Social Value Orientations and Decisions to Take Proenvironmental Action1

This study assessed whether social value orientations influence decisions to actively support a proposal for a transportation pollution reduction program. Participants with prosocial or proself orientations were given the opportunity to send letters of support or opposition to the program director. Proself participants were more likely to send letters opposing the program, whereas prosocial participants were more likely to send letters of support. Although proself and prosocial participants reported equivalent support for the program and equivalent perceptions of the program's environmental benefits, proself participants reported higher perceptions of personal costs associated with the program. Social value orientations may lead to differences in environmental behaviors, primarily because of differences in perceptions of the personal costs incurred from engaging in these behaviors.     

The context of counselling: A neglected dimension of trainings research and practice

The context of counselling includes such factors as the physical environment of the counselling room, the emotional climate of the counselling agency, the relationship between the agency and the community it serves, and the cultural beliefs and values which inform both counsellor and client. It is argued that these factors can make a difference to the relationship between counsellor and client, and the process and outcome of counselling. It is suggested that contextual issues have been largely ignored in counselling theory, research and practice, and that increased attention to context has the potential to contribute to the creation of more responsive and effective counselling services.     

Grief counselling in context: Multiple roles and professional compromise

The issues involved in the use of counselling skills and approaches by members of professions such as nursing and social work have received relatively little research attention. Grief counselling represents an appropriate area in which to explore these issues, since members of many diverse professional groups may be called on to work therapeutically or supportively with the bereaved. This paper explores the use of grief counselling in a variety of professional and voluntary contexts, through an analysis of the experience of students who had undertaken a bereavement counselling course. The aim of the study was to explore the level of awareness shown by employing organisations to the 'loss' element of client experience, and the implications of organisational context for the role of counsellor as a worker responding to client grief. A range of practice characteristics emerged. At one end of the spectrum was clearly focused and contracted grief counselling, usually within the context of specialist voluntary agencies. By contrast, there were practitioners whose counselling response to grief was concealed within a multi-professional perspective characterised by compromise, usually working in complex organisational contexts in the statutory sector. It is argued that the range of practitioner activity cannot be understood simply by describing some activities as counselling and others as the use of counselling skills; it seems that there is a real and sometimes subtle middle ground which lies between the two. This is territory which is determined by the context of practice and needs to be understood and defined as such     

TREATMENT OF PICA THROUGH MULTIPLE ANALYSES OF ITS REINFORCING FUNCTIONS

We conducted functional analyses of the pica of 3 participants. The pica of 1 participant appeared to be maintained by automatic reinforcement; that of the other 2 participants appeared to be multiply controlled by social and automatic reinforcement. Subsequent preference and treatment analyses were used to identify stimuli that would compete with the automatic function of pica for the 3 participants. These analyses also identified the specific aspect of oral stimulation that served as automatic reinforcement for 2 of the participants. In addition, functional analysis-based treatments were used to address the socially motivated components of 2 of the participants' pica. Results are discussed in terms of (a) the importance of using the results of functional analyses to develop treatments for pica and (b) the advantages of developing indirect analyses to identify specific sources of reinforcement for automatically reinforced behavior.     

Gender Role Socialization and Male-on-Male vs. Female-on-Male Child Sexual Abuse

Most images of sexual abuse in contemporarysociety involve adult male perpetrators and femalevictims. In this paper, we consider the effects of childsexual abuse on the adult male gender roles of boyhood survivors of abuse. Specifically, we examinethe effects of coerced male-on-male (CM), coercedfemale-on-male (CF), and non-coerced female-on-male (NF)sexual contact on attitudes toward and behavior in adult heterosexual relationships. Usinglongitudinal data from 105 predominantly AfricanAmerican, working class men, we first document theprevalence of all 3 types of abuse within our sample.Consistent with gender socialization hypotheses, we foundthat relative to non-abused men, CM and CF survivorswere more likely to report violence toward intimatepartners. Compared to CF and NF survivors, CM survivors reported being kinder to women. CF survivorswere more likely to have committed sex offenses relativeto CM and NF survivors.     

Congruence and Career Change in Employed Adults

Holland's theory of congruence was applied to adults changing careers. Forty-two nontraditional students attending college to attain a new occupation were surveyed. The group's average experience in the work force was 14.5 years, and their average age was 34.4 years. Using theCindex (Brown & Gore, 1994) and Kwak and Pulvino's (1982) K-P index to measure congruence, data supported the hypothesis that employed adults in the process of changing their careers move in a direction of greater congruence. Further, job satisfaction was correlated significantly with congruence as operationalized by theCindex (r= .33,p< .03) and the K-P index (r= .32,p< .04).     

The Effect of Race on Decisions by Judges and Other Officers of the Court1

This study examined the impact of the ethnic group of defendant and victim on perceptions of a simulated trial. The subjects were judges, prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, and probation officers. People of different racial groups are perceived and would be treated differently by the respondents. Most respondents perceived the White defendant as a more serious offender than a minority defendant. However, there was one very important exception—judges. Judges indicated that a minority defendant who victimized a White was more likely to commit future crimes. Minority respondents and different occupational groups responded in diverse ways. Chen's filtering model of case processing in the criminal justice system (1991) is used to explain these results.     

THROUGH HER EYES:

A major component of a woman's ability to resist assaults by strangers versus acquaintances lies in the social and cognitive context in which she is engaged with the perpetrator and within which she must recognize potential threat before engaging in a behavioral response. This paper presents questionnaire and focus group findings of heterosexual college sorority women's social contexts, perceived risks, responses, and psychological barriers to protecting themselves from sexual aggression threat by fraternity acquaintances. Several social and cognitive factors, including alcohol consumption and psychological barriers, were related to projected responses to sexual aggression. Participants in general held a high sense of invulnerability to victimization and an optimistic belief in their ability to resist sexual aggression. Several differences between previously victimized and nonvictimized women also emerged.     

A cost-effectiveness evaluation of parent training

Outcomes from a parenting program that was modified to reduce costs and a wait-list control condition were compared. Costs were reduced by over 50%. Sixty-six parents participated. Treatment parents reported significantly greater improvements in child behavior problems, parent attitudes, and satisfaction with family relationships when compared to untreated controls. These effects were maintained at three months follow-up. Outcomes for 35 of the children in the sample who had clinically significant behavior problems before treatment were also examined separately. The difference between clinical recovery rates, i.e., movement from the clinical to normal range during treatment, for control and treatment children was not statistically significant. Limitations of the current study and suggestions for future research are discussed.