Knock,knock, anybody home? Psychological availability as link between work and relationship

This research investigated how negative and positive residuals of the workday spill over into the partner relationship. To unravel the mechanism of this spillover, this study introduces the concept of “psychological availability,” which refers to the individual's ability and motivation to direct psychological resources at the partner. A survey was conducted among 313 Dutch dual‐earner couples with children, using dyadic data analysis to analyze both partners simultaneously in 1 model. Psychological availability mediated the link between negative and positive work‐related residuals (i.e., work‐related negative mood, exhaustion, rumination and work‐related positive mood and vigor, respectively) and marital behavior. The findings suggest that partners' workday residuals spill over into the marital relationship through being more or less psychologically available for each other.     

Perceived Parental Attitudes and Family Concepts of Disturbed Adolescents,Normal Siblings and Normal Controls

This study tested the hypotheses that disturbed adolescents perceive lower parental attitudes (positive regard, empathic understanding, genuineness and unconditional regard) than are perceived by their normal siblings and normal controls; that normal siblings do not differ from normal controls on these variables; that levels of perceived attitudes are positively related to family concept measures of adjustment and satisfaction; and that attitudes perceived in one parent are positively associated with those perceived in the other. The hypotheses were substantially confirmed. In contrast to both normal groups, the disturbed adolescents failed to show positive relationships between maternal attitudes and the family concept measures and between perceived paternal and maternal attitudes.     

Therapist-Parent Interaction Patterns in Home-Based Treatments: Exploring Family Therapy Process

At the current stage of development in the family therapy field, exploratory, small-scale process studies are necessary in order to understand through what interpersonal processes child and family change occur. The goal of this article is to show how relevant therapist-parent interactions within family-based approaches can be explored and linked to the reduction in childrearing and behavior problems. Sequential analyses on 13 treatments using the Family Project Approach revealed that, within the most successful treatments, therapist and parent interact in a collaborative way in the phase of Direct Influence. In the beginning of this treatment phase, the therapist must activate the parents to tackle the problems actively. Further explorations indicated that a collaborative interaction pattern between therapist and mother during the first three sessions of therapy contributes to a better outcome.     

Positive illusion in close relationships

The literature regarding self-other comparisons suggests that self-enhancing perceptions are prevalent, including forms of “illusion” such as excessively positive self-evaluation, unrealistic optimism, and exaggerated perceptions of control. Concepts from optimal distinctiveness theory served as the basis for two experiments examining whether illusion functions similarly when the context of evaluation involves a relationship. In both experiments participants rated themselves, the best friend, and the average other—or their own romantic relationships, the best friend's relationship, and the relationship of the average other–using scales measuring positivity of evaluation, optimism regarding the future, and perceptions of control. In both experiments, participants exhibited centrality-based differentiation, rating targets more favorably to the degree that the target was more central to their social identity. Patterns of differentiation differed for the two contexts: In the individual context, participants differentiated themselves and their friends from the average other. In the relationship context, participants differentiated their own relationships from the relationships of friends and average others. Also, participants rated individuals as more controllable than relationships. Participants in Experiment 2 provided information regarding potential predictors of illusion. Analyses of these data suggest that favorable centrality-based differentiation may be partially accounted for by impression management, global self-esteem (particularly in the individual context), and commitment level (particularly in the relationship context).     

RELATIVISM AND ABSOLUTISM: HOW BOTH CAN BE RIGHT

This paper makes a small point concerning the contraposition of relativism and absolutism. Relativism need not be vulnerable to the self-refutation argument; as for internal consistency both positions can be equally right. They are asymmetric, however, in that according to the absolutist only one of the two positions can be right, whereas from the relativist's viewpoint they can both be right.