Institutional emotion norms and role satisfaction: Examination of a career wife population

Unlike other types of career wives, Assemblies of God missionary wives report very high role satisfaction and low depressive symptomatology. In order to explain this “exception,” this study examines (1) the social-structural conditions that affect satisfaction, (2) affective and behavioral responses, and (3) organizational implications. Data were collected through participant observation, interviewing, analysis of documents, and questionnaire research (n=200). Findings suggest that missionary wives often evoked satisfaction in response to institutional emotion norms in the manner suggested by the emotion management perspective. The social-psychological process of emotion work is examined, as well as the manner in which compliance facilitates organizational production and reproduction. Hypotheses for future research are suggested.     

Reflections on group psychotherapy with eating-disordered patients

This paper addresses some of the dynamics, resistances, and transference and countertransference considerations in group psychotherapy with eating disordered patients. Several resistances are delineated, including guilt over being helped, the recreation of early problems around control and forced feeding, and withdrawal as a defensive operation. A brief vignette is presented which highlights the demand on the part of the therapist as well as the patient to contain and manage feelings rather than acting on them. Lastly, the author argues that group participation helps the patient to identify, articulate, and accept feelings and to promote assertiveness.This paper is based on a presentation given at the Training Institute for Mental Health on May 11, 1991.     

PARADIGMS OF BELIEF, THEORY AND METATHEORY

Abstract. My account of the recent turnabout in the treatment of mental states in science and its basis in a modified concept of causal determinism and my claim that this opens the way for beliefs and values consistent with science are here reaffirmed in response to perceived weaknesses and "inherent incompleteness." Contested issues are reviewed to better clarify the main thesis. An inherent weakness in respect to deep spiritual needs is recognized and tentative remedial measures explored.     

Aging and shifts of visual spatial attention.

Three experiments examined adult age differences in the efficiency of endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary) attention shifts. Younger and older subjects performed a spatial cuing task in which abruptly onset peripheral cues (Experiment 1) or central, symbolic cues (Experiments 2 and 3) were presented before a target stimulus at intervals ranging from 50 to 250 ms. With peripheral cues, the magnitude of cuing effects was at least as great for older as for younger adults and followed a similar time course. Similar results were obtained with symbolic cues, although cuing effects for older adults varied with cue difficulty. The results suggest that cue encoding may decline with advancing age but that the efficiency of the shift process is preserved.     

The relationship between attitude,assertiveness and condom use

The Australian study investigated condom-specific assertiveness and condom use as a means of prevention infection from sexually transmitted diseases. 211 men participated including 83 homosexual men (aged 19-62 years) and 128 heterosexual men (aged 17-49) who completed a questionnaire that comprised demographic details such as age, monogamy, and sexual activity as well as attitudinal and assertiveness measures. General assertiveness was measured by the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule (RAS) which had been widely used across a wide range of social situations. Assertiveness relating specifically to situations involving condoms was measured by the Condom Assertiveness Scale (CAS). Intention to use condoms was positively related to favorable attitudes, which were related to condom-specific assertiveness for both groups. For the heterosexual men only, general social assertiveness was negatively related to attitudes toward condoms. For both groups, the condom-specific measure of assertiveness was positively correlated with attitudes toward condoms. Condom-specific assertiveness was positively related to general social assertiveness as measured by the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule for the homosexual, but not for the heterosexual men. The negative relationship between general assertiveness and attitude to condoms among the heterosexual men implies that the risk reducing behavior of condom use did not seem to accord with the perceptions of masculinity and social assertiveness among heterosexual men. Thus, female partners of such heterosexual men exhibiting negative attitudes toward condom use combined with assertiveness would have to overcome resistance to insist on the use of condoms. Recently some advertising campaigns have been directed at women. The promotion of condom use among heterosexual men has to deal with the perceptions of condom use as unmasculine behavior.     

The Chancellor's memory: Rhetoric and truth in discursive remembering

This paper explores the notion of truthfulness in research on conversational remembering. It argues that people's accounts of past events, before they can be taken as data on the cognitive workings of memory, need to be examined as contextualized and variable productions that perform pragmatic and rhetorical work; no one version can be taken as a person's real memory. The consequences of this discourse-analytical perspective are examined first through a critical discussion of Ulric Neisser's study of John Dean's testimony to the senate ‘Watergate’ committee. The issues are then explored more deeply in an analysis of reportings of a different event, in which similar (Watergate-like) issues of memory, truth and accuracy are also at issue. It is argued that: (a) all of Neisser's three kinds of memory–verbatim, gist and ‘repisodic’–involve problematical assumptions concerning their relation to some true, original event; and (b) that Dean's accounts of his memory and his displays of memory should be approached as occasioned productions oriented pragmatically to the assignment of guilt and avoidance of scapegoating. Through an analysis of newspaper reports (based on memory) of a controversial briefing given by the then British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, we then examine: (a) how discourse about what could be used as an arbiter of truth was rhetorically organized; (b) how participants' versions of events were constructed rhetorically, as parts of arguments; (c) that both sides in the dispute maintained the coherence of their positions by a form of error accounting similar to that used by Neisser with respect to Dean. It is suggested that cognitive psychologists, whether working in the laboratory or attempting to do real-world studies of everyday remembering, need to avoid simplistic notions of true original events, and can do so by addressing the rhetorical organization of participants' memory accounts.     

An evaluation of a brief integrity test user orientation program

The purpose of this pilot study was to assess the effectiveness of a brief test user orientation program on increasing service station managers' familiarity with a few key employment testing issues, including their familiarity with theModel Guidelines for Preemployment Integrity Testing Programs. The obtained results reveal that even a brief orientation program was able to significantly increase the managers' stated degree of familiarity with testing issues.     

Political families in therapy: The impact of media coverage and therapeutic issues

Many political families are ultra cautious about seeking therapy because of the stigma it carries in the political arena. Various cases on record show where an aspiring political candidate's chances to run for high elected office were destroyed because of publicity over her or his involvement in therapy. Nonetheless, members of families in politics do seek treatment and bring with them their idiosyncratic circumstances. This article attempts to provide an interior view of the politician's family life as seen in the therapist's sanctuary and a consideration of how media coverage may impact politician and family. Clinical data and information from interviews with six acquaintances whose main occupation is politics are presented. It is hoped that the data will enable therapists to understand and treat political families more effectively.Florence Kaslow, PhD, is director of Florida Couples and Family Institute in West Palm Beach. She is a visiting professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, and a visiting professor of psychology at Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL.