STAFFING AND TRAINING: NEGLECTED SUPERVISORY FUNCTIONS RELATED TO GROUP PERFORMANCE

The study was conducted in 43 library work groups. Supervisory role performances were measured by averaging questionnaire responses gathered from each group's members. Group performance was measured by questionnaire responses gathered from the supervisors of the groups. (The supervisors'performance assessments were tested against the members'perceptions, absence rates, and group ratings provided by the top executive staff of the library system). The study identified eight leadership functions which are performed differentially by the supervisors of the groups. Four of these role performances are related to the index of group performance. Two of the supervisors'activities, staffing and training, control major portions of the variance in group performance.     

ASSOCIATIVE ENCODING OF WORDS IN PASSIVE SENTENCES

Subjects were presented with short passive sentences and timed to respond in a recognition test involving a series of single words. Items to be rejected included synonymous associates of critical words and associates which would fit sensibly into the sentence frame. Rejection latencies varied as a function of the position of the critical word in the sentence, the time to reject associates of the logical subject (the final noun in the passive sentences) being much slower than associates of the object.     

BUILDING CHARACTER THROUGH SPORTS: MYTH OR POSSIBILITY?

In this article the authors ask whether striving to win in sports is compatible with the belief that participation in sports builds character. In identifying two viewpoints on winning in sports—winning as consequence and winning as experience—the authors suggest ways in which counselors might encourage athletes, coaches, and parents to perceive winning as experience so that participation in sports can foster “character” and build feelings of self-worth.     

Capitalism, Freedom and Rhetoric: a reply to Tibor R. Machan

ABSTRACT  Tibor R. Machan's 'The virtue of freedom in capitalism', which recently appeared in this journal, seeks to defend the currently fashionable view that capitalism and freedom are closely linked. I concentrate upon three aspects of his argument. First, Machan holds that capitalism is the only system capable of facilitating the exercise of moral responsibility effectively. Against this, I show that his argument rests upon a systematic confusion between two distinct theses. Secondly, I deal with his attempt to rest an argument upon the allegedly 'uncoercive' nature of market exchanges. Thirdly, I show that his analysis of the concept of freedom, which closely follows Hayek, logically cannot be deployed in support of the free market. Machan has a tendency to appeal to 'tradition', and so, in conclusion, I briefly consider his relation to the 'analytic' movement in philosophy.     

Behavioral Marriage Therapy. IV. Take Two Aspirin and Call Us in the Morning

The Jacobson-Weiss critique of the Gurman-Knudson and Gurman-Kniskern discussions of behavioral marriage therapy (BMT), while scholarly, derives from such a narrow conceptual set that, with only minor exceptions, Jacobson and Weiss have failed basically to comprehend the essence of our theoretical and logical criticisms of BMT. Moreover, a careful reanalysis of the research cited by our critics as evidence for the efficacy of BMT reveals the strength of the empirical foundation of this approach to have been greatly exaggerated. While few of our concerns about a preominantly behavioral approach to marriage therapy have been ameliorated by Jacobson and Weiss' commentary, some success seems to have been achieved in terms of our original purpose: to stimulate critical thinking about the premises and process of marital therapy.     

Deterioration in Marital and Family Therapy: Empirical,Clinical, and Conceptual Issues

Recent empirical evidence of deterioration during both nonbehavioral and behavioral marital and family therapy is presented. While the frequency of patient worsening in marital-family therapy does not appear to exceed that previously found for individual psychotherapy, the acceptability of the evidence for negative effects in the treatment of systems may be greater than that which exists for individual treatment. After examining the empirical evidence of negative effects in family therapy and some of the factors that influence their occurrence, the authors discuss some conceptual issues relevant to a definition of worsening in marital and family therapy and present some methodological guidelines for the assessment of deterioration in therapy with family systems. It is concluded that the study of deterioration processes in family therapy may aid the understanding of family change processes more generally.     

What the Disjunctivist is Right About

There is a traditional conception of sensory experience on which the experiences one has looking at, say, a cat could be had by someone merely hallucinating a cat. Disjunctivists take issue with this conception on the grounds that it does not enable us to understand how perceptual knowledge is possible. In particular, they think, it does not explain how it can be that experiences gained in perception enable us to be in 'cognitive contact' with objects and facts. I develop this challenge to the traditional conception and then show that it is possible to accommodate an adequate account of cognitive contact in keeping with the traditional conception. One upshot of the discussion is that experiences do not bear the explanatory burden placed upon them by disjunctivists.