Unlikely allies: credibility transfer during a corporate crisis

A company that faces a crisis can reestablish trust with stakeholders by announcing an independent investigation by a third party. Announcing an independent investigation, without knowing its outcome, significantly restored attitudes toward the company while an internal investigation was ineffective. Liberals responded most positively to a company that invited an independent investigation by a consumer advocacy group (Study 1). Experimentally activating liberal values using an implicit priming procedure likewise enhanced credibility transfer from a consumer advocacy group's investigation to a company in crisis (Study 2).     

The Pew Versus the Couch: Relationship Between Mental Health and Faith Communities and Lessons Learned from a VA/Clergy Partnership Project

The history of the relationship between religion and mental health is one of commonality, conflict, controversy, and distrust. An awareness of this complex relationship is essential to clinicians and clergy seeking to holistically meet the needs of people in our clinics, our churches, and our communities. Understanding this relationship may be particularly important in rural communities. This paper briefly discusses the history of this relationship and important areas of disagreement and contention. The paper moves beyond theory to present some current practical tensions identified in a brief case study of VA/Clergy partnerships in rural Arkansas. The paper concludes with a framework of three models for understanding how most faith communities perceive mental health and suggests opportunities to overcome the tensions between “the pew” and “the couch.”     

Parent and Adolescent Reports of Parenting When a Parent Has a History of Depression: Associations with Observations of Parenting

The current study examined the congruence of parent and adolescent reports of positive and negative parenting with observations of parent-adolescent interactions as the criterion measure. The role of parent and adolescent depressive symptoms in moderating the associations between adolescent or parent report and observations of parenting also was examined. Participants were 180 parents (88.9 % female) with a history of clinical depression and one of their 9-to-15 year old children (49.4 % female). Parents and adolescents reported on parenting skills and depressive symptoms, and parenting was independently observed subsequently in the same session. Findings indicated adolescent report of positive, but not negative, parenting was more congruent with observations than parent report. For negative parenting, depressive symptoms qualified the relation between the parent or adolescent report and independent observations. For parents, higher levels of depressive symptoms were associated with more congruence with observed parenting (supporting a depressive realism hypothesis) whereas an opposite trend emerged for adolescents (providing some supporting evidence for a depression-distortion hypothesis).     

Marriage and Family Therapists’ Use and Comfort with Online Communication with Clients

Despite the growth in computer and Internet use, marriage and family therapists’ (MFT) use of such technologies to communicate with clients has received limited attention. The purpose of the current research was to understand the frequency and ways in which MFTs are communicating online with clients and identify their level of comfort with online treatments. We administered a survey to practicing MFTs across the US to identify the frequency with which they used online communications with their clients, and the extent to which they felt comfortable using online communications in various treatment modalities. Implications for research, training, and practice are discussed.     

A normatively adequate credal reductivism

It is a prevalent, if not popular, thesis in the metaphysics of belief that facts about an agent’s beliefs depend entirely upon facts about that agent’s underlying credal state. Call this thesis ‘credal reductivism’ and any view that endorses this thesis a ‘credal reductivist view’. An adequate credal reductivist view will accurately predict both when belief occurs and which beliefs are held appropriately, on the basis of credal facts alone. Several well-known—and some lesser known—objections to credal reductivism turn on the inability of standard credal reductivist views to get the latter, normative, results right. This paper presents and defends a novel credal reductivist view according to which belief is a type of “imprecise credence” that escapes these objections by including an extreme credence of 1.     

One too many categories: an experimental test on the effectiveness of a dual-identity recategorization intervention on age-based bias

A laboratory experiment was conducted on a convenient sample of N?=?724 introductory Psychology students from the southeastern United States, to test the effectiveness of a dual identity recategorization intervention when applied on age bias toward a hypothetical older adult, when applied on individuals both low and high on the spectrum of ageism, and when applied on members of the naturally occurring in-group, younger adults. As predicted by Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, the intervention served to worsen evaluations of an in-group target vis-à-vis a control group that was not exposed to the intervention, and especially when applied on individuals possessing lower amounts of the in-group bias in question, ageism. Moreover, although age-based stereotyping and in-group bias against an older applicant was demonstrated, the intervention was found to have no effect in changing evaluations of an older target relative to the control group. Results and implications for future research are discussed.     

