A Gender Analysis of Theories of Coping with Stress

In this article, various feminist theories are used to critique selected psychological theories of coping with stress, a reformulated coping theory is outlined, and recommendations for future research are made. To date, theories of coping often portray women as less able copers than the samples of men with whom they are compared. A reformulated theory, based on different women's experiences, explicitly examines the role of social forces (sexism, racism) and access to power as variables in the coping process rather than solely focusing on the individual. Selected examples of research that contribute to such a revision are given. Revised theories and methodologies will encourage the more accurate appraisal of women's coping abilities and generate information vital to the creation of more inclusive and representative theories of coping.     

Stereotype activation is unintentional: Behavioural and event‐related potenials evidence

In this study, a priming Stroop paradigm was used to determine whether stereotype activation is unintentional. Priming conditions (priming/no‐priming) and the relationship between priming and target (consistent/inconsistent/no‐relation) were the independent variables; accuracy, reaction time and N400 amplitude were used as dependent variables. The reaction time revealed that stereotype activation is, to some extent, unintentional. Furthermore, the event‐related potenial (ERP) results showed that N400 amplitude was larger for inconsistent conditions than for consistent conditions. This result supported the notion that stereotype activation is an unintentional and automatic process.     

The effects of physical contact and decision type on moral decision making: A study of harm to save moral behavior

This study examined the relationship between physical contact and decision type in predicting “harm to save” behavior. Participants were assigned to making either a judgment or a choice involving moral dilemmas. All participants were presented with dilemmas that either required or did not require having physical contact with potential victims. Participants were asked to decide whether to sacrifice fewer people to save more (utilitarian responses) or not to do so and thus more people would die (deontological responses). The study sample included 345 participants who completed a set of self‐report measures. Results indicated an interaction between physical contact and decision type. In the choice condition only, participants reported significantly less utilitarian responses to the dilemmas that required having physical contact with the person to be harmed than to dilemmas that did not require physical contact. This difference was not found in the judgment condition. These results contribute to a greater understanding of the nature and potential malleability of human morality.     

Help yourself by helping others: The joint impact of group member organizational citizenship behaviors and group cohesiveness on group member objective task performance change

This paper examines how a group member's individual‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBI) and organization‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBO) interact with a salient group‐level contextual variable, group cohesiveness, to foster positive change for that group member, starting with job self‐efficacy change, and followed by objective task performance change. Over a span of 6 months, we engaged in multilevel, multisource, multistage data collection and surveyed 587 members in 83 work groups. Our results indicate that a group member's OCBI, in comparison with OCBO, is more positively related to his or her job self‐efficacy change. Group cohesiveness was found to attenuate the relationship between a group member's OCBI and job self‐efficacy change, and conversely, to accentuate the relationship between a group member's OCBO and job self‐efficacy change. Furthermore, a group member's job self‐efficacy change mediated the interactive effects of the group member's OCBI and group cohesiveness (as well as the group member's OCBO and group cohesiveness) on his or her objective task performance change.     

Framing Charity Advertising: Influences of Message Framing,Image Valence,and Temporal Framing on a Charitable Appeal1

This study examined when and how charitable advertisements could be effective in the context of child poverty. An experiment investigated the influences of message framing, image valence, and temporal framing on a charitable appeal. The results indicate that image valence enhances framing effects on advertising effectiveness of a charitable appeal when the image is congruent with the framed message, especially when the image and the message are presented negatively. A short‐term temporal frame facilitates effects of a negatively framed message with a negative pictorial presentation. Alternatively, a long‐term temporal frame increases advertising influences of a positively framed message with a positive pictorial image. Relevance for information processing of charity advertising is discussed.     

Differences in alexithymia and emotional awareness in exhaustion syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome

