The Religious Schema Scale: Construction and Initial Validation of a Quantitative Measure for Religious Styles

This article presents the Religious Schema Scale (RSS). Its conceptual background is the model of religious styles. After a conceptual discussion of the relation between religious styles and religious schemata, the steps of scale construction are reported. Based on 822 responses from research participants in the United States and Germany to a preliminary 78-item version, we used construct-oriented iterative and factor-analytic procedures for reducing the RSS to a 15-item version that consists of three 5-item subscales with acceptable reliabilities. Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the RSS has a robust 3-factor structure, which is cross-culturally valid in both the United States and Germany. We report correlations of the RSS with the Big Five, Psychological Well-Being, Religious Fundamentalism, and Right-Wing Authoritarianism. We also present predictive characteristics of the RSS in regard to Fowler's stages of faith. Finally, we report results on the incremental validity of the RSS.     

Reasons for Not Helping

Second-grade, fourth-grade, sixth-grade, high school, and college students (N = 140) were asked to describe situations in which they would not help someone else and their reasons for not helping in those situations. Younger subjects used perceived self-incompetence as a reason for not helping more frequently than did older subjects. In contrast, older subjects more frequently cited a desire not to violate another's personal situation and/or their own internalized values, laws, and rules as reasons not to help than did their younger counterparts. For a majority of the not-helping categories, however, no significant effect of age level was found, and indeed, some individuals in even the youngest age group expressed subtle and insightful reasons for not helping.     

Brightening His Days: A Reflective Single Case-Study of Social Integration and Recovery

Having been persuaded to change from an older to a newer generation antipsychotic, a gentleman with bipolar depression then had the potential to “recover his life,” which he did by utilizing occupational therapy interventions offered to him by occupational therapists in the UK National Health Service (NHS). This reflective case study illustrates how the combination of medical outpatient clinic and occupational therapy intervention together made a big difference in a person's life. Eleven key ingredients were reflected on as intentional strategies for helping him achieve his life goals.     

The Interactive Effects of Facial Maturity and Name Warmth on Perceptions of Job Candidates

This study investigated the interactive effects of' name warmth and facial maturity on job-hiring recommendations and trait perceptions of others. Subjects examined the bogus resume of a job applicant, attached to which was a picture of a babyfaced or maturefaced female or male. The name of the applicant was either cold or warm, as determined by pretesting. The suitability of the candidate for jobs requiring warmth and competence was rated, and other trait judgments were made. Results revealed that applicants with warm names were viewed as more suitable for a job requiring warmth, hut less suitable for a job requiring competence, and were judged as more sincere, but less powerful, than were applicants with cold names. Name warmth modified the perceptions of power and coldness that are typical when perceiving maturefaced people, although babyfaced job-seekers' name warmth did not affect their suitability for jobs. Specifically, maturefaced applicants with warm names were judged as less powerful and more suited for a job requiring warm than were maturefaced applicants with cold names, and maturefaced female applicants with warm names were perceived as more sincere than their cold-named counterparts. The results are discussed within a context suggesting that both physical appearance, and other nonbehavioral information jointly, and systematically influence impressions of others.     

Chaotic attractors in the therapeutic system 1

Because little research had been done on the presence and role of latent communication in the context of team‐conducted family therapy, the writers set out to monitor unconscious responses generated under these conditions. Specifically, they investigated an ongoing family treatment situation conducted according to the “reflecting team model.” One team of therapists handles the actual treatment session, while the other observes from behind a one‐way mirror. During the course of a session, the second team makes suggestions to the treatment team either by telephone or by calling the therapists out of the treatment room.

As the project developed, the writers found that the unconscious responses of both family and treatment teams indicated a process at work beyond the conscious intentions of the participants. That is, the therapeutic enterprise was functioning as a dynamical system, whose increasing complexity suggested a self organizing principle at work. This paper traces the development of the system's movement toward greater complexity, identifies the specific interventions that indicate this process, describes how all participants demonstrated a high degree of resonance and synchronization with this overarching‐self organizing pattern. This paper serves to alert therapists to the role of unconscious communication within the therapeutic system and postulates that the generation of form within psychotherapy follows many of the same self organizing processes found in other human and non human systems.     

Some thoughts and responses to The Francis Report

This response to the report by lawyer Robert Francis into the failure of National Health Service (NHS) care in Mid-Staffordshire is fairly positive about its conclusions but points out that without consideration of personal, psychosocial factors in care, on the ward, in the institution things are unlikely to improve, the report leaves much unconsidered. Francis emphasises that patient care is at the very centre of the NHS, this is obvious but so often forgotten. He comments that the unhelpful blame culture still exists. Missing from Francis’ analysis is a psychological perspective – the systemic factors he mentions are administrative not relational. This response is an attempt to redress the balance in thinking about the improvement of care for patients and of the working lives of staff.     

Cancer fear and the interpretation of ambiguous information related to cancer

We tested the hypothesis that people with a high fear of cancer would be more likely to interpret ambiguous information about cancer in a negative manner compared with people low on cancer fear. Adults (n=47) aged 50–70, who scored either high (n=16) or low (n=31) on cancer fear, took part in a laboratory-based ambiguous sentences task. Participants were presented with ambiguous cancer and social threat scenarios mixed with unambiguous neutral scenarios. Interpretations were assessed in a recognition task, by asking participants to rate disambiguated sentences in terms of how similar in meaning they were to the originals. People high on cancer fear were more likely to endorse negative interpretations of the original ambiguous cancer scenarios than were people low on cancer fear. This negative interpretation bias was specific to cancer scenarios and was not observed for the social threat scenarios.     

Relating Motivation to Read and Emergent Reading Skills: A Measurement Validation Study

Two studies examined the construct validity of emergent readers' motivation measures. Both studies directly assessed reading skills. Motivation was measured via self-report inventories, including existing and new items derived from the Preschool Reading Attitudes Survey (PRAS), the Motivated Reading Questionnaire (MRQ), and the Motivated Reading Profile (MRP). Parent and teacher measures of emergent readers' motivation were also administered. Study 1 findings indicated significant correlations within readers' self ratings and between teachers' and parents' ratings of children's motivation, but little consistency between these ratings and children's self-ratings. Study 2 replicated many Study 1 findings and indicated stability in children's motivation measures.