The Adjustment Process of Ex-Buddhist Monks to Life After the Monastery

This study explores the adjustment process of five Western ex-Buddhist monks to life after the monastery, using an in depth case study approach and thematic analysis. Participants discussed their initial experience of leaving, the process of creating a new life and their relationship with the past. The findings indicated that while each case was unique, significant common themes emerged as features of the adjustment process. The adjustment had been multi-dimensional, challenging, difficult, confusing, complex and profound for the participants. They had to contend with issues of grief, delayed development, missing out on life experiences, difficulties with intimacy, money, identity, depression, anxiety and confusion. This was combined with the hope and promise of many newly found freedoms involved in establishing a new life and identity. Parallels are drawn to the experience of Catholic priests and nuns who have departed their Orders, Vietnam veterans, ex-cult members and individuals who have left total institutions where their identity and daily lives were highly prescribed. The adjustment experience of ex-Buddhist monks extends the literature on Buddhist monks and provides an example of a life transition of interest to the helping professions because of its potential relevance to a range of major transitions for which clients may seek assistance. Tim Mapel is a lecturer in the Bachelor of Applied Social Sciences degree at the Eastern Institute of Technology in New Zealand. He has a Master’s degree in counseling and works with individuals, couples and groups. He has a passion for the practice of mindfulness and for facilitating a sense of aliveness in people’s lives. He is an advanced Psychodrama trainee and spent 12 years living as an ordained Buddhist monk. Originally from Boston, USA he has lived in the UK, Switzerland, and now considers New Zealand home.     

The consequences of effortful emotion regulation when processing distressing material: A comparison of suppression and acceptance

The present study investigated the consequences of different forms of emotion regulation. Eighty nine healthy participants viewed a distressing video of the aftermath of road traffic accidents under either suppression (of both felt and expressed affect), acceptance, or no-regulation control instructions and the immediate and longer-term consequences on emotion, mood, and memory were examined. Suppression (relative to control) led to reduced subjective experience of fear when viewing the video, but did not alter electrodermal (EDA) or heart rate (HR) response. Subsequently, suppression led to a less marked subjective emotional reaction to positive but not negative emotional images, reduced free recall memory of the video, and a greater likelihood of experiencing zero intrusions of the video's content. Acceptance (relative to control) had no impact when viewing the video, was associated with a less marked increase in EDA activity in the 5 min period immediately after viewing the video, a more marked HR deceleration and EDA response to both positive and negative images, and elevated negative affect at one week follow-up. These findings suggest, contrary to the current clinical zeitgeist, that emotion suppression can successfully lead to an ongoing down-regulation of emotion and memory, whereas acceptance may elevate subsequent emotionality.     

Typification in Society and Social Science: The Continuing Relevance of Schutz’s Social Phenomenology

This paper examines Alfred Schutz’s insights on types and typification. Beginning with a brief overview of the history and meaning of typification in interpretive sociology, the paper further addresses both the ubiquity and the necessity of typification in social life and scientific method. Schutz’s contribution itself is lacking in empirical application and grounding, but examples are provided of ongoing empirical research which advances the understanding of types and typification. As is suggested by illustrations from scholarship in the social studies of social science, studies of social identity associated with membership categorization analysis, and constructionist social problems theory, typification can be found to be central to social research whether it is taken up as a largely unacknowledged resource or whether it is addressed by different names. The overview and illustrations suggest the continuing, widespread, and indeed foundational relevance of Schutz’s insights into types and typification.     

Competition-specific preparation and expert performance

ObjectiveThe objective of the study was to identify and describe the extent, function, nature, and timeline of practice and preparation activities undertaken by experts in order to adapt to constraints unique to a specific upcoming competition.MethodA content analysis was conducted of data from interviews with 15 expert orienteers and six experienced orienteering coaches about competition-specific preparation in the sport of orienteering.ResultsThe analysis revealed several key concepts. First, competition-specific preparation is necessary because the constraints of a given orienteering competition vary across competitions. Second, owing to such variance, orienteers have limited advance information about the specific constraints of an upcoming competition, which impedes their preparation for that competition. Third, expert orienteers engage in a range of activities designed to gather information about the constraints of an upcoming competition. Fourth, this information is then used to identify or create practice environments that represent these constraints. Practice within these environments enables expert orienteers to adapt to these constraints before competing.ConclusionsCompetition-specific preparation appears critical to performance in sports in which environmental constraints change considerably between competitions.     

From marine ecology to crime analysis: Improving the detection of serial sexual offences using a taxonomic similarity measure

Jaccard has been the choice similarity metric in ecology and forensic psychology for comparison of sites or offences, by species or behaviour. This paper applies a more powerful hierarchical measure—taxonomic similarity (Δ_s), recently developed in marine ecology—to the task of behaviourally linking serial crime. Forensic case linkage attempts to identify behaviourally similar offences committed by the same unknown perpetrator (called linked offences). Δ_s considers progressively higher‐level taxa, such that two sites show some similarity even without shared species. We apply this index by analysing 55 specific offence behaviours classified hierarchically. The behaviours are taken from 16 sexual offences by seven juveniles where each offender committed two or more offences. We demonstrate that both Jaccard and Δ_s show linked offences to be significantly more similar than unlinked offences. With up to 20% of the specific behaviours removed in simulations, Δ_s is equally or more effective at distinguishing linked offences than where Jaccard uses a full data set. Moreover, Δ_s retains significant difference between linked and unlinked pairs, with up to 50% of the specific behaviours removed. As police decision‐making often depends upon incomplete data, Δ_s has clear advantages and its application may extend to other crime types. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developmental dissociations of preparation over time: deconstructing the variable foreperiod phenomena

In a variable foreperiod (FP) paradigm, reaction times (RTs) decrease as a function of FP on trial n (FP effect) but increase with FP on trial n - 1 (sequential effects). These phenomena have traditionally been ascribed to different strategic preparation processes. According to an alternative explanation, common conditioning laws underlie both effects. The present study aims to disentangle these opposite views using a developmental perspective. In Experiment 1A, 4- to 11-year-old children and a control group of adults performed a simple RT task with variable FPs (1, 3, and 5 s). Furthermore, 12 4- to 5-year-old children were retested after 14 months (Experiment 1B). In Experiment 2, a narrower pool of participants (4, 5, and 6 years old) performed a variable FP paradigm with different FPs (1, 2, and 3 s). The results consistently suggest different ontogenetic time courses for the two effects: The sequential effects are already present in the youngest group (4-5 years old), whereas the FP effect appears gradually some years later. These findings are not fully compatible with previous views. A dual-process account is proposed to explain the data.     

Predicting Affective Responses to Unexpected Outcomes

In decisions under uncertainty, decision makers confront two uncertainties: the uncertain linkage between actions and outcomes and the uncertain linkage between these outcomes and his or her affective responses to them. The two studies reported here examine affective responses to expected and unexpected outcomes in various settings. In Study 1, a scenario-based laboratory experiment (N = 149), we examined subjects' predicted responses to a range of outcomes, as a function of how surprising the outcome was. Study 2, a field study (N = 127), involved the expectations of bowlers about their scores in an upcoming game and about their responses to various outcomes at, above, and below expectations. We also measured actual affective reactions after the bowlers had completed their games. Findings suggest that subjects both expect and experience a loss-averse, expectation-based value function broadly of the Prospect Theory type. They also anticipate, and experience, an amplifying effect of outcome surprise, though they underestimate its size. We argue that such underestimation, together with overtight prediction ranges, may expose subjects to much larger affective variation with outcome variability than they anticipate.