Ethical Issues in Consultation,Associate Professor and Director

Consulting relationships differ from traditional counseling and psychotherapeutic relationships in several fundamental ways. These differences require special consideration in evaluating ethical questions and conflicts, identifying ethical parameters within any given situation, and using existing ethical guidelines in determining appropriate courses of action. Currently, formal guidelines specific to the practice of consultation are not available, and existing codes of ethics for the helping professions provide only limited guidance for consultation practice. Consequently, consultants bear a heavy personal responsibility for the consequences of their professional decisions and actions. In this article the author reviews several important ethical issues relevant to consultation and examines their implications for consultation practice.     

“My big sister the town supervisor”: Family leadership training is not just for boys

This study investigates gender similarity in the effects of birth order upon political leadership. Town supervisors were the leaders studied as there are a considerable number of women who attain this level of leadership. Questionnaires about birth order and family size were gained from 66 women who were town supervisors in New York State in 1992, and compared to a randomly selected sample of 57 male town supervisors. It was found that women as well as men town supervisors were more likely to have been first born in their families. However, whereas gender does not apparently influence the relevance of birth order for leadership, it clearly does exert an influence on the level of political leadership attained. Women town supervisors gained their positions in towns that were considerably smaller than the towns led by the male supervisors. Discussion concerned the nature of family experiences that contribute to leadership training, including those that may be different for girls and boys. Further research is needed to clarify barriers to female assertion of political leadership at more senior levels, because as this study shows, female leadership is being trained in families.     

Anger of women incest survivors

Adult women survivors of incest (n = 68) were compared to other women (n = 93) with respect to several questionnaire measures of manifest anger. The vast majority of the research participants were white, middle class, heterosexual, and Michigan residents. Incest survivors were angrier than other women, both in general and at their parents. Anger toward mother and anger toward father were comparable. Few incest survivors blamed either parent for the incest, except in those speciflc cases where the parent was a perpetrator. Not surprisingly, incest survivors were particularly angry at parent perpetrators when they were held responsible for the abuse. Incest occurred in families where other traumas were present, and the extent of these other traumas was also associated with increased anger at parents. Women who identified with feminism and who had participated in therapy were angrier at their parents than were other women. Therapy implications of these results were discussed.This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan by the first author, under the supervision of the second author. The help and encouragement of committee members Margaret Buttenheim, Kathleen Faller, and Sheryl Olson are gratefully acknowledged. Howard Gottlieb, Judith Ballou, Donna Silbert, and Robert Daniels also contributed substantially to this research.Financial support was provided by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Horace D. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan.     

The cocktail party effect in infants

Most speech research with infants occurs in quiet laboratory rooms with no outside distractions. However, in the real world, speech directed to infants often occurs in the presence of other competing acoustic signals. To learn language, infants need to attend to their caregiver’s speech even under less than ideal listening conditions. We examined 7.5-month-old infants’ abilities to selectively attend to a female talker’s voice when a male voice was talking simultaneously. In three experiments, infants heard a target voice repeating isolated words while a distractor voice spoke fluently at one of three different intensities. Subsequently, infants heard passages produced by the target voice containing either the familiar words or novel words. Infants listened longer to the familiar words when the target voice was 10 dB or 5 dB more intense than the distractor, but not when the two voices were equally intense. In a fourth experiment, the assignment of words and passages to the familiarization and testing phases was reversed so that the passages and distractors were presented simultaneously during familiarization, and the infants were tested on the familiar and unfamiliar isolated words. During familiarization, the passages were 10 dB more intense than the distractors. The results suggest that this may be at the limits of what infants at this age can do in separating two different streams of speech. In conclusion, infants have some capacity to extract information from speech even in the face of a competing acoustic voice.     

Rape Myths, Rape Definitions, and Probability of Conviction

Feminist analyses of rape hypothesize that adherence to rape myths affects the inclusiveness or restrictiveness of rape definitions, with numerous practical consequences. The results of this research support that hypothesis. The paper also critiques the experimental vignette methodology frequently used to investigate rape definitions. In the process of exploring its cectral hypothesis, this analysis demonstrates the importance and feasibility of using additional techniques to achieve a fuller understanding of factors affecting rape definitions.     

The Predictors of Post-Sterilization Regret in Married Women1

We interviewed a sample of 317 married women prior to a tubal sterilization (195) or a husband's vasectomy (122) and then reinterviewed them yearly for 5 years. Using these women's responses to six questions about their feelings and desires following sterilization, we fitted a latent-variable model of post-sterilization regret to the data by means of a linear structural equation analysis. The results confirmed our view that post-sterilization regret was not a simple psychological state but rather was a complex process with different, causally linked manifestations. This process began with a renewed interest in having a baby, proceeded to the development of negative feeling about the three decisions that lead to sterilization, and concluded with a desire to reverse the surgery. This sequence was affected by the negative, post-sterilization effects of the sterilization and by the Occurrence of divorce. Next, we identified the pre-sterilization predictors of six regret variables from our model by means of a series of linear regression analyses. The major pre-sterilization predictors of the regret process included being relatively young, ambivalence about future childbearing, negative attitudes toward sterilization, dominance of the decision making by the woman's husband, and conflict with her husband during decision making. Finally, we divided the sample into quintiles on the basis of their scores on a Pre-Sterilization Predictor Scale and assessed the performance of our predictor variables as indicators of risk of regret by determining the level of negative feelings toward sterilization in each quintile. The results confirm the discriminatory power of our predictors. The overall findings indicate a number of psychological and marital issues, the exploration of which might help counselors provide anticipatory and preventative services to couples seeking sterilization.     

The role of the psychologist expert witness: Provider of perspective and input

The definition and role of the expert witness is reviewed. Two conceptual systems for viewing the world, the scientific method and the adversarial system, are compared. The reconciliation and integration of these two discrepant systems are discussed in terms of input versus outcome. The rules of evidence, as well as problems of communication between the systems, are reviewed with the aim of providing expert witnesses with a better understanding of effective testimony. Finally, collaboration between the two systems is called for in order to provide guidelines for both neuropsychologists and attorneys.     

Hemisphere differences and judgments of simultaneity of brief light flashes

A series of experiments was conducted to investigate the possibility of hemispheric specialization for judgments of the simultaneity of two light flashes. Right-handed subjects adjusted two light flashes until they appeared simultaneous. The comparison of measures derived from the two possible orders of the light flashes suggested that the right hemisphere of right-handed subjects performed the function of ordering visual stimuli in time. Two further experiments examined an alternative explanation, that of a left-to-right scanning mechanism, the results of which also suggested a hemisphere explanation. The results of these experiments are discussed in terms of previous research and theories which located a temporal ordering mechanism in the speech hemisphere.