Stereotypes and recognition memory for faces and voices of good guys and bad guys

This study tested first whether 240 undergraduate students share high consensual agreement in their selection of faces and voices which fit criminal and non-criminal ‘occupations’ second, whether there are significant relationships between trait impressions and voice characteristics for persons selected as exemplars of criminals and non-criminals; and third, whether categorization of targets into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ influences recognition memory. Subjects' selections of exemplars of criminals and non-criminals from video recordings of the face and voice, or face-only, or voice-only of 15 white men were done with high confidence in a significantly non-random manner. Significant correlations were found between trait impressions and vocal characteristics in all three presentation modes which differentiated good guys from bad guys. Recognition memory for target voices was significantly inferior to the recognition of face and voice targets, and face-only targets. Recognition confidence scores were significantly higher for good guys over bad guys, especially in the voice-only condition. The results were discussed in terms of the probability that stereotyping of faces and voices can influence decision-making in the legal process.     

The public good that does the public good: A new reading of Mohism

Mohism has long been misrepresented. Mo‐tzu is usually called a utilitarian because he preached a universal love that must benefit. Yet Mencius, who pined the Confucian way of virtue (humaneness and righteousness) against Mo‐tzu's way of benefit, basically borrowed Mo‐tzu's thesis: that the root cause of chaos is this lack of love—except Mencius renamed it the desire for personal benefit. Yet Mo‐tzu only championed ‘benefit’ to head off its opposite, ‘harm’, specifically the harm done by Confucians who with good intent (love) perpetuated rites that did people more harm than good. Mo‐tzu wanted his universal love to be the public good that would actually do the public good (i.e. benefit the collective). And he derived this from Confucius’ teaching of ‘Love (all) men’ and his Golden Rule: Render not what others would not desire. No man desires harm. As a critic of Confucian rites (especially the prolonged funeral), Mo‐tzu worked to replace the blind custom of rites with his rational measure of ‘rightness’: what is right must do good (i.e. benefit the intended recipient). It is not true that Mohists were ‘joyless’ ascetics; they would gladly celebrate a good harvest with wine and folk song—not expensive court music—with the people. Since Mohist discourse is ‘public’ (that is, accountable), it is also only proper that what is ‘right’ should be outer (means‐end efficacy) and not inner as Mencius would insist.     

Individual and gender differences in good and first‐class undergraduate degree performance

Corroborating recent findings elsewhere, women within a large undergraduate sample at the University of Sussex achieved a greater proportion of ‘good’ (first‐ or upper‐second‐class) degrees than did their male counterparts. This female advantage disappeared when statistically controlling for the trait openness to experience and for study‐related behaviour whilst at university (i.e. attending seminars and completing ‘non‐contributory’ assignments). Contrary to robust findings previously obtained elsewhere, only slight and unreliable evidence was found that men at Sussex obtained a greater proportion of first‐class degrees than did women. Moreover, differences favouring either gender were unreliable across the subjects of study. Indeed, ‘subject gaps’ often appeared more pronounced than ‘gender gaps’, where present. We conclude that emphasis should be shifted away from research on gender differences per se in favour of recent approaches that more directly explore reasons for successful undergraduate performance. However, to the extent that subject choice is an important determinant of degree performance, gender differences in subject choice will continue to be an important area of research.     

The effects of meeting a family therapy supervision team on client satisfaction in an initial session

Despite the wide use of live supervision in marriage and family therapy training, there have been no randomized trials comparing different variations of the practice. This randomized trial of 86 clients was designed to measure client satisfaction after an initial therapy session under two conditions: meeting the supervision team behind the observation mirror or not meeting the team. A mixed linear model analysis of covariance was used to examine the relationship between ‘meeting the team’ versus ‘not meeting the team’ and client satisfaction. There were no statistically significant differences in client satisfaction based on whether clients met the team or not. There was a trend toward greater satisfaction with the therapy session among clients who did not meet the supervision team.     

BEING DRIVEN MAD: TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING BORDERLINE AND OTHER DISTURBED STATES OF MIND THROUGH THE USE OF THE COUNTER‐TRANSFERENCE

In this paper material is presented from supervision groups run for nurses and other mental health professionals. The patients presented to the group came from different mental health settings with a diagnosis that included borderline features and/or other disturbed states of mind. All of the patients described caused strong counter‐transference feelings of sympathy, confusion, anger, hopelessness and guilt. Although these views were not expressed in formal ward rounds or recorded in clinical notes, evidence of their influence could be seen in the staff's attitude toward these patients. In supervision groups staff would either say that the patients were victims of mistreatment or they adopted a rather moralistic tone saying, ‘the patient is attention‐seeking’, ‘manipulative’ or ‘not mentally ill’. Psychoanalytic supervision which puts the transference and counter‐transference relationship at the centre of practice can help staff to think about their feelings and digest them in a way that makes use of them as evidence rather than discarding them as purely subjective. It also helps to reduce the toxic effects of the patient's projections upon the clinician's mind and this in turn helps to reduce retaliatory or manic clinical decisions. In this paper I argue that staff teams need time to reflect on their practice in handovers and clinical meetings and that psychoanalytic supervision can offer a particularly valuable clinical perspective on patients with Borderline features. This sort of support should be seen as an essential part of the work of nurses and other mental health professionals rather than an unaffordable luxury.     

