The Nature of Client Agency Prior to Therapy: A Qualitative Study on Clients’ Narratives

Client agency is considered a crucial contributor to good treatment outcome. Recent studies, however, differ strongly in how they conceptualise and investigate agency. The current study explores the nature of client agency in ten clients’ pre-treatment interviews. Applying Consensual Qualitative Research, we constructed three overarching categories, subdivided into 14 sub-categories capturing both between- and within-person differences in agency before therapy. We found that all participants oscillated between the experience of a lack of grip on problems on the one hand and noticing their involvement in the problem and taking action on the other. These results present a dynamic conceptualisation of client agency. This allows us to ask pertinent questions for both future research and clinical practice.     

The Buffering Role of Social Support Perceptions in Relation to Eating Disturbances among Women in Abusive Dating Relationships

Abuse is often associated with diminished social support networks, which typically serve to buffer individuals against stress-related outcomes, including eating disorders. The goal of the present study was to examine whether eating disturbances among women in abusive dating relationships varied as function of perceived social support. Although both physical and psychological aggression in women's (N=83) dating relationships was associated with symptomatic dieting and bulimic symptoms, only psychological aggression predicted unique variance. Although psychological aggression was directly related to eating symptoms, support from friends diminished the relation to bulimic symptoms, possibly because such support facilitated women's ability to distract themselves from their abusive situations. In contrast, perceived parental support buffered women in physically abusive relationships from disturbed eating patterns. Thus, depending on the nature of abuse women experienced, social support resources were differentially effective in buffering women from eating disturbances.     

Upsetting Behavior: Reactions to Personal and Bystander Sexual Harassment Experiences

The current research was designed to examine objective and contextual factors related to the appraisal of potentially sexually harassing situations. Working female participants (n = 208) from a mid-sized southwestern university completed a workplace experiences survey in small groups. The majority of participants were Hispanic/Latina (77.9%). We predicted that characteristics of personal harassment experiences (e.g., number of distinct types of behaviors experienced, frequency, duration) and bystander harassment experiences would contribute independently to how upset women were by their own sexual harassment experiences. Results indicated that characteristics of personal harassment experiences and bystander experiences did predict how upset women were by their own gender harassment and by unwanted sexual attention experiences. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering multiple types of workplace stressors (e.g., personal and bystander sexual harassment experiences) and their relation to the appraisal process.     

Gender Role Attitudes across the Transition to Adolescent Motherhood in Mexican‐Origin Families

Using longitudinal data collected at four time points from 191 dyads of Mexican‐origin adolescent first‐time mothers and their mother figures, we examined changes in and socialization of traditional gender role attitudes across the transition to parenthood using latent growth curve modeling and actor – partner interdependence modeling. Longitudinal growth models indicated that, regardless of nativity status, adolescent mothers' and their foreign‐born mother figures' gender role attitudes became more egalitarian across adolescents' transition to parenthood, spanning from the 3rd trimester of pregnancy to 36 months postpartum. Furthermore, actor‐partner interdependence modeling suggested that adolescents' and their mother figures' gender role attitudes during adolescents' third trimester of pregnancy equally contributed to subsequent increases in one another's gender role attitudes at 10 months postpartum. Importantly, this reciprocal socialization process was not moderated by adolescent mothers' nor by their mother figures' nativity status. Findings suggest that it is important to understand the cultural and intergenerational family processes that contribute to the development of gender role attitudes during the transition to parenthood for adolescent mothers and their mother figures in Mexican‐origin families.     

Gradual escalation: The role of continuous commitments in perceptions of guilt

Many immoral acts are the result of gradually escalating behaviors. The present work focuses on observers of immoral acts and the role of continuous commitments in shaping their perceptions of another person's guilt. Across four studies investigating how gradual escalations affect moral judgments, participants read a scenario describing an instance of immoral behavior that gradually built in severity. In Study 1, female participants perceived a perpetrator as less guilty when his behavior gradually escalated to rape after explicitly committing to the appropriateness his initial morally ambiguous behavior. The findings from Study 2 suggest that inducing a categorical mindset can counteract this reduction in perceptions of guilt. Study 3 illustrated the power of the categorical versus continuous mindset by examining how a categorical (versus a continuous mindset) impacts perceptions of guilt even in the absence of gradually escalating behavior. Finally, Study 4 extended the findings from the prior studies to a sample of both men and women and investigated the effect of the mindset manipulation on perceptions. Together, these studies demonstrate that the potency of gradual escalations to induce acquiescence to immoral behavior may inhere in their ability to create initial commitments to and continuous perceptions of morally ambiguous behavior.     

