What the family brings: gathering evidence for strengths-based work

Families attending child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) services are often assumed to have problems in key areas such as communication, belonging/acceptance and problem-solving. Family therapy is often directed towards addressing these difficulties. With increasing emphasis in family therapy and human services fields over the last decade on identifying and building from strengths, a different starting point has been advocated. This paper describes a large survey of the self-reported pre-therapy functioning of children and families using a public CAMH service (n=416). Before commencing family therapy parents identified family strengths across a range of key areas, despite the burden of caring for children with moderate to severe mental health problems. This evidence supports theoretical and clinical work that advocates a strengths perspective, and highlights how resilience framed in family (and social) rather than individual terms enables a greater appreciation of how strengths may be harnessed in therapeutic work.     

Face threat sensitivity in negotiation: Roadblock to agreement and joint gain

Negotiation scholars and practitioners have long noted the impact of face, or social image, concerns on negotiation outcomes. When face is threatened, negotiators are less likely to reach agreement and to create joint gain. In this paper, we explore individual differences in face threat sensitivity (FTS), and how a negotiator's role moderates the relationship of his or her FTS to negotiation outcomes. Study 1 describes a measure of FTS. Study 2 finds that buyers and sellers are less likely to reach an agreement that is in both parties' interests when the seller has high FTS. Study 3 finds that job candidates and recruiters negotiate an employment contract with less joint gain when the candidate has high FTS, and that this relationship is mediated by increased competitiveness on the part of the high FTS candidates. The results support Deutsch's (1961) application of face theory ( Goffman, 1967) to negotiation.     

Marital quality of African American and white partners in interracial couples

In light of the growing number of interracial marriages in this country, the present study set out to examine the relative strength of one's racial identity, social support, and experience of discrimination in predicting interracial marriage quality. A total of 76 interracial couples (52 African American male/White female and 24 African American female/White male) participated in the study by completing mail surveys. Results revealed that for African American partners, and to a lesser extent White partners, racial identity was the strongest predictor of marital quality. Partners who had pride in their race but were also accepting of other races and cultures experienced higher marital quality. These findings are discussed in light of the literature that suggests interracial couples often minimize the relevance of race in their relationships.     

Multiple racial identities as sources of psychological resilience

Much of the research on multiracial individuals has focused on the impact of a multiracial background on psychological well‐being. This work, often using clinical samples, identified a higher prevalence of negative psychological outcomes among multiracial individuals, such as low self‐esteem, poor grades, or self‐hatred, and has emphasized that these negative outcomes stem from the unique challenges associated with navigating multiple racial identities. However, research on nonclinical samples finds that multiracial individuals fare as well as monoracial individuals on these, and other, outcomes. We put forth a synthesizing theory aimed at understanding how multiracial individuals develop adaptive coping strategies, which help them learn to navigate multiple identities and maintain positive psychological outcomes. In the current contribution, we build on existing research to theorize that multiracial individuals can engage in two psychological strategies that increase resilience: (a) switching between multiple racial identities and (b) reduced essentializing of race. Evidence and consequences of these two strategies are discussed. Taken together, in contrast to traditional depletion models of coping, this work highlights the unique experience of multiracial individuals and the potential psychological benefits of belonging to multiple racial groups in a racialized world.     

Finding the Right Value: Framing Effects on Domain Experts

By defining the essence of a policy problem, an issue frame shapes how individuals think about a political issue. In this research, we investigate framing effects among domain experts, an understudied yet increasingly important set of individuals in the policymaking process. Because domain experts have extensive and highly structured knowledge on a particular topic, they are likely to actively process issue frames to which they are exposed. Consequently, we hypothesize that frames consistent with experts' values will be particularly influential, whereas frames inconsistent with their values will lead to contrast effects. We test our hypotheses on a unique set of domain experts by examining professional farmers' attitudes toward no‐till agriculture. Using an experimental design, we find evidence that environmental values interact with frames to influence farmers' interest in no‐till, especially when farmers are exposed to a novel frame.     

Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment

Traditional theories of moral development emphasize the role of controlled cognition in mature moral judgment, while a more recent trend emphasizes intuitive and emotional processes. Here we test a dual-process theory synthesizing these perspectives. More specifically, our theory associates utilitarian moral judgment (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences) with controlled cognitive processes and associates non-utilitarian moral judgment with automatic emotional responses. Consistent with this theory, we find that a cognitive load manipulation selectively interferes with utilitarian judgment. This interference effect provides direct evidence for the influence of controlled cognitive processes in moral judgment, and utilitarian moral judgment more specifically.     

