Counselor Empathy or “Having a Heart to Help”? An Ethnographic Investigation of Chinese Clients' Experience of Counseling

Current understanding of counselor empathy is almost entirely based on Western culture. Clients'; perceptions of counselor empathy are scarcely investigated within any non-Western group. Using ethnographic interviews, this study explored the concept of counselor empathy from Chinese counseling clients'; perspectives by exploring their experiences of therapeutic relationships. Although informants did not commonly and explicitly consider counselor empathy as a priority in counseling, preliminary results suggest that they may perceive it in Chinese counseling relationships as a different phenomenon linguistically and conceptually.     

Transformational Leadership and Follower Task Performance: The Role of Susceptibility to Positive Emotions and Follower Positive Emotions

Purpose

The aim of the present study is to examine transformational leadership (TFL) from an emotion-based perspective. We apply susceptibility to positive emotions (STPE) as the moderator and follower positive emotions (PE) as the mediator in the relationship between follower perceptions of TFL and follower task performance (TP).

Design/Methodology/Approach

Survey data were collected from multiple sources, comprising 304 supervisor-subordinate dyads in 42 functional units of the Taiwanese military. Hierarchical linear analysis (HLM) was performed to examine our proposed model.

Findings

The HLM results confirmed that follower perceptions of TFL were positively related to follower PE. Further, individual differences in STPE moderated the relationship between follower perceptions of TFL and follower PE. Finally, follower PE mediated the moderated relationship among TFL, STPE, and follower TP.

Implications

This study advances understanding of when, how, and why TFL can enhance follower TP. The findings also address the complex role of STPE and follower PE in the relationship between follower perceptions of TFL and follower TP.

Originality/Value

Emotions have attracted increasing attention in the leadership literature recently, particularly with regard to the transformational leader–follower relationship. This study enhances understanding of how TFL functions by accounting for followers’ STPE. In addition, we respond to Avolio et al.’s (Ann Rev Psychol 60:421–449, 2009) call to test the mediated-moderation effect that links TFL to follower outcomes.     

Exploring Taiwanese Female Pastors' Intimate Relationships: Using the Story of the Levite's Concubine

The authors investigated intimate relationships and violence toward women, using group discussions and focus group techniques from a feminist group counseling perspective, with Taiwanese Presbyterian female pastors. The story of the Levite's concubine and the feminist commentary were provided to a group of Taiwanese female pastors to read at the beginning of the focus group session. The women's perspectives of their intimate relationship experiences in light of the biblical story were explored. The 6 themes related to participants' intimate relationships were generated and are discussed.     

Examining the Mechanisms Linking Transformational Leadership,Employee Customer Orientation,and Service Performance: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Supervisor and Coworker Support

Purpose  

The aim of this study is to test whether store-level transformational leadership influences service employees’ customer orientation via two different mechanisms—supervisor support and coworker support—and whether customer orientation leads to favorable customer-perceived employee service performance.     

Disentangling the Effects of Applicant Defensive Impression Management Tactics in Job Interviews

This study explores (1) the effects that three kinds of applicant defensive impression management (IM) tactics (apologies, justifications, and excuses) have on interviewer evaluation and (2) the moderating effects that two types of interviewer negative concerns (competence‐related and integrity‐related concerns) have on the aforementioned relationship. Two hundred and one managers from Taiwan participated in this study by watching a simulated interview. Compared with the control group, applicants using defensive IM tactics received higher interviewer ratings when negative concerns surfaced. Moreover, the type of interviewer negative concern moderated the effects of defensive IM tactics. All three tactics had similar effects on interviewer evaluation when the concern was competence related. Apology was, however, the most effective tactic when the concern was integrity related.     

