Therapist Spiritual and Religious Values in Psychotherapy

In training and in supervision, counselors learn to be cognizant of personal values (e.g., spirituality, religiosity), yet they are enjoined to except them from practice. This article examines the nature of therapist spiritual and religious values and the impact of these values on the practice of psychotherapy. A goal of effective treatment should be the integration of therapist spiritual and religious values with therapist epistemic values in order to accommodate the spiritual and religious needs of both client and counselor. Counselor spiritual and religious values can contribute to therapy, even when the therapist is engaged in a dialectic involving personal and epistemic values.     

A pattern recognition account of decision making

In the domain of pattern recognition, experiments have shown that perceivers integrate multiple sources of information in an optimal manner. In contrast, other research has been interpreted to mean that decision making is nonoptimal. As an example, Tversky and Kahneman (1983) have shown that subjects commit a conjunction fallacy because they judge it more likely that a fictitious person named Linda is a bank teller and a feminist than just a bank teller. This judgment supposedly violates probability theory, because the probability of two events can never be greater than the probability of either event alone. The present research tests the hypothesis that subjects interpret this judgment task as a pattern recognition task. If this hypothesis is correct, subjects’ judgments should be described accurately by the fuzzy logical model of perception (FLMP)—a successful model of pattern recognition. In the first experiment, the Linda task was extended to an expanded factorial design with five vocations and five avocations. The probability ratings were described well by the FLMP and described poorly by a simple probability model. The second experiment included (1) two fictitious people, Linda and Joan, as response alternatives and (2) both ratings and categorization judgments. Although the ratings were accurately described by both the FLMP and an averaging of the sources of information, the categorization judgments were described better by the FLMP. These results reveal important similarities in recognizing patterns and in decision making. Given that the FLMP is an optimal method for combining multiple sources of information, the probability judgments appear to be optimal in the same manner as pattern-recognition judgments.     

MENSTRUAL JOY The Construct and Its Consequences

Fifty female college students participated in a study of women's health. In a counterbalanced design, half of the participants completed the Menstrual Joy Questionnaire (MJQ) and the Menstrual Attitude Questionnaire (MAQ) in the first testing session. A week later they completed the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ) and the Menstrual Attitude Questionnaire. The other participants completed the MDQ and MAQ in the first session and the MJQ and MAQ in the second. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that those who received the MJQ first reported more positive cyclic changes on the MDQ and more positive attitudes on the MAQ. A follow-up study of 40 college students examined their responses to the MJQ. Participants reported that they were surprised or incredulous; most had not previously considered positive aspects of the menstrual cycle. Thirty percent reported that the MJQ had caused them to look at menstruation in a different way.     

DECONSTRUCTING THE MYTH OF THE NONAGGRESSIVE WOMAN

One of the most pervasive and undisputed gender stereotypes is that men are more aggressive than women. However, this stereotype has, until recently, led researchers to conclude that women are nonaggressive and, therefore, to ignore the topic of female aggression as a distinct phenomenon. The basis of the myth, factors supporting its maintenance, and theories of female aggression are examined. A feminist reinterpretation of aggression that views women's and men's aggressive behavior within social structural arrangements that create and sustain differential power relations is presented.     

Cognition without classical architecture

Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988) argue that any successful model of cognition must use classical architecture; it must depend upon rule-based processing sensitive to constituent structure. This claim is central to their defense of classical AI against the recent enthusiasm for connectionism. Connectionist nets, they contend, may serve as theories of the implementation of cognition, but never as proper theories of psychology. Connectionist models are doomed to describing the brain at the wrong level, leaving the classical view to account for the mind.This paper considers whether recent results in connectionist research weigh against Fodor and Pylyshyn's thesis. The investigation will force us to develop criteria for determining exactly when a net is capable of systematic processing. Fodor and Pylyshyn clearly intend their thesis to affect the course of research in psychology. I will argue that when systematicity is defined in a way that makes the thesis relevant in this way, the thesis is challenged by recent progress in connectionism.     

