Interventive Interviewing: Part III. Intending to Ask Lineal,Circular, Strategic,or Reflexive Questions?

Every question asked by a therapist may be seen to embody some intent and to arise from certain assumptions. Many questions are intended to orient the therapist to the client's situation and experiences; others are asked primarily to provoke therapeutic change. Some questions are based on lineal assumptions about the phenomena being addressed; others are based on circular assumptions. The differences among these questions are not trivial. They tend to have dissimilar effects. This article explores these issues and offers a framework for distinguishing four major groups of questions. The framework may be used by therapists to guide their decision making about what kinds of questions to ask, and by researchers to study different interviewing styles.     

Predicting Job Seeking Frequency and Psychological Well-Being in the Unemployed

Unemployed (n = 118) and employed (n = 120) people were contrasted on variables of well-being, confidence, and employment commitment. The unemployed scored lower on the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1972) and the General Self-Efficacy Scale (Sherer et al., 1982). No differences were Identified on levels of employment commitment. For the unemployed sample, predictors of job-seeking behavior and well-being were then examined. Intention to seek work predicted job-seeking behavior, while self-efficacy, employment commitment, and intentions to seek work predicted well-being. Results are discussed in light of current theories of job seeking behavior, and recommendations are made for practice.     

Studies in subjective probability V: Chance vs. structure in visual patterns

Student subjects were instructed to produce maximally non-random, aesthetically attractive and random appearing dot patterns of two different levels of complexity (3 and 5 dots). When the patterns were grouped according to similarity, random patterns were found to belong to greater equivalence groups than non-random patterns. They were also estimated to be far more probable to arise from a chance process, regardless of number of elements. The aesthetically attractive patterns were placed between random and non-random patterns in terms of probability estimates. With increasing pattern complexity, patterns produced according to different instructions became increasingly distinguishable. It is argued that there may be an optimal complexity level for discovering "structure" or unique configurations in chance patterns (cf. the constellations of stars).     

"Perception" versus "Learning": The effect of different instructions upon the central tendency shift

Abstract.— Earlier studies of context effects in stimulus generalization, especially in the adaption-level tradition, have failed to take into account the subjective difference between a learning experiment and an experiment in perception. In the present study, 68 student subjects were trained to discriminate a 30 cm vertical line from shorter and longer lines, and were subsequently tested for generalization with asymmetrical test series (centering around 34 cm). Half of the subjects were told that they were participating in a perception experiment, the other half that they were participating in a learning experiment. Subjects in the latter condition were considerably more influenced by context and gave a greater number of equivalence responses than did the subjects in the perception condition. Amount of training and discriminability of training stimuli did also influence the central tendency shift, but to a lesser extent.     

Studies in subjective probability III: The unimportance of alternatives

In four experiments, student subjects were asked to estimate probabilities for a list of two to ten exhaustive, non-chance events, covering a variety of situations, both of prediction and diagnosis. Only in the two-alternative case a majority gave estimates which add up to unity (or 100%). As the number of alternatives increased, the total probability increased far beyond 100%, indicating a non-distributional probability concept. For instance, the probability that a person has committed murder was considered to be quite independent of his being one of three or one of five suspects. Even when subjects were told that the list should be extended with two additional alternatives and were allowed to correct their earlier estimates, few thought it necessary to do so, and corrections went equally in both directions.     

Recognition failure of recallable words: free and cued recall compared

The experiment reported was conducted with the purpose of studying whether the phenomenon of recognition failure of recallable words would hold for a paradigm which involves a free recall test rather than a cued recall test used in previous research. The 3×2 design used comprised two between-subjects factors: the subjects were instructed that a recognition test, a cued recall test, or a free recall test would follow the study trial, but the actual test sequence given was recognition followed by cued recall, or recognition followed by free recall. The results demonstrate that cases of recognition failure of recallable words do occur in all six conditions, but the amount of recognition failure for the recognition-free recall test sequence was less than that predicted from the Tulving & Wiseman (1975) function. In line with previous research the data for the recognition-cued recall test sequence showed the amount of recognition failure that was predicted by this function.     

Intrinsic interest and the novelty-familiarity interaction

According to the interaction hypothesis of interest, the inherent interestingness of a communication or a situation will be maximal when novel and familiar elements are simultaneously present. This is illustrated in three experimental demonstrations, where students were to indicate their interest (a) in book titles (more and less well-known authors best and least known works); (b) in reports by foreign journalists about everyday life in Norway (familiar topic) and in Honduras (less familiar); and (c) in meeting tourists of different nationalities at more and less familiar geographical locations. The results show that the preference function for novelty will be ascending or descending dependent upon the familiarity or unfamiliarity of other aspects of the situation. Thus, Norwegian subjects were not very curious about unfamiliar British authors least known works, whereas they would very much like to read what journalists from unfamiliar countries write about Norway. Also, they preferred meeting tourists from unfamiliar countries, as long as the meeting took place in a familiar city. In a foreign city, the order of preference was reversed.     

HOW SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION AND JOB STATUS INFLUENCE PERCEPTIONS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BENEFICIARIES

This paper examines evaluative judgments about an African-American beneficiary of affirmative action (AA) in two studies. Based on a motivated social cognition model, we test whether the use of AA, social dominance orientation (SDO), and job status jointly influence judgments about the future job performance and career progression of an AA beneficiary. In a sample of 244 undergraduate business students, Study 1 showed that SDO and AA interact to predict job-related performance expectations, and AA and job status interact to predict career progression expectations. Study 2 used a different sample of 190 business undergraduates to test whether the effects of AA, job status, SDO and their interactions on evaluative judgments is mediated by stereotype application. Results showed that different dimensions of stereotypes mediated the relationships between SDO, job status and the AA × SDO interaction.     

Faultless Disagreement and Aesthetic Realism

It has recently been argued that certain areas of discourse, such as discourse about matters of taste, involve a phenomenon of ‘‘faultless disagreement’’ that rules out giving a standard realist or contextualist semantics for them. Thus, it is argued, we are left with no choice but to consider more adventurous semantic alternatives for these areas, such as a semantic account that involves relativizing truth to perspectives or contexts of assessment. I argue that the sort of faultless disagreement present in these cases is in fact compatible with a realist treatment of their semantics. Then I briefly consider other considerations that might be thought to speak against realism about these areas of discourse. I conclude with the tentative suggestion that realism about matters of taste is far more plausible (at least in some cases) than most philosophers believe today.