Using What Premarital Couples Already Know to Inform Marriage Education: Integration of a Gottman Model Perspective

The Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act of Florida stimulated a study of premarital couples. What are the best things that you do in your relationship was asked in a survey of persons seeking marriage licenses. The sample consisted of 962 participants. Responses were examined using Gottman's Sound Marital House (1999) as a theoretical framework. Results indicate that premarital participants view specific aspects of the Sound Marital House as the best things they contribute to their relationship. Responses can be used as a guide to the development of a Gottman-based marriage preparation curriculum.     

Senior capstone design and ethics: A bridge to the professional world

A senior level capstone design experience has been developed and offered with a particular emphasis on many of the professional issues raised in Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Engineering Criterion IV. The course has sought to develop student awareness of the ethical foundation of the engineering profession, the global and societal framework within which engineers practice, and the environmental impact on engineering. The capstone design course also focused upon improving the technical communications skills of the graduating senior class with both extensive instruction in writing and multiple workshops dealing with the art of making an effective oral presentation. The effectiveness of the design course was assessed using Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

Identity, narcissism and the emotional core

This paper describes the course of an analysis which demonstrates how borderline and narcissistic functioning can be understood in terms of a struggle with issues of identity. It shows how such functioning can come to exert a profound hold on the individual and why it seems, at times, a matter of life and death to the patient to avoid states of separation from the analyst. The paper suggests that these complex phenomena can be understood, perhaps surprisingly, in the simple terms of the nature of affect itself. The concept of the emotional core is introduced to embody and highlight that which lies beneath both Jungian and Freudian models (offering a potential bridge between the two models)--namely the psyche's essentially affective nature. It is suggested that the emotional core can serve as an organ of perception giving the individual both their primary relation to reality and an emotional attachment to others. This emotional core is understood to function in a narcissistic manner to preference experiences of sameness and in aversion to experiences of difference--a view consonant with Stern's understanding of infant development where the infant is able to distinguish self from other from the beginning of life (as Fordham also held); taking up Stern's terminology, it gives the individual a 'core' sense of being. There is, however, no stable, on-going sense of 'I' associated with this form of functioning as the individual is immersed in the latest affect to enter consciousness (as in the borderline state of mind) and consequently the individual comes to rely intensely on the other to determine their sense of being (the other becomes a self-regulating other in Stern's terms). The development of ego-functioning gives a more stable and on-going sense of 'I' to the individual, giving contact with the broader personality, allowing the individual to be less reliant on the other and orientating them to reality in a way more fitting to their overall needs. The paper describes how consciousness, which is not seen as identical with the ego, moves between the mode of functioning of the ego and that of the emotional core, i.e., shifting in and out of states where projective identification predominates. It elaborates the range of self-experience encompassing spiritual experience and states of disintegration (which are understood to have a similar structure) on one side, to ego-based experience (which can itself be defensive and rigid at times) on the other. It explores the consequences of such a view for analytic technique and relates it to the Jungian view of the self and the Freudian unconscious.     

Personality factors in older women's perceived susceptibility to diseases of aging

Personality correlates of older women's perceived susceptibility to breast cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis were examined in a community sample of 312 women aged 40-86. A latent factor of general perceived susceptibility to disease was shown to underlie disease-specific perceptions of susceptibility. Affect-related personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, optimism, worry, and self-deceptive enhancement) and internal and chance health locus of control predicted general perceived susceptibility. Perceived disease characteristics (e.g., perceived controllability, severity) and the use of cognitive heuristics (i.e., perceived similarity to those who contract each disease) also displayed marked consistency across the three distinct diseases. Finally, our results suggested that general beliefs about the characteristics of health threats and the use of cognitive heuristics may mediate the link between personality traits and perceived risk.     

Perceptions of Ethical Behaviour among Business Faculty in Canada

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts.     

Body image variability: the influence of body-composition information and neuroticism on young women's body dissatisfaction

The current studies consider the effect of body size, body composition feedback, and the moderating influence of neuroticism (N) on three measures of body dissatisfaction (BD) in young women. In Study One, normal-sized subjects who were given false feedback indicating that they were either fatter or leaner than average showed heightened BD compared to groups who received either accurate or no feedback about body size. There was no evidence of a moderating effect of N. In Study Two, thinner-than-average subjects who received accurate body-size feedback showed greater satisfaction than a control group receiving no information. For heavier than average subjects, feedback only increased BD for those low on N. Although these results show mixed support for N as a moderator, they are the first to show an effect of body composition information on BD.     

Silent thoughts,spoken wishes: when candidate experience of the supervisor converges with patient fantasies

How and why a candidate's private experience of two supervisors emerged in patients' fantasies about them is explored. Four issues are examined in light of two control cases: (1) Patients divide, rather than split, the transference between supervisor and candidate, experiencing both ambivalently. (2) Even a patient with no knowledge of the supervisor's identity may have a fantasy of the supervisor that is congruent with the candidate's experience of the supervisor. (3) When new professional traits emerge in the candidate as he or she identifies with his or her mentor, the patient may attribute them to the invisible person in the room--the supervisor; the patient may intuit and be influenced by the candidate's feelings about the supervisor as well. (4) A patient's fantasies about the supervisor may reflect parallel process in reverse, whereby the patient discerns what is going on between supervisor and candidate through his or her treatment, just as the supervisor reads what is going on between patient and candidate through the candidate's reporting of the treatment. Because the trio is the truth of the training case, it seems fitting and empowering to acknowledge and analyze the role of the supervisor in the patient's mind.     

Using video modeling and reinforcement to teach perspective-taking skills to children with autism

We evaluated video modeling and reinforcement for teaching perspective-taking skills to 3 children with autism using a multiple baseline design. Video modeling and reinforcement were effective; however, only 2 children were able to pass an untrained task, indicating limited generalization. The findings suggest that video modeling may be an effective technology for teaching perspective taking if researchers can continue to develop strategies for enhancing the generalization of these new skills.     

Effects of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 on employee attitudes

Much has been stated in the popular press about the effects of the events of 9/11/01 on employee attitudes about work. This study examined a large sample (N = 70,671) of employees of a multinational manufacturer whose annual employee survey data collection was interrupted by the events. After demonstrating measurement equivalence across time and countries, changes in attitudes pre- and post-9/11 were examined. Only negligible differences were found in Job Satisfaction, Supervisor Evaluation, Stress, and Organizational Commitment to Diversity for U.S. employees or for employees worldwide. Demographic differences in response to events were not found. Implications for understanding effects of stressful external events on employee perceptions of work are discussed.     

Postrecognition of interleaved melodies as an indirect measure of auditory stream formation

Primitive processes involved in auditory stream formation are measured with indirect, objective method. A target melody interleaved with a distractor sequence is followed by a probe melody that was identical to the target or differed by 2 notes. Listeners decided whether the probe melody was present or not in the composite sequence. Interleaved melody recognition is not possible when distractor sequences have the same mean frequency and maximum contour crossover with target melodies. Performance increases with mean frequency separation and timbral dissimilarity and is unaffected by the duration of the silent interval between composite sequence and probe melody. The relation between this indirect task measuring the interleaved melody recognition boundary and direct judgments measuring the fission boundary is discussed.