The Impact of a Brief Bullying Bystander Intervention on Depressive Symptoms

The authors evaluated the impact of a brief bullying bystander intervention (STAC) on depressive symptoms among high school students using a randomized controlled design. Results of path analyses provided support for a mediational model in which the intervention was associated with an increase in sense of school belonging, which in turn was associated with a reduction in depressive symptoms. The authors discuss implications for high school counselors and counselors in other settings working with adolescents.     

Trauma,resilience and healthy and unhealthy forms of dissociation

This paper outlines the difference between healthy and unhealthy forms of dissociation following, and in response to, traumatic experience, in particular the experience of refugees, calling on 30 years’ experience in working with refugees in voluntary and public sectors, including 20 years at the Refugee Therapy Centre, London. It differentiates dissociation from repression, and looks at some of the specific traumatic experiences associated with refugees’ displacement and situation, particularly relating to loss. Four key characteristics of resilience are described: ‘psychic space’, ‘sense of self’, and the use of a ‘listening other’ and ‘healthy dissociation/resiliency’. Two vignettes are given to illustrate the difference between healthy and unhealthy dissociation.     

Prejudice from thin air: The effect of emotion on automatic intergroup attitudes

Two experiments provide initial evidence that specific emotional states are capable of creating automatic prejudice toward outgroups. Specifically, we propose that anger should influence automatic evaluations of outgroups because of its functional relevance to intergroup conflict and competition, whereas other negative emotions less relevant to intergroup relations (e.g., sadness) should not. In both experiments, after minimal ingroups and outgroups were created, participants were induced to experience anger, sadness, or a neutral state. Automatic attitudes toward the in- and outgroups were then assessed using an evaluative priming measure (Experiment 1) and the Implicit Association Test (Experiment 2). As predicted, results showed that anger created automatic prejudice toward the outgroup, whereas sadness and neutrality resulted in no automatic intergroup bias. The implications of these findings for emotion-induced biases in implicit intergroup cognition in particular, and in social cognition in general, are considered.     

Family consequences of refugee trauma

OBJECTIVE: To construct a model on the consequences of political violence for refugee families based upon a qualitative investigation. METHODS: This study used a grounded-theory approach to analyze qualitative evidence from the CAFES multi-family support and education groups with Bosnian refugee families in Chicago. Textual coding and analysis was conducted using ATLAS/ti for Windows. RESULTS: A grounded-theory model of Family Consequences of Refugee Trauma (FAMCORT) was constructed that describes Displaced Families of War across four realms of family life: (1) changes in family roles and obligations, (2) changes in family memories and communications, (3) changes in family relationships with other family members; and (4) changes in family connections with the ethnic community and nation state. In each realm, the model also specifies family strategies, called Families Rebuilding Lives, for managing those consequences. CONCLUSIONS: Political violence leads to changes in multiple dimensions of family life and also to strategies for managing those changes. Qualitative family research is useful in better understanding refugee families and in helping them through family-oriented mental health services.     

A Unique Historical Case to Understand the Present Sustainable Development

Every innovation seeks to become a profitable business, with this considered to be the engine for economic prosperity. When an innovation is revolutionary, its long-term consequences can be revolutionary too. The Haber-Bosh process for ammonia synthesis is arguably the twentieth century’s most significant innovation, and its importance to global food production and its impact on the environment are not expected to diminish over the coming decades. The historical case of the ammonia synthesis process invented by Fritz Haber and the ensuing innovation provides an incomparable opportunity to illustrate the interactions across contemporary needs, prominent scientists, political concerns, moral dilemmas, ethics, governance and environmental implications at a time when the concept of sustainability was still in its infancy. Despite its high economic and environmental costs, no cleaner or more efficient sustainable alternative has so far been found, and so replacing this “old” innovation that still “feeds” a large part of the world’s population does not appear to be on the cards in the near future.     

Negativity,Finitude, and the Leap in Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy

This article examines Heidegger's assessment of negativity and finitude in the late 1930s and his enlargement of these issues in the name of a leap from one type of philosophy, one type of beginning, to a wholly other beginning. The guiding concerns of this article are negativity, finitude and the leap, and how these overlapping concerns coalesce around Heidegger's attempts to move towards a wholly other type of philosophy; in fact, one which no longer understands itself to be philosophy at all. The article concludes with a discussion of the role of death, sacrifice, and mourning in Heidegger's thought in the 1930s.     

