Is It Possible to “Incorporate” a Scar? Revisiting a Basic Concept in Phenomenology

Although scars never disappear completely, in time most people will basically get used to them. In this paper I explore what it means to habituate to scars against the background of the phenomenological concept of incorporation. In phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) the body as Leib or corps vécu (lived body) functions as a transcendental condition for world disclosure. Because of this transcendental reasoning, phenomenology prioritizes a form of embodied subjectivity that is virtually dis-embodied. Endowing meaning to one’s world through getting engaged in actions and projects is most successful indeed when one’s body is “absent,” “transparent,” or, at least, if it is not in the center of one’s attention. This taken-for-granted nature can be disturbed by discomfort, disability, and disfigurement. Incorporation, so I explain, aims at maintaining or restoring the body’s taken-for-grantedness. My analysis of the case of a woman who successfully habituated to her mastectomy scar demonstrates, however, that habituation to a perceptible scar can only be understood partly in terms of incorporation. Next to a decrease of explicit attention for the scar and the discomfort it produces (i.e., incorporation), the scar should also stop being a sign that refers to something else than itself. This is only possible, I argue, by taking the body’s materiality seriously, rather than it being wiped out as a result of transcendental reasoning.     

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Multicultural Counseling Competence

The authors examined the association between multicultural counseling competence (MCC) and mindfulness. Previous authors have maintained a conceptual link between MCC and mindfulness; however, this is the first empirical analysis of the relationship between MCC and mindfulness. Results revealed that, after race/ethnicity, multicultural course completion, and empathy were controlled, components of mindfulness were correlated with multicultural awareness and multicultural knowledge. These results have implications for counselor education, counseling practice, and future research.     

Navigating Bioethical Waters: Two Pilot Projects in Problem-Based Learning for Future Bioscience and Biotechnology Professionals

We believe that the professional responsibility of bioscience and biotechnology professionals includes a social responsibility to contribute to the resolution of ethically fraught policy problems generated by their work. It follows that educators have a professional responsibility to prepare future professionals to discharge this responsibility. This essay discusses two pilot projects in ethics pedagogy focused on particularly challenging policy problems, which we call “fractious problems”. The projects aimed to advance future professionals’ acquisition of “fractious problem navigational” skills, a set of skills designed to enable broad and deep understanding of fractious problems and the design of good policy resolutions for them. A secondary objective was to enhance future professionals’ motivation to apply these skills to help their communities resolve these problems. The projects employed “problem based learning” courses to advance these learning objectives. A new assessment instrument, “Skills for Science/Engineering Ethics Test” (SkillSET), was designed and administered to measure the success of the courses in doing so. This essay first discusses the rationale for the pilot projects, and then describes the design of the pilot courses and presents the results of our assessment using SkillSET in the first pilot project and the revised SkillSET 2.0 in the second pilot project. The essay concludes with discussion of observations and results.     

Interpersonal Violence Victimization and Sexual Harassment: A Prospective Study of Revictimization

This study examined associations between past interpersonal victimization (including both child and adult victimization) and sexual harassment (SH); and it examined intervening and moderating variables of the association of past victimization with SH, including posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and job-gender context. In addition, we examined an alternative hypothesis for revictimization that abuse survivors are hyper-sensitive to perceptions of sexual harassment. Employed women residing in Kentucky (U.S.) who had received an order of protection from a male partner and who were followed-up 12 months later (n?=?445, 78 % White, mean age?=?31.98, SD?=?8.60) were selected for this analysis. SH experienced between baseline and follow-up interviews was associated with baseline assessments of child nonsexual assault experiences (r?=?0.24, p?<?0.001) and intimate partner violence victimization (r?=?0.20, p?<?0.000), demonstrating a revictimization effect. PTSS mediated the relationship between child sexual assault, child nonsexual assault and subsequent SH. Further, working in a job with a male supervisor or in a male-dominated workgroup increased associations between child nonsexual abuse and subsequent SH. No support was found for the hyper-sensitivity hypothesis. Findings are consistent with prior research that identifies sexual harassment as a form of interpersonal violence that mental health and victim service providers and researchers should include in their assessment and treatment strategies. Employers should also understand that working in male-dominated work environments compound the risk of sexual harassment for those with prior abuse histories and should be vigilant to reducing these risks.     

Goal-setting in diabetes self-management: A systematic review and meta-analysis examining content and effectiveness of goal-setting interventions

Background: Goal-setting is recommended and widely used within diabetes self-management programmes. However, empirical evidence around its effectiveness lacks clarity. This review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of goal-setting interventions on diabetes outcomes and to determine which behaviour change techniques (BCTs) are frequently used within these interventions.

Methods: A systematic search identified 14 studies, describing 12 interventions targeting diabetic-control which incorporated goal-setting as the main intervention strategy. Study characteristics, outcome measures and effect sizes of the included studies were extracted and checked by two authors. The BCT taxonomy v1 was used to identify intervention content. Meta-analyses were conducted to assess intervention effects on the primary outcome of average blood glucose levels (HbA1c) and on body-weight. Psycho-social and behavioural outcomes were summarised in narrative syntheses.

Results: Significant post-intervention improvements in HbA1C were found (?.22, 95% CI, ?.40, ?.04) across studies. No other main effects were identified. The BCT ‘goal-setting (behaviour)’ was most frequently implemented and was identified in 84% of the interventions.

