Family therapy training: Current issues,future trends

This article extends the previous literature review of the family therapy training and supervision field (Liddle & Halpin, 1978) by organizing and discussing some of the dimensions most relevant to family therapy teachers. The five domains of focus include: (1) Personnel: who should teach and be taught family therapy? (2) Content and skills: what should be taught? (3) Methodology: how should the content and skills be taught? (4) Context: how do the setting and the training enterprise influence each other? (5) Evaluation: how should training be assessed? Finally, the article brings into focus several key aspects of family therapy training likely to have relevance for current and future trainers.     

Wanting,having, and satisfaction: examining the role of desire discrepancies in satisfaction with income

In 3 studies, the authors tested the predictors of income satisfaction, examining whether discrepanc between the things people have and the things they desire predict satisfaction. Study 1 manipulated the desirability of items that can be purchased with participants' income, and showed that their satisfaction with that income depended on the desirability of these items. Study 2 demonstrated that whether people's income enabled them to purchase the things they desired influenced their satisfaction with income. Study 3 found that the effect of comparisons with a person's past on income satisfaction is completely mediated by one's desires; and the effect of social comparison on income satisfaction is partially mediated by desires. Thus, desires play a pivotal role in determining people's satisfaction with income.     

Very happy people

A sample of 222 undergraduates was screened for high happiness using multiple confirming assessment filters. We compared the upper 10% of consistently very happy people with average and very unhappy people. The very happy people were highly social, and had stronger romantic and other social relationships than less happy groups. They were more extraverted, more agreeable, and less neurotic, and scored lower on several psychopathology scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Compared with the less happy groups, the happiest respondents did not exercise significantly more, participate in religious activities significantly more, or experience more objectively defined good events. No variable was sufficient for happiness, but good social relations were necessary. Members of the happiest group experienced positive, but not ecstatic, feelings most of the time, and they reported occasional negative moods. This suggests that very happy people do have a functioning emotion system that can react appropriately to life events.     

Most People are Pretty Happy,but There is Cultural Variation: The Inughuit,The Amish,and The Maasai

Diener and Diener (1996; Psychological Science 7: 181–185) suggested that most people are happy, and offered support for this claim from surveys in industrialized societies. We extend their findings to include people who lead materially simple lives and live in cultures far removed from those of typical survey respondents. We found that the Kenyan Maasai, the United States Amish, and the Greenlandic Inughuit, all reported positive levels of life satisfaction, domain satisfaction, and affect balance (more frequent positive emotions than negative ones). Across satisfaction and affect measures, including methods in addition to global self-reports, our 358 respondents from these cultures were one average, positive on all 54 scales, and significantly above neutral on 53 of them. Across all measures and samples 84% of participants scored above neutral. However, nobody was perfectly happy and satisfied, and the groups reported unique configurations of satisfaction and affect. Although all three groups were high in satisfaction with so cial domains, the Amish reported lower satisfaction with self-related domains, and the Maasai and Inughuit were relatively lower in satisfaction with material domains. All three groups reported frequent positive emotions, but only the Maasai reported frequent feelings of pride. Thus, the fact that most people tend to be moderately happy does not mean that they are ecstatic, or that there is no variation across cultures in happiness.     

An evaluation of a three-component model of occupational commitment: dimensionality and consequences among United Kingdom human resource management specialists

This study evaluated the J. P. Meyer, N. J. Allen, and C. A. Smith (1993) model of occupational commitment using a sample of 678 United Kingdom human resource management specialists. Support was found for the 3-component model, and findings suggest that the consequences of the affective, normative, and continuance components differ. Affective and continuance commitment were negatively related to occupational withdrawal cognitions, whereas normative commitment was negatively related to withdrawal cognitions only when continuance commitment was low. Affective and, to a lesser extent. normative commitment were related to intention to participate in professional activities. Continuance commitment had no significant relationship with intention to participate in professional activities.     

Psychopathy scores predict adolescent inpatient aggression

This prospective study found that psychopathy scores predicted aggressive behavior among 72 adolescent psychiatric inpatients, even after controlling for age, sex, socioeconomic status, length of hospital stay, and independent self-report measures of impulsivity and conduct problems. Psychopathy was assessed within 3 days of hospital admission by clinical raters trained in the use of Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. Aggressive behavior was recorded by clinical staff members who were unaware of psychopathy ratings. Adolescents rated higher in psychopathy exhibited higher frequencies of both reactive and instrumental aggressive behavior than adolescents rated lower in psychopathy. Post hoc regression analyses revealed that psychopathy had incremental validity in predicting aggression beyond the contribution of clinical diagnosis or scores on the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory.     

Falsifying mental models: Testing the predictions of theories of syllogistic reasoning

Four experiments are reported that tested the claim, drawn from mental models theory, that reasoners attempt to construct alternative representations of problems that might falsify preliminary conclusions they have drawn. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to indicate which alternative conclusion(s) they had considered in a syllogistic reasoning task. In Experiments 2-4, participants were asked to draw diagrams consistent with the premises, on the assumption that these diagrams would provide insights into the mental representation being used. In none of the experiments was there any evidence that people constructed more models for multiple-model than for single-model syllogisms, nor was there any correlation between number of models constructed and overall accuracy. The results are interpreted as showing that falsification of the kind proposed by mental models theory may not routinely occur in reasoning.     

Progressive taxation and the subjective well-being of nations

Using data from the Gallup World Poll, we examined whether progressive taxation is associated with increased levels of subjective well-being. Consistent with Rawls's theory of justice, our results showed that progressive taxation was positively associated with the subjective well-being of nations. However, the overall tax rate and government spending were not associated with the subjective well-being of nations. Furthermore, controlling for the wealth of nations and income inequality, we found that respondents living in a nation with more-progressive taxation evaluated their lives as closer to the best possible life and reported having more positive and less negative daily experiences than did respondents living in a nation with less-progressive taxation. Finally, we found that the association between more-progressive taxation and higher levels of subjective well-being was mediated by citizens' satisfaction with public goods, such as education and public transportation.