Satisfaction and Stressors in a Religious Minority: A National Study of Orthodox Jewish Marriage

The paucity of mental health studies with Orthodox Jews makes culturally competent counseling care unlikely. In this large‐scale investigation of marriage among Orthodox Jews, most respondents reported satisfaction with marriage and spouse, although satisfaction was highest among recently married couples. The most significant stressors were finances, communication, physical intimacy/sexuality, time pressures, and in‐law conflicts. Counseling interventions are discussed. La escasez de estudios sobre salud mental en poblaciones de judíos ortodoxos limita la posibilidad de ofrecer un cuidado de consejería culturalmente competente. En esta investigación a gran escala sobre el matrimonio entre judíos ortodoxos, la mayoría de los participantes indicaron satisfacción con su matrimonio y esposo/a, aunque la satisfacción fue mayor entre las parejas recién casadas. Los elementos estresantes más significativos fueron las finanzas, la comunicación, el contacto íntimo/sexualidad, la falta de tiempo, y los conflictos con la familia política. Se discuten intervenciones para la consejería.     

JEWISH FOREIGN POLICY: ISRAEL,WORLD JEWRY AND THE DEFENCE OF “JEWISH INTERESTS”

Is there such a thing as a “Jewish foreign policy”? This article argues that Jewish foreign policy does in fact exist. It is not Israeli foreign policy, nor is it an aggregation of American Jewish political power and interests. Jewish foreign policy is not controlled by the Israeli Prime Minister, nor is it led by the myriad of Jewish communal organizations in the United States or elsewhere. It defies the traditional ‘Israel-diaspora’ dichotomy that all too often defines Jewish political discourse. Jewish foreign policy, like other systems of foreign policy, has its own distinctive set of interests and actors. It is a complex, informal, and de-centralized system of ethno-nationalist foreign policy. This article maps out the Jewish foreign policy system. In doing so, the following questions are addressed: Who are the actors involved? What are its interests? What are the challenges and problems facing the system?     

The effect of anxiety on linguistic parameters of public speech: A verbal impairment model

This study presents a new research paradigm designed to explore the effect of anxiety on semantic information processing. It is based on the premise that the demonstrated effect of anxiety on cognitive performance and apparent inconsistencies reported in the literature might be better understood in terms of linguistic properties of inner speech which underlies analytic (vs. intuitive) thought processes. The study employed several parameters of functional linguistics in order to analyse properties of public speech by high- and low-anxious individuals. Results indicate that anxiety is associated with greater use of associative clauses that take the speaker further away from the original starting point before coming back and concluding (identified as reduced semantic efficiency). This is accompanied by a speech pattern that includes greater amounts of factual information unaccompanied by elaborate argumentation. While these results are considered tentative due to methodological and empirical shortcomings, they suggest the viability of this approach.     

How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves Raven's Matrices Performance in Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Few studies have examined the impact of age on reactivity to concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports. An initial study with 30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking aloud improves older adult performance on a short form of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998 Bors, D. A. and Stokes, T. L. 1998. Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices: Norms for first-year university students and the development of a short form. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58: 382–398. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks. In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other tasks to replicate and extend the findings of the initial study. Once again older adults performed significantly better only on the Raven's Matrices while thinking aloud. Performance gains on this task were substantial (d = 0.73 and 0.92 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), corresponding to a fluid intelligence increase of nearly one standard deviation.     

One Family at a Time: A Prevention Program for At‐Risk Parents

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a psychoeducational parenting program with at‐risk parents of young children. At‐risk was defined as excessive parental use of verbal and corporal punishment combined with low‐income status. All families were seen for 10 weeks, either individually or in very small groups. Results showed that compared with the control group, parents participating in the program significantly decreased their levels of verbal and corporal punishment, anger, stress, and reported child behavior problems; results were maintained at follow‐up. Implications for counselors are provided.     

Psychosocial Characterization of Physically Abused Children from Low Socioeconomic Households in Comparison to Neglected and Nonmaltreated Children

Research reports on the long-term sequelae of physically abused children have not produced a coherent profile that can be used to identify this population as a distinct diagnostic group. To define the specific combination of symptomatology and personality characteristics of this group, 41 physically abused children, referred by the state Child Protection Officers were interviewed using the Attachment Style Classification Questionnaire, the Children's Depression Inventory, the Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Child Suicidal Potential Scales. The results were compared with those of 38 neglected children and 35 nonabused, nonneglected children. The physically abused children showed an avoidant attachment style, specific depressive and suicidal symptomatology, high anxiety level, high aggression level, and primitive defense mechanisms. A discriminant data analysis identified 92.8% of the participants in terms of their diagnostic status. Our study suggests that an emotional and behavioural cluster of characteristics may differentiate physically abused children from neglected and nonmaltreated children. This cluster highlights the severity of induced developmental damages in the short and long-term.     

Implicit theories of relationships: Implications for relationship satisfaction and longevity

The role of implicit theories in romantic relationships was investigated in two studies. People holding a soulmate theory, who believed that finding the right person is most important for a satisfying relationship, were compared to people holding a work–it–out theory, who believed that effort is most important for building a successful relationship. In Study 1, college students (N = 527) completed a set of questionnaires, including measures of relationship theories and functioning within romantic relationships. Approximately 8 months later, a subset of these students (N = 176) completed a second set of questionnaires for Study 1. The implicit theories were highly stable over time (r = .74). For soulmate theorists, feelings that one’s specific partner is ideal predicted relationship satisfaction and relationship longevity to a greater extent than for work–it–out theorists. Whereas Study 1 investigated people’s theories of relationships as ends of a bipolar continuum, a separate study explored people’s theories of relationships as two unipolar dimensions. Findings from Study 2 (N = 266) supported a representation of the theories as two negatively correlated factors, and supported findings from Study 1 highlighting the role of the interaction between the relationship theories and partner fit in predicting relationship satisfaction.     

The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention

We investigated whether a fearful expression enhances the effect of another's gaze in directing the attention of an observer. Participants viewed photographs of faces whose gaze was directed ahead, to the left or to the right. Target letters then appeared unpredictably to the left or right. As expected, targets in the location indicated by gaze were detected more rapidly. In nonanxious volunteers the effects of fearful gaze did not differ from neutral gaze, but fearful expression had a more powerful influence in a selected high anxious group. Attention is thus more likely to be guided by the direction of fearful than neutral gaze, but only in anxiety-prone individuals.     

Probability, logic and the cognitive foundations of rational belief

Since Pascal introduced the idea of mathematical probability in the 17th century discussions of uncertainty and “rational” belief have been dogged by philosophical and technical disputes. Furthermore, the last quarter century has seen an explosion of new questions and ideas, stimulated by developments in the computer and cognitive sciences. Competing ideas about probability are often driven by different intuitions about the nature of belief that arise from the needs of different domains (e.g., economics, management theory, engineering, medicine, the life sciences etc). Taking medicine as our focus we develop three lines of argument (historical, practical and cognitive) that suggest that traditional views of probability cannot accommodate all the competing demands and diverse constraints that arise in complex real-world domains. A model of uncertain reasoning based on a form of logical argumentation appears to unify many diverse ideas. The model has precursors in informal discussions of argumentation due to Toulmin, and the notion of logical probability advocated by Keynes, but recent developments in artificial intelligence and cognitive science suggest ways of resolving epistemological and technical issues that they could not address.