Professional Counseling in Romania: An Introduction

The formalization and professionalization processes in Romania resemble the early history of counseling in the United States, where development initially took place in the educational and career/vocational sectors. Brief accounts of the relationship between select periods in Romanian history and access to education and career/vocational support services are presented to provide a context for present‐day counseling activities. Information on the development of counseling in Romania, current practices, and future opportunities are presented as well.     

Perceived intergroup competition and adolescents’ behavioural intentions toward minorities: the role of threat,stereotypes and emotions

The main purpose of this study was to analyse the effect of perceived intergroup competition on majority adolescents’ behavioural intentions toward two relevant immigrant groups in the Spanish context, Ecuadorians and Moroccans. We proposed an integrative path model in which perceived intergroup competition led to perception of outgroup threat, which in turn affected warmth stereotypes (morality and sociability). Perceived warmth further fostered positive and negative emotions, which in turn predicted facilitative and harmful interpersonal behavioural tendencies. Following a between subject design, participants (N = 231, M_age = 15.39, SD = 1.09) evaluated Moroccans (n = 114) or Ecuadorians (n = 117) on the examined variables. Results indicate that Ecuadorians were perceived as more moral and sociable and elicited less negative emotions than Moroccans. The model had a good fit for both groups. Perceived intergroup competition predicted perceived outgroup threat which, in turn, fostered perceived morality and sociability. Only perceived morality predicted both positive and negative emotions, whereas sociability elicited only positive emotions. Finally, facilitation intentions were predicted by both positive and negative emotions, while harm intentions were triggered only by negative ones. Results highlight the distinctive role of morality for intergroup relations during adolescence and extend previous literature regarding perceived intergroup competition, stereotype content, emotions and perceived outgroup threat.

     

The Manager as Coach: Cross-Cultural Adaptation of an Instrument Assessing Managers’ Coaching Skills

While coaching has been conceived as a new managerial strategy and effective leadership initiative in organizations, the concept of ‘manager as coach’ has gained considerably popularity. In this context, the interest for reliable and valid tools to assess managers’ coaching skills increased among practitioners and organizations. This paper provides additional analyses of an instrument assessing managers’ coaching skills in business settings and examines a theoretical model in identifying manager coaching skills from two informational sources, namely self-report and other-report. This work does not only continue the development of the base of empirical research on managerial coaching, but also offers some guidelines for further testing and development of valid and reliable instruments for the assessment and understanding of managers’ coaching skills.     

Institutional Betrayal in the Canadian Medical System: Reliability and Validity of a Self-Report Questionnaire

Institutional betrayal (IB), an institutional failure to either prevent or to respond supportively to a traumatic event, tends to cause trauma survivors further psychological distress. The medical system may exhibit significant levels of IB given the frequency of medical interactions and vulnerability of patients. The current study aimed to assess the reliability and validity of a new measure of IB in the medical system in a sample of 352 Canadian adults with chronic medical conditions. An exploratory factor analysis found 3 stable and reliable factors of IB: negative healthcare experiences, cognitive-affective reactions, and systemic responses to these experiences. Subsequent analyses found evidence supporting the validity of the IB questionnaire. As expected, IB predicted poorer mental health even after controlling for demographics, and traumatic experiences. Future studies should confirm that these factors hold in different populations, and should employ different experimental designs to better understand the causal factors of IB.     

Creating Through Deviancy or Adjustment? The Link between Personality Profile Normativeness and Creativity

Does deviancy or adjustment predict creativity? To address this question, we tested the association between personality profile normativeness (similarity between one's personality profile and the average profile—a proxy for the deviancy–adjustment continuum) and creativity across four different samples (total N = 348 768). We used a wide range of creativity measures, including self‐reported, informant‐reported, behavioural, and occupational creativity, as well as several essential statistical controls (i.e., demographics, socio‐economic background, intelligence, and life satisfaction). Furthermore, we employed both cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs, including samples of college students and representative adult populations. We found that people who had more normative personality profiles were more creative. However, this association only held within modality (i.e. when both personality and creativity were either self‐reported or informant‐reported). We did not find robust associations between personality profile normativeness and laboratory‐based behavioural measures of creativity, occupational creativity, or creative achievements. We discuss alternative explanations for the observed adjustment–creativity link, specifically, implicit theories of creativity and person perception biases (halo effects). Notably, the findings did not support the idea that deviancy breeds creativity, suggesting that the famed ‘mad genius’ hypothesis might not hold among the general population. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The Role of Freedom in Descartes' Ethics of Belief

This article brings to light the role and importance of Descartes' concept of freedom for his ethics of belief. For Descartes, I argue, correctly assigning epistemic praise/blame means tracking authentic freedoms: ascertaining whether an act of assent is spontaneous or perverse both before and after eliciting the act of will. Authentic spontaneity ensures that the agent receives praise for his epistemic accomplishment, which includes the right results as well as the right order of steps. Authentic perversity leads to the agent being blamed for not accepting the truth while fully aware of the gravity of the gesture.