Researching Identity Styles In Pakistan: Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Associations With Commitment and Value Priorities

Identity styles—informational, normative, and diffuse-avoidant—have been studied widely across North America and Europe but infrequently in “non-Western” cultures. We tested the factorial structure of the Identity Styles Inventory-5 (ISI-5) among 479 young adults in Pakistan. Findings supported the predicted three-factor solution, but only when numerous poorly performing items were deleted. We further tested associations among identity styles, identity commitment, and value priorities. As expected, informational and normative styles were associated with higher commitment, whereas diffuse-avoidant style was associated with lower commitment. The three identity styles showed a pattern of divergent associations with value priorities that mostly, but not entirely, replicated the pattern of associations previously found among U.S. and European samples. We conclude that Berzonsky’s three identity styles can be detected in a Pakistani cultural context but that the ISI-5 may not fully capture the breadth and complexity of identity formation processes among Pakistani youth.     

Life Satisfaction of Career Women and Housewives

Profound changes in gender roles have taken place over the past several decades in the United States. Women’s roles have changed most: women are marrying later in life and at lower rates, having fewer children, and working more outside of the household. “Career women” are the new normal and housewifery has gone out of fashion. At the same time, women have become less happy. We use the US General Social Surveys from 1972 to 2014 to explore these latest trends. We find that, until recently, women were happier to be housewives or to work part-time than full-time, especially, women who are older, married, with children, in middle or upper class, and living in suburbs or smaller places. The effect size of housewifery on subjective wellbeing (SWB) is mild to moderate, at about a fourth to a third of the effect of being unemployed. Therefore, we argue that one possible reason for the decline in average happiness for women was increased labor force participation. Yet, the happiness advantage of housewifery is declining among younger cohorts and career women may become happier than housewives in the future.     

Conceptualizing psychopathic traits from an evolutionary-based perspective: An empirical study in a community sample of boys and girls

Although psychopathy has historically been associated with a lack of emotion, recent research has suggested that psychopathy may represent a tendency to externalize the experience of unpleasant emotions, including shame, which could be seen as an adaptive strategy within an evolutionary framework. However, more empirical research is needed to build on this argument. This study tested a novel evolutionary-based model involving pathways associating the impact of harsh rearing experiences (warmth and safeness experiences and traumatic shameful experiences) with psychopathic traits as well as the indirect effects of external shame and shame coping strategies in this association. This study also tested the invariance of this model across gender. A youth community sample (N = 703; 58.9% girls) completed self-report questionnaires on the impact of harsh rearing experiences, external shame, shame coping strategies, and psychopathic traits. The results suggested that the impact of harsh rearing experiences was directly and indirectly (through external shame and shame coping strategies) associated with psychopathic traits. The model partially explained the endorsement of psychopathic traits in boys and girls, although gender differences were found in some of the pathways. These findings offer support for conceptualizing psychopathic traits as an adaptive strategy to cope with the impact of harsh rearing experiences, opening new perspectives for prevention and treatment.

     

Using a Constant Family in Role-Plays for Training MFTs

Marriage and Family Therapy training programs use role-plays and simulations to train their students in interviewing skills and in various therapeutic models. A review of literature shows that these training tools do not allow student-therapists to experience therapy beyond the first session. This article presents a modified version of the role-play, in which a constant family is used in preparing student-therapists for clinical work. This article describes a training scenario using the constant family role play and includes feedback from student-therapists. The authors present the benefits, limitations, and potential training considerations that can enhance use of the constant family role play.     

Effects of a Self-Help Program on Depressed Mood for Women with an Unfulfilled Child Wish

This randomized controlled trial aimed to examine the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral self-help program (CBS) with minimal coaching in improving depressed mood for women with a permanent unfulfilled child wish. Participants completed pretest, posttest, and follow-up questionnaires and were randomly allocated to CBS (n = 27) or a waiting list condition (WLC, n =27). Respondents who followed the CBS improved significantly on depression scores compared to the WLC. This positive effect remained at follow-up. This study suggests that a low-resource, low-cost self-help program could be an effective intervention in reducing depressed mood in women living with the loss of a desired child.     

On the aesthetic potential of sports and physical education

Even though there is a general presence of aesthetics in school curricula in most of western countries, both at the level of terminology and at the level of choice and definition of contents, objectives and skills to be developed, the approach to sports and physical education potential for the development of aesthetic education of students still does not seem to be a reality in the agenda of this subject. Moreover, it is not transversal in terms of its different didactic contents. In order to explore its relevance, the aim of this work was to deepen how aesthetics is internal and central to sports experience, and which elements of sports and physical education lived experiences can be relevant in the promotion and development of the aesthetic sensibility of students. We propose the deepening of the subject through an hermeneutical qualitative research approach, confronting the content collected in 19 semi-structured interviews that enabled the thematic analysis of its content, and through it, the discussion of viewpoints of representative subjects among those that are the main players in the consideration of an aesthetic education through sport, namely physical education teachers and researchers in the context of aesthetics and sports sciences. With the information gathered and after its processing, we could conclude that there are aesthetic elements of sport's experience that should be taken into account in an aesthetic educational point of view of physical education, namely: complexity, diversity, playability, tension between drama and accuracy, overcoming experience, risk and vulnerability, unpredictable storylines and uncertainty, technique and effectiveness.     

Sophistry in Vygotsky: Contributions to the Rhetorical and Poetic Pedagogy

Studies in Philosophy and Education - This work relates L. S. Vygotsky’s theory to the rhetorical and poetic pedagogy, which is a set of educational ideas and practices derived from the...     

The Ethical and Academic Implications of the Jeffrey Beall (www.scholarlyoa.com) Blog Shutdown

Science and Engineering Ethics - A very important event took place on January 15, 2017. On that day, the Jeffrey Beall blog ( www.scholarlyoa.com ) was silently, and suddenly, shut down by Beall...     

Medical Psychology in Brazil

In 1962, Psychology was officially accorded professional status in Brazil. Since then the profession has been undergoing continuous development, but the training of psychologists still suffers from flaws that are reflected in the public heath service, SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde). However, SUS itself is also open to criticism: the service is badly distributed, the number of posts for psychologists is limited, and working conditions are poor. Nevertheless, many positive changes are occurring. These include plans to alter academic training to better meet the needs of the Brazilian population, an expansion of the roles played by psychologists in the health service, and increasing research activity. These and many other changes suggest that the progressive evolution of the profession in Brazil will continue.     

On the relevant systemsP andP * and some related systems

In this paper we study the systemsP andP ^* (see Arruda and da Costa,O paradoxo de Curry-Moh Shaw-Kwei, Boletim da Sociedade Matemtica de São Paulo 18 (1966)) and some related systems. In the last section, we prove that certain set theories havingP andP ^* as their underlying logics are non-trivial.