The relationship of positive and negative expressiveness to the processing of emotion information

The tendency to express emotions non-verbally is positively related to perception of emotions in oneself. This study examined its relationship to perception of emotions in others. In 40 healthy adults, EEG theta synchronization was used to indicate emotion processing following presentation of happy, angry, and neutral faces. Both positive and negative expressiveness were associated with higher emotional sensitivity, as shown by cortical responses to facial expressions during the early, unconscious processing stage. At the late, conscious processing stage, positive expressiveness was associated with higher sensitivity to happy faces but lower sensitivity to angry faces. Thus, positive expressiveness predisposes people to allocate fewer attentional resources for conscious perception of angry faces. In contrast, negative expressiveness was consistently associated with higher sensitivity. The effects of positive expressiveness occurred in cortical areas that deal with emotions, but the effects of negative expressiveness occurred in areas engaged in self-referential processes in the context of social relationships.     

Gender Segregation in Childhood: A Test of the Interaction Style Theory

The authors investigated the play/interaction-style theory of gender segregation with a sample of 39 children aged 2 to 5 years (primarily Caucasian). According to this theory, children prefer playmates with styles of play or interaction that are similar to their own. Because such styles are sex differentiated, same-sex playmate preference (i.e., gender segregation) results. The authors observed children during free play to determine preferred playmates and gender segregation level, and they used teacher ratings to derive play/interaction-style scores. The authors used a multiple regression approach to path analysis to analyze effects of sex of participant, participants' play/interaction-style scores, playmates' play/interaction-style scores, and degree of gender segregation to determine their effects on one another. The authors observed significant levels of gender segregation, with highly aggressive or active children displaying less segregation than their peers did. However, gender segregation was not associated with a preference for playmates with similar play or interaction styles.     

Computer aided self‐monitoring to increase academic production and reduce self‐injurious behavior in a child with autism

Self‐monitoring to increase the on‐task behavior of students with learning disabilities has been the focus of numerous studies in the literature. This study examined the effectiveness of computer aided self‐monitoring of academic task completion to reduce self‐injurious behavior in a 13‐year‐old male student with autism. Using an ABAB design, data were collected over 22 sessions in a resource‐reading classroom. Visual and statistical analyses indicated that when self‐monitoring of activity completion was implemented, rates of completion increased and maladaptive behaviors such as self‐injurious behavior and tantruming decreased. Discussion follows for implications for self‐monitoring with students with autism. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Associations Among Asian Americans' Enculturation,Emotional Experiences,and Depressive Symptoms

Using a computer‐based text analysis of 218 Asian Americans' writing samples, the authors found that enculturation as well as use of negative emotion and positive emotion words were associated with depressive symptoms. Enculturation was also found to moderate the relation between use of negative emotion words and cognitive‐affective depressive symptoms. Utilizando un análisis de texto computerizado de muestras escritas por 218 individuos Asiático‐americanos, los autores hallaron que la asimilación cultural y el uso de palabras de emoción positivas y negativas están asociadas con síntomas depresivos. También se halló que la asimilación cultural modera la relación entre el uso de palabras de emoción negativas y los síntomas depresivos cognitivo‐afectivos.     

The limits of 'adaptive' coping: well-being and mood reactions to stressors among women in abusive dating relationships

Coping is typically thought to be adaptive if it reduces immediate distress and promotes well-being. However, coping strategies might appear beneficial in a given situation, but when considered in the broader stressor context, those situational benefits may actually undermine well-being. Two studies (N = 473 and N = 80 women) demonstrated that, in the context of psychologically or physically abusive dating relationships, coping orientations were rooted in women's stressor history (prior assault trauma) and elevated emotion-focused and lower problem-focused efforts were predictive of greater depressive symptoms. Yet, in response to a stressor video that acted as a reminder of women's abusive experiences (but not to a stressor video unrelated to abuse), affective benefits (lower hostility, higher positive agency) were associated with abused women's emotion-focused coping endorsements, but were not linked to problem-focused coping. It seems that in some contexts, reduced distress might limit active efforts to alter a dysfunctional situation.