Self‐esteem and caregiving in romantic relationships: Self‐ and partner perceptions

Self‐esteem may be associated with romantic partners' experience of emotional support and caregiving. Using a sample of 6,385 heterosexual couples in committed relationships gathered from the RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE) data set (see www.relate‐institute.org ), structural equation modeling was used to compare two actor–partner interdependence models examining the associations between both partners' self‐esteem and perceptions of partner caregiving responsiveness (i.e., accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement). Male and female self‐esteem was significantly related to partners' caregiving responsiveness while controlling for family‐of‐origin attachment experiences and relationship stability. Female self‐esteem was also significantly associated with females' caregiving responsiveness. These findings yield important implications, demonstrating that higher self‐esteem may be associated with improved caregiving behaviors between romantic partners. Relevant implications and future research directions are discussed.     

MULTIPLE ASSESSMENT OF MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS: INTERRATER AGREEMENT AND CONSENSUS IN EFFECTIVENESS MODELS

Research has consistently identified poor interrater agreement among multiple assessments of managerial performance. Three alternative sources of dissensus in the effectiveness ratings were examined: rating errors, selective perceptions, and variations in criteria type or weight. As the available empirical evidence and theoretical analysis show, all three causes provide plausible reasons—though in varying degrees—for the low agreement coefficient. However, an empirical study designed to test three specific hypotheses on criterion type and criterion weights found consensus in the effectiveness models of superiors, subordinates, and peers. Consensus among different raters was high on both the role behaviors and on the personal traits of the managers as criteria for effectiveness. While these findings supported Biddle's role theory (1979), disagreement on the relative weights of these criteria was evident. These observations underscore the need for further conceptualization on the preference functions of raters as a primary source of the low convergent validity coefficients among multiple raters. Further research is also desirable on contextual and cognitive factors that may lead to shifts in criterion type and criterion weight, as well as on actual rating error tendencies among different raters.     

Virtue Without Gender in Socrates

In this paper I argue that Socrates believed that there is no distinction between man's virtue and woman's virtue and that there is no difference in the achievement of virtue between men and women. My analysis shows Plato's position on the moral equality of guardian women and men in the Republic to be a continuation of the Socratic position of nongendered virtue. I thus disagree with Spelman's recent interpretation of the Republic on this issue.     

Impacting Awareness of Child Abuse through a Spiritually Based Performing Arts Project

Using indigenous religious folklore images, a folk opera explored issues of child abuse, sexual assault and violence through a psychologically fictionalized character of Mary Magdalene. Befriended by an understanding Mary, Mary Magdalene is healed of her childhood ‘wounds through a religious conversion after almost refusing to encounter Jesus. Six hundred secondary students attended three daytime performances and 486 returned a Likert‐scaled questionnaire. The results indicated that most students perceived abuse as a personally relevant social problem, with this felt relevance increasing with age. Significant trends supported initial expectations that the play may help increase community and personal awareness of child abuse and sexual assault and that the play may also help increase a personal and community interest and effort toward helping others. Perplexing differences in school responses suggest that the schools in which prior discussion occurred may have led to students gaining more social insight and benefit from the play, although some of these same schools also tended to reject the personal relevance of the play. The latter may indicate community risk factors contributing to denial. More Hispanics responded positively to the sense of benefit, which may reflect the fact that there is a Hispanic Catholic majority in the community that sponsored the play itself. Overall, the findings suggest that performing arts can help increase awareness of child abuse as well as personal and community interest in helping and that this benefit increases with teacher discussion and age. In spite of procedural deprivations, the authors felt it was a relatively rare and useful effort to collect some data, hopefully to inspire more social scientists with more resources to consider collaborating with socially and spiritually meaningful fine arts productions in order to document scientifically the impact of the arts on human attitudes and behaviour. The reader's tolerance for the obvious limitations of investigation are requested and appreciated. A discussion of psychospiritual models of creativity and healing concludes the paper.     

INTERACTIVE VIDEO ASSESSMENT OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION SKILLS

In this research we developed and validated an interactive video assessment of conflict resolution skills. A model of conflict management was used to develop the conflict scenarios and part of the scoring key. Computer assessments of conflict resolution skills and two cognitive abilities were administered to 347 supervisors and job performance ratings were collected from their managers. The conflict skills assessment was found to be significantly related to supervisory ratings of on-the-job performance in managing conflict but to be unrelated to the measures of cognitive ability. In addition, the conflict skills assessment had no adverse impact for women. The implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Lesbian Coming Out Process: Therapeutic Considerations

The problems and therapeutic needs of women in the process of identifying themselves as lesbians are described. Means of working through denial rationales are explored.     

Preparing Culturally Effective Counselors

The preparation of culturally effective counselors is a familiar topic in the counseling literature. Counselor educators and practitioners have regularly discussed cultural barriers in the counseling process and have proposed models for working more effectively with multicultural populations. Still, there is no counselor education program in the United States that trains students in the special problems and advantages of counseling culturally different clients. Now more than ever, there are many compelling reasons to prepare culturally effective counselors. They include (a) the multicultural overtones of the American population; (b) the growing number of new immigrants and refugees; (c) the expressed and perceived needs of counselors working with multicultural groups; and (d) the naming of counselors as “necessary” recipients of federal training funds to develop better bilingual programs. The authors propose a counselor training program with a specialization in bilingual-multicultural education. This requires specific attitudes, skills, and competencies based on the interdisciplinary philosophies of counseling, bilingual education, and multicultural education.