Gender Differences in Experiences with Couples Treatment for IPV

Evidence suggests that conjoint treatment can be effective for certain violent couples in certain situations (Finkel in Rev Gen Psychol 11:193–207, 2007; LaTaillade et al. in J Cogn Psychother 20:393–410, 2006; Fals-Stewart et al. in J Consult Clin Psych 73:239–248, 2005; Stith et al. in J Marital Fam Ther 29(3):407–426, 2003). However, not as much is known about which aspects of conjoint treatment make a difference, nor if male and female participants experience these elements of treatment differently. Knowing which components of couples’ treatment clients perceive as helpful—and whether their perceptions differ by gender—will allow us to redefine models with an eye toward making them more effective. In this study we used qualitative methods to examine the aspects of a particular couples’ treatment program (Stith and McCollum in Aggress Violent Beh 16(4):312–318, 2011) that clients found useful while also considering the differences between men’s and women’s responses. Fourteen couples, in which the male had been identified as the primary aggressor, were interviewed multiple times to gain their perspectives about components of the program they found helpful and their suggestions for program improvement. Themes are analyzed by gender. Implications for treatment and future research are provided.     

Extraversion and job performance: How context relevance and bandwidth specificity create a non-linear,positive, and asymptotic relationship

The personality factor of extraversion has been associated with performance in some occupations (e.g., sales), and it has been one of the most consistent personality predictors of leadership. Recent research indicates that extraversion could have a non-linear relation with performance. At the same time, many researchers have contended that scholars should utilize measures of personality narrower than factors and that the bandwidth and relevance of personality should fit both the criterion and the context of a study. We argue and find that by examining an aspect of extraversion (i.e., social potency) in a particular vocational context (i.e., enterprising job demands), non-linear, asymptotic (diminishing marginal benefits) effects will be demonstrated on a relevant type of performance (i.e., enterprising job performance). We review implications, limitations, and avenues for future research.     

Aristotelian contraries

The first version of this paper was delivered as part of Problems and Changes in the Concept of Predication, a conference at the UC Humanities Research Institute organized by Karel Lambert and Alan Code. I am indebted to the other participants for helpful discussion, and to HRI for providing a wonderful environment for the conference.     

Factors facilitating adjustment to unemployment: Implications for intervention

Conducted a community survey in the Fall of 1984 in a sample of high unemployment blue-collar census tracts in southeastern Michigan. Results of earlier analyses using these data showed that involuntarily unemployed workers had significantly elevated levels of depression, anxiety, somatization, and self-reported physical illness relative to a stably employed comparison group (Kessler, House, & Turner, 1987). Results presented in this paper document that this relationship is modified by social support (as measured by social integration and the availability of a confidant), self-concept, and various coping processes. Further analyses allowed us to determine the way in which these modifiers operate. The modifying effects of social support and coping operate primarily by buffering the impact of unemployment-related financial strain on the health outcomes. Self-concept operates primarily by attenuating vulnerability to other stressful life events. The implications of these results for the design and implementation of preventive interventions are discussed.     

The Humanizing Brain: An Introduction

The rediscovery of the sacred needs to take into account the neural underpinnings of faith and meaning and also draw on the insights of the emerging discipline of complexity studies, which explore a tendency toward adaptive self-organization that seemingly is inherent in the universe. Both neuroscience and complexity studies contribute to our understanding of the brain's activity as it transforms raw stimuli into recognizable patterns, and thus "humanizes" all our perceptions and understandings. The brain is our physical anchor in the natural environment— and its human capacities orbit us into the emerging world of culture (including religion), which provides a template for the brain's function of making sense of an ambiguous reality. The humanizing brain holds together scientific causality and religious meaning, working both bottom-up (linking the physical and the experiential) and top-down (beginning with the whole of things, or God). These processes we know as "mind" (experienced as intentionality, subjective consciousness, empathy, imagination, memory, adaptability). We maintain that such processes are not only subjective but built into "the way things really are." Thus, they carry the most privileged information about the nature of reality to which we human beings have access. For not only are we humans observers and logicians, but we are embedded in the larger reality; and as we strive to make sense of it all, we become both Homo sapiens and Homo religiosus .     

Parent-daughter discussions to discourage tobacco use: feasibility and content.

Parents engaged their 6th- and 8th-grade daughters in a conversation about tobacco. The parents were guided by a pamphlet designed to encourage effective family communication about tobacco. Conversations were audiotaped for later coding. Evidence is presented that such parent-daughter conversations about tobacco use can be successfully carried out in a nonaversive manner. Overall, the conversations were perceived to have gone well, with very little conflict reported. Further, the daughters reported that the parental advice was helpful and they did not resist receiving such advice. Among the topics suggested by the pamphlet, the following were most frequently discussed: consequences of smoking as experienced by friends and relatives, difficulty of quitting, promotional tactics of tobacco companies, making rules about tobacco use, and deciding on the consequences of rules adherence or violation. Other frequently discussed topics, which were not covered in the pamphlet, may also be appropriate for parent-daughter conversations: diminished physical attractiveness and body-image issues, how to resist peer pressure, and health risks.     

Age differences in accuracy and choosing in eyewitness identification and face recognition

Studies of aging and face recognition show age-related increases in false recognitions of new faces. To explore implications of this false alarm effect, we had young and senior adults perform (1) three eye-witness identification tasks, using both target present and target absent lineups, and (2) and old/new recognition task in which a study list of faces was followed by a test including old and new faces, along with conjunctions of old faces. Compared with the young, seniors had lower accuracy and higher choosing rates on the lineups, and they also falsely recognized more new faces on the recognition test. However, after screening for perceptual processing deficits, there was no age difference in false recognition of conjunctions, or in discriminating old faces from conjunctions. We conclude that the false alarm effect generalizes to lineup identification, but does not extend to conjunction faces. The findings are consistent with age-related deficits in recollection of context and relative age invariance in perceptual integrative processes underlying the experience of familiarity.