Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Service Experiences and Satisfaction Judgments: The Use of Affect and Beliefs in Judgment Formation

Recalling a service experience may increase the accessibility of relevant beliefs and affect an individual's temporary mood. We examine the interplay of mood and accessible beliefs in the construction of satisfaction judgments. We find that episodically recounting the specific service encounter results in assimilation effects on the satisfaction ratings of both the service provider and a competitive company. Analytically recounting the service encounter, on the other hand, results in assimilation effects for judgments of the service provider and effects in the direction of contrast for judgments of the competitive company. In this case, beliefs about the service provider appear to provide a comparison standard against which the competitive company is judged. Implications of these findings for measuring and managing consumer satisfaction are discussed.     

What triggers causal attributions? The impact of valence and subjective probability

Various field studies and experimental simulations demonstrated that causal reasoning increases after unexpected as well as after unpleasant events. However, unpleasant events are seen as less likely than pleasant ones in everyday life. Accordingly, the subjective probability of the event and its hedonic quality were naturally confounded in these studies. To isolate the contribution of both determinants, the subjective probability and the valence of an event were independently manipulated in a laboratory experiment. Subjects completed an ostensible ‘professional skills test’ and received either success or failure feedback in relation to a criterion set by the experimenter. The subjective probability of success was varied by informing subjects about the distribution of success and failure in a comparable population (either 23 per cent or 77 per cent were said to meet the criterion). The results indicate a pronounced valence effect: The intensity of causal reasoning and the number of possible reasons reported for the outcome was greater after negative than after positive feedback, independent of the a priori probability of the outcome. No evidence for an increase in causal explanations after unexpected, as compared to expected, events was obtained. Several mediating processes are discussed.     

Positive Affect and College Success

This study investigated the relation between positive affect and a variety of variables related to college success for undergraduate students matriculating at 21 academically selective 4-year colleges and universities in the United States. Positive affect??cheerfulness??is generally positively related to students?? self-rated academic abilities, self-predicted likelihoods of various college outcomes, self-stated major and academic-degree intentions, and self-reported subjective college outcomes, but negatively related to most objective college-success variables (e.g., cumulative college grade-point average) recorded by the institution of matriculation, and not related to objective college outcomes reported by the student. Positive affect is thus associated with ??positive illusions?? about college-success variables.     

Social organization predicts nature of infant-adult interactions in two species of wild guinea pigs (Cavia aperea and Galea monasteriensis)

The authors compared interactions of infants with mothers and unfamiliar females in a novel environment in 2 caviomorph rodent species: the harem-living Cavia aperea, the probable progenitor of the domestic guinea pig; and the pair-living Galea monasteriensis. In C. aperea, interactions with mothers and unfamiliar females were largely similar; in G. monasteriensis, interactions with the mother, but not unfamiliar female, were characterized by physical closeness and sociopositive behavior. In G. monasteriensis, plasma cortisol levels were lower when with the mother than when with the unfamiliar female. Results are consistent with the species' social organizations and suggest that behavioral interactions of pups with mothers and other females in domestic guinea pigs reflect primarily the social organization of the progenitor species rather than domestication.     

Lived Religion and Family Therapy: What Does Spirituality Have to Do with It?

This review examines fundamental and methodological issues concerning the cross-disciplinary efforts of family therapists to involve spirituality in their clinical practice. Training requirements, challenges, and limitations are discussed. It is suggested that the construct lived religion is the best starting point for this work. Lived religion is a term that addresses the real, lived, experiential, and intimate dimensions of our religious life. It is also tied to a variety of academic disciplines that can guide and deepen thought. Significant problems and limitations are identified with the term spirituality. It is suggested that if clinicians continue to prefer spirituality as a construct, that it be seen as a form or expression of lived religion. This way the links to various discipliines are maintained and idiosyncratic efforts will be minimized. Methods that attempt to integrate spirituality and family therpay are also found to be lacking. For nearly a half century American divinity schools have developed various co-relational methods which foster more respectful and productive discourse calling for the goals and objectives of mental health and religion to be equally value and maintained. In this way the piftalls of reductionism, or oversimplification, and anti-institutional bias can be lessened.