Book Reviews

For inexperienced sales representatives, success provides an important learning opportunity from which to build confidence and hone strategies. Such learning is derived from the attributions one makes for success and how those attributions shape future behavior. This research investigates the interpretation and behavioral intentions of inexperienced sales representatives following a successful sales call using a sample of financial services representatives. Surprisingly, we found that achieving success did not assure the adoption or future use of the strategy that garnered that success. These results suggest that inexperienced sales representatives may require managerial attention to fully understand and appropriately assimilate their sales successes. Implications for managers and future research are discussed.     

Dissimilarity in mother and adolescent illness representations of type 1 diabetes and negative emotional adjustment

The study explored how two measures of mother–adolescent dissimilarity in illness representations relate to negative emotional adjustment in mothers and adolescents. Eighty-four adolescents with type 1 diabetes (age 11.5–17.5) and their mothers completed the Revised Illness Perceptions Questionnaire and measures of negative emotional adjustment. Adolescents viewed diabetes as less chronic, containing fewer negative emotional representations, and that mother had less control over the illness than did mothers. Mother–adolescent mean differences in representations were not associated with negative adjustment for adolescents; mean differences in coherence were related to negative adjustment for mothers, when controlling the individual's own representations. A measure of dissimilarity based on the sum of squared differences between mother and adolescent was associated with negative adolescent adjustment when controlling adolescent's own representations, but no relations were found for mothers. Dyadic approaches to coping with chronic illness will benefit by understanding how dissimilarity in illness representations between patient and caregiver relate to adjustment.     

Reinterpreting Sellars in the Light of Brandom,McDowell, and A. D. Smith

Abstract: The intent of this paper is to indicate a development in Sellars' writings which points in another direction than the interpretations offered by Brandom, McDowell, and A. D. Smith. Brandom and McDowell have long claimed to preserve central insights of Sellars's theory of perception; however, they disagree over what exactly these insights are. A. D. Smith has launched a critique of Sellars in chapter 2 of his book The Problem of Perception which is so penetrating that it would tear Sellars' philosophy of perception apart if it were adequate. However, I try to show firstly that Brandom's and McDowell's interpretations are unsatisfying when Sellars' late writings are taking into consideration. And secondly that we can give another interpretation of Sellars that is not vulnerable to some of the problems of which Smith accuses Sellars.     

A Pilot Study of the Development of a Measure Assessing Adolescent Reactions to Parents in the Context of Emotion Socialization

We conducted a pilot study of the initial development of a self-report measure assessing how adolescents react when parents respond in a helpful manner to their sad emotional experiences. Participants were late adolescents (ages 18–20) attending a large, racially diverse urban university (N = 86; 75% women; 46% racial/ethnic minority). A broad range of relationship-oriented literatures (e.g., early childhood and marital) were considered in creating items for the Adolescent Reactions to Parents (ARP) scale. A 3 factor solution (Accepting, Avoidant, and Attacking) appeared to provide the most parsimonious fit to the data. Adequate levels of reliability were observed for each of the three ARP subscales. Zero-order correlations among subscales of the ARP were moderate in strength. Findings indicated that participants who reported more avoidant and attacking reactions also reported more adjustment difficulties including emotion regulation difficulties and symptoms of depression. Results suggest that the ARP scale has the potential to be a valuable tool for advancing knowledge related to the socialization of emotions.     

Coming to terms: quantifying the benefits of linguistic coordination

Sharing a public language facilitates particularly efficient forms of joint perception and action by giving interlocutors refined tools for directing attention and aligning conceptual models and action. We hypothesized that interlocutors who flexibly align their linguistic practices and converge on a shared language will improve their cooperative performance on joint tasks. To test this prediction, we employed a novel experimental design, in which pairs of participants cooperated linguistically to solve a perceptual task. We found that dyad members generally showed a high propensity to adapt to each other's linguistic practices. However, although general linguistic alignment did not have a positive effect on performance, the alignment of particular task-relevant vocabularies strongly correlated with collective performance. In other words, the more dyad members selectively aligned linguistic tools fit for the task, the better they performed. Our work thus uncovers the interplay between social dynamics and sensitivity to task affordances in successful cooperation.     

Infidelity Treatment Patterns: A Practice-based Evidence Approach

Infidelity is a common presenting problem in couples therapy and can be challenging for therapists to treat. The current zeitgeist in mental health delivery systems includes a focus on developing treatment guidelines. The essence of this movement is that therapists' practice be informed by clinical research, or at the very least, be guided by the accumulated wisdom of other therapists. Practice-based evidence has been advocated as a method using a bottom-up approach of gathering data relying on the expertise of practicing clinicians to inform treatment guidelines. The goal of this paper was to distill and disseminate such aggregated wisdom related to treating infidelity into a practice-based evidence model. We reviewed the literature related to the treatment of infidelity and identified a core set of clinical recommendations that was similar across sources. The themes and patterns that emerged are divided into the following areas: goals of treatment, treatment engagement, treatment format, assessment, process and intervention, treatment adherence, and relapse prevention. We present this as a map or guide to treatment than can be individualized to a specific clinical situation, rather than as a specific, step-by-step manualized approach. We note cultural and ethical factors that may be relevant, as well discuss areas of debate and topics for future research.