Evaluation of Service‐Learning‐Infused Courses With Refugee Families

This study evaluated the impact of service‐learning‐infused courses on multicultural competence and social justice advocacy skills among counseling students. The project, in which students acted as job coaches for refugee families, was integrated into 1st‐ and 2nd‐year counseling courses. Results indicated an increase in multicultural knowledge and advocacy skills, with greater changes reported among 1st‐year students. Implications for counselor training, including placement of service‐learning projects within the counseling curriculum, are discussed. Este estudio evaluó el impacto de cursos con elementos de aprendizaje por medio del servicio en la competencia multicultural y las habilidades de defensoría de justicia social entre estudiantes de consejería. El projecto, en el cual los estudiantes proporcionaron orientación laboral a familias de refugiados, estaba integrado en cursos de consejería de primer y segundo año. Los resultados indicaron un aumento del conocimiento multicultural y las habilidades de defensoría, con mayores cambios comunicados por los estudiantes de primer año. Se discuten las implicaciones para la formación de consejeros, incluyendo la inserción de projectos de aprendizaje por medio del servicio en el currículum de consejería.     

Predicting Change in Parenting Stress Across Early Childhood: Child and Maternal Factors

This study examined maternal parenting stress in a sample of 430 boys and girls including those at risk for externalizing behavior problems. Children and their mothers were assessed when the children were ages 2, 4, and 5. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to examine stability of parenting stress across early childhood and to examine child and maternal factors predicting parenting stress at age 2 and changes in parenting stress across time. Results indicated that single parenthood, maternal psychopathology, child anger proneness, and child emotion dysregulation predicted 2-year parenting stress. Child externalizing behaviors predicted initial status and changes across time in parenting stress. Stability of parenting stress was dependent upon child externalizing problems, as well as interactions between child externalizing problems and gender, and child externalizing problems and emotion regulation. Results are discussed in the context of mechanisms by which parenting stress may influence the development of child externalizing behaviors.     

Interpolation processes in object perception: reply to Anderson (2007)

P. J. Kellman, P. Garrigan, & T. F. Shipley presented a theory of 3-D interpolation in object perception. Along with results from many researchers, this work supports an emerging picture of how the visual system connects separate visible fragments to form objects. In his commentary, B. L. Anderson challenges parts of that view, especially the idea of a common underlying interpolation component in modal and amodal completion (the identity hypothesis). Here the authors analyze Anderson's evidence and argue that he neither provides any reason to abandon the identity hypothesis nor offers a viable alternative theory. The authors offer demonstrations and analyses indicating that interpolated contours can appear modally despite absence of the luminance relations, occlusion geometry, and surface attachment that Anderson claims to be necessary. The authors elaborate crossing interpolations as key cases in which modal and amodal appearance must be consequences of interpolation. Finally, the authors dispute Anderson's assertion that vision researchers are misguided in using objective performance methods, and they argue that his challenges to relatability fail because contour and surface processes, as well as local and global influences, have been distinguished experimentally.     

Performance benefits and costs in forced choice perceptual identification in amnesia: Effects of prior exposure and word frequency

Accuracy in identifying a perceptually degraded word (e.g., stake) can be either enhanced by recent exposure to the same stimulus or reduced by recent exposure to a similar stimulus (e.g., stare). In the present study, we explored the mechanisms underlying these benefits and costs by examining the performance of amnesic and control groups in a forced choice perceptual identification (FCPI) task in which briefly flashed words (that were identical to studied words, similar to studied words, or new) had to be identified, and two response choices were provided that differed from each other by one letter. Control participants showed a performance benefit and cost in FCPI with both high- and low-frequency words. Amnesic participants showed a benefit (but no cost) with high-frequency words and a benefit and a cost with low-frequency words. The benefit/cost pattern with low-frequency words in amnesia was obtained even when the to-be-identified stimulus in the FCPI task was eliminated (Experiment 2), suggesting that this effect was driven by processes operating at the level of the response choices. Our findings suggest that implicit memory effects in FCPI reflect the operation of multiple mechanisms, the relative contributions of which may vary with the frequency of the test stimuli. The results also highlight the need for caution in interpreting results from normal participants in the FCPI task, since those findings may reflect a contribution of explicit memory processes.