Death feigning by grass snakes (Natrix natrix) in response to handling by human "predators."

Death feigning, a variant of tonic immobility, is usually interpreted as a last-resort antipredator measure. The authors describe death feigning in grass snakes (Natrix natrix) and test some of its potential correlates. Death feigning was seen in 66% of wild-caught snakes but was not seen in hatchlings from laboratory-incubated eggs. Minimal indication of death feigning was mouth gaping, often with the tongue hanging free, but more dramatic cases involved voluntary supination and/or lack of muscle tone. Aside from hatchlings, which did not feign death, there was little variation in frequency or intensity of death feigning with body size. There was no effect of body temperature on death feigning nor were snakes that were moving when caught less likely to feign death than those that were not moving. Interpretation of the adaptive value of death feigning in grass snakes or in other animals is hampered by lack of evidence of this behavior in the field in response to natural predators.     

Improving understanding and recall of the probation service contract

The role of the probation service within the Criminal Justice System is to provide support to probationees so they can serve out their probation orders in accordance with certain regulations. These regulations are expressed in a formal contract. The current article reports an assessment of the readability of the current Kent Probation Service's users' contract. A Flesch (1948) analysis of the original document indicated that it required an IQ of 111+ for full comprehension. Using several criteria suggested by the Flesch formula and other literature, the document was revised to improve its readability. Analysis revealed the revised document to require an IQ of 84+ for full comprehension, indicating that the revised contract should be considerably easier to understand than the original. An exploratory study revealed that both understanding and recall were significantly greater for the revised contract than for the original. We conclude that in assessing readability of written materials, it is important that (in conjunction with a Flesch analysis) documents are actually tested on the intended readership. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Negotiation Teamwork: The Impact of Information Distribution and Accountability on Performance Depends on the Relationship among Team Members

We examined how the distribution of information among team members and accountability pressures affected the quality of negotiated settlements reached among teams of friends negotiating against teams of strangers. The main conclusions of the experiment may be summarized by the following findings: (1) Teams of strangers reaped a greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates were accountable to a supervisor as opposed to negotiating strictly on their own behalf. (2) Teams of strangers also reaped a marginally greater share of the joint profit than did teams of friends when teammates possessed unique, as opposed to common, information about their own team's preferences. (3) Not surprisingly, teams of friends were more cohesive than were teams of strangers; however, teams of friends were also more concerned about maintaining their relationship than were teams of strangers. (4) Teams of friends felt least cohesive when they were accountable to a supervisor, whereas teams of strangers felt most cohesive when they were accountable. Similarly, friends indicated greater relationship concerns when having to deal with distributed information, whereas information distribution had no effect on the relationship concerns of strangers. (5) For teams of strangers, greater team cohesiveness was positively correlated with better performance. (6) Moreover, when teams of strangers felt more cohesive than their opponents, they earned more than teams of strangers who felt less cohesive.     

Tool-use and the left hemisphere: What is lost in ideomotor apraxia?

Impaired tool related action in ideomotor apraxia is normally ascribed to loss of sensorimotor memories for habitual actions (engrams), but this account has not been tested against a hypothesis of a general deficit in representation of hand-object spatial relationships. Rapid reaching for familiar tools was compared with reaching for abstract objects in apraxic patients (N = 9) and in a control group with right hemisphere posterior stroke. The apraxic patients alone showed an impairment in rotating the wrist to correctly grasp an inverted tool but not when inverting the hand to avoid a barrier and grasp an abstract object, and the severity of the impairment in tool reaching correlated with pantomime of tool-use. A second experiment with two apraxic patients tested whether barrier avoidance was simply less spatially demanding than reaching for a tool. However, the patient with damage limited to the inferior parietal lobe still showed a selective problem for tools. These results demonstrate that some apraxic patients are selectively impaired in their interaction with familiar tools, and this cannot be explained by the demands of the task on postural or spatial representation. However, traditional engram theory cannot account for associated problems with imitation of novel actions nor the absence of any correlated deficit in recognition of the methods of grasp of common tools. A revised theory is presented which follows the dorsal and ventral streams model ( Milner & Goodale, 2008) and proposes preservation of motor control by the dorsal stream but impaired modulating input to it from the conceptual systems of the left temporal lobe.