Selective Evaluation and Coping With Stress: Making One's Situation Cognitively More Livable

Selective evaluation processes were examined in a study involving 167 individuals receiving payments under the Disablement Insurance Act in the Netherlands. A factor analysis showed 6 strategies of selective evaluation: emphasizing benefits, downward comparison, devaluing former dimensions, imaging "worse worlds," positive framing, and creating new dimensions. Although emphasizing benefits was relatively less common among those under stress, downward comparisons and the imaging of "worse worlds" were clearly more prevalent among individuals experiencing stress. A regression analysis showed that, independent of the degree of stress, selective evaluation techniques (in particular, emphasizing benefits and imagining of "worse worlds") contributed positively to the way respondents evaluated their situation. Moreover, when controlling for the evaluation of one's situation and stress at Time 1, selective evaluation techniques, and especially imagining of "worse worlds," and creating new dimensions, were positively related to the evaluation of one's situation at Time 2 (1 year after Time 1). The results are interpreted as support for the Taylor, Wood, and Lichtman (1983) model of selective evaluation, and for Wills' (1987) downward comparison theory.     

Policy controversies in the negotiatory state

In this article Schön and Rein’s views about policy controversies and their resolution are introduced and critically examined. The broader context of their argument can be found in the emergence of the “negotiatory state,” where public policy is made in coproduction between interdependent actors in shared-power settings. Policy controversies, conceived of as conflicts rooted in clashes between the action frames that actors employ when they define problems and propose solutions to public issues, constitute a challenge to this institutional logic of policy-making. Schön and Rein’s book is largely devoted to identifying ways to resolve them. This article revisits their conceptualization of controversies, reassesses their implications for the integrity of the policy-making process, and places their proposed philosophy of “design rationality” in a broader repertoire of ways to cope with frame multiplicity and frame conflict in public policy-making.     

Adherence to the Super Woman ideal and eating disorder symptoms among college women

The degree to which three components of the Super Woman construct of femininity [C. Steiner-Adair (1986) “The Body Politic: Normal Female Adolescent Development and the Development of Eating Disorders” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 14, pp. 95–114], valuing physical appearance, striving for success in multiple roles, and insecure parental attachment, are related to eating disorder symptoms was examined for a sample of 156 college women (84% white, 6% African American, 6% Asian, 3% Latina, 1% another race). Canonical analysis yielded three significant roots, suggesting a complex relationship between components of the Super Woman model and eating disorder symptoms. The first root supports the hypothesized relationship between the three components of the Super Woman model and eating disorder symptoms. The second root suggests that striving for success, when accompanied by a context of secure parental attachment, is positively associated with measures of social competence. The third root highlights the contribution of an emphasis on physical appearance to weight concern, dieting, and bulimic behavior.     

The effects of service dogs on social acknowledgments of people in wheelchairs

Able-bodied people often exhibit behaviors that show them to be socially uncomfortable upon encountering a physically disabled stranger. These behaviors include less eye contact, gaze avoidance, greater personal distance, and briefer social interactions. This study examined whether persons in wheelchairs with service dogs receive more frequent social acknowledgement from able-bodied strangers than people in wheelchairs without dogs receive. Behaviors of passersby were recorded by an observer who followed a person in a wheelchair at a distance of 15 to 30 feet. Observations were made in public areas amid pedestrian traffic, areas such as shopping malls and a college campus. The behaviors of passersby to the person in a wheelchair, with or without a service dog, were recorded, including smiles, conversation, touch, gaze aversion, path avoidance, or no response. Results indicated that both smiles and conversations from passersby increased significantly when the dogs were present. These findings suggest that the benefits of service dogs for their owners extend beyond working tasks to include enhanced opportunities for social exchange. The service dogs substantially reduced the tendency of able-bodied people to ignore or avoid the disabled person.     

Age and forgetting rate with pictorial stimuli

The rate of forgetting standardized line drawings of common objects was assessed in groups of young (M age = 22 years) and older (M age = 70.5 years) subjects. The two groups forgot equal quantities of pictorial stimuli over successive intervals of 10 min, 2 hr, and 48 hr, after being matched for original learning. In contrast, the older subjects showed the expected age decrement in reproduction of geometric designs from memory. These findings indicate that aging does not affect retention of pictures when differences in learning and retrieval abilities are controlled.     

Psychological and Sociocultural Adaptation of Children Adopted from Russia and their Associations with Pre-Adoption Risk Factors and Parenting

We investigated academic and behavioral outcomes of internationally adopted children and the associations between these outcomes and age at adoption, time spent in the adoptive family, and parenting. At two time points (T1 and T2, ~15 months apart), we examined early academic skills (school readiness), and parent-reported behavioral adjustment (internalizing and externalizing behavior) and adaptive functioning of a sample of 75 children (45.9% boys, mean age?=?5.17 years) adopted from Russia into US families. We also collected parents’ self-assessments of their parenting at T1. Children who were adopted at a younger age showed higher levels of early academic skills. Correlations between age at adoption and other outcomes were overall small and mostly non-significant. However, adoptees’ academic and behavioral progress differed notably in several respects. Specifically, adoptees improved in early academic skills over time, whereas, as a group, their adaptive functioning and behavioral adjustment remained stable within the normal range. Early academic skills were not related to behavioral adjustment at each time point and over time. The time spent in the adoptive family was positively related to early academic skills at T2. Whereas outcomes showed little to no relation to parenting as reported by mother and father separately, higher discrepancies between mothers' and fathers' reports of positive parenting were related to higher levels of behavioral symptoms and lower levels of adaptive skills at T2. These differential results may be explained in part by drawing upon the notion of dissociated domains of psychological and sociocultural adaptation and acculturation, outlined in the immigration literature. These results also bring to light the possible importance of between-parent consistency in parenting for adoptees’ behavioral outcomes.