Conclusions: Goal-setting interventions appear to be associated with reduced HbA1C levels. However, the low numbers of studies identified and the risk biases across studies suggest more research is needed to further explore goal-setting BCTs in diabetes self-management.     

Bilingual comparison of Mandarin and English cognitive bias tasks

Most research into cognitive biases has used Western samples, despite potential East-West socio-cultural differences. One reason is the lack of appropriate measures for non-Westerners. This study is about cross-linguistic equivalence which needs to be established before assessing cross-cultural differences in future research. We developed parallel Mandarin and English measures of interpretation bias and attention bias using back-translation and decentering procedures. We assessed task equivalence by administering both sets of measures to 47 bilingual Mandarin-English speakers. Interpretation bias measurement was similar and reliable across language versions, confirming suitability of the Mandarin versions for future cross-cultural research. By contrast, scores on attention bias tasks did not intercorrelate reliably, suggesting that nonverbal stimuli such as pictures or facial expressions of emotion might present better prospects for cross-cultural comparison. The development of the first set of equivalent measures of interpretation bias in an Eastern language paves the way for future research investigating East-West differences in biased cognition.     

The Primal Scene Phenomenon: Witnessing Parental Sexual Activity and Sociosexual Orientation

Sigmund Freud coined the term urszene—or “primal scene”—to describe the experience of children witnessing their parents engaging in sexual activity. We examined the historical context in which the primal scene emerged, considered contemporary views of the primal scene, and conducted two empirical studies (N = 961, 1390) to investigate Freud’s proposition that children who witness the primal scene would later be prone to “attacks of falling physically in love,” which we operationalized as sociosexual orientation. In both studies, individuals who witnessed the primal scene as children had a more unrestricted sociosexual orientation than those who did not. Additionally, men had a more unrestricted sociosexual orientation than women. Altogether, these results suggest a possible link between primal scene exposure and sociosexual orientation. In contrast to psychoanalytic theories, we offer psychodynamic and normative social explanations of the primal scene phenomenon.     

Living with Death in Rehabilitation: A Phenomenological Account

This paper uses an ongoing ethnography of childhood rehabilitation to rethink the Heideggerian phenomenology of death. We argue that Heidegger’s threefold perishing/death/dying framework offers a fruitful way to chart how young people, their parents, and practitioners address mortality in the routine management of muscular dystrophies. Heidegger’s almost exclusive focus on being-towards-death as an individualizing existential structure, rather than the social life with and around death, is at odds with the clinical experience we explore in this paper. After looking to the basic structures of Heidegger’s philosophy of death, we point to recent work by Leder, Svenaeus, Aho, and Carel, bringing health and the spaces of healthcare into our purview. Turning to ethnographic data, we argue that a revised phenomenology of death gives a nuanced account of how health care practitioners address death, dying, and perishing, and outline some steps toward a more ontologically sensitive clinical space. These revisions are in line with recent work in disability studies, that see disability as more than a death sentence. We advocate adjusting phenomenological reflections on disability, to be framed as a way of life, rather than as a deficient or especially deadly mode of human existence.     

The Satisfaction with Life Scale in Adolescent Samples: Measurement Invariance across 24 Countries and Regions,Age, and Gender

Measurement of adolescent life satisfaction across cultures has not received much attention in previous empirical research. The present study evaluated measurement invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) among adolescents in 24 countries and regions (N = 22,710; age range = 13–19 years; 53% female). A single-factor model with residual covariance between a pair of items tapping past life satisfaction fitted well in 19 countries and regions and showed a partial metric invariance. In a subset of nine countries and regions, partial scalar invariance was supported. Partial metric invariance across all 24 countries and regions was achieved when custom model modifications in five countries and regions were included. Three SWLS items showed evidence of noninvariance across cultures. The measurement model was found to operate similarly across gender and age. Our findings suggest that caution is needed when using the SWLS for measuring life satisfaction among adolescents from different cultures.

     

When Harry met Meghan (got married,had a baby,and “Megxited”): Intergroup anxiety,ingroup norms,and racialized categorization as predictors of receptivity to interracial romances

Despite being frequently met with disapproval, interracial romantic relationships have the potential to transform intergroup relations through marriage and children. However, relatively little is known about the receptivity to these important intergroup relationships. Capitalizing on three historical events involving a world-famous interracial couple, Prince Harry and Meghan, we expand the intergroup relations literature by longitudinally and cross-sectionally examining White Briton's perceptions and receptivity to interracial romances. Study 1 (N = 585) showed that intergroup anxiety around the couple's wedding was longitudinally associated with less receptivity to interracial dating and less favorable intergroup attitudes a month later, even when controlling for strong autoregressive paths. Study 2 (N = 402), conducted around the birth of the couple's son (Archie), found that intergroup anxiety (negatively) and favorable ingroup norms (positively) were longitudinally associated with receptivity to intergroup romances and favorable intergroup attitudes a month later in statistically conservative tests. Study 3 (N = 507), conducted at the time of the so-called “Megxit,” cross-sectionally found that media exposure to Meghan was positively associated with favorable ingroup norms which was, again, related to positive intergroup outcomes. However, these associations were suppressed by the perception that Meghan had tainted the Royal Family which was, in turn, negatively associated with the intergroup outcomes. Moderation analyses across the studies revealed these associations were often stronger for those who categorized the biracial Royals as more Black (vs. White). Together, the novel research highlights the often-complex perceptions and longitudinal predictors of interracial romances and does so in historic social contexts.