Gender Differences in American Jewish Identity: Testing the Power Control Theory Explanation

This paper addresses discrepancies in previous research about whether there are gender differences in Jewish identity. Four factors of Jewish identity are examined: multifaceted Jewish engagement, social Jewish identity, communal religious identity, and cultural Jewish identity. Using the 2011 New York Jewish Community Survey, gender differences in Jewish identity in seven denominational groups of American Jews are examined. The power control theory (PCT) is tested as an explanation for the gender differences, and found to be lacking. Measures of power imbalance in current family situations are used, in addition to measures related to socialization; the rationale for this variation is discussed. According to PCT, the Orthodox would exhibit greater gender differences in Jewish identity, but the opposite is true: significant gender differences are found for non-Orthodox denominations more than are found for the Orthodox. Being raised Orthodox does not contribute to the gender differences. Measures of power imbalance within families do not contribute to the explanation of variance in any of the Jewish identity factors. Possible generalization of the findings is discussed, as well as directions for further research.     

Why individuals want money is what matters: Using self-determination theory to explain the differential relationship between motives for making money and employee psychological health

Researchers have debated for years whether money can lead to happiness. Indeed, the findings to date are contradictory in regard to the impact of individuals’ motives for making money on their psychological well-being. This study aimed to reconcile these findings and show that certain motives for making money can be beneficial to individuals’ psychological health, while others can be detrimental, not only by reducing well-being, but also by increasing ill-being. Based on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) were hypothesized to be the psychological mechanism explaining these differential effects. More precisely, need satisfaction and need frustration were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between employees’ money motives and psychological health (well-being and ill-being). Our findings suggest that self-integrated motives for making money lead to greater well-being and lesser ill-being by positively predicting need satisfaction and negatively predicting need frustration. On the other hand, non-integrated motives for making money appear to result in lesser well-being and greater ill-being by being negatively associated with need satisfaction and positively associated with need frustration. Together, these findings suggest that money motives can have differential effects on employees’ psychological health depending on whether these underlying reasons are need-satisfying or need-frustrating life goals.     

Longitudinal Study of Life Events,Well-Being,Emotional Regulation and Depressive Symptomatology

Etiological research regarding adolescent depression is relatively recent and longitudinal studies are needed to explicate the mechanisms by which risk and protective factors impact the development of depression. This investigation evaluated the effects of time 1 predictors (e.g., depressive symptoms, life events, subjective well-being, and emotion regulation strategies) on depressive symptoms assessed at time 2 (1 year later). The sample comprised 182 Portuguese adolescents, aged 12–16. Time 1 depressive symptoms and psychological well-being were significant predictors of time 2 depressive symptoms. Time 1 rumination predicted time 2 depressive symptoms, but time 2 brooding mediated this effect. Time 1 life events did not predict time 2 depressive symptomatology. This study identified several factors that seem to play an important role in the development of depressive symptomatology. Previous depressive symptomatology and well-being had a significant effect in this process and the relationship between rumination in time 1 and depressive symptoms at time 2 (1 year later) was fully mediated by brooding at time 2. Given these results, implications for prevention and treatment of depression include addressing risk factors like early depressive symptoms, rumination and brooding, and increasing the protective effect of psychological well-being.     

A Republican Housewife: Marie‐Jeanne Phlipon Roland on Women's Political Role

In this paper I look at the philosophical (and sometimes personal) struggles of one eighteenth‐century woman writer to reconcile a desire and obvious capacity to participate in the creation of republican ideals and their applications on the one hand, and on the other a deeply held belief that women's role in a republic is confined to the domestic realm. I argue that Marie‐Jeanne Phlipon Roland's philosophical writings—three unpublished essays, published and unpublished letters, as well as parts of her memoirs—suggest that even though she adopted a Rousseau‐style rural republicanism that relies on complementarity of men and women's virtues, she somehow succeeds in proposing a less sexist picture of the republican family, one that makes it possible for men and women to take an equal part in family business and politics.     

Informed consent for the diagnosis of brain death: a conceptual argument

Background

This essay provides an ethical and conceptual argument for the use of informed consent prior to the diagnosis of brain death. It is meant to enable the family to make critical end-of-life decisions, particularly withdrawal of life support system and organ donation, before brain death is diagnosed, as opposed to the current practice of making such decisions after the diagnosis of death. The recent tragic case of a 13-year-old brain-dead patient in California who was maintained on a ventilator for over 2 years illustrates how such a consent would have made a crucial difference.

Methods

Conceptual, philosophical, and ethical analysis.

Results

I first consider a conceptual justification for the use of consent for certain non-beneficial and unwanted medical diagnoses. I suggest that the diagnosis of brain death falls into this category for some patients. Because the diagnostic process of brain death lacks the transparency of traditional death determination, has a unique epistemic structure and a complex risk-benefit profile which differs markedly from case to case, and presents conflicts of interest for physicians and society, I argue that pre-diagnostic counseling and informed consent should be part of the diagnostic process. This approach can be termed as “allow cardiac death”, whose parallel logic with “allow natural death” is discussed. I also discuss potential negative impacts on organ donation and health care cost from this proposal and offer possible mitigation. I show that the pre-diagnostic counseling can improve the possibility for well-thought-out decisions regarding organ donation and terminating life-support system in cases of hopeless prognosis. This approach differs conceptually from the pluralism of the definition of death, such as those in New Jersey and Japan, and it upholds the Uniform Determination of Death Act.

