Measuring Gender Differences in Partner Violence: Implications from Research on Other Forms of Violent and Socially Undesirable Behavior

The proposition that men and women perpetrate partner violence equally would make partner violence unique with respect to other forms of interpersonal violence. Women, however, commit a substantial minority of violent acts. Any theory of gender patterns in partner violence needs to be reconciled with other violence data. Data on other violence indicate that different methodologies sample from different sets of phenomena, and those methods that sample the least severe violence show greater gender equivalence. Interpretation is clouded, however, by underreporting and overreporting across methodologies. Despite improvements in self-report measures, partner violence measurement lacks a gold standard. A gold standard would include incident data, sexual violence, injury, and be developed through direct comparison of multiple methods, including perhaps real-time self-monitoring.     

The Transformation of Girls to Women: Finding Voice and Developing Strategies for Liberation

The theme of silence is one of the most pervasive themes in the study of girls and women across cultures. The authors examine emotional, physical, educational, and behavioral losses that occur for adolescent girls. Results of landmark research studies and the implications for practitioners also are discussed. El tema del silencio es uno de los temas más penetrantes en el estudio de jovencitas y mujeres a través de las culturas. Los autores examinan las pérdidas emocionales, físicas, educativas y de comportamiento que ocurren para las jovencitas adolescentes. Los resultados de estudios culminantes y las implicaciones para consejeros se discuten.     

Cultural considerations in adolescent suicide prevention and psychosocial treatment

Ethnic groups differ in rates of suicidal behaviors among youths, the context within which suicidal behavior occurs (e.g., different precipitants, vulnerability and protective factors, and reactions to suicidal behaviors), and patterns of help-seeking. In this article, the authors discuss the cultural context of suicidal behavior among African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Latino adolescents, and the implications of these contexts for suicide prevention and treatment. Several cross-cutting issues are discussed, including acculturative stress and protective factors within cultures; the roles of religion and spirituality and the family in culturally sensitive interventions; different manifestations and interpretations of distress in different cultures; and the impact of stigma and cultural distrust on help-seeking. The needs for culturally sensitive and community- based interventions are discussed, along with future opportunities for research in intervention development and evaluation.     

Embodied Pedagogy: The Body and Teaching Theology

This essay is a reflection on my own experience of teaching undergraduates in light of research on proxemics (social and personal space) and kinesics (body language). I discuss ways to structure classroom space to encourage interaction and discussion, using Edward Hall's distinctions between three types of space (fixed feature, semi‐fixed feature, and informal). I explain the importance of body language in verbal communication and describe how I use my own body to illustrate and reinforce what I say in class. I then offer strategies to incorporate students' bodies in the learning process. I conclude by arguing that embodied pedagogy calls us to look beyond the classroom and to acknowledge the importance of our bodies in all aspects of our lives.     

Discrepant Self-Views and Young Women's Sexual and Emotional Adjustment

Young women in the United States receive conflicting messages about being sexually moral versus sexually desirable. Drawing from self-discrepancy theory, we hypothesized that women's internalization of messages about morality and desirability influence their ought and ideal self-guides for sexuality, respectively. Further, we expected that women who viewed their actual selves as significantly less positive/more negative than their self-guides would endorse greater sexual and emotional problems. In Study 1, never-married undergraduate women (N = 242) completed measures of sexual self-views, ought self-guides, and sexual adjustment. In Study 2, another sample (N = 170) also completed measures of ideal self-guides, depression, and anxiety. Participants were predominantly Caucasian and from upper middle-class backgrounds. Both negative actual:ought and actual:ideal discrepancies were associated with poorer sexual adjustment. Negative actual:ought discrepancies were associated with anxiety but not depression, whereas negative actual:ideal discrepancies were associated with both anxiety and depression. Self-discrepancy theory is a useful framework for understanding how self-standards for sexual morality versus desirability are associated with young women's emotional and sexual adjustment.     

Feline communication strategies when presented with an unsolvable task: the attentional state of the person matters

Animal Cognition - Research on social cognitive ability in domestic cats is limited. The current study investigated social referencing in cats when exposed to first, a solvable, and then, an...