The relationship between expressed social fears and assertiveness and its treatment implications

Behavior therapists have speculated about the relationship between social fears or social anxieties and lack of assertive behavior. Wolpe (1958) perhaps most clearly suggested such a relationship. “If he [the patient] has been ineffectual in such situations—unable, for instance, to return a faulty garment—I explain how unadaptive fears are at the bottom of this ineffectualness. … p. 116.” Wolpe further assumed that engaging in assertive behavior reciprocally inhibited fear in these same social situations and that assertive responses can be programmed for use in overcoming these fears.In later writings (Wolpe. 1969; Wolpe and Lazarus, 1966) Wolpe seems to have broadened his position concerning the cause of non-assertive behavior. Specifically, he now allows that an individual also may be non-assertive, “… not because of anxiety but because they have never had the opportunity of acquiring the necessary habits. p. 40” (Wolpe and Lazarus, 1966). For these individuals direct efforts in assertive training such as behavior rehearsal, operant conditioning or direct instruction are in order. For these individuals whose lack of assertiveness is due to a ‘phobic reaction’ or strong extrinsic fears, systematic desensitization is recommended in addition to assertive training.Despite this apparent change in position, the intuitively appealing notion that the more socially fearful an individual is the more non-assertive he is likely to be has not received the empirical attention it deserves. Rathus (1973) seems to have provided some indirect evidence pertaining to the relationship between social fears and assertiveness. In the context of evaluating the efficacy of an assertive training method he administered both the 100-item Temple Fear Survey Inventory (TFSI) (Braun and Reynolds, 1969) and the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule (RAS) (Rathus, 1973) to groups of female students receiving either assertive training, a placebo treatment or no treatment. He found that at post-test the assertive training group scored significantly higher than either the placebo or no treatment groups on the RAS and that there were no significant differences in post-test Full Scale TSFI Scores. Fear of Social Criticism Factor Scores or Fear of Social Incompetence Factor Scores although in each case the mean changes toward less fear were greater for the group receiving assertive training. This finding gives little support to the reciprocal relationship between social fears and assertiveness. What is needed is a direct determination of the degree to which social fears and assertiveness are related in a sizeable sample of subjects.     

Acoustic confusion of digits in memory and recognition

It has been shown that, contrary to current opinion, digits do not confuse arbitrarily and that similar patterns of confusion are observed in memory and auditory recognition tasks. Two alternative measures of stimulus similarity are compared.     

Do rats like to work for their food?

Rats were given a choice in a two-compartment box between response-dependent and response-independent schedules of food presentation. In general, the response-independent schedule was preferred, but the preference was not exclusive and considerable amounts of time were spent on the “work” (response-dependent) side. Food deprivation caused an increased preference for the response-independent schedule when the schedules were fixed, but not when they were variable. Addition of a signal to the work side, indicating the availability of reinforcement, increased preference for that side. In general, the relative numbers of reinforcements obtained on the response-independent side exceeded the relative time spent there; when the relative reinforcements were equated by adding delays to the response-independent side, indifference between the schedules resulted. Latencies of food collection were higher on the response-independent side than on the lever side, and it is suggested that this gives a clue to the factors maintaining “work” in this situation.     

Different paths to protest: predictors of collective action in the Occupy Movement

This study investigated the variables that shaped people's willingness to engage in collective action in the context of the Occupy Movement. Data were collected in 2011 from nonprotesting supporters at the New York City Occupy encampment and active occupiers at the New York and Atlanta encampments. Participants distinguished between different kinds of collective action based on cost. Furthermore, different predictors motivated distinct kinds of collective action. Identity and anger predicted low‐cost collective action. Efficacy predicted relatively costly collective action and mediated the link between identity and costly collective action. This study provides evidence that people draw distinctions between different actions based on cost and that, when it comes to predicting collective action, these distinctions matter.     

Outpatient Clinic Identification of Trauma Symptoms in Children in Foster Care

As understanding of the impact of trauma on children has grown, there has been increasing interest in the use of screening the medical setting to identify which children at risk may be symptomatic. This study was undertaken to determine whether the use of a trauma assessment tool to screen for trauma symptoms in the setting of a foster care clinic was feasible and more sensitive than non-standardized approaches in the context of outpatient primary care. Using a chart review of trauma symptom identification before and after the implementation of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSC-C) and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSC-YC), validated trauma assessment tools, we looked at the feasibility of use of this tool and likelihood of trauma symptom identification. 73 % (n = 204) of eligible patients had a trauma screening tool in the medical record following the introduction of the use of the TSC. Detection of trauma symptoms was higher in the screening period than in the baseline period for the entire population (78 vs. 46 %, p < 0.0001), and trauma symptoms were identified with more specificity following the introduction of, and likely due to, formal trauma screening. However, there were limitations as to feasibility in the outpatient medical clinic. In conclusion, the use of the TSC-C and TSC-YC in the setting of an outpatient foster care evaluation clinic increased rates and precision of identification of trauma symptoms, but had limitations to its feasibility of use in the outpatient clinic setting.     

Not Boxed In: Acculturation and Ethno-Social Identities of Central American Male Youth in Toronto

This paper examines the acculturation process of male Central American-origin youths in Toronto, a group who are known to have a higher than average risk of dropping out of high school. Using data from semi-structured interviews with a small sample of male youths born in the region or born in Canada to parents from the region, we examine interrelated and shifting friendship patterns, ethno-social identities, and aspirations for schooling. The findings reveal that some youths become marginalized with weak friendship networks, diffuse ethno-social identities and low school completion aspirations, while others develop relatively strong affiliations exclusively with co-ethnic friends who have modest school completion goals. The strongest trend was toward being integrated with a mix of co-ethnic friends and those from other backgrounds, hybrid ethno-social identities, and higher schooling goals. The analysis examines whether the youths are aware of the relationships between social belonging and academic belonging, and whether they feel it possible to escape from being “boxed in” to acculturation patterns associated with poor school completion. These findings add to research on efforts to understand and improve schooling outcomes for “at risk” minority youth in a multicultural city.     

So Close and Yet So Far: Construal Level Moderates Cultivation Effects

The cultivation effect is well established: The more media we consume, the more our worldviews come to reflect the mediated world. Several advancements have been made in the past decade exploring the processes underlying the effect. Importantly, the judgments are often heuristically based (Shrum, 2001 Shrum, L. J. (2001). Processing strategy moderates the cultivation effect. Human Communication Research, 27, 94–120.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2009 Shrum, L. J. (2009). Media consumption and perceptions of social reality: Effects and underlying processes. In J. Bryant &; M. B. Oliver (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 50–73). New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), with relevance of the media information an important moderator of this process. Mental construal level, in which people are considered to be thinking on a relatively concrete (psychologically close, specific) level or a relatively abstract (psychologically distant, general) level, may influence these cognitive processes. The present studies find that mental construal level (concrete or abstract) moderates the classic cultivation effect for first-order judgments. Specifically, concrete construal encourages the cultivation effect with a stronger relationship between media consumption and violence prevalence estimates, but abstract construal reduces the effect. Comparison to a control condition in Experiment 2 indicates that concrete construal may be the default state for cultivation effects. One possible explanation for the effect of construal on cultivation effects is that construal influences relevance of and reliance on media cues in judgment formation.