Influence of a Cross-Cultural Training Course on Racial Identity Attitudes of White Women and Men: Preliminary Perspectives

The authors examine the influence of cross-cultural training on the racial identity attitudes of 35 White graduate counselors in training (10 men and 25 women) and the impact of gender on training. A pretest-posttest comparison of responses to the White Racial Identity Attitudes Survey (WRIAS) was used. Results indicated that the cross-cultural training course (a) influenced racial identity attitudes of White counselors in training and (b) racial identity attitudes were influenced by gender.     

Comparing Risky Decision Making Under Conditions of Real and Hypothetical Consequences

In a series of three experiments, subjects made risky decisions under conditions of hypothetical or real consequences. Task variations across experiments included: (1) type of risk (monetary gambles or investments of time and effort), (2) within-subject and between-subjects manipulations of consequence condition, and (3) single or multiple decisions. The hypothesis of no difference between choices in real and hypothetical consequence conditions was retained in each experiment. Supplemental analyses ruled out various “artifactual” interpretations of the null results. Discussion focused on conditions in which researchers can and cannot infer decision makers’ actual risk preferences from their responses in laboratory tasks.     

Beliefs about stories: Parents' and therapists' explanations of childhood difficulties

Therapists and parents were given vignettes describing the behavioural and emotional difficulties of two nine-year-old children and were asked to rate the importance of a number of possible explanations for such difficulties. Broad agreement was found between parents and therapists, but also there were a number of significant differences. Parents endorsed more child centered explanations and put greater emphasis on physical and developmental factors, while therapists endorsed relationships factors and saw the beliefs of other family members as important. Therapists who were parents showed a pattern of responses that lay between those of parents and non-parent therapists.     

MFT trainee adjustment to program lifestyle stress: The TAPS scale

The 30-item Trainee Adjustment to Program Stress (TAPS) scale was developed to measure lifestyle stress of family therapy trainees. Initially, 70 items were generated from propositional statements based on four constructs. Following pilot testing, 329 out of 900 (37%) student members of the American Association for Mariage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) returned TAPS questionnaires. Internal consistency reliability analyses and principal components and factor analyses produced a final 30 item TAPS scale appropriate for use in family therapy training programs. Reliability and validity measures are reported.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

Joining with all members of a family system: The rhetoric of antilogic in family therapy dialogue

Family therapists face a significant rhetorical challenge in working with families that disagree about the problematic life-situation which brought them to therapy. Therapists must find a way to join with disagreeing family members and then find a way to engage in a therapeutically useful conversation with them. Thus, they must deal resourcefully with contradictions. This article explores the ways that the Sophistic rhetorical concept of antilogic may be employed in helping therapists join and then engage in a therapeutically useful conversation with families who hold contradictory views concerning the problem that brought them to therapy.The author wishes to thank Ronald Chenail, PhD, Douglas Flemons, PhD, and Shelly Green, PhD, for their assistance in the development of this project.     

A plea for more intervision

The author presents an argument for tolerance, mutual understanding and reconciliation in psychotherapy, instead of a continued emphasis of schools. Psychotherapists' work with clients is proposed as a likely area for mutual understanding, rather than continued emphasis on their particular theories and academic matters. Psychotherapeutic intervision groups in which a small number of therapists voluntarily discuss their cases with peers from various backgrounds have become increasingly common again in recent years.Slightly revised version of a presentation made at the Georgetown Family Center Symposium in November 1995.     

Do the bishops have it right on health care reform?

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops has argued for significant government involvement in health care in order to assure respect for what they regard as the right to health care. Critics charge that the bishops are wrong because health care is not a right. In this article, it is argued that these critics are correct in their claim that health care is not a right. However, it is also argued that the premise that health care is not a right does not imply that the market is the most equitable and just system for providing health care. Natural law arguments in the tradition of Roman Catholic social teaching lead to the conclusion that a just and prosperous society has a moral obligation to provide health care even if there is no such right. Further, there are strong moral grounds for concluding that the bishops are correct in their claim that health care ought not to be considered a market commodity. It is argued that if health care ought not to be considered a commodity, then national health insurance is the best available alternative for fulfilling the social obligation to distribute health care resources justly and fairly at this time in American history. The bishops' case for government involvement can be made on the strength of the Catholic tradition in theological argumentation, independent of the claim that health care is a right.     

Attributional style,attributional retraining,and inoculation against motivational deficits

College students periodically experience many challenges in pursuit of their educational goals. Such experiences can have deleterious effects on subsequent motivation and performance when they are perceived as negative. Research shows that some students who experience negative events are buffered against motivational deficits, whereas others are motivationally at-risk. Several individual difference variables have been proposed to account for such diverse reactions. A longitudinal field study that involved three phases was conducted to extend this research. Phase I examined the motivational buffering effects of academic attributional style on students' performance, motivation, and emotions. Results indicated that attributional style related to students' performance, motivation, and emotions. Specifically, students who routinely made unstable and controllable attributions for negative academic events exhibited the greatest performance and motivation compared to students who typically made stable and uncontrollable attributions. Phases II and III were designed to examine the remedial benefits of attributional retraining for different attributional styles. Findings indicated that attributional retraining influenced motivation, emotions, and course grade. These results were qualified by the interaction between attributional style, attributional retraining, and time. Findings are discussed within Weiner's (1985, 1986) attribution theory. This research was based, in part, on the first author's dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology and the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) doctoral fellowship, a University of Manitoba doctoral fellowship, and a SSHRCC postdoctoral fellowship to the first author. In addition, the research was also supported by a SSHRCC research grant (#410911296) to the second author. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Bernard Weiner, Harvey Keselman, John Adair, Rodney Clifton, and Robert Altemeyer. Also appreciated was the assistance of Verena Menec and the Higher Education Research group.