Salience of physical appearance characteristics among young women in Thailand

Our aim in the present study was to identify key components of physical appearance among young Thai women. Free listings, focus groups and pile sorting were used. One-hundred twenty young women generated 78 unique physical appearance characteristics. Ninety-four nursing students validated these characteristics in focus groups and then sorted them into piles that reflected separate domains of physical appearance and labeled them. Salience analysis revealed that facial appearance (e.g., bright facial skin, high nose bridge, big eyes) was the most important domain, followed by body weight and shape, skin color and texture, hair (color, texture, length), and ‘other’ physical appearance (e.g., slender neck, slim fingers). This is the first study to identify aspects of physical appearance that are most salient to young Thai women and that may differ from women in other cultural contexts. These findings could be used to develop culturally grounded measures of physical appearance in Thai women.     

(A)Temporal dialectic: creative conversations between timelessness/time and transference

The intimate relationship between timelessness, time, and transference is generative in its clinical impact on analysis. A tendency to define and represent timelessness and time as opposing structures, antithetical in aim, can obscure the fertility and complexity of their relationship. The creative and transformative power of an (a)temporal dialectic is proposed whose engagement with transference destroys and creates new paradigms of human experience, presenting analyst and analysand with fresh ways of thinking and being. A brief history of timelessness and time in psychoanalysis follows their intertwined developmental path and their import in transference-countertransference experience.     

Paying a price: culture, trust, and negotiation consequences

Three studies contrasting Indian and American negotiators tested hypotheses derived from theory proposing why there are cultural differences in trust and how cultural differences in trust influence negotiation strategy. Study 1 (a survey) documented that Indian negotiators trust their counterparts less than American negotiators. Study 2 (a negotiation simulation) linked American and Indian negotiators' self-reported trust and strategy to their insight and joint gains. Study 3 replicated and extended Study 2 using independently coded negotiation strategy data, allowing for stronger causal inference. Overall, the strategy associated with Indian negotiators' reluctance to extend interpersonal (as opposed to institutional) trust produced relatively poor outcomes. Our data support an expanded theoretical model of negotiation, linking culture to trust, strategies, and outcomes.     

Effect of ingroup membership on organizational meta-representation

The present study considers the importance of analyzing what very powerful or influential people think about their employees. We assumed that belonging to a specific category has a differential effect on the perception of others' thoughts in the organization ("meta-representation"). Therefore, experts in organization and human resources from diverse organizations and institutions assessed seven dimensions which structure the organizational image (context, structure, organizational processes, working climate, culture, satisfaction and efficacy). The results showed that belonging to a group (managers or leaders, academicians, consultants, technicians or employees' representatives) modulated the meta-representation, as the experts' opinion about what they think that the employees consider important was related to their group. This was specifically the case for the managers' and leaders' representations, which differed from the other groups and especially from that of the technicians and employees' representatives. The implications of the present findings are discussed.     

Reichenbach’s Posits Reposited

Reichenbach’s use of ‘posits’ to defend his frequentistic theory of probability has been criticized on the grounds that it makes unfalsifiable predictions. The justice of this criticism has blinded many to Reichenbach’s second use of a posit, one that can fruitfully be applied to current debates within epistemology. We show first that Reichenbach’s alternative type of posit creates a difficulty for epistemic foundationalists, and then that its use is equivalent to a particular kind of Jeffrey conditionalization. We conclude that, under particular circumstances, Reichenbach’s approach and that of the Bayesians amount to the same thing, thereby presenting us with a new instance in which chance and credence coincide.     

Contextualizing Health Outcomes: Do Effects of Network Structure Differ for Women and Men?

Although previous research demonstrated that networks matter for health-related outcomes, few studies have investigated the possibility that network effects may differ between women and men. In a multivariate regression analysis of a US sample of 548 hurricane victims, we ask whether effects of network composition, density, and size affect perceived adequacy of social support and depressive symptoms more strongly among women than among men. We find evidence for these moderating effects, for direct effects of density on support adequacy and size on depressive symptoms. Our examination of indirect effects of network structure on depressive symptoms, in the pathway through perceived adequacy of social support, suggests that gender may exert more substantial moderating effects than previous health studies suggest.     

Probabilistic Justification and the Regress Problem

We discuss two objections that foundationalists have raised against infinite chains of probabilistic justification. We demonstrate that neither of the objections can be maintained. Presented by Hannes Leitgeb     

Adolescents' participation in organized activities and developmental success 2 and 8 years after high school: do sponsorship, duration, and intensity matter?

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, the authors examined relations between educational, civic, and occupational success in young adulthood and the duration and intensity of participation in organized activities during high school. They also examined these relations as a function of sponsorship (i.e., school- vs. community-sponsored organized activities). They found that youths who participated in organized activities for 2 years demonstrated more favorable educational and civic outcomes in young adulthood than those who participated for 1 year. More intensive participation was also associated with greater educational, civic, and occupational success in young adulthood--particularly among youths who participated in activities for 2 years. Educational attainment often mediated the relations between temporal measures of participation and young adult civic and occupational outcomes. With the exception of analyses examining occupational success, findings varied little as a function of sponsorship. Of note, analyses revealed that both temporal measures of participation were positively associated with young adult outcomes as many as 8 years after high school.     

The roles of respect for parental authority and parenting practices in parent-child conflict among African American, Latino, and European American families

In this study, the authors examined whether parent-child conflict during the middle childhood years varied among families characterized as having different cultural traditions regarding issues of respect for parental authority and parenting practices. The sample included 133 African American, European American, and Latina girls (M age = 8.41 years) and their mothers. African American and Latina girls showed significantly more respect for parental authority than did European American girls. Furthermore, African American and Latina mothers reported significantly more intense arguments when respect was low than did European American mothers. Higher levels of discipline and better communication by mothers were both associated with reports of lower frequency of conflict; ethnicity did not moderate this association. Thus, respect for authority was most salient to group differences in conflict.     

Counselors' and Counselor Educators' Practice of Mindfulness: A Qualitative Inquiry

The Buddhist practice of mindfulness is being used more often both to help clients and to facilitate counselor effectiveness. A growing body of research supports these uses of mindfulness. Most authors also emphasize that those who teach mindfulness must also apply it themselves. However, little is known about how counselors and counselor educators incorporate mindfulness into their personal and professional lives. The current study used semistructured interviews to elicit such information from 6 counselors and counselor educators. A constant comparative method was used to analyze the data and synthesize themes. Emergent themes included practices used to cultivate mindfulness and the results of mindfulness practices.