Living With the AIDS Virus: A Representative Case

A human sciences, multilevel, hermeneutic approach was employed to study intensively the relevant life experiences of a 21-year-old male expert consultant who had tested positive for the AIDS virus but who was asymptomatic. The study is presented both as a methodological example of this type of research and as a contribution to understanding an important personal and social issue. Under supervision, the initiating investigator collected anamnestic, behavioral, and projective data, as well as dream reports and spontaneously produced artistic material from the expert consultant. A narrative was produced to describe the study, and the data were integrated in terms of five themes: feeling infected and infectious; facing death and dying; ambivalence; uncertainty; and secrecy. Special features of this method of research are discussed, as is its relevance to the needs and interests of professionals who work with this population.     

A longitudinal test of the relational turbulence model of romantic relationship development

A longitudinal study evaluated associations between intimacy and relational uncertainty and characteristics of interdependence within nonmarital romantic relationships. Three hundred and fifteen college students in the United States completed a Web‐based survey about their relationship weekly for 6 weeks. Results indicated nonlinear associations between intimacy and relational uncertainty and perceptions of a partner’s interference (p < .001) that were inconsistent with hypotheses. Intimacy was positively associated with a partner’s influence in and facilitation of activities (p < .001). An interaction between intimacy and a partner’s influence predicted a partner’s interference, such that a partner’s influence was more positively associated with interference at low, compared to high, intimacy (p < .05). The implications of these findings for rethinking the relational turbulence model are discussed.     

Accuracy and bias in perceptions of emotionally supportive communication in marriage

Abstract This study examined accuracy and bias within people's perceptions of a spouse's emotionally supportive behavior in the United States. Hypotheses stated that people's self‐reported supportiveness, their marital satisfaction, and outside observers' ratings of their partner's support predict people's perceptions of their partner's supportiveness. Married dyads (N = 100) completed measures of marital satisfaction, engaged in a discussion about personal stressors, and rated their own and their spouse's emotional support during the interaction. Third‐party observers also provided a rating of each partner's emotionally supportive behavior. For husbands and wives, perceptions of partner support were positively associated with their own supportiveness and the partner's observable supportive communication. Marital satisfaction predicted greater perception of partner support for wives, but not for husbands.     

From Walls to Windows: Using Barriers as Pathways to Insightful Solutions

The purpose of this study was to explore and develop a conceptual model for how individuals unlock insight. The concept of insight — the ‘out of the box’ or ‘aha!’ solution to a problem — offers a framework for exploring and understanding how best to enhance problem solving skills due to the cognitive shift insight requires. Creative problem solving (CPS) is inherent to a variety of performance realms including effective decision making, innovation, and organizational development; however, related processes of insight, innovation and creativity remain intangible. The model, based on a review of the problem solving literature, proposes that insight involves a five stage, cyclical process emerging as: primary appraisal of the problem, secondary appraisal based on prior knowledge, initial focus, problem representation, and solution generation when, if no solution is found, the cycle begins again. The research has implications for individual, team and organizational settings suggesting that performance on a wide variety of problems may be improved by utilizing an integrated focus rather than a barrier or goal focus alone.     

Evaluating Therapist Competency and Adherence to Behavioral Family Management with Bipolar Patients

The present study assessed fidelity to the behavioral family management (BFM) model for treating bipolar disorder patients and their families. The BFM Therapist Competency/Adherence Scale (BFM-TCAS) was developed to evaluate clinicians' competency and adherence to BFM, as outlined by Miklowitz' (1989) BFM Manual for use with bipolar patients. Therapist competency and treatment adherence was also evaluated with regard to two family characteristics: overall level of family difficulty and family expressed emotion (EE) status. The BFM-TCAS was used to code 78 videotaped sessions of 26 families with a bipolar member, selected from a larger treatment study of bipolar disorder patients. The findings suggest that, overall, clinicians adhered closely to the BFM manual. Specific areas in which there was high competency and treatment adherence were (a) skill in conveying factual information about bipolar illness, (b) establishment of a therapeutic environment, and (c) ability to take command of therapy sessions. The one area in which there was less compotency and relatively weak adherence to the manual was the use of between-session homework assignments to assist families in mastering the BFM exercises. Results of this study also suggest that, for the most part, therapist competency and adherence ratings were not related to overall level of difficulty or to family EE status.     

Effects of relationship education on emerging adults' relationship beliefs and behaviors

In this multisite study, we used a randomized controlled trial to examine how a relationship education intervention affected emerging adults' maladaptive relationship beliefs, mutuality, relationship decision making, relationship quality, and psychological distress. In addition, we explored whether one intervention modality (i.e., facilitated group discussion) was more/less effective than another (i.e., self‐facilitated online) and whether there were differential effects for participants in a relationship. We found that the facilitated group evidenced a decline in maladaptive relationship beliefs and an improvement in deliberate decision making. Moreover, facilitated group participants in a relationship reported higher levels of mutuality. Contrary to our hypothesis, there were no changes in relationship quality or psychological distress. Implications for the content and delivery of relationship education for emerging adults are discussed.     

Communicating to Farmers About Skin Cancer The Behavior Adaptation Model

Although health campaigns promote avoidance of behaviors that put an individual's health at risk, often these behaviors cannot be avoided, and campaign messages designed to encourage behavior adaptation afford greater likelihood of success. With that in mind, a model of health risk behavior adaptation was proposed and tested using four different behaviors in a communication campaign aimed at reducing farmers' risk for skin cancer, farmers and farm wives answered a series of questions about their skin cancer prevention and detection behaviors and attitudes. Interpersonal expectancies, social resources, and actual procedural knowledge predicted perceived procedural knowledge and public commitment, which, in turn, predicted behavior adaptation.     

The dilution effect: judgmental bias,conversational convention,or a bit of both?

This study explored competing normative interpretations of the dilution effect: the tendency for people to underutilize diagnostic evidence in prediction tasks when that evidence is accompanied by irrelevant information. From the normative vantage point of the intuitive statistician, the dilution effect is a judgmental bias that arises from the representativeness heuristic (similarity-matching of causes and effects). From the normative prospective of the intuitive politician, however, the dilution effect is a rational response to evidence presented in a setting in which Gricean norms of conversation are assumed to hold. The current experiment factorially manipulated conversational norms, the degree to which diagnostic evidence was diluted by irrelevant evidence, and the accountability of subjects for their judgments. Accountable subjects demonstrated a robust dilution effect when conversational norms were explicitly primed as well as in the no-priming control condition, but no dilution when conversational norms were explicitly deactivated. Non-accountable subjects demonstrated the dilution effect across norm activation conditions, with the strongest effect under the activation of conversational norms. Although the results generally support the conversational-norm interpretation of dilution, the significant dilution effect among non-accountable subjects in the norm-deactivated condition is more consistent with the judgmental-bias interpretation.