A molecular dissociation between cued and contextual appetitive learning

In appetitive Pavlovian learning, animals learn to associate discrete cues or environmental contexts with rewarding outcomes, and these cues and/or contexts can potentiate an ongoing instrumental response for reward. Although anatomical substrates underlying cued and contextual learning have been proposed, it remains unknown whether specific molecular signaling pathways within the striatum underlie one form of learning or the other. Here, we show that while the striatum-enriched isoform of adenylyl cyclase (AC5) is required for cued appetitive Pavlovian learning, it is not required for contextual appetitive learning. Mice lacking AC5 (AC5KO) could not learn an appetitive Pavlovian learning task in which a discrete signal light predicted reward delivery, yet they could form associations between context and either natural or drug reward, which could in turn elicit Pavlovian approach behavior. However, unlike wild-type (WT) mice, AC5KO mice could not use these Pavlovian conditioned stimuli to potentiate ongoing instrumental behavior in a Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer paradigm. These data suggest that AC5 is specifically required for learning associations between discrete cues and outcomes in which the temporal relationship between conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) is essential, while alternative signaling mechanisms may underlie the formation of associations between context and reward. In addition, loss of AC5 compromises the ability of both contextual and discrete cues to modulate instrumental behavior.In Pavlovian learning, animals form associations between discrete or contextual stimuli in their environment to shape their behavior and make appropriate responses. In discrete cue appetitive Pavlovian conditioning, a single cue with a defined onset and offset that typically activates one sensory modality is provided, immediately followed by reward delivery (Hall 2002; Domjan 2006; Ito et al. 2006). Alternatively, behavior can be driven by context, an assortment of stimuli activating a number of sensory modalities that contribute to the representation of environmental space (Balsam 1985; Rudy and Sutherland 1995; Smith and Mizumori 2006). Collectively, these stimuli make up a context that is paired with reward delivery in contextual appetitive learning. One important distinction between these two forms of learning is that in cued conditioning, there is a discrete temporal relationship between conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US). Thus, an animal can effectively anticipate timing of reward delivery from onset and offset of CS. In vivo studies of dopamine (DA) neuron activity have suggested this discrete temporal relationship can be encoded by DA neurons (Schultz et al. 1997; Schultz 1998a). In contrast, in many contextual Pavlovian conditioning tasks, US delivery is not predicted, it is delivered as the animal explores the environment; thus, the temporal relationship between contextual stimuli and reinforcement is not an essential component of the learned associations (Fanselow 2000). These two types of environmental stimuli may be encoded differently and mediated by different neural substrates.Lesion studies have elucidated the anatomical dissociations between cued and contextual appetitive learning. Using a modified Y-maze procedure, it has been suggested that contextual appetitive learning is hippocampus- and nucleus-accumbens (NAc) dependent, while cued learning is dependent on the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BLA) and the NAc (Ito et al. 2005, 2006). In addition, as the NAc processes glutamatergic inputs from the amygdala and the hippocampus (Groenewegen et al. 1999; Goto and Grace 2008), recent studies have indicated that disconnecting the hippocampus from the NAc shell can disrupt contextual appetitive conditioning (Ito et al. 2008). In addition to glutamatergic inputs, the NAc, as part of the ventral striatum, receives dense dopaminergic input from midbrain nuclei (Groenewegen et al. 1999). Temporal shifts in phasic DA release in striatal regions has been correlated with appetitive Pavlovian learning (Day et al. 2007), and models of striatal function suggest that DA-dependent modification of glutamatergic transmission in the striatum may underlie reinforcement learning (Reynolds et al. 2001; Reynolds and Wickens 2002).The cAMP pathway has been implicated in plasticity and learning in a number of neuronal structures (Abel et al. 1997; Ferguson and Storm 2004; Pittenger et al. 2006). Adenylyl cyclase (AC), the enzyme that makes cAMP, has nine membrane-bound isoforms, each with different expression patterns and regulatory properties (Hanoune and Defer 2001). AC5 is highly enriched in the striatum, with very low levels of expression in other regions of the brain (Mons et al. 1998; Iwamoto et al. 2003; Kheirbek et al. 2008, 2009), and genetic deletion of AC5 (AC5KO) severely compromises DA''s ability to modulate cAMP levels in the striatum (Iwamoto et al. 2003). Previous studies have shown that AC5KO mice were severely impaired in acquisition of a cued appetitive Pavlovian learning task, while formation of action–outcome contingencies in instrumental learning was intact (Kheirbek et al. 2008). Yet, it remains unknown whether the cAMP pathway in the striatum underlies all forms of appetitive Pavlovian learning, or how it contributes to the ability of Pavlovian cues to modulate instrumental behavior.In this study, we asked if genetic deletion of AC5 selectively impairs cued or contextual appetitive learning. In addition, we tested whether loss of AC5 affects the ability of conditioned cues or contexts to modulate instrumental behavior. Our data indicate that although loss of AC5 abolishes cued appetitive learning, contextual learning is spared. Although contextual stimuli could elicit approach behavior in AC5KO mice, they could not potentiate an ongoing instrumental response, highlighting the importance of this isoform of AC in Pavlovian–instrumental interactions.     

Differences in Mathematical Performance,Creativity Potential,and Need for Cognitive Closure between Chinese and Australian Students

Research has shown that Chinese students outperform students from several Western countries on mathematics performance while some evidence has suggested that Western students perform more strongly on tests of creativity. One potential mechanism for these differences may be a higher need for cognitive closure among Chinese students. The current research compared performance on tests of mathematics and creativity among 50 students of Chinese background and 49 Australian students of Anglo‐Saxon background. As predicted, Chinese students performed better on mathematics while Australian students performed better on the measure of creativity. Australian students also had a lower score on one subscale of the need for cognitive closure, preference for predictability. Across the sample, preference for predictability showed small but significant negative correlations with several measures of creativity and positive correlations with several measures of mathematics. These findings were interpreted with respect to characteristic educational practices in both nations.     

Fairness‐related behaviour modulation by friendship is moderated by American primes in Chinese participants

Empirical studies from the fields of psychology and behavioural economics indicate that people do not like being treated unfairly and may punish those who violate the norm, even at a cost to themselves. Recent research has emphasized the relationship effect on fairness‐related behaviour but has shown conflicting results and has not focused much on the characteristics of culture. This study used the cultural priming paradigm and the Ultimatum Game (UG) to explore whether cultural primes could moderate the relationship effect on fairness‐related decision making. We primed Chinese participants with either Chinese cultural symbols or American cultural symbols and asked them to play as responders with friends or strangers in the two‐party UG (experiment 1) or in the three‐party UG (experiment 2). Results from the two experiments confirm that Chinese participants accepted unfair offers more often when the offers were made by friends than when the offers were made by strangers. However, the relationship effect was diminished after American cultural priming. These results suggest that American primes can moderate the relationship effect on fairness‐related behaviour in Chinese people. This finding may shed new light on the likelihood of exiting from the heavy reliance on social relationships in Chinese society.     

Youth gang affiliation,violence, and criminal activities: A review of motivational,risk, and protective factors

Youth gangs are a universal phenomenon attracting increasing attention; the criminal and antisocial behavior perpetuated by youth gangs has an adverse impact on local communities across the globe. Although there is an extensive body of research that has examined the problems posed by youth gangs in America (and more recently in other countries), there have been relatively fewer empirical studies that examined the factors and psychological processes that are related to youth joining and leaving gangs. This review compiles the international research on the nature of youth gangs and critically evaluates: (a) the factors that motivate engagement in and desistance from gang-related activities, (b) risk and protective factors that impact on youths' propensity for gang membership, delinquency, and violent behavior, and the adverse consequences associated with gang affiliation, and (c) the relationship between gang-affiliation, youth violence, and criminal behavior.