Therapists’ and clients’ perceptions of routine outcome measurement in the NHS: A qualitative study

Primary objective: This is the first qualitative study that elicited the perceptions of both psychological therapists and their clients in the use of Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation with computer software (CORE‐Net), where instant visual feedback for session tracking was given on a computer screen in the therapy room at each therapy session. The study also examined how therapists viewed its potential value in supervision and provides suggestions for improving training. Research design: The study adopted a convenience sample of four therapists in a primary care counselling setting (PCC – General Practitioner referrals) who were experienced in using CORE‐Net, and five therapists in an NHS employee/occupational support counselling service (OH) who had just begun to use CORE‐Net for session tracking with 10 of their clients. Method: A qualitative methodology was used and interview data were collected from the therapists via focus groups; the clients were interviewed individually face to face. All data was analysed inductively. Findings: The study identified six overarching themes: (i) therapists were initially anxious and resistant; (ii) therapists adapt ‘creatively’; (iii) outcome measures help the client/therapist relationship; (iv) clients perceive visual measures as helpful; (v) CORE scores inform supervision; and (vi) proper and ongoing training/support of therapists is necessary. The main limitations are comparability of data and the generalisabilty of results. Conclusions: The implementation of routine outcome measurement (ROM) is a challenge but can be made easier with proper training and supervision. Clients appear happier than their therapists when routine outcome measurement is used.     

Good education,the good teacher,and a practical art of living a good life: a Catholic perspective

What is good education? We value education for reasons connected to the good provided by education in society. This good is connected to be the pedagogical aim of education. This article distinguishes five criteria for good education based on the concept of ‘Bildung’.

Next, these five criteria are used to develop the idea of the good teacher. The rationale behind the analysis is that the good teacher should be able to realise what we consider to be good education. There are different traditions of religiously affiliated schools in the world. This article gives insight into the idea of the good teacher in two documents of the Catholic Congregation of Education on the lay teacher. Finally, the article focuses on the formation of a practical art of living a good life. Again, the five characteristics of good education structure the analysis of this type of educational formation.     

Person‐Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy Scale: Development and reliability of an adherence/competence measure for person‐centred and experiential psychotherapies

Aims: This study aimed to assess the reliability of the Person‐Centred and Experiential Psychotherapy Scale (PCEPS), a new adherence/competence measure of person‐centred and experiential psychotherapies. The PCEPS consists of 15 items with two subscales: Person-Centred Process and Experiential Process. Method: One‐hundred twenty audio‐recorded segments of therapy sessions were rated independently by two teams of three raters using the PCEPS. Half of the segments were 10 minutes long and the other half were 15 minutes long. Six therapists were experienced therapists and four were counsellors in training. Seven of the therapists identified their work as ‘person‐centred’, and three identified their work as ‘process‐experiential’. Three raters were qualified and experienced person‐centred therapists and three raters were person‐centred counselling trainees in their first year of training. Results: Interrater reliabilities were good (alpha: .68–.86), especially when ratings were averaged across items (alpha: .87); interitem reliabilities were quite high (alpha: .98). Exploratory factor analyses revealed a 12‐item facilitative relationship factor that cuts across Person‐Centred and Experiential subscales (alpha: .98), and a nonfacilitative directiveness factor (3 items, alpha: .89). Conclusions/Implications: The PCEPS has potential for use in RCT research as well as in counselling training and supervision, but will require further testing and validation.     

The guise of the good and the problem of partiality

According to the guise of the good thesis, we desire things under the ‘guise of the good.’ Here I sympathetically articulate a generic formulation of the guise of the good thesis, and address a problem for the view, which I call the problem of partiality. The problem is, roughly, that our partial pro-attitudes –for example, our special concern for ourselves –do not correspond to what is absolutely good. I criticize three solutions to the problem, and propose an alternative strategy, on which partial pro-attitudes constitute a species of illusion.     

The supervisory field and projective identification1

Taking as their starting point the Baranger and Baranger model of the ‘psychoanalytic field’, the authors extend the notion of intersubjectivity in the analytic relationship to the supervision process. They use a practical example of a supervision to show the development of what they term the ‘supervisory field’, formed from the superimposition of the two fields of analyst‐patient and supervisor‐supervisee. They emphasize the interplay of projective identifications with objects emanating from the inner world of the patient that are relived in the analytic relationship and transposed to the supervisory field. They believe that the concept of the ‘supervisory field’ contributes to a deeper understanding of the unconscious processes occurring in the mind of analysand, supervisee and supervisor during supervision, particularly regarding the identification, comprehension and resolution of persistent disturbances in the supervisory process.     

