Reactive Attitudes,Forgiveness, and the Second-Person Standpoint

Philosophers discussing forgiveness have usually been split between those who think that forgiveness is typically virtuous, even when the wrongdoer doesn’t repent, and those who think that, for forgiveness to be virtuous, certain pre-conditions must be satisfied. I argue that Darwall’s second-personal account of morality offers significant theoretical support for the latter view. I argue that if, as Darwall claims, reactive attitudes issue a demand, this demand needs to be adequately answered for forgiveness to be warranted. It follows that we should reject the thesis that unconditional forgiveness is appropriate in the absence of repentance.     

Dyadic measurement invariance and its importance for replicability in romantic relationship science

Comparisons of group means, variances, correlations, and/or regression slopes involving psychological variables rely on an assumption of measurement invariance—that the latent variables under investigation have equivalent meaning and measurement across group. When measures are noninvariant, replicability suffers, as comparisons are either conceptually meaningless, or hindered by inflated Type I error rates. We propose that the failure to account for interdependence among dyad members when testing measurement invariance may be a potential source of unreplicable findings in relationship research. We developed fully dyadic versions of invariance models, created an R package (dySEM) to make specifying dyadic invariance models easier and reporting more reproducible, and executed a Registered Report for gauging the extent of dyadic (non)invariance in romantic relationship research across measures of relationship well‐being, personality, and sexuality in a sample of 282 heterosexual couples. We found that although a number of popular measures display good evidence of dyadic invariance, a few display concerning levels and interesting patterns of noninvariance, while others appeared either noninvariant or poorly fitting for both men and women. We discuss our findings in terms of their meaning for the replicability dyadic close relationship research. We close by arguing that increased theorizing and research on dyadic invariance, and inclusive methods for analyzing invariance with indistinguishable dyads, are needed to capitalize on the opportunity to advance our field's understanding of dyadic constructions of relational concepts.     

Religion and Spirituality among American Indian,South Asian,Black, Hispanic/Latina,and White Women in the Study on Stress,Spirituality, and Health

Social scientists have increasingly recognized the lack of diversity in survey research on American religion, resulting in a dearth of data on religion and spirituality (R/S) in understudied racial and ethnic groups. At the same time, epidemiological studies have increasingly diversified their racial and ethnic representation, but have collected few R/S measures to date. With a particular focus on American Indian and South Asian women (in addition to Blacks, Hispanic/Latinas, and white women), this study introduces a new effort among religion and epidemiology researchers, the Study on Stress, Spirituality, and Health. This multicohort study provides some of the first estimates of R/S beliefs and practices among American Indians and U.S. South Asians, and offers new insight into salient beliefs and practices of diverse racial/ethnic and religious communities.     

Effects of A Parenting-Focused Mindfulness Intervention on Adolescent Substance Use and Psychopathology: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Substance use and psychopathology symptoms increase in adolescence. One key risk factor for these is high parent stress. Mindfulness interventions reduce stress in adults and may be useful to reduce parent stress and prevent substance use (SU) and psychopathology in adolescents. This study tested the feasibility and effects of a mindfulness intervention for parents on adolescent SU and psychopathology symptoms. Ninety-six mothers of 11–17 year olds were randomly assigned to a mindfulness intervention for parents (the Parenting Mindfully [PM] intervention) or a brief parent education [PE] control group. At pre-intervention, post-intervention, 6-month follow-up, and 1-year follow-up, adolescents reported on SU and mothers and adolescents reported on adolescent externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Primary intent to treat analyses found that the PM intervention prevented increases in adolescent SU over time, relative to the PE control group. The PM intervention also prevented increases in mother-reported externalizing symptoms over time relative to the PE control group. However, PM did not have a significant effect on internalizing symptoms. PM had an indirect effect on adolescent-reported externalizing symptoms through greater mother mindfulness levels at post-intervention, suggesting mother mindfulness as a potential intervention mechanism. Notably, while mothers reported high satisfaction with PM, intervention attendance was low (31% of mothers attended zero sessions). Secondary analyses with mothers who attended?>??=?50% of the interventions (n?=?48) found significant PM effects on externalizing symptoms, but not SU. Overall, findings support mindfulness training for parents as a promising intervention and future studies should work to promote accessibility for stressed parents.

