Developing Moral Responsibleness Through Professional Education

Suggesting that a technical or means orientation prevails in the professional preparation and practice of counselors, the authors state that more attention must be given to development of critical reflectiveness about valued ends when making professional judgments. They describe an instructional model designed to further students' capacities and motivations for making rational moral judgments in counseling. Instructional strategies involving independent-learning modules, critique, and dialogue are used to promote reflection on self and examination of moral questions. A pretest-posttest evaluation of a 10-week application of the teaching model found significant student gains in moral sensitivity.     

Eclecticism revisited

Eclecticism as a counseling point of view has experienced a history of contempt and skepticism mixed with sporadic enthusiasm. A viewpoint described here as emerging eclecticism has promise as a counseling position for the practitioner faced with the needs to be comprehensive, flexible, and open in his theory and method. The emerging eclectic is a skilled observer in the scientific behavioral tradition; he knows the history of counseling theory and contemporary views; he is aware of his unique style and counseling setting. From these he forges his own comprehensive evolving view of behavior change.     

The Missing Triad: The Case of Two-Child Families

Families, as they grow, become more complex in their psychosocial development. They also become more complex in their dyadic/triadic structure through the simple addition of another child. This article traces some of the structural changes that families undergo with the entry of each new child. It also raises several questions about how these very structures may, in turn, influence development of the children. By comparing two- and three-children families with different dyadic/triadic structures, these questions offer some basis for possible future research, as well as some speculation for the clinician.     

THE IMPLICATIONS OF PROFESSIONAL AND LEGAL GUIDELINES FOR COURT DECISIONS INVOLVING CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY: A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS

Title VII court cases litigated since 1978 were reviewed to assess the implications of the latest professional and legal guidelines for court deliberations regarding the criterion-related validity of paper-and-pencil tests with adverse impact. Major topics important to an understanding of predictor, criterion, procedural, data analysis, and interpretation issues were examined. Among the major findings were the heavy reliance placed on test development procedures and the reluctance of many judges to accept recent research findings, often contained in professional guidelines, which are inconsistent with those in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978). Suggestions are offered throughout to guide employers who are interested in successfully conducting or defending a criterion-related validation study.     

The Evaluative Consequences of Hedges,Hesitations, and Intensifies Powerful and Powerless Speech Styles

This article examines the separate and combined impact of hedges, hesitations, and intensifiers on perceptions of authoritativeness, sociability, character, and similarity, and the extent to which messages containing one or more of these language variables differs from a “prototypically” powerless message in evaluative consequences. A “prototypically” powerless message is one that contains not only hedges, hesitations, and intensifiers, but also contains polite forms and meaningless particles, such as “oh, well” and “you know.” Two studies indicated that hedges and hesitations individually affected perceptions of authoritativeness and sociability, but interactions among the variables were not found in the studies. Furthermore, only high intensifiers/low hedges/low hesitations and low intensifiers/low hedges/low hesitations messages differed significantly from the “prototypically” powerless message. The second study revealed that speaker status interacted to affect evaluative consequences. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the power of speech style construct.     

SELF-DISCLOSURE AND INTERPERSONAL SOLIDARITY: MEASUREMENT,VALIDATION, AND RELATIONSHIPS

This study investigated the relationship of self-disclosure and interpersonal solidarity. Major emphasis was devoted to the refinement of a multidimensional measure of reported self-disclosure and development of a preliminary measure of solidarity. Results replicated in two studies indicated that (1) the self-disclosure scales could be improved to acceptable levels of reliability, (2) the solidarity measure validly distinguished between closer and more distant relationships, (3) self-disclosure and solidarity were positively related, and (4) meaningfully higher levels of self-disclosure were associated with high solidarity relations than with low solidarity relations.