Marital Problems Occurring in Midlife: Implications for Couples Therapists

The ability of therapists to adequately address the presenting problems of couples impacts the process and outcome of therapy. Although research has examined the types of problems that couples commonly experience, little is known about problems among midlife couples. Midlife marital problems were examined using data from a national random sample of 632 married people between the ages of 40 and 50. The results indicated that the most common problems were financial matters, ways of dealing with children, and sexual issues. Values, commitment, spiritual matters, and violence were the least common problem areas. There were few differences when gender, remarriage, and length of marriage were considered.     

INTENTIONAL ACTION AND THE UNINTENTIONAL FALLACY

Much of the recent work in action theory can be organized around a set of objections facing the Simple View and other intention‐based accounts of intentional action. In this paper, I review three of the most popular objections to the Simple View and argue that all three objections commit a common fallacy. I then draw some more general conclusions about the relationship between intentional action and moral responsibility.     

UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS ON INDIVIDUALS' TURNOVER DECISIONS: A META-ANALYTIC PATH MODEL

Historically, researchers have sought to identify environmental causes of employee turnover. This paradigm has led to the underemphasis of individual differences as being an important cause of individuals' turnover decisions. The results of the meta-analysis show that personality traits do have an impact on individuals' turnover intentions and behaviors. The trait of Emotional Stability best predicted (negatively) employees' intentions to quit, whereas the traits of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness best predicted (negatively) actual turnover decisions. A theoretically developed path model showed important direct effects from personality to intentions to quit and turnover behaviors that were not captured through job satisfaction or job performance. These direct effects indicate that employees who are low on Emotional Stability may intend to quit for reasons other than dissatisfaction with their jobs or not being able to perform their jobs well. The direct effects on turnover suggest that individuals who are low on Agreeableness or high on Openness may engage in unplanned quitting. Personality traits had stronger relationships with outcomes than did non-self-report measures of job complexity/job characteristics.     

THE PRAYER OF THE MOLINIST

According to the ‘Power of Prayer’ objection to Molinism, the insights of the Church's great saints and spiritual directors regarding how best to grow in the spiritual life conflict with Molinism: spiritual growth is best achieved by praying from a Thomistic attitude towards Providence. Thomas Flint has recently replied to this objection as it was raised by Fr. Reginald Garrigou‐Lagrange. In this paper, I respond on behalf of Garrigou‐Lagrange.     

CONSEQUENCES OF INDIVIDUALS' FIT AT WORK: A META-ANALYSIS OF PERSON–JOB, PERSON–ORGANIZATION, PERSON–GROUP, AND PERSON–SUPERVISOR FIT

This meta-analysis investigated the relationships between person–job (PJ), person–organization (PO), person–group, and person–supervisor fit with preentry (applicant attraction, job acceptance, intent to hire, job offer) and postentry individual-level criteria (attitudes, performance, withdrawal behaviors, strain, tenure). A search of published articles, conference presentations, dissertations, and working papers yielded 172 usable studies with 836 effect sizes. Nearly all of the credibility intervals did not include 0, indicating the broad generalizability of the relationships across situations. Various ways in which fit was conceptualized and measured, as well as issues of study design, were examined as moderators to these relationships in studies of PJ and PO fit. Interrelationships between the various types of fit are also meta-analyzed. 25 studies using polynomial regression as an analytic technique are reviewed separately, because of their unique approach to assessing fit. Broad themes emerging from the results are discussed to generate the implications for future research on fit.     

