to divorce?

Although divorce typically follows an extended period of unhappiness that begins early in marriage, some couples who are very happy throughout the first several years of marriage will also go on to divorce. This study aimed to identify risk factors early in marriage that distinguish initially satisfied couples who eventually divorce from those who remain married. We identified 136 couples reporting stably high levels of relationship satisfaction in the first 4 years of marriage. We compared the couples who went on to divorce by the 10-year follow-up with the couples who remained married on initial measures of commitment, observed communication, stress, and personality. Divorcing couples displayed more negative communication, emotion, and social support as newlyweds compared with couples who did not divorce. No significant differences were found in the other domains, in relationship satisfaction, or in positive behaviors. Overall, results indicate that even couples who are very successful at navigating the early years of marriage can be vulnerable to later dissolution if their interpersonal exchanges are poorly regulated. We speculate that, paradoxically, the many strengths possessed by these couples may mask their potent interpersonal liabilities, posing challenges for educational interventions designed to help these couples.     

Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Community-Based Participatory Research to Enhance Mental Health Services

Historically, consumers of mental health services have not been given meaningful roles in research and change efforts related to the services they use. This is quickly changing as scholars and a growing number of funding bodies now call for greater consumer involvement in mental health services research and improvement. Amidst these calls, community‐based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged as an approach which holds unique promise for capitalizing on consumer involvement in mental health services research and change. Yet, there have been few discussions of the value added by this approach above and beyond that of traditional means of inquiry and enhancement in adult mental health services. The purpose of this paper is to add to this discussion an understanding of potential multilevel and multifaceted benefits associated with consumer‐involved CBPR. This is accomplished through presenting the first‐person accounts of four stakeholder groups who were part of a consumer‐involved CBPR project purposed to improve the services of a local community mental health center. We present these accounts with the hope that by illustrating the unique outcomes associated with CBPR, there will be invigorated interest in CBPR as a vehicle for consumer involvement in adult mental health services research and enhancement.     

Why Research and Teach Early Modern Women Philosophers?

This paper makes explicit some issues of gender that have been implicitly raised in recent discussions concerning the recovery of European women's contributions to the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy. A useful way to bring these issues to light is to distinguish between the project of recovering women's contributions and the project of justifying their inclusion. The former project is an important effort to provide a more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy. Within the latter project, there is a distinction between justifying the inclusion of a specific author and justifying women's inclusion in general. The suggestion that we need to justify women's inclusion in general is fundamentally illegitimate because it presumes that either women's philosophical ability is up for debate or that their contributions require special explanation, both of which are misogynist.     

Why Study White Supremacist Terror? A Research Note

This article discusses how the current neglect of white supremacist violence impedes the development of terrorism scholarship. The decentralized organization of contemporary white supremacists is often confused with disorganization that has led some observers to claim that white supremacist terror (WST) poses a relatively benign threat and is essentially irrelevant. In contrast, I argue that white supremacist violence is part of a broader social movement strategy. Lastly, I discuss how four hot-button issues may contribute to a new large-scale wave of WST.     

Commentary: Why Do Research on Spirituality and Health, and What Do the Results Mean?

I address two related questions in this article. First, why conduct research on religion/spirituality (R/S) and health? Second, what are the dangers of misinterpreting or misapplying the results from such research? If relationships are found, so what? What is the practical value or clinical relevance of such information? Why should investigators spend time and scarce financial resources to explore such connections? What might health care professionals do differently as a result? How would people live their lives differently in light of such information? Questions like these need solid answers for the field to continue to move forward. Related to the "So what?" question is the issue of how results from research in this area are translated into popular understanding and application. After discussing why conducting research on religion and health is important, I identify a recently published research report that focuses on the relationship between R/S and self-control, an article that received considerable media press coverage. I present the results reported by the authors of this study and then examine a column written about the study that appeared in the New York Times. Finally, I explore what the findings mean, how the media portrayed the findings, and problems that might result depending on how people applied those findings.     

