Reducing AIDS-related stigma in developing countries: the importance of theory- and evidence-based interventions

In many developing countries persons living with HIV and AIDS experience strong stigma and discrimination, and AIDS-related stigma has an enormous negative impact on their social relationships, access to resources, and psychological well being. Moreover, AIDS-related stigma hampers HIV-related health promotion, including voluntary HIV counselling and testing. In this article, we will argue that programs to reduce AIDS-related stigma are most likely to be effective if these programs are based upon thorough needs assessments, theory- and evidence-based intervention strategies and collaborative planning. A protocol for health promotion programs design is outlined. Furthermore, psychosocial correlates of AIDS-related stigma in developing countries, social-psychological theories that might be useful in designing intervention strategies to reduce stigmatisation and successful elements of previous interventions aimed at stigma reduction are discussed. It is concluded that psychological theory does provide guidelines for the development of stigma-reducing intervention programs, but that such programs can only be effective when based upon context-specific needs assessment and collaborative planning.     

assessing complexity: integrating being and becoming

Holistic perspectives in career development have focused attention on complexity as important for counselors using assessment techniques. Increased emphasis on subjectivity has resulted in greater focus on qualitative measures versus traditional psychometric tests. These developments reflect issues such as the idiographic‐nomothetic distinction and individuals' being and becoming. The author uses a card sort technique to show how some of these issues might be addressed in the context of seeking a more comprehensive assessment for addressing the challenge of assessing complexity. Specifically, complexity is assessed in terms of traits, unique patterns of preferences, personal constructs, idiosyncratic likes, and the potential for change.     

Antecedents of Gender Harassment: An Analysis of Person and Situation Factors

Two laboratory studies examined the impact of person and situation factors in the prediction of gender harassment. Male undergraduates from a mid-sized Midwestern university in the U.S. were recruited based on an assessment of sexist attitudes. It was predicted that, across two studies, characteristics of one’s personality (sexist attitudes) and situational characteristics (sexual priming and masculine identity threat) would produce unique and interactive effects in the prediction of gender harassment, defined behaviorally as the number of sexist questions asked of women during a mock job interview, and cognitively as negative evaluations of the female interviewee. Across both studies, results support the predictions that both person and situation factors are important to understanding gender harassment.     

The Use of Modelling in Career Counselling: A Case-Study

Through the presentation of a case-study, two issues are addressed: the application of modelling to career counselling and the generalisation of counselling effects. The case-history is presented of a client who was failing in nursing. Modelling was used to reduce the fear and to enable the client to implement her career plan. Particular attention is focused on the initiation of modelling, the use of a modelling hierarchy, the self-efficacy mechanism, the use of mental rehearsal, and the implications of reciprocal determinism for counselling. It is concluded that modelling may be an effective technique for career-development problems. Further, modelling may enable the effective transfer and generalisation of coping strategies.     

Psychological Test Interpretation: Integrative or Disintegrate?

The need for constructive debate by psychologists about the interpretation of psychological tests is noted. This paper is a critique of Crites' integrative test interpretation approach which eschews a specific test-interpretation session in favour of feeding in such data as are perceived appropriate by the counsellor during subsequent counselling. Five problem areas are noted: hidden knowledge; counsellor as guru; clients' rights and responsibilities; using any information in counselling; and little supportive evidence. It is concluded that the 'integrative' approach fails to live up to its laudable intentions. To promote the debate about psychological test interpretation, seven general principles are outlined to further the development of more useful approaches to the use of tests in counselling.     

Effects of performance expectancy and self-focused attention on social interaction

We investigated the impact of performance expectancies and self-focused attention on social performance in a mixed-sex dyad. A group of 48 undergraduate men with self-reported moderate social anxiety were divided into two groups on the basis of their high or low performance expectancies. Subjects were asked to respond to several self-report questionnaires before and after making a 4-5-min phone call to a female confederate for the purpose of getting acquainted. Half of the subjects in each expectancy group performed in the presence of a self-focusing stimulus (video camera). When anxiety level was controlled for, focus of attention alone had a very limited effect on performance. Expectancy had a significant influence on social performance, but only if subjects were self-focused. Thus confident subjects were rated by judges as more socially skilled than were doubtful subjects, but only when the camera was present. The interaction between these variables parallels previous research and supports the self-regulation model of Carver and Scheier.     

Tailoring computerised interventions to client needs

The results are reported of an experimental study in which 91 subjects rated the perceived helpfulness of three computerised interventions - a work values inventory (WAPS), a job-bank (JOB), and a decisions exercise (DECISIONS) - for hypothetical clients with identity, self-awareness, opportunity-awareness, decision-making and implementation problems. As predicted, WAPS was perceived as most helpful for clients with a self-awareness problem, JOB for clients with an opportunity-awareness problem, and DECISIONS for clients with a decision-making problem. Potential applications of the model implicit in the study to counsellor training, to the assessment of client problems and to careers education programmes are discussed.     

Interpretations of sexual harassment: An attributional analysis

Two studies were conducted to examine an attributional model of judgments of sexual harassment. The key assumption of the model is that judgments of sexual harassment involve the attribution of negative intentions (e.g., hostility or callousness) to an actor with regard to a sexual behavior. The two studies effectively demonstrated that many factors known to influence the attribution of intentionality play an important role in judgments of sexual harassment. The findings are discussed with regard to understanding how people differ in their judgments of sexual harassment.The studies described in this article were reported in a presentation at the 1986 meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago.