Experiential Activities and Multicultural Counseling Competence Training

Counselor's multicultural counseling competence (attitudes/beliefs, knowledge, and skills) has been highlighted as an important ingredient in creating positive counseling outcomes when the clients are ethnic and racial minorities. The use of experiential activities in general, and games in particular, is presented as a potentially useful strategy to instill and enhance multicultural competence in counselor trainees. Illustrative games and guidelines for implementation are described.     

Counselor Ethnicity,Counselor Nonverbal Behavior,and Session Outcome With Asian American Clients: Initial Findings

Five Asian American and 5 European American female counselors each saw 3 Asian American volunteer clients for 1 session of career‐focused individual counseling. Examination of counselor nonverbal behaviors revealed that European American counselors displayed significantly greater frequency of adaptors, postural shifts, and smiles than did Asian American counselors. The frequency of smiles was significantly positively correlated with client‐rated session positivity and session arousal, and the frequency of postural shifts was significantly positively correlated with client‐rated session arousal. Limitations and implications of the findings are described.     

Victim Impact Testimony and Juror Judgments: The Effects of Harm Information and Witness Demeanor1

Victim impact testimony (i.e., testimony concerning the harmful consequences on the victim's surviving family) was examined to determine its effect on the sentencing judgments of mock jurors. Undergraduate students (N= 293) watched a videotaped murder trial simulation, rendered verdicts, and made sentencing judgments. During the penalty phase of the trial, participants were either given no victim impact testimony, or they were given victim impact testimony that varied both the severity of the harm information (mild harm/ severe harm) and the demeanor of the witness (low affect/high affect). The results indicate that information concerning the harm experienced by the victim's relatives, not the affective demeanor of the witness, influenced sentencing judgments. Implications for the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Payne v. Tennessee (1991) are discussed.     

The DRD4 VNTR polymorphism moderates craving after alcohol consumption.

Recent research has suggested that alterations in mesolimbic dopamine neurotransmission are central to the development and expression of craving for alcohol. Because the D4 dopamine receptor gene, variable numbers of tandem repeats (DRD4 VNTR) polymorphism putatively expresses functional differences in dopamine receptors, the present study tested whether this polymorphism influences the effects of a priming dose of alcohol on craving. Participants consumed 3 alcoholic drinks or 3 control drinks and completed measures of craving after each drink. Participants who were homozygous or heterozygous for the 7 (or longer) repeat allele were classified as DRD4 L, whereas the other participants were classified as DRD4 S. Results suggested that DRD4 L participants demonstrated significantly higher craving after consumption of alcohol as compared with the control beverage.     

Reduction, integrated theory, and the study of religion

The philosophy of science helps us to sort out and evaluate conflicting claims about reduction. Some persons maintain that reductions can be useful in constructing theories in science. Others hold that, with certain possible exceptions, reductions are likely to prove unproductive as well as inelegant. Such disagreements sometimes turn on differences in the scale or scope of the reductions envisioned. A promising strategy is to subsume considerations of reduction into efforts to find compatibilities among the claims and theoretical constructs of different disciplines. The postulation of compatibilities, advanced under rubrics such as ‘unified theory’, ‘consilience’, and ‘integrated theory’, holds great promise for studies of religion undertaken with reference to the contemporary cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Numbers of such studies view religious phenomena as, in part, expressions of evolved capacities and propensities that are not themselves necessarily religious.     

Kuhn and the science of religion

Ever since the challenge to the ‘received’ view of the philosophy of science—a view epitomized by Karl Popper and Carl Hempel—the status of science has been questioned. If radical critics of the received view—critics including Kuhn, Laudan, Feyerabend, the Edinburgh Strong Programme, and Latour—are right, can science, which means natural science, still be considered objective? Can it still be deemed the model of objectivity to be emulated by the social sciences and even by the humanities? Because religious studies is commonly assumed to fall short of the standards of objectivity of the natural sciences and even of the social sciences, what bearing does criticism of conventional philosophy of science have on it? Specifically, can the religionist approach to religion, the approach that purports to be the sole appropriate one for religious studies, be defended? Does radical philosophy of science, by challenging the objectivity of scientific claims, make the world safe for religious ones? This article will focus on the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn and will seek to determine what use defenders of religious studies can make of it.     

Client Adherence to Asian Cultural Values,Common Factors in Counseling,and Session Outcome With Asian American Clients at a University Counseling Center

Based on data from 61 Asian American clients at a university counseling center, the study found that client‐perceived match on client‐counselor belief about problem etiology was related to counselor credibility, empathy, and cross‐cultural competence; the client‐counselor working alliance; session depth; and the likelihood of the client recommending the counselor to another client. An interaction effect showed that both strong match on belief about problem etiology and high client expectation for counseling success were associated with strong client‐counselor working alliance.     

Adolescents' attitude toward gender roles within work and its relationship to gender,personality type,and parental occupation

Sex Roles - Information was obtained from 184 females and 157 males enrolled in grade 11 in six urban high schools. The majority of the students were of European descent (70%), but there were...