Strategies for Dealing with Clients We Dislike

Therapists frequently encounter clients they dislike. Surprisingly, however, there is little in the literature on this topic. The literature that does exist offers little guidance on how to deal with this problem when it arises. The purpose of this article is to explore possible reasons a therapist may dislike a client, as well as strategies that a therapist can use when the problem is encountered. Implications for clinical training are also briefly discussed.     

The Emotionality Activity Sociability Temperament Survey: Factor analysis and temporal stability in a longitudinal cohort

We investigated Buss and Plomin’s Emotionality Activity Sociability (EAS) Temperament Survey for Children, used to assess temperament. Temperament is believed to comprise stable traits that change little over time. We examined stability of EAS temperament in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, in which 7429 mothers completed the EAS when their children were 3, 5 and 6 years old. Factor analysis was conducted at each time point, and stability over time was assessed using correlation and mixed effects regression modelling, accounting for differences within and between individuals. A four-factor model provided the best fit, with 19–20 of the 20 items loading onto the dimensions predicted by Buss and Plomin. Test–retest correlations ranged from 0.52–0.64 (3–5 years), 0.59–0.74 (5–6 years) and 0.46–0.58 (3–6 years). Mixed effects regression modelling suggested good stability over time: differences between, rather than within, individuals accounted for between 69% and 82% of the variance. This study demonstrates the stability of temperament over time, a vital pre-requisite to investigating childhood temperament as a predictor of outcomes.     

Perceived Responder Legitimacy and Group Identification Predict Cooperation and Compliance in a Mass Decontamination Field Exercise

Emergency responders' failure to communicate effectively during decontamination following a chemical or biological incident has been associated with increased public anxiety and reduced public compliance. In this study we applied the social identity approach to evaluating a field exercise that involved mass decontamination. Questionnaires were collected from 115 volunteers, who participated in the exercise as simulated casualties. Volunteers' perceptions of effective responder communication predicted increased self-reported compliance with decontamination, mediated by perceived responder legitimacy and identification with other group members. Developing effective communication strategies using a social psychology perspective could improve the way in which incidents are managed.     

When Pain Does Not Heal: The Common Antecedents and Consequences of Chronic Social and Physical Pain

Researchers find that social and physical pain overlap in acute episodes. In this article, we hypothesize that social and physical pain overlap in chronic conditions as well. To support this hypothesis, we reviewed the literature and introduced the Integrated Chronic Pain Model (ICPM), which posits that chronic social and physical pain overlap in their psychological antecedents and consequences. Specifically, the ICPM proposes several common factors that play a role in the onset and maintenance of both social and physical chronic pain and indicates that both forms of pain persistently impair self-regulatory resources and threaten the same basic psychological needs.     

Global Leadership,Education, and Human Survival

Global leadership is the pivotal point for appropriate policies and action to ensure human survival, but a fast-changing world requires a learning leadership. How can potential and serving leaders acquire the necessary skills, abilities, and attributes for them to recognize and address the threats and challenges to our survival in the contemporary world? Serving leaders have little time for formal learning. They learn on the job through reciprocal peer interaction and transactional relationships with their followers. But the global aspect demands another dimension, cybernetic learning, within which an awareness of global ethics is central.     

Being moved by meaningfulness: appraisals of surpassing internal standards elicit being moved by relationships and achievements

ABSTRACT

People can be moved and overwhelmed, a phenomenon typically accompanied by goose-bumps and tears. We argue that these feelings of being moved are not limited to situations that are appraised as pro-social but elicited when someone surpasses an internal standard. In line with these predictions, people were moved by relationships and success (Study 1), by reunion, separation, success and failure (Study 2) and by social, environmental and sports achievements (Study 3). In all three studies, the elicitation of these feelings was partially mediated by appraisals of surpassing social or achievement standards. In line with this, ratings of meaningfulness were closely associated with feelings of being moved and moving stimuli elicited behavioural intentions such as spending time with family and friends, helping others and/or achieving something in life. Thus, moving situations may remind us about what we perceive as meaningful and thereby help us to act accordingly.     

Attentional bias differences between fear and disgust: Implications for the role of disgust in disgust-related anxiety disorders

Research demonstrates a relation between disgust and anxiety-related pathology; however, research has yet to reveal mechanisms by which disgust may contribute to anxiety. The current experiment examined attentional bias characteristics as one route by which disgust influences anxiety. Eighty undergraduate participants completed a rapid serial visual presentation attention task using fear, disgust, or neutral target stimuli. Task-relevance of the target's presentation was also manipulated. Results revealed that task-relevant disgust targets impaired attention among all participants, but task-irrelevant disgust targets impaired attention only in high disgust prone individuals. Difficulty in disengagement characterised both disgust and fear attentional biases, but the difficulty in disengagement was greater for disgust compared to fear attentional biases. High disgust prone individuals displayed exaggerated difficulty in disengaging attention from disgust targets compared to low disgust prone individuals. The results suggest that disgust attentional biases differ from fear attentional biases. The characteristics of disgust attentional biases are discussed as possible mechanisms by which disgust functions in certain anxiety disorders.     

Identification of emotional facial expressions among behaviorally inhibited adolescents with lifetime anxiety disorders

The current study examined differences in emotion expression identification between adolescents characterised with behavioural inhibition (BI) in childhood with and without a lifetime history of anxiety disorder. Participants were originally assessed for BI during toddlerhood and for social reticence during childhood. During adolescence, participants returned to the laboratory and completed a facial emotion identification task and a clinical psychiatric interview. Results revealed that behaviorally inhibited adolescents with a lifetime history of anxiety disorder displayed a lower threshold for identifying fear relative to anger emotion expressions compared to non-anxious behaviorally inhibited adolescents and non-inhibited adolescents with or without anxiety. These findings were specific to behaviorally inhibited adolescents with a lifetime history of social anxiety disorder. Thus, adolescents with a history of both BI and anxiety, specifically social anxiety, are more likely to differ from other adolescents in their identification of fearful facial expressions. This offers further evidence that perturbations in the processing of emotional stimuli may underlie the aetiology of anxiety disorders.     

Age Differences in Reported Recollective Experience are Due to Encoding Effects,Not Response Bias

Abstract

Three experiments examined whether reduced recollective experience reported in old age is due to a criterion shift towards more cautious responses by older subjects. In Experiment 1 Young and Old subjects took a recognition test without specific instructions on how they should encode the presented words. For recognised items subjects indicated whether they recollected the item's previous occurrence or whether they just knew it had been on the list. They then rated their confidence that the word came from the study list. Although overall recognition levels were equivalent, older adults recollected less and reported more know responses than the younger subjects. However, there was no overall difference in confidence, contrary to a criterion shift explanation. In Experiment 2A specific encoding instructions removed the age-related change in recollective experience entirely. Experiment 2B reproduced the test conditions of Experiment 2A, but without specific encoding instructions, and replicated the pattern of know responding found in Experiment 1. Thus the three experiments together suggest that the amount of recollection experienced by the elderly is not explicable in terms of cautiousness, but is driven by the encoding carried out by the elderly at presentation.