Conclusions

My intention is not to provide an instant panacea for the ongoing impasse of the brain death debate, but to point to a novel conceptual ground for a more pragmatic, and more patient- and family-centered approach. By enabling the family to consent to or decline the diagnostic process of brain death, but not to choose the definition of death, it upholds the current legal definition of death.

     

Effects of Family Context on Adolescents’ Psychological Problems: Moderated by Pubertal Timing,and Mediated by Self-Esteem and Interpersonal Relationships

We examined the potential mediational roles of self-esteem and interpersonal relationships that link the effect of family context on psychological outcomes in 5214 junior high school students. The moderating effects of pubertal timing were also examined. Pubertal development scores were used to measure pubertal status. Separate mediational models were examined across subgroups with different pubertal timings (i.e., early puberty, on-time puberty, and late puberty). Self-esteem and interpersonal relationships mediated the association between family context and psychological consequences. Although early-maturing adolescents tended to have more psychological problems, they were usually more strongly influenced by self-esteem than were their late-maturing counterparts. Self-esteem and interpersonal relationships were both important when dealing with adolescent psychological problems, particularly for those who mature early. Clinicians should be able to recognize these problems associated with pubertal transition and provide appropriate counseling with a focus on positive adaption to reduce adverse psychological and behavioral consequences.     

An Eriksonian Psycho-Social Response to Confucius on the Development of Virtue in Boys and Men

As the exemplar of how men should live, for over six hundred years Confucius has contributed greatly to the formation of the mindset and identity of Korean males. His life and teachings that emphasize the values of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and sincerity have long been regarded as the quintessential frame of reference for males in Korea to emulate. Yet at the same time, some of the legacies of Confucius connote oppression because of their overemphasis on the enhancement of human cognition and will to the neglect of the robustness and usefulness of emotion. It is quite probable that the oppressive mechanism inherent in Confucian teachings on human development—i.e., the rigid and regulatory characteristic that overemphasizes or obsesses about rites, rules, decency, and norms—comes to a large extent from Confucius’s own relational and emotional vulnerability toward his parents. This paper suggests that Erik Erikson’s view on the psychosocial dimension of human development can usefully complement what Confucius did not pay much attention to in his lifelong efforts to cultivate human virtue. Indeed, Erikson shows that the robustness of emotion precedes the enrichment of cognition as well as the reinforcement of will and that it is nurtured by one’s caring and constructive relationships with significant others. In this regard, the caregiver’s role is to help males in Korea reconcile with their genuine selves in which cognition and will are in harmony with emotion.     

Economic Impact of Third-Wave Cognitive Behavioral Therapies: A Systematic Review and Quality Assessment of Economic Evaluations in Randomized Controlled Trials

The term third-wave cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) encompasses new forms of CBT that both extend and innovate within CBT. Most third-wave therapies have been subject to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) focused on clinical effectiveness; however, the number and quality of economic evaluations in these RCTs has been unknown and may be few. Evidence about efficiency of these therapies may help support decisions on efficient allocation of resources in health policies. The main aim of this study was to systematically review the economic impact of third-wave therapies in the treatment of patients with physical or mental conditions. We conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, and CINALH to identify economic evaluations of third-wave therapies. Quality and Risk of Bias (RoB) assessment of economic evaluations was also made using the Drummond 35-item checklist and the Cochrane Collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias, respectively. Eleven RCTs were included in this systematic review. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and extended Behaviour Activation (eBA) showed acceptable cost-effectiveness and cost-utility ratios. No study employed a time horizon of more than 3 years. Quality and RoB assessments highlight some limitations that temper the findings. There is some evidence that MBCT, MBSR, ACT, DBT, and eBA are efficient from a societal or a third-party payer perspective. No economic analysis was found for many third-wave therapies. Therefore, more economic evaluations with high methodological quality are needed.     

A one-person doxastic characterization of Nash strategies

Within a formal epistemic model for simultaneous-move games, we present the following conditions: (1) belief in the opponents’ rationality (BOR), stating that a player believes that every opponent chooses an optimal strategy, (2) self-referential beliefs (SRB), stating that a player believes that his opponents hold correct beliefs about his own beliefs, (3) projective beliefs (PB), stating that i believes that j’s belief about k’s choice is the same as i’s belief about k’s choice, and (4) conditionally independent beliefs (CIB), stating that a player believes that opponents’ types choose their strategies independently. We show that, if a player satisfies BOR, SRB and CIB, and believes that every opponent satisfies BOR, SRB, PB and CIB, then he will choose a Nash strategy (that is, a strategy that is optimal in some Nash equilibrium). We thus provide a sufficient collection of one-person conditions for Nash strategy choice. We also show that none of these seven conditions can be dropped.     

Is Phonological Encoding in Naming Influenced by Literacy?

We examined phonological priming in illiterate adults, using a cross-modal picture-word interference task. Participants named pictures while hearing distractor words at different Stimulus Onset Asynchronies (SOAs). Ex-illiterates and university students were also tested. We specifically assessed the ability of the three populations to use fine-grained, phonemic units in phonological encoding of spoken words. In the phoneme-related condition, auditory words shared only the first phoneme with the target name. All participants named pictures faster with phoneme-related word distractors than with unrelated word distractors. The results thus show that phonemic representations intervene in phonological output processes independently of literacy. However, the phonemic priming effect was observed at a later SOA in illiterates compared to both ex-illiterates and university students. This may be attributed to differences in speed of picture identification.