Families created through surrogacy arrangements: parent-child relationships in the 1st year of life

Findings are presented of a study of families created through surrogacy arrangements. Forty-two surrogacy families were compared with 51 egg-donation families and 80 natural-conception families on standardized interview and questionnaire measures of the psychological well-being of the parents, the quality of parent-child relationships, and infant temperament. The differences that were identified between the surrogacy families and the other family types indicated greater psychological well-being and adaptation to parenthood by mothers and fathers of children born through surrogacy arrangements than by the natural-conception parents.     

Anatomy of Regret: A Developmental View of the Depressive Position and a Critical Turn Toward Love and Creativity in the Transforming Schizoid Personality

This article deals with critical psychic transformation in a schizoid personality disorder that evolves in an object relations psychoanalysis in which "developmental mourning" plays a central role. Within a mourning process that allows for the grieving of loss related to arrested separation-individuation development, the analysand confronts the existential grief of regret that had always unconsciously haunted her. The unconscious guilt related to the existential grief of regret had caused much dissociation of self-experience and affect states. The analysand acknowledges her own part in the destruction of primal and current relationships after the traumatic impact of her early life is understood. This allows her to repair current relationships, both within her internal and external worlds so that she can open to capacities for love and creativity. The analysand's courage to consciously grapple with her regret (loss and guilt combined) allows her to relinquish self-sabotaging character defenses such as contempt and emotional withdrawl. Consequently, a second marriage is salvaged and enriched, and the analysand's relationship with her two children is dramatically improved.     

Perceptions of Ethical Behaviour among Business Faculty in Canada

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts.     

School-year employment among high school students: effects on academic, social, and physical functioning

This study describes the effects of different weekly work intensity levels on adolescent functioning in a sample of 3,083 high school students in rural South Texas, where economically disadvantaged and Hispanic youth are heavily represented. Anonymous surveys were conducted in 10th- and 12th-grade students' classrooms in 1995. The following effects were associated with long hours of weekly employment during the school year: (1) decreased performance/engagement in school and satisfaction with amount of leisure time, and (2) increased health risk behaviors and psychological stress. The effects of school-year work on academic factors and health behaviors differed by grade, but not by race/ethnicity, parent education, or race/ethnicity and parent education considered together. It was concluded that parents and professionals should continue to monitor the number of weekly hours that students work during the school year.     

Affirmative action. Psychological data and the policy debates

The authors bring psychological research to bear on an examination of the policy of affirmative action. They argue that data from many studies reveal that affirmative action as a policy has more benefits than costs. Although the majority of pro-affirmative action arguments in the social sciences stress diversity, the authors' argument focuses on issues of merit. The merit-based argument, grounded in empirical studies, concludes that the policy of affirmative action conforms to the American ideal of fairness and is a necessary policy.     

Prevention opportunities in health care settings

Psychologists have an opportunity to offer their expertise at a time when health care settings are beginning to recognize the importance of behaviorally based interventions for improving health and health care. The authors review the changing patterns of health and illness that have led to an increased interest in the role of patient and provider behavior and discuss the many advantages of using health care settings as prevention sites. Examples of successful behaviorally based prevention programs are presented, along with the evidence supporting the cost-effectiveness of such programs. Challenges presented by working in health care settings are described. Throughout, the authors emphasize the multiple opportunities for psychologists' involvement across a wide variety of health care delivery sites.     

Pathways to violence in the children of mothers who were depressed postpartum

The impact of postnatal depression on a child's risk for violent behavior was evaluated in an urban British community sample (N=122 families). Mothers were interviewed during pregnancy, at 3 months postpartum, and when the child was 1, 4, and 11 years of age. Mothers, teachers, and children reported on violent symptoms at age 11. Structural equation modeling revealed that the child's violence was predicted by the mother's postnatal depression even when her depression during pregnancy, her later history of depression, and family characteristics were taken into account. Violence was associated with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and problems with anger management. Children were most violent if mothers had been depressed at 3 months and at least once thereafter.     

Motivating operations and terms to describe them: some further refinements

Over the past decade, behavior analysts have increasingly used the term establishing operation (EO) to refer to environmental events that influence the behavioral effects of operant consequences. Nonetheless, some elements of current terminology regarding EOs may interfere with applied behavior analysts' efforts to predict, control, describe, and understand behavior. The present paper (a) describes how the current conceptualization of the EO is in need of revision, (b) suggests alternative terms, including the generic term motivating operation (MO), and (c) provides examples of MOs and their behavioral effects using articles from the applied behavior analysis literature.