THE SORROW THAT DARE NOT SAY ITS NAME: THE INADEQUATE FATHER,THE MOTOR OF HISTORY

Although the following essay is literary‐philosophical, it arose from a practical interest. I have been struck by how widespread today is the complaint about the ‘inadequate father’. Of course a father may be inadequate in diverse ways, either absconding, absent and weak, or overbearing, bullying, and tyrannical, or some combination of these. Further, I am not restricting the term ‘father’ to its narrow biological sense, but using it rather as a metaphor for any institution or structure which an individual or a group feels should have been in place to guide, direct, and protect them in important situations, but did not do its job properly. Consequently they are willing to concede they are not all they could have been, but they insist it is not their fault, rather the fault of the ‘father’ who should have done his job better. This ties in with the fashionable appeal of ‘victimhood’. Everybody today seems to want to cast themselves as a ‘victim’, for reasons similar to those mentioned above. If you are a ‘victim’, then there must be an ‘oppressor’– and some ‘parent’ organization that should have guided, directed, and protected you against the oppressor, but again did not do its job adequately. It is striking how many individuals and groups around the world today choose to perceive themselves, and to present themselves to others, as ‘victims’; it has indeed become a preferred characterization of our age, for it carries with it a rhetorical advantage that trumps all others. If you are able to cast yourself as a ‘victim’, and have others accept this, you disarm and neutralize criticism, not only of what you are, but of what you are currently doing – because the latter can be presented as a just ‘compensation’ for what you have suffered. As with guilt, there is no built‐in quota or statute of limitations. This rhetoric was not as common thirty or forty years ago. There is an added factor here in America and the New World generally where, according to a whispered criticism, as our ancestors crossed the ocean, they experienced a ‘drop in civilization’. Life here was initially without some of the structures and institutions which had evolved over thousands of years in the Old World, which could thus be presumed there but here were absent. As we won with difficulty our independence, we unconsciously repudiated much of the ‘higher culture’ of the colonial master, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As the ‘economic bubble’ of having won the Second World War has gradually dissipated, we discover we are handicapped by an absence of the forms of maturation and self‐realization that arise in and are necessary for dealing with prolonged peace. In our ‘ideology of liberty’, our adults become essentially grown children, unschooled in anything higher, and thus have particular difficulty assuming the responsibilities of parenthood. They are forced to fall back upon a military style of giving orders, because on this side of the water, ‘final causes’ in the form of commonly admired or agreed on goals for striving are not in place. In this sense there is an absence of the ‘adequate father’. Further, as ‘American Culture’ expands through publicity and the media, we spread the same disease. There is another relevant factor, the ‘celebrity‐liberationist’ lifestyle that has been diffused into the general population since the 1960's and has become a default secular ethic of our time, replacing the traditional Judeo‐Christian decalogue. The former is invoked as a justification for aggressively seeking fame and fortune, and making no attempt to conceal this; rather than worrying that such an attitude will cause offense, it is worn proudly and defiantly in the hope that others will identify with it, thereby branding the performer a cultural hero. This popular strategy towards fulfilment itself rests on a metaphysic of ‘expressive individualism’, a position that holds that the supreme ethical imperative to which other obligations must be subordinated is for each to bring forward their hidden noumenal core, the only source of value, into phenomenal appearances where it may be admired and benefit others and such that creation will for the first time be complete. This change in Western culture made possible by greater affluence and security represents a trickle‐down phenomenon and democritization of the awe reserved for the artist revered as a genius during the nineteenth century, now spread to the entire population. Anything that constrains this expansion, which interrupts or limits this transfer, is to be rejected as parental abuse, psychological repression, or cultural imperialism.     

TARGET PRACTICE: AN ORGANIZATIONAL IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT APPROACH TO ATTRACTING MINORITY AND FEMALE JOB APPLICANTS

On account of a number of factors, many companies have increased recruitment targeting female and ethnic or racial minority job applicants. Despite evidence suggesting that these applicants are attracted by different factors than traditional applicants and an abundance of recruitment tactics suggested in the popular press, no empirically based approach to recruiting these populations has emerged. This article reviews and integrates literature on organizational impression management, recruitment, marketing, and social psychology and provides a framework to assist practitioners in attracting minority and female job applicants. In addition, several avenues for future research are discussed.     

The costs and benefits of practical and emotional support on adjustment: A daily diary study of couples experiencing acute stress

Emotional support from intimate partners has been shown to have both costs and benefits for daily anxious and depressed moods (N. Bolger, A. Zuckerman, & R. C. Kessler, 2000). We examine whether similar costs and benefits are found for practical support, and when fatigue, vigor, and anger are outcomes. Results are based on daily diary reports from 68 recent law school graduates and their intimate partners during the month before the New York State bar examination. Partners’ reports of practical support provision to the examinee were beneficial in that they were associated with decreased examinee fatigue and increased examinee vigor. In contrast, examinees’ recognition of emotional support receipt was costly in that it was associated with increases in anger, as well as anxious and depressed mood. Results highlight the distinction between emotional and practical support and are consistent with findings that suggest that invisible (provided but not recognized) support leads to the best outcomes.