JOB SEARCH BEHAVIOR OF EMPLOYED MANAGERS

Job search typically has been thought of as an antecedent to voluntary turnover or job choice. This study extends existing literature by proposing a model of the job search process and examining the search behavior of 1,388 employed managers. Managers were surveyed about their job search and voluntary turnover activities. Survey data were matched with job, organizational, and personal information contained in the data base of a large executive search firm. Results suggest that job satisfaction, compensation, and perceptions of organizational success were negatively related to job search, while desire for more work-family balance and ambition exhibited positive relations with search. Perceptions of greener pastures did not have much effect on job search among this group. Results also indicated that although some job search activity does facilitate turnover, a considerable amount of search does not lead to turnover. Thus, it appears that search serves many purposes.     

Memory trace development along a coarse-to-fine dimension; a study supporting a progressively finer attributes theory

This study presents two experiments that demonstrate that the memory trace of a tobe-remembered item develops along a dimension (continuum) from coarse/general to fine/specific. Similarly, forgetting is shown to be a reverse movement along this dimension from fine to coarse, as increasingly less fine attributes are lost. The attribute acquisition pattern of this Progressively Finer Attributes Theory is robust and predictable, valid for experimentally unstructured (Experiment 2) as well as experimentally structured (Experiment 1) material.     

Promotion and employee turnover: Critique,meta-analysis,and implications

Qualitative reviews of the withdrawal literature have reached inconsistent conclusions regarding the strength of the relationship between promotion and turnover. Several issues were addressed in this study which may account for these inconsistencies. First, we differentiate among three distinct operationalizations of promotion: (1) promotion satisfaction; (2) perceptions of promotional opportunity; and (3) actual promotion. We then conduct quantitative reviews using meta-analytic procedures on turnover and the three operationalizations of promotion. We found no significant relationships between promotion satisfaction and turnoveror between perceived promotional opportunities and turnover. However, a significant negative relationship was found between actual promotion and turnover. Theoretical implication of these findings are presented.     

The development of beliefs about spelling and their relationship to spelling performance

This study examined relations among spelling performance and students' beliefs about spelling, including self-efficacy for spelling ability, outcome expectancy for spelling, and attributions for good spelling across grades 4, 7, and 10. Spelling self-efficacy remained relatively constant across grades. Spelling outcome expectancies for adult life and school declined across grades, as did effort and ability attributions for spelling success, with a disproportional decrease in ability attributions between grades 4 and 7. Self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of spelling performance at all grade levels; attribution for ability entered into the regression for grade 4 students, while outcome expectancies for school and writing were more important in grades 7 and 10. Cluster analyses on the grade 10 sample showed that students with high efficacy as spellers and high outcome expectancy of spelling for writing were the best spellers, with the highest performance reserved for those who attributed good spelling more to effort than ability. The impact of spelling instruction on developing beliefs is discussed.     

Taking an individualized approach to the assessment of self-efficacy and the prediction of alcoholic relapse

The present study reports on a clinical instrument designed for assessing self-efficacy in alcoholics. In contrast to studies that construct general measures, it was proposed that taking an individualized approach to assessment might offer an effective methodology. Thirty-four alcoholics in an outpatient, behaviorally oriented treatment program participated as subjects. During therapy, an Individualized Self-Efficacy Survey (ISS) was developed for each subject. The ISS was developed by (a) administering the Drinking Patterns Questionnaire (DPQ) to identify important problem areas (e.g., work, children, marital) and specific drinking antecedents and (b) constructing a 15-item scale using each drinker's most important cues. The utility of having clients choose their own items was supported by finding a significant relationship between problem areas identified as important on the DPQ and the areas reported as surrounding relapse. ISS ratings were reflective of efficacy changes during treatment, while posttreatment ISS scores were predictive of subsequent relapse. Situation-specific prediction of relapse was not found. The advantages of this methodology for clinical use are discussed, while general directions for future research are suggested.