Therapeutic reactance in a depressed client sample: a comparison of two measures

The impact of client variables on psychotherapy is of both theoretical and practical importance. Reactance--the premise that individuals seek to maintain control over personal freedoms when threatened by a perceived loss thereof--has been shown to have an impact on the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Developing an effective means of quantitatively assessing this characteristic prior to treatment could facilitate treatment planning and maximize treatment outcome. The present study compared two paper-and-pencil measures of reactance: the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (TRS) and Resistance Potential (RP). Ninety-eight men and women diagnosed with depression completed both measures. The TRS and RP failed to correlate despite their presumed ability to measure the same construct. The RP exhibited extremely poor internal consistency, calling into question results that have been based on this measure. The TRS results provided evidence of convergent, divergent, and construct validity for this instrument.     

The emergence of ethnic and racial attitudes in preschool-aged children

The author assessed preschool-aged children's attitudes (N = 70) toward their own and 2 ethnic or racial out-groups using traditional forced-choice measures and a new method that assessed children's out-group attitudes independently of their attitudes toward their own group. When required to assign positive and negative traits to either their own group or an ethnic or racial out-group, children evaluated their own group favorably relative to the out-group in question. However, when not forced to choose between groups, children evaluated out-groups positively, indicating that own-group preference relative to ethnic and racial out-groups was not equated with out-group rejection. Children's positive out-group evaluations did vary with the out-group being considered and were reflective of the local social context, suggesting the influence of social learning. The results indicate that young children's positive feelings toward their own group do not necessarily involve or cause negative out-group attitudes and that various factors might differentially influence in-group and out-group attitudes.     

A Christian for the Christians, a Muslim for the Muslims? Reflections on a Protestant View of Pastoral Care for all Religions

Whereas in the first half of the 20th century, proclamationwas the focal point of pastoral care in Germany, the 1970s witnessedan embracing of the American pastoral care movement. From thenon, pastoral care was increasingly understood as accompanyingpatients whilst adopting the spiritual dimension. Nowadays,Christian chaplains are encountering an increasing number ofpatients from different religious communities. Various modelshave been proposed to help Protestant chaplains find an authenticform of pastoral care suitable for all religions. Until a clearposition is assumed with regard to Christianity's demands ofabsolutism, however, none of these approaches can be satisfactory.     

Introduction to the essays on Kurt H. Wolff

Introduction to the essays on Kurt H. Wolff     

Reducing Political Dehumanization by Pairing Facts With Personal Experiences

The media is increasingly blamed for inflaming political animosity, but it may also bridge partisan divides—with the right strategies. Past research highlights the outgroup-experience effect: Sharing personal experiences (and not facts) helps to reduce partisan animosity. However, sharing facts is a pillar of good journalism and is essential for mediated political communication. Across four studies in two countries, we show that journalists, and citizens on social media sites, can share facts about contentious political issues (gun and climate policy), while simultaneously increasing tolerance and reducing dehumanization of political opponents. We extend the outgroup-experience effect by introducing factual content alongside personal experiences of political adversaries (i.e., a combination approach). These effects are replicated in both the United States and Germany although in Germany the personal experience intervention is only beneficial for people with more extreme attitudes.     

Can performance epistemology explain higher epistemic value?

Synthese - Judgment and Agency contains Sosa’s latest effort to explain how higher epistemic value of the sort missing from an unwitting clairvoyant’s beliefs might be a special case of...     

Non‐epistemic perception as technology

Some epistemologists and philosophers of mind hold that the non‐epistemic perceptual relation of which feature‐seeing and object‐seeing are special cases is the foundation of perceptual knowledge. This paper argues that such relations are best understood as having only a technological role in explaining perceptual knowledge. After introducing the opposing view in §1, §2 considers why its defenders deny that some cases in which one has perceptual knowledge without the relevant acquaintance relations are counterexamples, detailing their case for lurking inferential epistemology. §§3–4 suggest that this strategy fails in many other cases. While there is a computational tale that might be deemed ‘inferential’ in these cases, there is no corresponding tale in epistemic structure, not even if one rejects what Siegel (2017) calls the ‘Reckoning Model’ of inference. §5 offers a more fundamental dilemma. §6 concludes that there is only a technological role for non‐epistemic perception in grounding perceptual knowledge, but allows that it might play a more‐than‐technological role elsewhere.