Clinical Trials Identifier: NCT02038231; Date of Registration: January 13, 2014

     

How High Schools Become Empowering Communities: A Mixed‐Method Explanatory Inquiry into Youth‐Adult Partnership and School Engagement

Educational reform efforts emphasize empowerment and engagement, but these concepts are rarely translated into policy or classroom practice. This inquiry explores how schools can become places where students take ownership over their own learning. Phase 1 of this inquiry, a survey of students from diverse high schools, examines pathways to school engagement. Results indicated that youth voice in decision‐making, particularly when the experience is situated within supportive adult relationships and a sense of safety, significantly predicts emotional and cognitive engagement. Phase 2, a case study of an exemplary high school, sought to explain these pathways. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of “empowered community settings” and “youth‐adult partnership,” analyses highlighted the importance of a shared belief system and core instructional activities that were student‐centered, affirmative, and strength‐based. Within this context, the opportunity role structure allowed students to exercise voice in creating their own educational program. The relational environment offered partnership and safety for academic risk‐taking. Teachers broke down traditional roles and power hierarchies in ways that helped students discover their own sources of engagement. The article identifies ways that community psychologists, as policy framers and as researchers, can help schools become places of empowerment and engagement.     

Talking about sunbed tanning in online discussion forums: Assertions and arguments

Objective: There is increasing evidence of both health and appearance risks associated with sunbed use. At the same time, the sunbed industry promotes the benefits of using sunbeds, and the image of a tanned skin as attractive and healthy arguably remains embedded within contemporary western culture. These tensions are played out in everyday conversations, and this paper reports a study which explored how sunbed users manage them within online discussion forums.

Design: A total of 556 posts from 13 sunbed-related threads, taken from six different UK-based online forums, were analysed thematically followed by techniques from discourse analysis.

Main outcome measures: Informed by social representations theory and discursive-rhetorical psychology, the way social representations of sunbed use are constructed, debated and disputed in online discussion forums were explored.

Results: Sunbed users drew upon numerous representations to distance and protect themselves from negativity they were confronted with in the forums, utilising a range of rhetorical, discursive strategies to help them.

Conclusion: Theoretical contributions and potential practical implications of the findings are discussed. Findings indicate, for example, that those working on campaigns and interventions in this area need to consider the wider negativity and argumentative orientation of sunbed users’ responses.     

The role of appraisal in dysphoric affect reactivity to positive laboratory films and daily life events in depression

Hedonic deficits are linked to protracted dysphoric affect (DA) in depression, a disorder characterised by emotion context insensitivity (ECI). Recent findings from daily life studies contradict the ECI view. This study longitudinally investigated DA across laboratory and daily life contexts and the conditions associated with discrepancies in DA reactivity. Thirty-three healthy controls and 41 adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) provided responses to neutral and positive (a) films viewed in the laboratory and (b) daily events recorded over the course of three days using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology. The current study reports on participants’ appraisals of films and events and their subsequent DA, both rated individually after each task and daily event. Despite large group similarities in appraisals of the positive film and life events, MDDs appraised the neutral film and neutral life events as less important (film: d?=?.58; event: η²?=?.07) and less pleasant (film: d?=?.56; event: η²?=?.18) relative to controls. While MDDs reported higher DA both in the laboratory and in daily life, they experienced larger decreases in DA during positive life events (B?=??.77, SE?=?.28, t(73)?=??2.70, p?=?.009), but not in response to the positive film relative to controls. Results indicate that higher pleasantness appraisals in daily life predicted larger decreases in DA among MDDs than controls (B?=??.24, SE?=?.06, t(73)?=??4.10, p?B?=?1.28, SE?=?.46, t(73)?=?2.77, p?=?.006). The implications of valence and relevance of context for DA reactivity and mood repair are discussed.     

Family Experience of Safe: A New Intervention for Families of Children with a Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Systemic Autism-related Family Enabling (SAFE) is a new intervention for families of children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). SAFE responds to international and national recommendations for improved care and the reported needs of families. SAFE draws from Family Therapy techniques, Attachment Narrative Therapy and known preferences of individuals with autism. Twenty two families of a child with a diagnosis of ASD severity level 1 or 2 were recruited. The families attended five 3-hour sessions. Family members completed the Helpful Aspects of Therapy Questionnaire (HAT) after each session. Analysis of the HAT data revealed that adults and children experienced SAFE to be helpful which was elaborated in terms of the following themes: therapist as helping reflection, increased understanding, feeling closer, more confident to reflect and problem solve, improved communication and feeling less alone and isolated. The findings are discussed to consider how SAFE can be improved and implemented to offer support for families. SAFE is a good candidate to fill a gap in autism related care.

     

The elephant in the room: attention to salient scene features increases with comedic expertise

Cognitive Processing - What differentiates the joke writing strategy employed by professional comedians from non-comedians? Previous MRI work found that professional comedians relied to a greater...