Expectation for Mood Enhancement as a Result of Helping: The Effects of Gender and Compassionate Love

Several theoretical perspectives in the social psychology literature on helping suggest that people forecast the benefit that they will receive as a result of helping others, and help only if they determine that it is rewarding to do so. One type of self-benefit that can be received from helping is an enhancement of positive mood. The major hypotheses of the present study were: (1) women, to a greater degree than men, would expect to experience enhanced positive mood as a consequence of both helping and receiving help in a relational context; and (2) those who are high in compassionate love for others would expect to experience enhanced positive mood from giving and receiving help relative to those who are lower on compassionate love. Support was found for both hypotheses. In addition, women were more likely than men to rate certain helping behaviors in a relational context (e.g., providing verbal support) as good examples of “compassionate love acts.” The meaning of the results with respect to altruism and for gender differences in helping behavior is discussed.     

Prophets against Ockhamism. Or: why the hard fact/soft fact distinction is irrelevant to the problem of foreknowledge

In this paper, a cognate of the problem of divine foreknowledge is introduced: the problem of the prophet’s foreknowledge. The latter cannot be solved referring to Ockhamism—the doctrine that divine foreknowledge could, at least in principle, be compatible with human freedom because God’s beliefs about future actions are merely soft facts, rather than hard facts about the past. Under the assumption that if Ockhamism can solve the problem of divine foreknowledge then it should also yield a solution to the problem of the prophet’s foreknowledge, it is concluded that Ockhamism fails.     

Psychotherapy across languages: beliefs,attitudes and practices of monolingual and multilingual therapists with their multilingual patients

Aims: The present study investigates beliefs, attitudes and practices of 101 monolingual and multilingual therapists in their interactions with multilingual patients. Method: A mixed‐method approach was adopted using an online questionnaire with closed questions, and informed questions in interviews with one monolingual and two multilingual therapists. Results: A principal component analysis yielded a four‐factor solution accounting for 41% of the variance. The first dimension, which explained 17% of variance, reflects therapists' attunement towards their bilingual patients (attunement versus collusion). Further analysis showed that the 18 monolingual therapists differed significantly from their 83 bi‐ or multilingual peers on this dimension. The follow‐up interviews confirmed this result. Discussion: Recommendations based on these findings are made for psychotherapy training and supervision.     

The development and content of an interpersonal psychotherapy group for postnatal depression

Postnatal depression (PND) usually causes distressing symptoms for sufferers and significant impairments in relationships. Group Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT-G) provides the experienced therapist with a brief, focused, and manualized approach to helping women recover from the debilitating effects of PND. This paper describes the background and development of IPT-G for PND. The evidence for the effectiveness of individual and group IPT formats with this population is summarized. The triad of theories underpinning IPT are discussed with an emphasis on the important role of attachment styles during the transition to parenthood. Its strengths, which include its unique package of targets, tactics, and techniques, are highlighted. The benefits and challenges of IPT-G are also explored, and the results of a randomized controlled trial are summarized. Finally, a case study illustrates how IPT-G specifically addresses the social role transitions, conflicts, losses, and social isolation that mothers commonly experience.     

Disfluencies in cluttered speech

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and frequency of occurrence of disfluencies, as they occur in singletons and in clusters, in the conversational speech of individuals who clutter compared to typical speakers. Except for two disfluency types (revisions in clusters, and word repetitions in clusters) nearly all disfluency types were virtually indistinguishable in frequency of occurrence between the two groups. These findings shed light on cluttering in several respects, foremost of which is that it provides documentation on the nature of disfluencies in cluttering. Findings also have implications for our understanding of the relationship between cluttering and typical speech, cluttering and stuttering, the Cluttering Spectrum Hypothesis, as well as the Lowest Common Denominator definition of cluttering. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: At the end of this activity the reader will be able to: (a) identify types of disfluency associated with cluttered speech; (b) contrast disfluencies in cluttered speech with those associated with stuttering; (c) compare the disfluencies of typical speakers with those of cluttering; (d) explain the perceptual nature of cluttering.     

Differential effects of differing intensities of acute exercise on speed and accuracy of cognition: A meta-analytical investigation

The primary purpose of this study was to examine, using meta-analytical techniques, the differential effects of differing intensities of acute exercise on speed and accuracy of cognition. Overall, exercise demonstrated a small, significant mean effect size (g = 0.14, p < 0.01) on cognition. Examination of the comparison between speed and accuracy dependent variables showed that speed accounted for most of the effect. For speed, moderate intensity exercise demonstrated a significantly larger mean effect size than those for low and high intensities. For speed of processing during moderate intensity exercise, central executive tasks showed a larger effect size than recall and alertness/attention tasks; and mean effect size for counterbalanced or randomized studies was significantly greater than for studies in which a pre-exercise followed by during or post-exercise protocol was used. There was no significant difference between mean effect sizes when testing took place post-exercise compared to during exercise for speed but accuracy studies demonstrated a significantly larger mean effect size post-exercise. It was concluded that increased arousal during moderate intensity exercise resulted in faster speed of processing. The very limited effect on accuracy may be due to the failure to choose tests which are complex enough to measure exercise-induced changes in accuracy of performance.     

Are anxiety and depression just as stable as personality during late adolescence? Results from a three-year longitudinal latent variable study

Although considerable evidence shows that affective symptoms and personality traits demonstrate moderate to high relative stabilities during adolescence and early adulthood, there has been little work done to examine differential stability among these constructs or to study the manner in which the stability of these constructs is expressed. The present study used a three-year longitudinal design in an adolescent/young adult sample to examine the stability of depression symptoms, social phobia symptoms, specific phobia symptoms, neuroticism, and extraversion. When considering one-, two-, and three-year durations, anxiety and personality stabilities were generally similar and typically greater than the stability of depression. Comparison of various representations of a latent variable trait-state-occasion (TSO) model revealed that whereas the full TSO model was the best representation for depression, a trait stability model was the most parsimonious of the best-fitting models for the anxiety and personality constructs. Over three years, the percentages of variance explained by the trait component for the anxiety and personality constructs (73-84%) were significantly greater than that explained by the trait component for depression (46%). These findings indicate that symptoms of depression are more episodic in nature, whereas symptoms of anxiety are more similar to personality variables in their expression of stability.     

Free Will,Foreknowledge, and Future‐Dependent Beliefs

Recently, a time‐honored assumption has resurfaced in some parts of the free will debate: (A) if past divine beliefs or past truths about what we do depend on what we do, then these beliefs and truths are, in a sense, up to us; hence, we are able to act otherwise, despite the existence of past truths or past divine beliefs about our future actions. In this paper, I introduce and discuss a novel incompatibilist argument that rests on (A). This argument is interesting in itself, for it is independent of a number of assumptions about the nature of God that have played an essential role in the classical defense of incompatibilism about divine foreknowledge and human free will. Moreover, the argument enables us to identify a difficulty compatibilists encounter when employing (A) to block incompatibilism.