Symptoms of Exhaustion Syndrome (ES) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) are overlapping and create difficulties of differential diagnosis. Empirical studies comparing ES and CFS are scarce. This study aims to investigate if there are any emotional differences between ES and CFS. This cross‐sectional study compared self‐reported alexithymia and observer‐rated emotional awareness in patients with ES (n = 31), CFS (n = 38) and healthy controls (HC) (n = 30). Self‐reported alexithymia was measured with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale‐20 (TAS‐20) and emotional awareness with an observer‐rated performance test, the Level of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). Additionally, depression and anxiety were scored by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Results show that patients with ES expressed higher self‐reported alexithymia in the TAS‐20 compared to HC, but had similar emotional awareness capacity in the observer‐rated performance test, the LEAS. Patients with CFS expressed more difficulties in identifying emotions compared to HCs, and performed significantly worse in the LEAS‐total and spent more time completing the LEAS as compared to HC. Correlation and multiple regressions analyses revealed that depression and anxiety positively correlated with and explained part of the variances in alexithymia scores, while age and group explained the major part of the variance in LEAS. Findings of this study indicate that emotional status is different in patients with ES and CFS with respect to both self‐reported alexithymia and observer‐rated emotional awareness. Emotional parameters should be approached both in clinical investigation and psychotherapy for patients with ES and CFS.     

Adapting the Unique Minds Program: Exploring the Feasibility of a Multiple Family Intervention for Children with Learning Disabilities in the Context of Spain

The Unique Minds Program (Stern, Unique Minds Program, 1999) addresses the socio‐emotional needs of children with learning disabilities (LD) and their families. Children and their parents work together in a multiple family group to learn more about LD and themselves as people with the capacity to solve problems in a collaborative way, including problems in family school relationships. This article reports the cultural adaptation of the program for use in Spain and findings from a feasibility study involving three multiple family groups and a total of 15 children and 15 mothers, using a pre‐post design. This Spanish adaptation of the program is called “Mentes Únicas”. Standardized outcome measures indicated an overall statistically significant decrease in children's self‐rated maladjustment and relationship difficulties by the end of the program. Improvements were endorsed by most mothers, although they were not always recognized by the children's teachers. The program had a high level of acceptability: Mothers and children felt safe, understood, and helped throughout the sessions. The efficacy of the adapted intervention for the context of Spain remains to be tested in a more rigorous study.     

Counseling Considerations for the Twice‐Exceptional Client

Counselors can be pivotal in helping families to understand the identification of twice‐exceptionality and related implications, including developing successful interventions for the school years and beyond. There are many potential counseling concerns, including bullying and peer interactions, social and emotional development, career guidance, college transition planning, and functioning in adulthood. Learning how to work with twice‐exceptional clients regarding these concerns needs to begin during training and progress throughout one's career. Recommendations for best practice are provided.     

Entre Nosotros: Exploring Latino Diversity in Family Therapy Literature

The term Latino is often used to describe a largely diverse group of individuals living in the United States. This very broad term minimizes within-group differences due to race, ethnicity, class, country of origin and impact of immigration. We conducted a content analysis of 78 articles from peer reviewed journals in the fields of family therapy and family studies focused on Latinos, published from 2000 to May 2010, to challenge the Theoretical Myth of Sameness. We describe our evaluation and offer a culturally sensitive clinical and research approach with Latinos.     

Inducing a Rule in Wason's 2-4-6 Task: A Test of the Information-Quantity and Goal-Complementarity Hypotheses

In the standard 2-4-6 induction task, subjects are instructed to discover the rule generating sequences of three numbers by inventing number triples for which they receive immediate feedback. The rule is “ascending numbers”. Performance is greatly aided with Dual Goal (DG) instructions that ask subjects to discover two rules, one that generates “Dax” triples (equivalent to “yes” instances with Single Goal [SG] instructions) and another that generates “Med” triples (equivalent to “no” instances). The present study eliminates two explanations for this effect suggested by Wharton, Cheng, and Wickens (1993). Experiment 1 tested their Information-Quantity hypothesis that the effect results simply from the DG subjects testing more triples prior to proposing a rule. Our DG subjects were more likely to solve the problem and produced more “negative” triples than SG subjects when both groups generated exactly 15 triples. Two further groups received feedback only after generating all 15 triples, and again DG subjects were more likely to solve the problem and to generate more “negative” triples. Experiment 2 tested Wharton et al.'s Goal-Complementarity hypothesis that success under DG instructions hinges on preserving the complementary representation of the two rules. We compared SG instructions with three types of DG instructions that suggested different types of triples (Dax, Med, both Dax and Med, neither Dax nor Med). DG instructions were more effective in promoting successful rule discovery regardless of differences in rule complementarity. Our analysis of the heterogeneity of the examplars generated with DG instructions in both experiments suggest that success on the 2-4-6 task is as much a consequence of the breadth of hypotheses that subjects entertain as it is a consequence of the testing strategy.