Positive and Negative Androgyny and Their Relationship with Psychological Health and Well-Being

A new method of scoring the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (EPAQ) was used to assess the constructs of positive and negative androgyny. The EPAQ was administered to 196 adult women and men; their responses were categorized into a differentiated androgyny. Significant differences were obtained between positive and negative androgynous people as well as between positive and negative feminine and positive and negative masculine people on a set of measures of psychological health and well-being. These findings support the validity and utility of differentiating androgyny into positive and negative categories of gender role identity.     

Understanding and Treating Social Phobia

Social phobia, a relatively obscure disorder, is receiving increased attention due to evidence suggesting that it is more prevalent and debilitative than once thought. The purpose of this article is to help counselors better understand the nature of and treatments for this disorder. Effective behavioral and pharmacological approaches are reviewed, and counseling implications are discussed to increase counselors' confidence in providing treatment to people with social phobia.     

‘And what about residential…?’ Re‐conceptualizing residential treatment as a stop‐gap service for youth with emotional and behavioral disorders

The need for residential services for youth with the most intractable emotional and behavioral problems continues to exist despite advances made in developing community‐based systems of care. Residential treatment centers (RTCs), considered one of the most restrictive service settings, have changed little over the years and have not fared well in outcome evaluations. Despite these factors, admissions to RTCs continue to increase. In an attempt to contemporize and bring the RTC more in line with current practice, a stop‐gap model of service delivery is recommended. The stop‐gap model, incorporating evidence‐based practices, is intended to have an immediate and positive impact on the barrier behaviors that keep youths in the most restrictive environments. The twofold goal of the stop‐gap model is to interrupt the youth's downward spiral imposed by increasingly disruptive behavior and, simultaneously, to prepare the post‐discharge environment for the youth's timely reintegration. Strategies for evaluating the effectiveness of the stop‐gap model are recommended. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The parent analogy: a reassessment

According to the parent analogy, as a caretaker’s goodness, ability and intelligence increase, the likelihood that the caretaker will make arrangements for the attainment of future goods that are unnoticed or underappreciated by their dependents also increases. Consequently, if this analogy accurately represents our relationship to God, then we should expect to find many instances of inscrutable evil in the world. This argument in support of skeptical theism has recently been criticized by Dougherty. I argue that Dougherty’s argument is incomplete, for there are two plausible ways of construing the parent analogy’s conclusion. I supplement Dougherty’s case by offering a new argument against the parent analogy based on failed expectations concerning the amount of inscrutable evils encountered in the world. Consequently, there remains a significant empirical hurdle for skeptical theism to overcome if it is to maintain its status as a defeater for our reliability when tracking gratuitous evils.     

The General Factor of Personality and Character: A Reanalysis

Using data from the Texas Twin Project, it was recently reported that 7 measures of character covaried to the extent that they formed a general factor of character (Tucker-Drob, Briley, Engelhardt, Mann, &; Harden, 2016 Tucker-Drob, E. M., Briley, D. A., Engelhardt, L. E., Mann, F. D., &; Harden, K. P. (2016). Genetically-mediated associations between measures of childhood character and academic achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 790–815. doi:10.1037/pspp0000098.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In turn the relationship between the general factor of character and the Big Five personality traits were examined. It was found that personality was associated with the general factor of character primarily through the traits of conscientiousness and openness. For several reasons we propose that a more accurate interpretation of the data is that a Big Five personality traits form a general factor of personality, and that the relationship between the general character factor and personality is primarily through the general factor of personality. The results lend some support to this contention and are discussed in relation to the growing interest in covariation among multiple personality traits.     

Culture, cross-role consistency, and adjustment: testing trait and cultural psychology perspectives

Trait and cultural psychology perspectives on cross-role consistency and its relation to adjustment were examined in 2 individualistic cultures, the United States (N=231) and Australia (N=195), and 4 collectivistic cultures, Mexico (N=199), the Philippines (N=195), Malaysia (N=217), and Japan (N=180). Cross-role consistency in trait ratings was evident in all cultures, supporting trait perspectives. Cultural comparisons of mean consistency provided support for cultural psychology perspectives as applied to East Asian cultures (i.e., Japan) but not collectivistic cultures more generally. Some but not all of the hypothesized predictors of consistency were supported across cultures. Cross-role consistency predicted aspects of adjustment in all cultures, but prediction was most reliable in the U.S. sample and weakest in the Japanese sample. Alternative constructs proposed by cultural psychologists--personality coherence, social appraisal, and relationship harmony--predicted adjustment in all cultures but were not, as hypothesized, better predictors of adjustment in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures.