The development of therapeutic attitudes during and after psychotherapy training

The aim of this study was to explore changes in psychotherapeutic attitudes of students during training in psychodynamic psychotherapy and the first few years after it. Forty-six students were asked to answer a therapeutic identity questionnaire at three times during training and at one time after it. Twenty-one students completed the questionnaire on all four occasions. The questionnaire assessed attitudes on nine scales relating to beliefs about curative elements in psychotherapy, therapeutic style, and basic assumptions about psychotherapy and human nature. At the beginning of training, students had a clear psychoanalytical orientation, similar to that of their supervisors. From the last year of training, after supervision had ended, and continuing during the post-training period, students distanced themselves from the psychoanalytical orientation and their supervisors toward a more eclectic position. This development may reflect the formation of an autonomous therapeutic identity.     

Passion and challenging goals: drawbacks of rushing into goal‐setting processes

This study shows that passion may have a potential downside for setting challenging goals. Hypotheses are developed by drawing on self‐determination theory and goal‐setting theory. Data is collected from a sample of 134 team leaders and hypotheses are tested using ordinary least squares regression analyses. Findings demonstrate that in a project context, team leaders' own competence positively influences their obsessive passion, while their perceptions of team members' competence positively influence their harmonious passion. Goal‐setting speed is included as a mediator in the relationship between passion and degree of goal challenge, proving both harmonious passion and obsessive passion ultimately negatively influence the ability to develop challenging goals because they increase the likelihood of rushing into the goal‐setting process.     

Author Index

Authors Index

Author Index     

Mega‐interest on Microcredit: Are Lenders Exploiting the Poor?

Microcredit is often hailed as an effective way of alleviating poverty. In recent years, however, microfinance institutions have been the target of much criticism due to their comparatively high interest rates (which may be as high as 70–100% per annum). This paper discusses whether it can be morally justified to charge very high rates of interest when lending money to the poor. Arguments are drawn from contemporary as well as historical debates on usury, exploitation, egalitarianism and consequentialism. It is conceded that it would be preferable if interest rates could be reduced, but it is argued that typical microlenders today do nothing wrong in setting their rates at the current levels. Instead the responsibility rests on governments, commercial banks and overseas investors to facilitate an environment where rates could be reduced.     

Fixation identification in centroid versus start-point modes using eye-tracking data

Fixation-identification algorithms, needed for analyses of eye movements, may typically be separated into three categories, viz. (i) velocity-based algorithms, (ii) area-based algorithms, and (iii) dispersion-based algorithms. Dispersion-based algorithms are commonly used but this application introduces some difficulties, one being optimization. Basically, there are two modes to reach this goal of optimization, viz., the start-point mode and the centroid mode. The aim of the present study was to compare and evaluate these two dispersion-based algorithms. Manual inspections were made of 1,400 fixations in each mode. Odds ratios showed that by using the centroid mode for fixation detection, a valid fixation is 2.86 times more likely to be identified than by using the start-point mode. Moreover, the algorithm based on centroid mode dispersion showed a good interpretation speed, accuracy, robustness, and ease of implementation, as well as adequate parameter settings.     

A Comprehensive Model of Entrepreneur Role Stress Antecedents and Consequences

Purpose  The aim of this study was to systematize findings in role stress research into original and conceptually important abstract higher-order constructs and to develop and test a comprehensive structural equation model that examined such expanded conceptualizations of antecedents and consequences to entrepreneur role stress. Design/Methodology/Approach  Model tests were performed on data from a sample of 282 Swedish entrepreneurs (a usable rate of 22.5%) engaged in their first-year of venture activities. We used structural equation modeling, mediation tests and tests for common method bias to test the appropriateness of the model. Findings  We found that role stress can be explained by expansions of lower-ranked, less abstract constructs embedded in a multiple-indicator model of venture technology, venture environment, and entrepreneur personality. The analysis confirmed that role stress is an important mediator and that it has pronounced relationships to expanded conceptualizations of role-related rewards and exhaustion. Implications  This study advance role stress theory and existing knowledge about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship when it introduces role stress and suggests it mediates the effects from personality traits, organizational and environmental characteristics, on higher-order conceptualizations of rewards and exhaustion. Originality/Value  With contributions from several distinct disciplines over a half decade, prior research has not paid much attention to show how role stress research can benefit from more abstract conceptualizations and empirical evaluation. By synthesizing and developing expanded higher-level conceptualizations that link diversities, we show that expanded conceptualizations effectively enable to introduce role stress to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.     

Swedish Reception of Unaccompanied Refugee Children—Promoting Integration?

In this article we describe and analyse the Swedish reception of unaccompanied refugee children and efforts to promote their integration into Swedish society. We identify the actors involved in the reception and promotion of the children’s integration and investigate their efforts through the lens of social ecological systems theory. We show that reception is fraught with challenges that concern lack of interconnections between actors, lack of an articulated political vision of integration and absence of systematic evaluations and long-term follow-ups of how the reception affects integration.     

Comparing serial homicides to single homicides: A study of prevalence,offender, and offence characteristics in Sweden

Multiple and serial homicides constitute around 1.6% of all homicides but have unusually tragic outcomes. The aims of this study were to report the prevalence serial‐homicide offences and the characteristics of serial‐homicide offenders in a non‐North American context. The study included all convicted serial‐homicide offenders in Sweden from 1973 to 2012 (n = 25), as well as a population‐based control sample of single‐homicide offenders collected during 2007 and 2009 (n = 201). Similar to U.S. findings, approximately 1.6% of homicides could be attributed to serial‐homicide offenders. Serial offenders were more often diagnosed with personality disorders and autism‐spectrum disorders compared with single offenders; and serial offences more often involved victims who were female and unacquainted with the offender, as well as planning, sexual motives, and asphyxia as method of violence. One third of serial offences involved actions aimed at disguising the manner of death; such actions were considerably less common in single‐homicide offences. Few offenders displayed the traditional profile of a serial‐homicide offender; however, one third displayed sexual motives, a rate roughly 10 times higher than that in the single‐homicide group. The study concludes that serial‐homicide offenders should be subjected to forensic‐psychiatric examinations and that research involving cross‐contextual differences and similarities in serial‐homicide offenders is needed.     

Cognitive bias,emotion, and somatic complaints in a normal sample

Cognitive bias (Stroop interference and implicit memory bias) for masked and unmasked threat words (illness words and negative emotion words) was investigated for its associations with emotion (anxiety, anger/aggression, and positive affect) and somatic complaints in a randomly selected community sample of 138 individuals. Because measures of cognitive bias are inherently bipolar, the data were tested for both linear and curvilinear trends. Cross-sectional analysis showed that the associations between somatic anxiety and Stroop interference for unmasked threat words were better described in terms of curvilinear than linear models, and that degree of somatic complaints was associated with Stroop facilitation for masked threat words. Longitudinal analysis showed that Stroop interference for masked threat words predicted lack of positive affect during an ensuing eight weeks daily recording period. Implicit memory bias was found to be negatively associated with measures of anger/aggression, both in the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. We suggest that: (a) cognitive bias should be treated as a bipolar construct in future research; (b) the phenomenon of Stroop facilitation for threat words deserves further exploration; and (c) more research should address the question about the relationship between cognitive bias and other emotions than anxiety (e.g., positive affect and anger).