Disordered gambling as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the South Oaks Gambling Screen: evidence for a common etiologic structure

In a previous article, we demonstrated in a large twin study that disordered gambling (DG), as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV), ran in families, that about half of the variation in liability for DG was due to familial factors, and that all of this was explained by shared genetic rather than shared environmental influences (Slutske, Zhu, Meier, & Martin, 2010). The purpose of the present study is to extend this work to include an alternative conceptualization of DG that is provided by the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) item set in order to (a) compare the magnitude of the familial resemblance obtained when using the two definitions of DG (based on the DSM-IV and the SOGS), (b) examine the extent to which the 2 definitions tap the same underlying sources of genetic and environmental variation, and (c) examine whether the same results will be obtained among men and women. The results of bivariate twin model-fitting analyses suggested that DG, as defined by the DSM-IV and the SOGS, substantially overlapped at the etiologic level among both men and women, which supports the construct validity of both the DSM and the SOGS conceptualizations of DG. This study highlights the utility of twin studies for appraising the validity of the diagnostic nomenclature.     

Developmental origins of perfectionism among African American youth

The present study used a person-centered latent variable approach to classify types of perfectionism among 6th-grade African American children living in an urban setting. In particular, the authors were interested in determining whether an adaptive subtype could be found and validated against external criteria. The authors also attempted to identify any developmental precursors that could reliably differentiate the perfectionist subtypes. A social learning and competence framework was used to select potential 1st-grade risk and protective factors for future perfectionism profiles. Four classes best described the children's perfectionism scores in 6th grade. Three of these classes resembled the profiles most commonly seen in prior perfectionism research (Non-Critical/Adaptive, Critical/Maladaptive, and Non-Perfectionist). The fourth class, Non-Striving, was characterized by extremely low levels of reported personal standards. Sixth-grade correlates confirmed the distinctiveness of these classes. In particular, the Critical/Maladaptive and Non-Striving classes had higher rates of internalizing symptoms and disorders. Additionally, several 1st-grade predictors suggested unique developmental origins of these classes. The Critical/Maladaptive class was characterized by lower academic skills and elevated teacher-rated attention problems, hyperactivity, shyness, and peer rejection. The Non-Striving class had higher rates of family alcohol problems and lower levels of parent praise. Implications regarding the universal and culture-specific origins and effects of perfectionism are discussed.     

What Do Chaplains Contribute to Large Academic Hospitals? The Perspectives of Pediatric Physicians and Chaplains

This article analyzes interviews with pediatric physicians (N = 30) and chaplains (N = 22) who work at the same large academic medical centers (N = 13). We ask how pediatric physicians understand and work with chaplains and how chaplains describe their own work. We find that physicians see chaplains as part of interdisciplinary medical teams where they perform rituals and support patients and families, especially around death. Chaplains agree but frame their contributions in terms of the perspectives related to wholeness, presence, and healing they bring. Chaplains have a broader sense of what they contribute to patient care than do physicians.     

The pull of the past: when do habits persist despite conflict with motives?

To identify the factors that disrupt and maintain habit performance, two field experiments tested the conditions under which people eat out of habit, leading them to resist motivational influences. Habitual popcorn eaters at a cinema were minimally influenced by their hunger or how much they liked the food, and they ate equal amounts of stale and fresh popcorn. Yet, mechanisms of automaticity influenced habit performance: Participants ate out of habit, regardless of freshness, only when currently in the context associated with past performance (i.e., a cinema; Study 1) and only when eating in a way that allowed them to automatically execute the response cued by that context (i.e., eating with their dominant hand; Study 2). Across all conditions, participants with weaker cinema-popcorn-eating habits ate because of motivations such as liking for the popcorn. The findings reveal how habits resist conflicting motives and provide insight into promising mechanisms of habit change.     

