Enhancing young people's social competence and health behavior: An important challenge for educators, scientists, policymakers, and funders

Large numbers of America's young people engage in multiple high-risk behaviors that may jeopardize their health and social development. Given the gravity of this situation, many federal agencies and national organizations have called for the implementation of school-based K-12 social competence and health promotion programs. Unfortunately, there is a gap between the comprehensive programs that policymakers are asking educators to implement and the limited scope, duration, and intensity of state-of-the-art health promotion programs that scientists have developed and evaluated. As a result, most schools currently adopt well-marketed programs that lack documented effectiveness. Although current research indicates that brief, well-designed, theory-driven competence promotion and health education programs produce short-term benefits, there have been no controlled, longitudinal field studies to evaluate the long-term effects of K-12 efforts. This paper proposes that policymakers and funding agencies support long-term collaborations among educators and scientists to develop and evaluate K-12 comprehensive social competence and health education programs and identifies critical issues that funded projects should address.     

Why Improvement Can Trump Consistent Strong Performance: The Role of Effort Perceptions

How do evaluators form comparative judgments of improved versus consistently strong performance records with equivalent recent performance? We propose that evaluators judge those with improved records to be more deserving of future opportunities (e.g., a promotion) and that this can be explained – at least in part – by perceptions of effort investments. Specifically, evaluators rely on improvement to judge effort and hence devalue consistent strong performance. Five studies supported these propositions. Evaluators perceived greater effort investment and trait effort in individuals with improved profiles than those with consistent profiles and consequently thought that those with improved profiles were more deserving of future opportunities. We discuss implications of these results across various decision contexts. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis and the Sociocultural Turn: From Cultural Contexts to Hermeneutic Understanding

This article addresses the tension between the defining impact of culture on human experience and the role of the person as agent. Focusing on the sociocultural turn in psychoanalysis, it examines the evolution of the notions of culture and the person, first in the culturalist psychoanalysis of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm, and then in the hermeneutic turn of recent psychoanalysis. The article maintains that persons are inescapably shaped by the culture in which they live. At the same time, the manner in which individual psychology is organized and experienced within culture points to the role of agency as an emergent human potential. The article suggests that culture and personal agency are mutually reinforcing and that psychoanalysis must account for both. It develops a hermeneutic perspective as an alternative to postmodernism and concludes by outlining a post-Cartesian approach in psychoanalysis that addresses culture and the person in a non-dualistic fashion.     

Metacognitive Therapy in Major Depression: An Open Trial of Comorbid Cases

This open trial investigated the transdiagnostic effects of metacognitive therapy (MCT) in patients with severe major depressive disorder and comorbid psychiatric disorder. Ten patients were treated with MCT over 10 sessions and were assessed with measures of depression, anxiety, rumination, and metacognitions at pre- and posttreatment and at 6 months follow-up. None of the patients were diagnosed as depressed at posttreatment, and of the initial 21 total diagnoses at pretreatment only 3 diagnoses remained at postintervention. The effect sizes were large for symptoms of depression, rumination, and worry. At 6 months follow-up standardized recovery criteria on the BDI showed that 70% were recovered, 20% improved, and 10% unchanged. The results indicate that MCT was associated with high rates of transdiagnostic improvement.     

The relationship of sexual attitudes,attitudes about women,and racial attitudes in white males

A questionnaire measuring sexual attitudes, attitudes about women, and racial attitudes was administered to 350 White male college students. Sexual attitudes characterized by sexual guilt, emphasis on personal and social control of sexual expression, and depersonalization of sex were significantly positively correlated (p<.001) with attitudes that typified women in terms of traditional masculine—feminine stereotypes and good (nonsexual)—bad (sexual) dichotomies. These stereotyped and dichotomous attitudes about women and constricted and depersonalized sexual attitudes were both significantly positively correlated (p<.001) with negative racial attitudes. The implications of these results and other research suggested by this investigation are discussed.This report is based on a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree at Michigan State University, 1973. The author would like to express appreciation to Dozier W. Thornton for continued guidance and assistance as dissertation advisor. In addition, the author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Donald L. Grummon, Andrew M. Barclay, and Jeanne E. Gullahorn, all of whom served on the dissertation committee.     

Subjectivist – observing and objective – participant perspectives on the world: Kant,aquinas and quantum mechanics

Theological thinking is influenced by perspectives on the relation of scientific knowledge to reality. Two paradigms for understanding the nature of human knowledge are considered in relation to quantum mechanics: the subjective-observing perspective of Kant, and the objective-participant perspective of Thomas Aquinas. I discuss whether quantum mechanics necessarily implies a subject centered perspective on reality, and argue, with reference to d'Espagnat's notion of veiled reality, that quantum non-separability challenges this view. I then explore whether the objective-participant perspective of Thomas Aquinas provides a more fruitful context for understanding quantum mechanics. I discuss quantum measurement in terms of the transition from potentiality to actuality, and knowledge as the latent intelligibility of the world realized. However, the negative nature of our knowledge of quantum non-separability also challenges this perspective. Our theological thinking in response to quantum knowledge must therefore proceed tentatively, balancing a via positiva, with a via negativa.