From landlines to cell phones: negotiating identity positions in new career contexts

This article uses metaphors to explore how changes in technology and the world of work affect the lives and identities of workers today. The author integrates theory from vocational psychology and cultural studies with personal narrative in order to consider positive and negative aspects of the shift from traditional linear careers to postmodern, boundaryless, protean careers. Career is framed as a dialogical construct that is mutually shaped by individual and social practices. Career counselors are invited to consider ways they might adapt their practice to better accommodate clients' lived experiences of evolving career contexts.     

Filial Responsibility and Transitions Involved: A Qualitative Exploration of Caregiving Daughters and Frail Mothers

One of the consequences of an aging society is the growing need for caregivers to the increasing number of frail older persons. This study is a qualitative examination of filial responsibility between caregiving daughters and frail mothers. It explores filial expectations and motivations and how incongruencies are met and negotiated. Twenty-two women (eleven caregiving dyads) were interviewed using a semi-structured interview format. Employing the grounded theory methodology, interviews were analyzed both individually and dyadically for content and themes. What emerged from the analysis was a grounded theory framework of four intrapsychic caregiving and care-receiving transitions: (1) Realizing I am a Caregiver/Care-receiver; (2) Defining the Caregiver/Care-receiver Roles; (3) Redefining the Caregiving Relationship; and (4) Relationship Acceptance. The transitions identified here comprise a loose framework influenced by different levels of filial responsibility—personal, parental, family, and religious. In addition to the four transitions, one overarching theme called “Emotional Responses to Informal Caregiving and Care-receiving” was evident throughout the findings. Findings from this research provide a framework for understanding the often unclear transitions that daughters and mothers believe they go through. Research implications are discussed for researchers, therapists, caregiving support group leaders, and women who are contemplating or confronted with filial responsibility.     

Facets of psychopathy, Axis II traits, and behavioral dysregulation among jail detainees

Forensic evaluations of offender populations often consider psychopathy as an integral component of these consultations. Vexing issues remain of whether psychopathic traits should be evaluated consistently irrespective of demographic characteristics (e.g. gender), comorbidity (e.g. other Axis II pathology), or setting (e.g. jail or community). The current study examined gender differences for psychopathy and Axis II traits in a nonreferred jail sample of predominantly nonviolent offenders. Participants with moderate to high levels of psychopathy evidenced substantial comorbidity, especially with Cluster B personality disorders. Facets of psychopathy and Axis II traits varied substantially across both genders. In addition, the research evaluated Lynam's Hyperactivity, Impulsivity, and Attention difficulties (HIA) model of psychopathy. These initial data found little support for the HIA model in this jail sample. In testing competing hypotheses, the HIA model was substantially better at predicting Cluster B traits than psychopathy per se.     

Blushing during social interactions in people with a fear of blushing

Changes in facial blood flow were investigated during an introductory conversation, delivering a speech, and listening to the speech afterwards in 16 people with a fear of blushing and 16 controls. It was hypothesized that fear of blushing would be associated with high ratings of self-reported blushing intensity and embarrassment during the tasks, and with persistence of the blushing reaction between tasks. Embarrassment and self-reported blushing intensity were greater in the fear-of-blushing group than in controls throughout the experiment. Increases in facial blood flow were similar in the two groups during each of the tasks. However, blushing dissipated more slowly after each task in the fear-of-blushing group than in controls, resulting in an incremental increase in facial blood flow over the course of the experiment. The slow recovery after an episode of blushing might result in physiological or social cues that help to maintain a fear of blushing.     

The development of memory for own- and other-race faces

This study demonstrates that experience and development interact to influence the "cross-race effect." In a multination study (n=245), Caucasian children and adults of European ancestry living in the United States, Norway, or South Africa, as well as biracial (Caucasian-African American) children and adults living in the United States, were tested for recognition of Asian, African, and Caucasian faces. Regardless of national or biracial background, 8- to 10-year-olds, 12- to 14-year-olds, and adults recognized own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces, and did so to a similar extent, whereas 5- to 7-year-olds recognized all face types equally well. This same developmental pattern emerged for biracial children and adults. Thus, early meaningful exposure did not substantially alter the developmental trajectory. During young childhood, developmental influences on face processing operate on a system sufficiently plastic to preclude, under certain conditions, the cross-race effect.     

Debiasing of Pessimistic Judgments Associated with Anxiety: A Test of the Availability Heuristic

This investigation directly tested the Consider-An-Alternative debiasing procedure and the reduction of pessimistic threat-related judgments associated with anxiety. Two separate generation interventions were included to test the availability heuristic as a possible explanation of the debiasing effect. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three interventions and probability estimates of future threat-related events were completed in a repeated measures experimental design. Level of trait anxiety was measured to assign participants to “normal” and highly anxious groups. The data were analyzed in a 3 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial repeated measures ANOVA. The results found that only the short debiasing intervention showed a significant reduction of pessimistic judgments in comparison to the control group. The results were interpreted as supporting the availability heuristic as an explanation of the debiasing effect. Further analysis also suggested that the content of recall may be as important to the debiasing effect as ease of recall.     

Criteria‐based content analysis of true and suggested accounts of events

Worldwide, the criteria‐based content analysis (CBCA) is probably the most widely used veracity assessment technique for discriminating between accounts of true and fabricated events. In this study, two experiments examined the effectiveness of the CBCA for discriminating between accounts of true events and suggested events believed to be true. In Experiment 1, CBCA‐trained judges evaluated participants' accounts of true and suggestively planted childhood events. In Experiment 2, judges analysed accounts of recent events that were experimentally manipulated to be a (a) true experience, (b) false experience believed to be true and (c) deliberately fabricated experience. In both experiments CBCA scores were significantly higher for accounts of true events than suggested events. However, this difference was not significant for participants classified as experiencing ‘full’ memories for the suggested event. Self‐report memory measures supported the findings of the CBCA analyses. Taken together these results suggest that the CBCA discriminative power is greatly constrained. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Structural Social Psychological View of Gender Differences in Cooperation

We analyze differences in cooperation between men and women in social dilemma settings. Using a structural social psychological framework, we examine how the actor, the encounter, the microstructure, and the macrostructure might influence when gender differences emerge in cooperation. Many of the interaction differences, often linked to innate differences between men and women, are modified when the context is modified. We pay particular attention to how status and identity are connected to such modifications.