A Multi-informant Approach to Assessing Fear of Positive Evaluation in Socially Anxious Adolescents

Fears of positive evaluation form important components of social anxiety. Researchers developed the Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale (FPES) to assess these fears. The FPES reliably and validly assesses fears of positive evaluation in undergraduates and adult social anxiety patients. However, it remains unclear if the FPES reliably and validly assesses these fears in clinic-referred adolescents. Further, implementing the FPES in clinical assessments of adolescents likely requires a multi-informant approach. Indeed, long lines of work indicate low cross-informant correspondence in reports of anxiety and anxiety-related constructs, and support the combined use of multiple informants’ reports (e.g., parents and adolescents). We examined the FPES in a clinic-referred sample of adolescents aged 14–17 years (M = 15.11; 20 females; 59.5 % African American). Thirty-seven parent-adolescent pairs completed the FPES, as well as reports of adolescent social anxiety, safety-seeking behaviors, and depressive symptoms. Both parent and adolescent reports on the FPES evidenced adequate levels of internal consistency. Further, when taking both parent and adolescent reports into consideration, the FPES significantly and positively related to measures of social anxiety and safety-seeking behaviors, over and above other widely used measures of adolescent social anxiety and depressive symptoms. The findings indicate that a multi-informant administration of the FPES yields internally consistent and valid estimates of fears of positive evaluation in a clinical sample of adolescents. These findings have important implications for properly assessing and treating social anxiety concerns in adolescents.     

Hooking up: Gender differences, evolution, and pluralistic ignorance

"Hooking-up" - engaging in no-strings-attached sexual behaviors with uncommitted partners - has become a norm on college campuses, and raises the potential for disease, unintended pregnancy, and physical and psychological trauma. The primacy of sex in the evolutionary process suggests that predictions derived from evolutionary theory may be a useful first step toward understanding these contemporary behaviors. This study assessed the hook-up behaviors and attitudes of 507 college students. As predicted by behavioral-evolutionary theory: men were more comfortable than women with all types of sexual behaviors; women correctly attributed higher comfort levels to men, but overestimated men's actual comfort levels; and men correctly attributed lower comfort levels to women, but still overestimated women's actual comfort levels. Both genders attributed higher comfort levels to same-gendered others, reinforcing a pluralistic ignorance effect that might contribute to the high frequency of hook-up behaviors in spite of the low comfort levels reported and suggesting that hooking up may be a modern form of intrasexual competition between females for potential mates.     

Regional differences in pathogen prevalence and defensive reactions to the "swine flu" outbreak among East Asians and Westerners

Research has found that contagion-minimizing behavioral tendencies are amplified in pathogen-prevalent regions. We investigated whether reactions to the "swine flu" outbreak of 2009 were stronger among East Asians than Westerners, populations residing in regions that now enjoy comparable advances in healthcare but that are characterized by relatively high and low historical pathogen prevalence, respectively. In a survey, East Asians reported greater concerns about infection, especially from foreigners. Analyses of international air travel data around the time of the outbreak provided corroborating evidence: Immediately following the outbreak, airports in the Asia-Pacific region lost more international traffic relative to their Western counterparts, and East Asian airlines reported greater declines in international traffic compared to Western airlines. These differences are unlikely to reflect objective threat posed by swine flu (whose casualties were concentrated in the Americas); rather, they appear to reflect culturally adapted behavioral patterns forged and sustained by regionally variable levels of pathogen prevalence.     

Shifts in attention biases in response to acute pain induction: examination of a model of "conversion" among repressors

Unlike most people, those who are characterized by a repressive coping style report high levels of physical (sensory) pain but low levels of emotional distress (affective pain), which is a discrepancy that may suggest a "conversion" process. In two studies, we tested an attention allocation model, proposing that repressors direct attention away from threatening negative affective information and toward nonthreatening physical pain information during emotionally arousing (painful) situations. In Study 1, 84 participants underwent a cold pressor and then recovered. Repressors reported greater pain during recovery than low- and high-anxious participants, but they reported lower distress than high-anxious participants. Repressors reported significant and large discrepancies between high pain and low distress, whereas these differences were less pronounced for other groups. In Study 2, 77 participants underwent an ischemic pain task while performing a modified dot-probe task with sensory and negative affective pain words as stimuli. Repressors showed increasing biases away from affective pain words and toward sensory pain words as the pain task continued, whereas low- and high-anxious participants did not show these shifts in attention. The results support the notion that conversion among repressors may involve a process by which attention is directed away from emotional distress during noxious stimulation and is focused instead on sensory information from pain.