Clergy and Counselors—Collaborating Toward New Perspectives

This article describes a workshop and exploratory study done by counselors for a clergy group that requested assistance in working with families. The counselors focused on 4 family dynamic concepts: communication, distance, hierarchy, and adaptability to change. Data were collected from the same pre- and postworkshop questionnaire that included a Semantic Differential Scale, Likert questions, and an open-ended response technique. Changes occurred in distance and adaptability to change concept perceptions among clergy as a result of the workshop. Nearly 1/2 of the respondents reported feeling more confident regarding family counseling on each of the concepts after the workshop.     

Tracing the Path from Personality — via Cooperativeness — to Conservation

Ecological behaviour is often conceptualized as an instance of cooperating in a social dilemma situation. Thus, it has been argued to relate to dispositional tendencies of moral virtue and pro‐social orientation. To embed such notions in models of basic personality, we herein predicted that the recently proposed sixth basic personality factor, Honesty–Humility — which specifically pertains to individual differences in cooperativeness — is linked to environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. Results from two studies (N = 137 and N = 531, respectively) supported these hypotheses and showed that Honesty–Humility explains incremental variance beyond the remaining, more classical five factors of personality. In addition, mediation analyses revealed that Honesty–Humility exerts part of its influence via individual differences in pro‐social value orientations. Individual tendencies to cooperate in social dilemma situations could thus be shown to form a bridge between basic personality dimensions and ecological behaviour. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rape — Relationships and Recovery

Rape—Relationships and Recovery is a group counseling model designed to intercede when crisis-oriented rape counseling ends. Major aspects of the model include (a) giving factual information and dispelling common myths surrounding rape; (b) recognizing and working through the grief process following rape; and (c) aiding the expression of the intrapersonal and interpersonal feelings that result from rape.     

面向未来的理论心理学

理论应当是任何学科体系中的重要组成部分,是一个学科的基础。相应的,理论心理学也应当是心理学的基础和重要组成部分。然而在当下,心理学对于理论心理学缺乏重视,在这其中既有来自外部的原因也有来自理论心理学本身的问题。但总而言之,无论具体是何种原因,实际上都对理论心理学提出了更深层次的要求,即着眼当下,放眼未来。理论心理学对于当下的介入主要从两个方面展开:一是实时接收当代各思想话语的影响,用以武装整个心理学科并回应各思想话语提出的问题; 二是对当下心理学中的各具体问题进行理论层面的讨论,发现问题,指出问题并尝试解决问题。理论心理学要想在未来心理学的发展中大放异彩首先应当保持对当下的介入,只有这样才能凸显自身的价值与意义,并且为整个心理学的发展发光发热。     

Stereotypical behavioural cues — but not their order — influence credibility judgements

To what extent stereotypical deceptive behaviours such as gaze aversion and fidgeting actually influence people's credibility judgements remain largely unknown. In this study, we directly manipulated the presence/absence of such behaviours to investigate this. Participants were shown four truthful videos in which we manipulated the presence of stereotypical cues and asked them to judge how credible the person in each video is. Moreover, research consistently shows that decision making is influenced by various cognitive biases. One example is the primacy effect, which implies that people form an opinion early in the decision process. Information acquired early will have the largest influence on how subsequent information will be interpreted. To investigate a possible primacy effect, we also manipulated whether these cues were present towards the beginning or the end of the video (i.e. the timing of the manipulation). In line with our expectations, the presence of stereotypical cues significantly lowered the observed credibility, showing that the presence of these cues indeed influences credibility judgements. The timing of the cues had no effect.     

Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy: Theoretical and Clinical Foundations

Ecosystemic structural family therapy (ESFT) is a systemic, strength-based, and trauma-informed family therapy model that has evolved from structural family therapy (SFT; Minuchin in Families and family therapy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1974). ESFT is an evidenced-based family therapy approach designed to intervene with families of children who are experiencing behavioral health problems and are at the risk of out-of-home placement. In this article we review the theoretical, applied, and empirical evolution of ESFT relative to extant SFT models. ESFT is based on the fundamental assumption that child, parental, and marital functioning are inextricably linked to their relational environment. Five interrelated constructs guide ESFT therapists in their understanding of clinical problems: family structure; family and individual emotional regulation; individual differences (e.g., historical, biological, cultural, developmental); affective proximity; and family development (Gehart 2010). ESFT has an extensive evaluation history dating back to the 1980s involving over 4,000 families in 39 different sites. While ESFT is considered evidence-based, it might be more consistent with “Practice-Based Evidence” given its long, extensive, and successful, history in the child mental health system in Pennsylvania.     

A multivariate projection‐type analogue of the Wilcoxon — Mann — Whitney test

The problem of comparing two independent groups based on mulitivariate data is considered. Many such methods have been proposed, but it is difficult to gain a perspective on the extent to which the groups differ. The basic strategy here is to determine a robust measure of location for each group, project the data onto the line connecting these measures of location, and then compare the groups based on the ordering of the projected points. In the univariate case the method uses the same measure of effect size employed by the Wilcoxon — Mann — Whitney test. Under general conditions, the projected points are dependent, causing difficulties when testing hypotheses. Two methods are found to be effective when trying to avoid Type I error probabilities above the nominal level. The relative merits of the two methods are discussed. The projected data provide not only a useful (numerical) measure of effect size, but also a graphical indication of the extent to which groups differ.