Phenomenological research on supervision: Supervisors reflect on ‘being a supervisor’

A study using a phenomenological research method was performed to reveal the meanings of the concept ‘supervision’, from the supervisor's perspective. Eleven supervisors of counselling and psychotherapy from a humanistic/existential framework answered the open question: “What does being a supervisor mean?”. Content analysis and frequency measuring were performed, revealing six groups of statements; six facets describing the experience of supervision: ‘structuring’, ‘teaching’, ‘nurturing’, the ‘supervisor as person’, ‘supervisor as colleague’, and the ‘triangle, client-therapist-supervisor’. Structuring was the largest category, and the first three categories together represented more than 75% of the statements. The results showed that ‘teaching’ and ‘nurturing’ were very similar in their importance, as represented by the number of statements in each. Further research should address the possible relation between supervisors' perception and experience of their role and the theoretical framework of counselling and psychotherapy in which they are based, The phenomenological research method in this study has shown the possibility of doing research on processes without ‘betraying’ the subjective perspective.     

What makes a good story

Three different ways have been selected for analyzing a story's structure, each focusing on different types of information. (a) Episodic or story grammar approaches stories as problem-solving episodes, emphasizing goals and activities to achieve them. (b) Labov's high point structure emphasizes affective information and sees stories as organized around emotional high points or crisis events. (c) Deese's dependency analysis emphasizes linguistic complexity and, in particular, the way propositions are related to each other through a relationship of either coordination or subordination. Stories were scored according to how well they realized good structure in each system, and the three scoring systems were relatively independent of each other. Adults were asked to rate 3-to 9-year old children's personal narratives in terms of how good a story each was, and their ratings were compared to how the stories were scored in terms of all three systems. None of the systems completely explained the subjective quality ratings; rather, all three seemed to contribute in different ways to subjects' ratings, with the best narratives generally deemed sophisticated and complex in at least two of the three systems.The authors wish to acknowledge their great debt to James Deese and Christine Glenn. This research was supported by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant A-7911 to Carole Peterson.     

Personality patterns of adolescent poor and good sleepers

To determine whether poor sleepers have a unique personality constellation significantly different from that of good sleepers, a sample of 162 emotionally disturbed adolescent poor sleepers was compared to a sample of 153 emotionally disturbed adolescent good sleepers on standardized personality instruments. Poor sleepers were found to have a high incidence of neurotic psychopathology with personality patterns characterized by depression, fearfulness, inhibition, anxiety, and rumination. In contrast, good sleepers showed quasi healthy and/or characterological patterns. While this study does not resolve cause and effect relationships, it does establish a highly significant relationship between neuroticism and sleep disturbance for adolescent boys and girls, and also demonstrates a similarity of personality dynamics and patterns between adult and adolescent samples of patients with sleep disturbances.     

Social representations in the ordinary explanation of a ‘riot’

This paper critically examines the notion of social representations by way of a systematic analysis of media and participants' accounts of the St Pauls street disturbances of 1980. The analysis concentrates on two major explanatory categories which appear in the accounts: (A) ‘race’; (B) ‘government cuts and amenities’. In each case it is possible to distinguish three different levels of consensus between accounts: (i) particular explanatory schemata can be recognized as available but treated as mistaken; (ii) particular explanatory schemata can be recognized as relevant and adopted to explain the particular events, although in different ways; (iii) particular schemata can be adopted and used to explain events in the same way. The flexible meaning of these categories is highlighted along with the recurrent reference to alternative explanations. These findings raise problems for the suggestion that social representations minimize conflict and create ‘consensual universes’, and question the straightforward relationship between social representations and identifiable social groups. In conclusion the need is identified for a more detailed analysis of the language in which social representations are couched, and the relationship they bear to different contexts of use.     

The experiences of therapy from the perspectives of carers of people with dementia: An exploratory study

Design: Interviews were conducted with six carers of people with dementia about their experience of receiving counselling/psychotherapy. Interviews were conducted in the carer's own home, and data were analysed thematically using a narrative approach. Findings: Three themes were identified from the data: ‘Still doing the best I can’ (identified as losses and processes of personal growth); ‘Feeling connected and being understood’ (identified as attributes believed to be important within the therapeutic relationship); and ‘Wanting to share information’ (identified as sharing information with someone ‘neutral’). Carers placed emphasis on the age of the therapist and the amount of therapist self‐disclosure. Attending counselling and/or psychotherapy also helped the carer to find a ‘safe space’ to disclose and share concerns. Discussion: Carer loss and personal growth are explored, together with the importance of building therapeutic relationships and, for the therapist, seeking supervision when managing personal self‐disclosure. The theme of therapist self disclosure is explored together with the importance of therapists seeking supervision when managing personal self‐disclosure.     

British Citizenship and the ‘Other’: An Analysis of the Earned Citizenship Discourse

This paper presents an analysis of interviews conducted with citizenship officers in London, working within the field of British naturalisation. We draw from a rhetorical psychology perspective to study the dilemmatic tensions that exist in the participants' discourse about naturalisation applicants who are constructed as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, as both ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ of British citizenship. In line with a rhetorical approach, we argue that these different constructions of the migrant are strategic and are associated with different constructions of Britain as humanitarian and tolerant, on the one hand, and as being under threat by the influx of immigration, on the other hand. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this ambivalence for processes of inclusion and exclusion. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.