Perceptions of Liver Transplant Candidates with or Without an Alcohol Use History

Cirrhosis secondary to alcohol use is a primary cause of liver disease and a medical condition for which liver transplantation is a viable treatment option. However, there remains considerable debate within both the lay and the medical communities regarding the distribution of a scarce medical resource to adults with alcoholism. This study examined college students' perceptions toward an adult, presented in a written vignette, for whom liver transplantation was medically indicated. The influence of gender (female and male) and alcohol use history (no alcohol history, alcoholism history with long-term abstinence, alcoholism history with current use) on these ratings was examined. Subjects rated the adult presented with no alcohol history more positively than they did the adults presented with a history of alcoholism. Also, the adult with no alcohol history was more likely to be offered transplantation and was given higher priority ratings for transplantation by subjects. While subjects' own alcohol use history and organ donor registration status were not associated with ratings, having a family member with an alcohol problem and personally knowing a transplant recipient were related to more favorable ratings toward the adult presented in the vignette. Implications of these findings as well as limitations of the study are discussed.     

Distance judgments under different size-information conditions

Seventy-two Ss judged the absolute distance of a target presented without distance cues other than retinal size and assumed size. The method by which E communicated information about the size of a 3-in. target had a significant effect on the magnitude of the discrepancy between judged distance and the perceived distance required by the size-distance invariance hypothesis. In order of increasing effectiveness in producing distance judgments meeting invariance requirements were: size information in the form of verbally communicated metric units, size information communicated by labeling the target with the name of a familiar object, and size information in the form of a visual representation.     

Revisiting Individual Creativity Assessment: Triangulation in Subjective and Objective Assessment Methods

Compared to the significant development of creativity studies, individual creativity research has not reached a meaningful consensus regarding the most valid and reliable method for assessing individual creativity. This study revisited 2 of the most popular methods for assessing individual creativity: subjective and objective methods. This study analyzed 1,500 individuals to investigate whether the methods for assessing individual creativity affect the measurement outcomes of individual creativity. Findings indicated that subjective assessments have a smaller variance a higher mean and a moderate but significant correlation with objective assessment methods. Such differences can be motivated by social desirability, consistency motif, illusory superiority, and leniency biases. Based on these findings, this study highlighted the need to acknowledge how subjective and objective assessment methods may affect individual creativity assessment outcomes.     

The Contribution of Ideational Behavior to Creative Extracurricular Activities

The prediction of creative performance from ideation has shown promise, but questions remain. In this study, the relationship of ideational behavior and the creative performance of elementary school children (N = 255) was examined across 6 domains of creative performance: science, mathematics, technology, fine arts, music, and writing. Importantly, the potential confounding of grade and gender were controlled and creative self-efficacy tested as a moderator. Results indicated that ideational behavior explained a unique portion of variance in creative performance, above and beyond the potential confounding factors. The moderating effect of creative self-efficacy was confirmed, but only in the domain of science. Interestingly, ideation was more strongly related to creative activity than was creative self-efficacy in every domain except art and writing. Limitations and future research are discussed.     

The Heterogeneity of Truancy among Urban Middle School Students: A Latent Class Growth Analysis

This longitudinal study explores heterogeneity of middle school students by identifying subgroups of youth characterized by distinct truancy trajectories and by determining disability profiles that distinguish these subgroups. Participants comprised an entire 7th through 9th grade student population, with approximately 58,000 students, in a large urban school district. Latent class growth analysis was used to identify subgroups of truant youth. This analysis yielded five distinct truant subgroups: Very-Low (37 %), Low (43.4 %), Declining (3.3 %), Rising (12.8 %), and Chronic (3.6 %). Further, differential disability profiles were found in each subgroup with the control of demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, free/reduced lunch, Limited English Proficiency, grade, and prior school absences), students with serious emotional disturbance and learning disabilities demonstrated amplified risks of being classified in the Chronic or Rising subgroups, which show chronic or incremental upward truant trajectories over time. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for future research.     

Self-determination and motivation for bariatric surgery: a qualitative study

This study examined how obese individuals acquire their motivation to undergo weight loss surgery and characterized the motivations within the framework of the self-determination theory (SDT). Participants expecting to have bariatric surgery were recruited and participated in semi-structured interviews. Interview accounts characterized different types of motivation for individuals seeking surgical weight loss treatments on the SDT continuum of relative autonomy. This study demonstrated that the more one’s motivation was internally regulated, related to one’s personal life and supported for competency, the more personal and hopeful were the anecdotes participants mentioned in accounts, thus the more positive the surgical outcomes were anticipated. Study limitations and future research were discussed as was the need for a systematic scheme to categorize types of motivation within the SDT, a longitudinal approach to measure actual weight loss outcomes based on the patient’s pre-surgical motivation, and a further investigation with a larger sample size and balanced gender ratio. Practical implications of the study findings were also discussed as a novel strategy to internalize bariatric patients’ motivation, further helping to improve their long-term quality of life post-surgery.     

Family Therapy for an Adult Child Experiencing Bullying and Game Addiction: An Application of Bowenian and MRI Theories

Bowenian theory and MRI family therapy model were chosen to treat a Korean male adult client whose symptomatic problems were bullying and game addiction. To test its validity of therapeutic effectiveness, the following case analysis methods were used: narrative analysis of interview contents, categorization of the nine sessions of verbatim, videotaping, and notes according to classified concepts (i.e., triangulation), and explanation using matrix and network. Results showed that low level of differentiation, patterns of emotional cutoff, and dynamics of triangulation were clearly present in this client. After MRI family therapy, changes were evident in perceptive references, communication patterns, stress-coping mechanism, symptomatic behaviors, and intra-family relationships.     

Social Contagion in Competitors Versus Cooperators

The current study examined social contagion—or the spreading of memories from individual to individual—in two different social contexts: Competition and Cooperation. Participants were provided with words (Experiments 1A and 1B) or scenes (Experiment 2) to study. After study, participants were randomly divided: Half were given a competitive context, and the other half, a cooperative context. Then, in the paired recall phase, each participant took turns with a confederate partner in recalling the previously studied items. On a subsequent test, participants had to report the items that were recalled on the pair recall phase, in addition to who had recalled that item. The results showed that competitors, as compared with cooperators, were more likely to focus on other people's memories, and surprisingly, the same difference obtained for false memories. Essentially, people who are primed with a competitive context were more easily ‘infected’ by memories, true or false. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Multiple Roles of South Korean Married Women Professors: Role Changes and the Factors Which Influence Potential Role Gratification and Strain

In this paper, we examine role gratification and role strain of married middle-class South Korean women by comparing a sample of women professors and a sample of housewives whose husbands are professors and researchers. The results show that the married women professors, compared with the housewives, experienced both greater gratification and greater strain. The findings also show that sociodemographic factors are not strongly related to role gratification and strain. It was found that married women professors have more nontraditional gender-role attitudes as compared with housewives. In addition, the research indicates that transnational resocialization from overseas experiences in a Western society has positive effects on role gratification among the married women professors.