Extending the Knapsack: Using the White Privilege Analysis to Examine Conferred Advantage and Disadvantage

This article describes a self-awareness activity that utilizes a directed reading on privilege and a small-group discussion format to examine unearned disadvantage and unearned advantage in one’s life. This exercise can help clinicians to better understand systemic and individual sources of power and privilege in society. Beginning with my previous work on white privilege, students can extend this analysis to other domains of privilege, including, for example, gender, class, sexuality, age, nationality, and physical ability, to name a few. The primary goals of this reflective exercise are to help clinicians understand how clients’ lives are influenced by societal disadvantages and advantages, to encourage a new understanding of oneself, and to increase empathy towards clients.     

Role of personality and affect on the social support and work family conflict relationship

The relationship between support and work family conflict has been studied extensively, but previous studies have not examined if personality moderates this relationship. In this research, we examine the moderating influence of personality on the relationship between contextual support and work-family conflict across two studies. In Study 1, we examine if core self-evaluations (CSE) moderate the relationship between four different types of workplace support, 1. family friendly work policies (FFOP), 2. family supportive organizational climate (FSOC), 3. perceived organizational support (POS), and 4. perceived supervisor support (PSS), and work interfering with family conflict (WIF) using a sample of working adults (N=435). In Study 2, we examine if Big Five personality traits and negative affect moderate the relationship between co-worker support and (WIF) using a large national sample (N=1130) of working respondents from the “midlife in the US” (MIDUS) study of health and well-being. Taken together, the current research examines the moderating effect of several key personality variables on the relationship between important forms of social support and work family conflict. Results based on these two samples indicate CSE moderates the relationship between POS and WIF, and PSS and WIF, but does not moderate the relationship between FFOP and WIF, or FSOC and WIF. Further, conscientiousness and agreeableness moderate the relationship between co-worker support and WIF. Co-worker support and WIF is stronger for individuals with higher levels of negative affect. We discuss the implications for research and practice relating to work family conflict.     

The MMPI‐2 in chronic psychiatric illness

While previous studies on the MMPI‐2 in patients with schizophrenia and depression have used mixed samples of both early stage and chronic psychiatric patients. Here, it is investigated whether chronicity itself might have a differential effect on the MMPI‐2 profiles of these patients and whether demoralization ‘associated with long‐term illness’ affects the scales of the MMPI‐2. Thirty long‐term patients with schizophrenia, 30 long‐term patients with depression, and 30 healthy participants completed the MMPI‐2. Groups were compared on Clinical Scales and on the Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales. Patients with schizophrenia differed from patients with depression on 14 MMPI‐2 scales and from healthy controls on 10 scales, generally showing mean UT‐scores < 65, indicating a subjective experience of (near) normal functioning. Patients with depression differed from healthy controls on 17 scales mostly with UT‐scores > 65, indicating impaired functioning. Demoralization was higher in patients with depression than in patients with schizophrenia and both psychiatric groups differed from the healthy control group. It is concluded that long‐term patients with depression show impaired functioning and high demoralization, while long‐term patients with schizophrenia surprisingly show near normal functioning and less demoralization.     

Projecting Lower Competence to Maintain Moral Warmth in the Avoidance of Prosocial Requests

When faced with prosocial requests, consumers face a difficult decision between taking on the request's burden or appearing unwarm (unkind, uncaring). We propose that the desire to refuse such requests while protecting a morally warm image leads consumers to under‐represent their competence. Although consumers care strongly about being viewed as competent, five studies showed that they downplayed their competence to sidestep a prosocial request. This effect occurred across both self‐reported and behavioral displays of competence. Further, the downplaying competence effect only occurred when facing an undesirable prosocial request, not a similarly undesirable proself request. The final studies showed that people specifically downplayed competence and not warmth. We further distinguished between social warmth (e.g., humor) and moral warmth (e.g., kindness), showing that when competence, social warmth, and moral warmth were all requisite skills for a prosocial task, people downplayed competence and social warmth more than moral warmth. These findings underscore that although people care strongly about being viewed as competent, they willingly trade off competence evaluations if evaluations of warmth—particularly moral warmth—are at risk.     

How thinking about what could have been affects how we feel about what was

Episodic counterfactual thoughts (CFT) and autobiographical memories (AM) involve the reactivation and recombination of episodic memory components into mental simulations. Upon reactivation, memories become labile and prone to modification. Thus, reactivating AM in the context of mentally generating CFT may provide an opportunity for editing processes to modify the content of the original memory. To examine this idea, this paper reports the results of two studies that investigated the effect of reactivating negative and positive AM in the context of either imagining a better (i.e. upward CFT) or a worse (i.e. downward CFT) alternative to an experienced event, as opposed to attentively retrieving the memory without mental modification (i.e. remembering) or no reactivation. Our results suggest that attentive remembering was the best strategy to both reduce the negative affect associated with negative AM, and to prevent the decay of positive affect associated with positive AM. In addition, reactivating positive, but not negative, AM with or without CFT modification reduces the perceived arousal of the original memory over time. Finally, reactivating negative AM in a downward CFT or an attentive remembering condition increases the perceived detail of the original memory over time.     

"IF Only I Were Thin Like Her, Maybe I Could be Happy Like Her": The Self-Implications of Associating a Thin Female Ideal with Life Success

Women often feel dissatisfied with their appearance after comparing themselves to other females who epitomize the thin-ideal standard of beauty. The current study posits that women associate a thin-ideal female body type with positive life-success, and that it may be this psychological link that drives feelings of negativity toward the self after such upward social comparisons. The results revealed that women reported more self-dissatisfaction and less optimism about their possible future life outcomes after exposure to a thin-ideal female target that ostensibly had a successful life than when the target ostensibly had an unsuccessful life.     

Help-Seeking Attitudes of Chinese Americans and Chinese Immigrants in the United States: The Mediating Role of Self-Stigma

In this study, the authors examined the relationship between age, gender, self-stigma, and help-seeking attitudes of Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants, hypothesizing that self-stigma would mediate the relationship between demographic variables (age and gender) and help-seeking attitude. Utilizing a path analysis, the authors found that self-stigma mediated the relationship between demographic variables and help-seeking attitude. Self-stigma was a moderately strong predictor for help-seeking attitude (β = –.41, p < .001). Implications are discussed. Es este estudio, los autores examinaron la relación entre edad, sexo, autoestigma y actitudes de búsqueda de ayuda en personas estadounidenses de origen chino e inmigrantes chinos, con la hipótesis de que el autoestigma mediaría la relación entre las variables demográficas (edad y sexo) y la actitud de búsqueda de ayuda. Mediante un análisis de ruta, los autores hallaron que el autoestigma medió la relación entre las variables demográficas y la actitud de búsqueda de ayuda. El autoestigma fue un indicador moderadamente fuerte de la actitud de búsqueda de ayuda (β = –.41, p < .001). Se discuten las implicaciones.