Hypothesizing and evidence-gathering: the nexus of understanding

Prior discussion of hypothesizing as a session "guideline" has not fully clarified the derivation of hypotheses. Reviewing relevant philosophy of science literature, the authors develop the notions of evidence and evidence-gathering in systemic family therapy. The authors claim evidence-gathering and hypothesizing are interdependent, reciprocal elements of scientific understanding. The structure of evidence is described along with practical and qualitative rules for collecting and using evidence. This model is applied to a case example illustrating the logic of clinical process. Implications are discussed for family therapy training and supervision.     

Serious and playful aggression in Brazilian girls and boys

We report on an observational study on sex differences in serious and playful aggression in early childhood. The sample included 14 girls and 14 boys, aged 2 to 4. The study was carried out in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Half of the subjects attended a nursery school for children from a favela (slum district); the others attended a nursery school that was run by a local university and represented the life conditions of the middle class of the Brazilian society. Each of the children was observed at school for 3 hours (divided into 12–15 minutes episodes) through a focal sampling technique. Significant sex differences are found for the frequency of playful aggression for both the actor's and the victim's part of the aggressive act, but for the actor's role the effect holds only for the middle class setting. There are also tremendous differences between the frequencies of serious aggression in girls and some of the boys, although the effect is not statistically significant. When several types of aggression are compared, it becomes evident that sex differences are restricted to bullying (dominant aggression). The rates of instrumental and reactive aggression are similar in both sexes. Girls and boys from the favela setting do not differ in the relative importance of the different types of serious aggression, but in middle class children the proportion of acts of bullying is much higher in boys than in girls.Revised and elaborated version of the contribution to the Paper Session onFemale Aggression at the90th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, 1991. We thank Claúdio Simon Hutz and Tânia Sperb who helped us to carry out the observations and Simone Schenk and Iris Seltenreich for help in data analysis. We are also grateful to the children and the staff of two nursery schools in Porto Alegre, Brazil, who participated in the study.     

The rate of scent marking by male rats and consequent olfactory preferences of female rats

An experiment is reported designed to test the hypothesis that female rats might discriminate between males that differed in the quantity of odor deposited by scent marking. Male odor donors were selected by prior screening for high or low rates of scent marking in an open arena. Females were then tested to determine whether they showed any preference for males that marked at a high rate. It was found that female rats did discriminate, but that they preferred to remain near males selected for low rates of scent marking.     

A typology of religious attitudes among young people in Germany

Issues like faith and Church, religion and religiousness are not valued particularly highly among the young. At the same time a search for the meaning of life and an orientation in one’s own behaviour still seem to be significant and transcendent focal points are being sought to deal with these issues. This article questions the value that religion, faith and the Church have for young people on the basis of empirical data. Five types of religious orientation of young people are identified: a churchly Christian type, an autonomously Christian type, a conventionally religious type, an autonomously religious type and, finally, a non‐religious type. The empirical data are taken from a study of about 800 pupils in the Grade 11 (age 16–17 years) from grammar schools (Gymnasien) in Germany.     

Who shapes the self of independents and interdependents? Explicit and implicit measures of the self's relatedness to family,friends and partner

We suggest that social relationships shape the self in different ways, depending on whether persons define themselves as independent or interdependent. While the self of independents is most strongly associated with mental representations of others to whom they are related because of their own deliberate action (e.g. friends), the self of interdependents is most strongly connected with representations of others with whom they share allocated group memberships (e.g. family members). We took both explicit (Study 1) and implicit measures (Studies 2, 3 and 4) on how strongly independent and interdependent selves are associated with self‐chosen versus allocated close others. In Studies 3 and 4, we additionally primed the independent or interdependent self. Both explicit and implicit measures indicated that mental representations of family members were more strongly associated with the interdependent self than with the independent self, while romantic partners and friends were connected with both the independent and interdependent self. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Unhappy Marriage of Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics

The proposal that care ethic(s) (CE) be subsumed under the framework of virtue ethic(s) (VE) is both promising and problematic for feminists. Although some attempts to construe care as a virtue are more commendable than others, they cannot duplicate a freestanding feminist CE. Sander‐Staudt recommends a model of theoretical collaboration between VE and CE that retains their comprehensiveness, allows CE to enhance VE as well as be enhanced by it, and leaves CE open to other collaborations.     

Stress in Clinical Psychology Trainees: Current Research Status and Future Directions

The purpose of this article is to present the current status of the literature related to stress in clinical psychology trainees (CPTs), and to offer research directions for investigating stress in this population and ways to enhance self‐care in these individuals. The following conclusions emerge from the review: (1) CPTs are vulnerable to elevated stress; (2) undue stress can negatively impact CPTs' personal and professional functioning and, in turn, result in less than optimal standards of care for clients; (3) there is a dearth of studies on stress in this population and no published intervention studies; (4) incorporating self‐care strategies into clinical psychology training is recommended; and (5) “third‐wave” cognitive behaviour therapy stress management interventions have been efficacious in comparable populations. In view of the potential costs of elevated stress to trainees themselves and their clients, research on stress and stress management in this population is of a high priority. Broad research agendas are proposed for these two domains. Modifications to clinical training programmes to reduce trainee stress are required and should be evidence‐based and systematically revaluated.