Reducing intergroup anxiety: Applying an imagined contact intervention with counselors-in-training

This study assessed the impacts of an (elaborated) imagined contact intervention (eICI) with graduate-level counseling students (N = 38) in a multicultural counseling course. Participant levels of intergroup anxiety were assessed, comparing those who completed an eICI versus those who did not. Intergroup anxiety decreased for both groups over time, albeit with a greater immediate reduction for those who received the ICI. Qualitative commentary suggests specific student learning from the activity.     

Differences in the importance of romantic structures among transgender and cisgender adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

The stressors of the global COVID-19 pandemic have led to an increased need for support. For adults, romantic relationships often represent an environment of emotional support and stability; as such, attitudes toward—and particularly the importance of—romantic relationships may have shifted as a result of the pandemic. The present cross-sectional study explores how U.S. transgender (n = 99) and cisgender people (n = 1886) report whether they have perceived a change in their feelings about the importance of long-term romantic structures (i.e., committed relationships, monogamy, cohabiting with a romantic partner, and marriage) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results found that transgender people reported a more positive perceived change in importance placed on all four romantic items relative to cisgender people. Different forms of stress (e.g., social, financial, health) associated with the COVID-19 pandemic may have contributed to an increased need, and subsequent desire, for social connection and support in the form of romantic relationships among transgender individuals to a greater extent than cisgender individuals, perhaps in part due to the additional layers of stress transgender people must navigate. Results are discussed through the lens of the minority stress framework.     

Choice behavior and the accessibility of the reinforcer

In Experiment 1, matching of relative response rates to relative rates of reinforcement was obtained in concurrent variable-interval schedules when the absolute values of the two concurrent variable-interval schedules varied from 6 sec and 12 sec to 600 sec and 1200 sec. Increases in the duration of the changeover delay, however, produced decreases in the relative response rates and, consequently, some deviation from matching. In Experiment 2, matching of relative response rates to the relative duration of the reinforcer failed to occur when the equal variable-interval schedules arranging access to the two different reinforcer durations (1.5 and 6 sec) were varied in size from concurrent variable-interval 10-sec schedules to concurrent variable-interval 600-sec schedules.     

Rehabilitation of the Culturally Different: A Model of the Individual in Cultural Change

Services of rehabilitation agencies and facilities tend to be structured to the needs of the larger American culture. It is important, however, to reconsider our social service programs in view of the needs of different cultural groups when providing services that will aid these individuals to move across cultural boundaries. An attempt is made in this paper to develop a model of the individual who undergoes such cultural transition. Such a model should help define problems in service programs, assess the value of current service activities, and identify areas for developing new services that will aid the overall process of cultural transition. A model of behavior development is outlined, followed by a formulation of a model of the individual in cultural change.     

Information processing,neuropsychological function,and the inherited predisposition to alcoholism

Sons of male alcoholics are at particularly heightened risk for the development of alcoholism. This heightened risk frequently appears in association with increased incidence of conduct disorder or hyperactivity, with deficits in abstract thinking and poor school performance, with abnormalities in cued psychophysiological response, and with increased sensitivity to the putatively stress-response-dampening effects of alcohol intoxication. This risk and its associated features are discussed within the context of a neuropsychological theory, predicated on the notions (1) that deficits in cognitive functions theoretically dependent upon the intact functioning of the prefrontal cortex could underlie manifestation of the idiosyncracies commonly attributed to sons of male alcoholics, and (2) that acute alcohol intoxication could relieve the subjective discomfort associated with the consequences of such deficits.     

Good Practice in Transcultural Counselling: An Asian Perspective

In Britain today, counsellors and therapists often work with people from a diverse range of ethnic groups whose cultures are substantially different from their own. There is increasing concern that people from black and ethnic communities have limited access to appropriate services—despite service planners' and providers' statements that mental health services are being restructured to become more sensitive, relevant and meaningful to these communities. This paper is an attempt to redress the balance with an emphasis on the therapeutic needs of South Asian communities. It aims to challenge assumptions and beliefs held by therapists and counsellors, question therapeutic practice based within a white, middle-class ideology, raise awareness of an 'Asian' perspective in therapy, and provide some guidelines for good practice in transcultural counselling.     

Pessimistic explanatory style and response to illness

Previous studies have shown that a pessimistic explanatory style is a risk factor for illness, but the factors linking explanatory style and illness are unknown. One's characteristic response to poor health may mediate this relationship. Perhaps pessimistic individuals act helplessly in the face of their symptoms, thereby exacerbating disease. In the present study, we investigated this possibility by asking 96 young adults to complete measures of explanatory style, habitual response to illness, and ways of coping during their most recent episode of illness. Subjects who explain bad events pessimistically (with internal, stable, and global causes) reported more frequent illnesses during the past year and rated their overall health more poorly than those who habitually favor external, unstable, and specific explanations. When ill, the pessimistic subjects were less likely than their optimistic counterparts to take active steps to combat their illness. Our results suggest that one pathway leading from pessimistic explanatory style to poor health is mundane: passivity in the face of disease.     

Racial bias and the MCMI

We studied the scores obtained on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) by Black and White male psychiatric inpatients to determine the presence or absence of racial bias. In predicting psychopathology for the two races, comparisons of MCMI performance indicated significant differences for all diagnoses except the personality disorders. The subjects were then matched into two groups of 209 patients each, according to DSM-III psychiatric diagnoses. The data were analyzed at the item, scale, and structural levels. At the item level, application of the Mantel-Haenszel Procedure revealed that 45 of the 175 items of the inventory were answered significantly different by the two racial groups. Because this number was higher than what could be expected by chance, the finding suggested possible deficiencies in terms of the culture-fairness of the items used in the test. At the scale level, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that the scores obtained by the Black and White groups were significantly different in 9 of the 20 scales (Histrionic, Narcissistic, Antisocial, Paraphrenia, Hypomania, Dysthymia, Alcohol Abuse, Drug Abuse, and Psychotic Delusion). With the exception of the Dysthymic scale, all of the differences were in the direction of the Blacks obtaining a higher score than the Whites. At the structural level, however, a principal components factor analysis performed on each group resulted in factor structures that looked identical.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Minds and Bodies: Human and Divine

Does God have a mind? Western theism has traditionally construed God as an intentional agent who acts on creation and in relation to humankind. God loves, punishes, and redeems. God's intentionality has traditionally been construed in analogy to human intentionality, which in turn has often presumed a supernatural dualism. Developments in cognitive science, however, render supernatural dualism suspect for explaining the human mind. How, then, can we speak of the mind of God? Borrowing from Daniel Dennett's intentional stance, I suggest that analogical reasoning regarding the mind of God be abandoned in favor of an ontologically agnostic approach that treats God as an intentional system. In this approach, God's purposive action is an explanatory feature of the believer's universe, a real pattern that informs our values and beliefs about the world and our place in it.