Guest editors'' commentary: Japanese socialization research in review

This focus section has presented Japanese research on a variety of socialization agents and contexts, including mothering, fathering, peers and multiple-caretakers in families and institutions. The reader is encouraged to compare the papers, discover the theoretical and applied implications of each study for child development in the reader's own culture, and to pursue collaborations with the outstanding young Japanese contributors. We conclude with brief comments on each of the five articles, discussing their limitations, most significant findings, theoretical importance, and implications for subsequent research.     

Gender, relational role orientation, and affinity for animal rights

Research based mainly on non-national samples reports a greater affinity for animal rights among women than men, and proposes a greater relational role orientation among women that emphasizes caring for others to explain this difference. Using a recent national sample comprised of 11% African American and 89% white American respondents, we find that a relational role orientation fails to account for women’s greater support of animal rights. It does provide minor help in distinguishing animal rights advocates from nonadvocates, but only among women and only on one of two measures of animal rights support. We conclude by proposing women’s structural locations as well as the interplay between these locations and women’s role socialization as alternate explanations for gender differences in affinity for animal rights.     

Minds and Bodies: Human and Divine

Does God have a mind? Western theism has traditionally construed God as an intentional agent who acts on creation and in relation to humankind. God loves, punishes, and redeems. God's intentionality has traditionally been construed in analogy to human intentionality, which in turn has often presumed a supernatural dualism. Developments in cognitive science, however, render supernatural dualism suspect for explaining the human mind. How, then, can we speak of the mind of God? Borrowing from Daniel Dennett's intentional stance, I suggest that analogical reasoning regarding the mind of God be abandoned in favor of an ontologically agnostic approach that treats God as an intentional system. In this approach, God's purposive action is an explanatory feature of the believer's universe, a real pattern that informs our values and beliefs about the world and our place in it.     

Behavior analysis and farm animal welfare

This article demonstrates that there is a role for behavior-analytic techniques in the area of farm animal welfare and provides examples of the kinds of work that can be done. Behavior-analytic procedures, specifically those used in the study of psychophysics, preference, and demand, can provide answers to three questions people concerned with the welfare of farm animals are likely to ask: What can the animals detect? What do they like and dislike? What will they work to attain or preserve? Such information certainly is necessary for making reasonable decisions about animal welfare, although it is not sufficient in and of itself.     

Relationship-Centered Counseling: A Humanistic Model of Integration

Relationship-centered counseling is a development in the client-centered tradition. It represents a humanistic integration that gives primacy to the humanizing and counseling relationship, conceives technical expertise as the instrumental extension of relationship, and affirms the necessity for an in-depth synthesis of both for effective counseling. Significant findings from contemporary process and outcome research are presented as supportively consistent with the relationship-centered integration, which has implications for research, practice, and training.     

Resilience and Severe Burns

To define resilience and its components for individuals with severe burns, the authors integrated findings of a general literature review with opinions offered by 39 burn survivors through individual interviews. Results indicate that core factors influencing resiliency include social support (cultural influences and community, school, personal, and familial support,), cognitive skills (intelligence, coping style, personal control, and assignment of meaning), and psychological resources. Counseling strategies to strengthen resilience are suggested.     

SIGNIFICANCE TESTING IN PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH:

Abstract— Empirical surveys show that reports of significance tests appear in the vast majority of articles in psychological research journals and are relied on by both investigators and journal reviewers when making decisions about replication of experiments and submission and acceptance of research reports Evaluation of claims by critics that significance testing is, nonetheless, counterproductive yields suggestions for improvements of prevailing practices, but also the recommendation that decisions about significance testing versus alternative procedures should remain the province of the individual investigator, unconstrained by mandates or prohibitions by publishers or officials of scientific associations. The prime focus for efforts toward improvement of research design and data analysis in psychology and other behavioral sciences should be upgrading the mathematical and general scientific preparation of students preparing for research careers in these fields     

Family Functioning and Mental Illness: A Comparison of Psychiatric and Nonclinical Families

The primary objective of the present investigation was to examine adaptive functioning in the families of patients with a wide range of psychiatric disorders. Seven dimensions of family functioning, as measured by the Family Assessment Device (FAD), were compared across families of patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (n = 61 ), bipolar disorder (n = 60 ), major depression (n = 111 ), anxiety disorder (n = 15 ), eating disorder (n = 26 ), substance abuse disorder (n = 48 ), and adjustment disorder (n = 46 ). Families in each psychiatric group were also compared to a control group of nonclinical families (N = 353 ). Results indicated that regardless of specific diagnosis, having a family member in an acute phase of a psychiatric illness was a risk factor for poor family functioning compared to the functioning of control families. However, with few exceptions, the type of the patient's psychiatric illness did not predict significant differences in family functioning. Thus, having a family member with a psychiatric illness is a general stressor for families, and family interventions should be considered for most patients who require a psychiatric hospitalization for either the onset of, or an acute exacerbation of, any psychiatric disorder.