The left digit effect in a complex judgment task: Evaluating hypothetical college applicants

A left digit effect has been broadly observed across judgment and decision-making contexts ranging from product evaluation to medical treatment decisions to number line estimation. For example, $3.00 is judged to be a much greater cost than $2.99, and “801” is estimated strikingly too far to the right of “798” on a number line. Although the consequences of the effects for judgment and decision behavior have been documented, the sources of the effects are not well established. The goal of the current work is to extend investigations of the left digit effect to a new complex judgment activity and to assess whether the magnitude of the effect at the individual level can be predicted from performance on a simpler number skills task on which the left digit effect has also recently been observed. In three experiments (N = 434), adults completed a judgment task in which they rated the strength of hypothetical applicants for college admission and a self-paced number line estimation task. In all experiments, a small or medium left digit effect was found in the college admissions task, and a large effect was found in number line estimation. Individual-level variation was observed, but there was no relationship between the magnitudes of the effects in the two tasks. These findings provide evidence of a left digit effect in a novel multiattribute judgment task but offer no evidence that such performance can be predicted from a simple number skills task such as number line estimation.     

African American clergy: what are their perceptions of pastoral care and pastoral counseling?

This qualitative study explores African American clergy’s perspectives on pastoral care and pastoral counseling. Interviews were conducted with 18 African American clergy of diverse ages, locales, and educational levels who were recruited from a southern state. Two major themes emerged from the data: (a) Shepherding the Flock and (b) Distinguishable Concepts with Different Meaning and Functions. Implications for social work practice and research are addressed.     

Hostility,oral contraceptive use,and cardiovascular reactivity in women

Abstract

Hostility, task instructions, social desirability and cardiovascular reactivity were investigated in a exploratory study of 70 female college students and employees. Women were administered the Videotaped Clinical Interview (VC1), the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MC), the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (CM), the Buss-Durkee Hostility Index (BD) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) before undergoing a stressful discussion. Oral contraceptive users had significantly higher DBP at baseline. Based on PAQ scores, women were given instructions for the discussion task consistent or inconsistent with their gender-relevant styles. Instruction type predicted heart rate changes, and interacted with hostility to predict DBP reactivity. Interview-based hostility (VCI-H) was associated with increased DBP during the discussion task, as was being high hostile (low MC/high VCI-H). The CM and the BD had less association with heart rate and blood pressure changes. Oral contraceptive (OC) use was associated with higher SBP reactivity under stress, with highest SBP increases in the OC users concerned with social desirability. The complex interaction between trait dimensions like hostility, social desirability, and oral contraceptive use requires further investigation.     

Connecting confusions with painful realities: Group analytic psychotherapy for adults with learning disabilities

Developments in the psychodynamic understanding of individuals with learning disabilities (LD) ¹ This recently-adopted term is used here. Earlier authors have used other terms to refer to such clients, including ‘mental retardation’, ‘subnormality’, ‘handicap’, and ‘learning difficulties’. View all notes have included the exploration of the relationships between biological and psychosocial vulnerabilities, and emphasis on separation and individuation processes. While the normalisation movement encourages access to mainstream counselling and psychotherapy services, confusions persist about the suitability of people with LD for analytic psychotherapies. Given some recent positive accounts of group psychotherapy, in this paper we aim to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with an outpatient analytic group for adults with LD.

The group's background, members, material, and outcomes illustrate the emerging themes of confusions, connections, and painful realities for adults with LD. Attempts to understand individual and group transference and therapists' countertransference emphasised the primacy of dependence, handicap, and loss within the content and process of the group.

We encourage further consideration of the psychodynamics, service, and research issues involved in psychotherapy for adults with LD.     

The other-race effect: Holistic coding differences and beyond

We evaluate claims that the other-race effect in face memory reflects stronger holistic coding of own-race than other-race faces. Considering evidence from a range of paradigms, including the inversion effect, part–whole effect, composite effect, and the scrambled/blurred task, we find considerable inconsistency, both between paradigms and between participant ethnicities. At the same time, however, studies that isolate configural and component feature processing consistently show better featural, as well as better configural, processing of own-race faces, for both Caucasian and Asian participants. These results raise the possibility that the key feature of own-race face processing is not stronger holistic processing per se, but rather more effective processing of all types of face information (featural as well as holistic).     

A Crisis in the Subjectivity of the Analyst: The Trauma of Morality

This paper explores the dilemmas that arise when treatment is offered in circumstances when spiritual and ethical survival comes into conflict with physical survival and material well-being. Through an exploration of the author's experience in South Africa's war of liberation, this conflict is explicated. Although these experiences are now historical, it is argued that they are pertinent at the current time as the West, following 9/11, finds itself encouraged to think in terms of war, as notions of both a war against the West and a war against terrorism have become part of many public discourses. Questions that may arise for us as relational analysts and as individuals as a result of this are flagged, and although no easy answers are proposed, the importance of this exploration is highlighted.     

Using Community Surveys to Inform the Planning and Implementation of Environmental Change Strategies: Participatory Research in 12 Washington Communities

A number of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of environmental change strategies (ECS) in effecting community-level change on attitudes and behaviors related to underage drinking (Treno and Lee in Alcohol Res Health 26:35–40, 2002; Birckmayer et al. in J Drug Educ 34(2):121–153, 2004). Primary data collection to inform the design of these strategies, however, can be resource intensive and exceed the capacity of community stakeholders. This study describes the participatory planning and implementation of community-level surveys in 12 diverse communities in the state of Washington. These surveys were conducted through collaborations among community volunteers and evaluation experts assigned to each community. The surveys were driven by communities’ prevention planning needs and interests; constructed from collections of existing, field-tested items and scales; implemented by community members; analyzed by evaluation staff; and used in the design of ECS by community-level leaders and prevention practitioners. The communities varied in the content of their surveys, in their sampling approaches and in their data collection methods. Although these surveys were not conducted using traditional rigorous population survey methodology, they were done within limited resources, and the participatory nature of these activities strengthened the communities’ commitment to using their results in the planning of their environmental change strategies.