Do They Suffer More? Reflections on Research Comparing Suicide Survivors to Other Survivors

This article contrasts public perceptions of suicide survivors with conclusions based on comparative studies of suicide, fatal accident survivors, and other survivors. Although suicide is commonly thought to cause a particularly burden-some grief, quantitative studies have often failed to support this. We then offer some interpretations of these findings and suggest future pathways for research.     

Breakdown or Breakthrough? A History of European Research into Drugs and Creativity

ABSTRACT Language barriers have largely prevented American scholars from learning about European studies concerning drugs and creativity. An art historian reports on several Swiss, English, French and German studies conducted from the 1940s to the 1970s, offering new data in a research area that has been banned since drugs like mescalin, psilocybin, and LSD became illegal. Different views of the operations of these drugs, revealed by such terms as “hallucinogens,” “psychotogenics,” and “psychedelics,” appear to have colored researchers' aims to a large extent. The notions of drugs “dictating” or “liberating” the intoxicated artist are criticized by discussing the importance of set and setting. It is proposed that intentional drug use among artists expecting artistic breakthroughs while intoxicated, can be seen as a form of “gaucherie” or disinhibiting technique.     

Why Can't We Be More Idiographic in Our Research?

ABSTRACT— Most psychological scientists make inferences about the relations among variables of interest by comparing aggregated data from groups of individuals. Although this method is unarguably a useful one that will continue to yield scientific advances, important limitations exist regarding the efficiency and flexibility of such designs, as well as with the generality of obtained results. Idiographic research strategies, which focus on the intensive study of individual organisms over time, offer a proficient and flexible alternative to group comparison designs; however, they are rarely taught in graduate training programs and are seldom used by psychological scientists. We highlight some of the unique strengths of idiographic methods, such as single case experimental designs, and suggest that psychological science will progress most efficiently with an increased use of such methods in both laboratory and clinical settings.     

Why are therapists indifferent to research?

In counselling and psychotherapy there is a serious research—practice gap. Why should research on the therapeutic process have such little impact? Five related factors are considered: (i) epistemology—reliance on experiential/personal knowledge; (ii) preciousness—reliance on nonaxiomatic truths; (iii) lack of theoretical rigour—looseness with which constructs are construed; (iv) non-Popperian logic—tendency to work within a theory and defend it; and (v) personalisation of theory—evaluation seen as criticism. The result is a proliferation of therapies rather than a refinement of therapy.     

Why Does Time Seem to Pass?

According to the B‐theory, the passage of time is an illusion. The B‐theory therefore requires an explanation of this illusion before it can be regarded as fully satisfactory; yet very few B‐theorists have taken up the challenge of trying to provide one. In this paper I take some first steps toward such an explanation by first making a methodological proposal, then a hypothesis about a key element in the phenomenology of temporal passage. The methodological proposal focuses on the representational content of the element of experience by virtue of which time seems to pass. The hypothesis involves the claim that the experience of change involves the representation of something enduring, rather than perduring, through any change.     

Why a feminist approach to bioethics?

Many have asked how and why feminist theory makes a distinctive contribution to bioethics. In this essay, I outline two ways in which feminist reflection can enrich bioethical studies. First, feminist theory may expose certain themes of androcentric reasoning that can affect, in sometimes crude but often subtle ways, the substantive analysis of topics in bioethics; second, it can unearth the gendered nature of certain basic philosohical concepts that form the working tools of ethical theory.     

So Why Aren't Counselors Reporting n = 1 Research Designs?

There is a growing urgency for counseling to be evidence based. The n = 1 research paradigm offers counselors in the field an opportunity to evaluate their clinical casework and report this in methodologically rigorous form to their peers. Data from the past 20 years of the Journal of Counseling & Development indicate that n = 1 studies constitute just over 1% of the total articles reporting research data, and possible reasons for this are discussed, with some suggestions made for overcoming this reluctance.