Reinterpreting the purpose of premarital counseling

Summary Premarital pastoral counseling is a broader activity than is often suspected, going beyond a set of interviews designed to prepare a couple for marriage. Its purpose is to extend the resources of the Gospel and the Church to a couple at a critical period in their lives. In the case of Bill and Gretchen, this meant reassessing their guilt over having had intercourse prior to marriage and setting it within the context of God's forgiveness. It meant helping Bill's mother to meet certain of her personal needs, and it meant helping Bill to understand his own interpersonal relationships more clearly. Later observation showed that, as a couple, Bill and Gretchen were able to sustain a meaningful relationship with each other and to meet the continuing stresses placed upon their marriage as they tried to help Bill's mother and father.The adoption of the purpose advocated here enables the pastor to avoid the contagion of emergency feelings, to set meaningful partial goals for his work with a couple in various stages of the premarital counseling relationship, and to set premarital counseling squarely within the context of his total pastoral ministry.     

THE GARNER-ATTNEAVE THEORY OF RATIO SCALING

The theory is shown to be logically and psychologically untenable, being based on a first order phenomenological-numerical (PN) relation which cannot exist. An alternative theory, not possessing this shortcoming because it involves a second order PN relation, explains both ratio and category scaling.     

Pattern uncertainty and the discrimination of visual patterns

Sixty Ss individually sorted eight decks of 50 cards each. A deck contained 25 cards each of two stimulus patterns. The patterns were drawn from different sets of five-dot patterns judged to be equivalent. The eight decks represented pairs of patterns drawn (a) from the same equivalence set, (b) from different equivalence sets of the same size, and (c) from different equivalence sets of different sizes. Sorting times were shown to increase with increasing size of equivalence set, and were shown to be greater for patterns drawn from within the same equivalence set than for patterns drawn from different equivalence sets. Ratings of pattern goodness were found to be useful predictors of sorting time only in their capacity to discriminate between equivalence sets of different sizes. The results were interpreted as supporting the importance of equivalence set membership in a discrimination task where the S logically does not have to consider stimuli other than the given criterion stimuli.     

Peers' Perceptions of Negro and White Occupational Preferences

The hypothesis that elementary school children would cast their peers in occupational roles in a class play that would be congruent with the peers' previously expressed vocational preferences was supported for boys (N = 106), but not for girls (N = 97). Boys expressing a preference for either professional or masculine, aggressively oriented occupations were nominated for similar occupational roles in a class play by a significant number of their male and female peers. However, girls who expressed a preference for nursing or teaching were not cast in these roles by a significant number of either their male or female peers. Negro boys expressing a preference for professional occupations were cast in these roles by their peers with significantly greater frequency than were white boys. There were no significant race differences in the other occupational categories of the class play.     

The effect of anxiety on food intake in the rat

Three levels of anxiety were induced experimentally in rats. With hunger drive held constant, the effects of anxiety on the intake of food which had either a positive or negative incentive value were observed and compared. The results for the intake of food with positive incentive value showed eating to be increased above control level by a low level of anxiety, and slightly decreased by medium and high levels. On the other hand, a direct relationship was observed between level of anxiety and suppression of the intake of food with a negative incentive value. These findings were shown to be inconsistent with previous explanations of similar effects in terms of an interaction between relevant and irrelevant drives. An alternative explanation in terms of incentive was offered.     

Decision responsibility, task responsibility, identifiability, and social loafing

Two laboratory experiments were conducted. Results of the first experiment revealed that identifiability had no impact on the degree of cognitive loafing when group members were asked to make a decision. Identifiability did have an impact when group members were asked to express an opinion. The second experiment replicated findings of the first experiment and, in addition, indicated that unidentifiable individuals with sole task responsibility loafed more than unidentifiable individuals who shared task responsibility. Cognitive effort was measured through recall of stimulus material.     

The omega project: An empirical study of the NDE-prone personality

Seventy-four near-death experiencers (NDErs) and 54 persons interested in near-death experiences (NDEs) participated in a mail questionnaire survey to assess the role of psychological factors in influencing susceptibility to NDEs and to measure aftereffects stemming from such events. NDErs, while not more fantasy-prone than control subjects, reported greater sensitivity to nonordinary realities as children and a higher incidence of child abuse and trauma. NDErs also scored higher on a measure of psychological dissociation. We discuss the implications of these findings for the concept of an NDE-prone personality. In addition to substantial shifts in values and beliefs, NDErs described far more psychophysical changes, including symptoms of kundalini activation, following their NDEs than did controls. We then discuss the implications of these findings with respect to their possible significance for human transformation and the emergence of a more highly evolved human being, the Omega Prototype.At the time of this study, Mr. Rosing was a student at the University of Connecticut     

Effects of Contract Framing,Motivation to Quit,and Self-Efficacy on Smoking Reduction1

Social learning theorists (SLT) have advocated that individual's cognitive beliefs about perceived behavioral ability and outcome expectancies are predictive of behavior change. SLT's also propose that the threat of losing positive rewards may result in greater behavior change than gaining rewards for altering behaviors such as smoking. Specifically, presenting behavioral outcomes in a loss frame context has proven more influential under certain conditions than presenting outcomes in a gain frame context. The present study evaluated the relationship between smoking cessation self-efficacy motivation to quit, and contract framing on smoking reduction. The majority of cognitive and behavioral changes occurred between baseline and 3 months into a 12-month treatment program. An interaction between contract framing and motivation to quit suggested that, for subjects with low motivation, receiving combined (gain plus loss) frame contracts resulted in smoking fewer cigarettes posttreatment than receiving gain frame only contracts. An interaction between framing and self-efficacy also indicated that subjects who received combined frame contracts smoked fewer cigarettes if they had high rather than low self-efficacy beliefs.     

The impact of salient self-identities on relative deprivation and action intentions

Salient self-identities and their impact upon feelings of relative deprivation (RD) and subsequent action intentions were examined. Eight experimental conditions (Personal/Group Salience × Large/Small Intragroup Inequalities × Large/Small Intergroup Inequalities) were created utilizing a role-play design. Significant main effects for both salience and social inequalities were found to influence both RD and action intentions. In accordance with self-categorization theory, when group compared to personal identities were made salient, stronger feelings of group RD and greater likelihood of collective action intentions were reported. Alternatively, when personal compared to group identities were made salient, greater likelihood of individual actions were reported. In accordance with relative deprivation theory, when intergroup inequalities were large compared to small, stronger feelings of group RD and less likelihood of collective action were reported. Alternatively, when intragroup inequalities were large compared to small, stronger feelings of personal RD were reported.