Rational-emotive therapy and the religious client

The religious client presents a particular challenge to the RET therapist in that the irrational beliefs responsible for the client's problems are often created or supported by distortions in the religious belief system. This paper will discuss the connections between religious distortions and the irrational ideas, ways to deal with them, and then present the most common religiously based irrational beliefs along with biblical disputations.Constance Lawrence, M.S., is Director of the Christian Counseling Center in Norwalk, CT, and also has a private practice in Weston, CT.     

Sex differences in household labor time a comparison of rural and urban couples

A sample of 440 full-time employed couples from 11 states was examined to determine the differences between time spent on housework by husbands and wives in rural and urban areas. More time is spent in housework in rural families than in urban families because time spent in housework is greater for rural women than for urban women, while rural and urban husbands' times do not differ. Education of spouses, job status differentials, and age of the younger child do not significantly interact with rural-urban residence and sex of the spouse. However, family income does significantly influence the relationship between time spent on housework for rural and urban husbands and wives.     

Gender,sex roles,and attitudes toward war and nuclear weapons

The observation that men are usually more supportive of war than women had led several authors to suggest that masculinity plays a causal role in the decision to make war and stockpile nuclear arms. In order to examine the relationship between sex role orientation and attitudes towards war and nuclear weapons, gender and measures of sex role orientation were used to predict three attitudes about nuclear weapons and the use of military force. Two specific and two classes of hypotheses regarding the possible relationships among these variables were tested: masculinity, femininity, Masculinity × Femininity interaction, and Gender × Sex Role Orientation hypotheses. The results provided limited support only for the femininity hypothesis—that attitudes toward war are associated with feminine traits. However, neither masculinity nor femininity was found to be the only mediators of the gender/war attitude relationship, indicating that sex role orientation (and especially masculinity) should be given less emphasis when trying to explain the relationship between gender and attitudes toward war.The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments of Douglas Kenrick, Nancy Russo, and an anonymous reviewer on a earlier version of this paper.     

The psychophysiology of combat-induced post-traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam veterans

The psychophysiological responses of heart rate (HR), systolic and diastolic blood pressure, skin conductance level and forehead electromyogram were compared during: rest, mental arithmetic and combat sounds of gradually increasing intensity for five groups of Ss: Vietnam veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); Vietnam veterans without PTSD but with comparable levels of combat experience; Vietnam veterans with other psychiatric disorders; Vietnam-era veterans; and nonveteran phobics. HR response to low-intensity combat sounds provided good discrimination between veterans with PTSD and the other groups and seems to resemble a conditioned emotional response.     

Accident reduction through stress management

The deleterious effects of occupational stress on worker health and well-being have been described in numerous reports for a wide range of work groups. Work overload (and underload), deadline pressures, role Stressors, underutilization of abilities, and physical discomfort have been identified as work factors associated with increased stress symptom reporting. The relationship between work stress and accident/injury occurrences is less clearly documented, although scattered reports in the literature suggest a contributory role for stress in the accident process. In this article, data linking stress to unsafe work behavior are reviewed and a model is proposed wherein accidents can arise from impaired worker capabilities (e.g., slower reaction time) brought about by stress symptom activity (e.g., anxiety). The potential usefulness of stress management training (SMT) for shortcircuiting the stress/accidents cycle by alleviating stress symptoms is discussed in light of recent empirical research.Portions of this article were presented at the Third Annual Scientist/Practitioner Conference in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Virginia Beach, Virginia, October, 1982.     

Blood pressure responses to hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestions in normotensive subjects

Forty normotensive subjects participated on a voluntary basis in a study designed to compare the effect of suggestions on blood pressure (BP). Two experimental groups received suggestions presumed to be specific in lowering or raising BP after simple relaxation (relaxation group) or hypnotic induction (hypnotic group). A control group was used to record the BP changes over time. The time variable was significant for both systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). Induction procedures (hypnosis or relaxation) resulted in significant decreases in DBP in both experimental groups. In the control group there was a significant decrease in SBP. A specific suggestion to increase the BP resulted only in DBP increase in the hypnotic group. This group also gave an increase of both SBP and DBP over the entire experiment, whereas the relaxation group resulted in a significant decrease in SBP. There was no significant group variable, indicating no differences between the groups. Further research is needed to enable firm conclusions of the effect of suggestions on BP.     

Mixed-modality psychophysical scaling: Double cross-modality matching for “difficult” continua

In mixed-modality psychophysical scaling, stimuli from different modalities are presented alternately for judgment on the same scale. The usual purpose is to produce cross-modality matching functions without actually doing cross-modality matches. This paper reports the results of two experiments that extend the method to situations in which the responses, themselves crossmodality matches on an easy-to-control continuum (duration), are used to derive matching functions for two difficult-to-control continua (here loudness and brightness). Derived cross-modality matching functions are highly similar to those obtained from magnitude estimation or category judgment responses. First- and second-order sequential dependencies also closely resemble those found in data from the methods that employ numerical response scales, with one exception. For the first time in these studies of mixed-modality scaling, current responses sometimes were found to be weakly contrasted to the values of previous stimuli of different modality from the current stimulus. The various sequential dependencies found may arise from different levels of processing, with intramodal response-stimulus contrast arising from sensory differentiation, inter- and intramodality response-response assimilation from perceptual categorization processes, and intermodality response-stimulus contrast from cognitive expectancies.     

Generalization and maintenance of the reduction of self-injurious behavior maintained by two types of reinforcement

The self-injurious forehead-gouging behavior that had resulted in blindness for a profoundly retarded 27-yr-old male was successfully treated using a combination of differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior during unstructured situations and prevention of escape during compliance situations. After self-injurious behavior was reduced to a low frequency, a reduction of his daily dose of chloral hydrate was accompanied by a large increase in self-injury, but the behavior gradually returned to its previous low level. A large increase in self-injury also occurred following transfer to another living unit, but the behavior again decreased to a low frequency. Treatment gains were maintained following transfer to another residential facility with follow-up observations occurring at 1, 2, 8, 15, 22, 27 and 35 months. The multiple determination of self-injurious behavior in this one S highlights the behavioral complexity of some of these behaviors.     

Development of Children's perceptions of internal locus of control: A cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis

Elementary school children between the ages of eight and thirteen were administered the Children's Nowicki/Strickland Locus of Control Scale annually for three years. As predicted, children's mean locus of control scores were found to be significantly different from one age group to the next (cross-sectional analysis) as well as from one year to the next (longitudinal analysis). Older children had significantly more internal scores than did younger children, and the same 97 children demonstrated significant increases in internal perceptions over each succeeding year. No significant sex differences were observed in this generally linear developmental trend. The study supports the hypothesis that increases in internal perceptions are associated with growing older. The data are explained using a confluent theoretical perspective drawing upon cognitive as well as behavioral theory.