The impact of adopting ethnic or civic conceptions of national belonging for others' treatment

National belonging is often defined in terms of "ethnic" ancestry and "civic" commitment (with the latter typically implying a more inclusive conception of belonging). The authors report three Scottish studies manipulating the prominence of these criteria. In Study 1 (N = 80), a Chinese-heritage target was judged more Scottish (and his criticisms of Scotland better received) when Scotland was defined in civic terms. In Study 2 (N = 40), a similar manipulation in a naturalistic setting showed a civic conception of belonging resulted in more help being given to a Chinese-heritage confederate. Study 3 (N = 71) replicated Study 2 and showed the effect was mediated by judgments of the confederate's Scottishness. These studies emphasize the importance of exploring how ingroup identity is defined.     

Hope as a Mediator and Moderator of Multidimensional Perfectionism and Depression in Middle School Students

The authors examined the relationship of perfectionism, hope, and depression in a sample of 153 middle school students. Adaptive perfectionists differed significantly from both maladaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists on their levels of hope and depression. Hope mediated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and depression and supported an indirect effects model for hope and the relationship between adaptive perfectionism and depression. No evidence was found for hope as a moderator in the relationship between perfectionism and depression.     

What do Non-clergy Spiritual Care Providers Contribute to End of Life Care in Israel? A Qualitative Study

Spiritual care is an increasingly important component of end of life care. As it emerges in Israel, it is intentionally built on a nonclerical model. Based on interviews with spiritual care providers in Israel, we find that they help patients and families talk about death and say goodbyes. They encourage the wrapping up of unfinished business, offer diverse cultural resources that can provide meaning, and use presence and touch to produce connection. As spiritual care emerges in Israel, providers are working with patients at the end of life in ways they see as quite distinct from rabbis. They offer broad frames of meaning to which patients from a range of religious traditions can connect.     

In Search of Balance: A Conceptual and Empirical Integration of Multiple Meanings of Work–Family Balance

This paper provides a framework that elaborates on four conceptualizations of work‐family balance: additive spillover (unique effects of bi‐directional conflict and enrichment), multiplicative spillover (interactive effects of lower conflict with higher enrichment), balance satisfaction (one's attitude toward resource allocation across work and family roles) and balance effectiveness (one's interdependent self‐evaluation of meeting shared expectations across work and family roles). We describe the conceptual differences among these approaches and hypothesize how they operate differently in predicting work and family attitudes and performance. Relative weights analyses showed that additive spillover was the most important predictor of work attitudes (organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intent), followed by balance satisfaction and effectiveness. However, balance satisfaction and effectiveness together were the most important predictors of family satisfaction and job and family performance. Mediation tests revealed that unique and interactive effects of bidirectional conflict and enrichment related to work and family attitudes and performance indirectly through balance satisfaction and effectiveness. We discuss implications of these findings and offer suggestions to guide future research and theory on work‐family balance.     

Janet Taylor Spence: Innovator in the Study of Gender

Janet Spence’s contributions moved gender researchers beyond a simple understanding of psychological gender in terms of individual differences in masculinity and femininity. In early work, she constructed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire, or PAQ, consisting of a masculine and a feminine scale, which she interpreted as assessing the core of psychological masculinity and femininity. Spence subsequently recognized that the masculine, or instrumental, scale reliably predicts only self-assertive, dominant behaviors and that the feminine, or expressive, scale reliably predicts only other-oriented, relational behaviors. Moreover, as her work developed, Spence came to understand this self-ascribed instrumentality and expressiveness, not as gender identity, but as two of the several types of psychological attributes that may become associated with individuals’ self-categorization as male or female. She then defined gender identity as the basic, existential sense of being male or female, which generally corresponds to one’s biological sex. Building on her ideas, we argue that gender identity instead encompasses both the sex categorization of oneself, usually as male or female, and self-assessments on gender-stereotypic instrumental and expressive attributes. These two levels of gender identity are linked by people’s self-stereotyping to the extent that they value their group membership as male or female.     

Conceptual and non-conceptual repetition priming in category exemplar generation: Evidence from bilinguals

One measure of conceptual implicit memory is repetition priming in the generation of exemplars from a semantic category, but does such priming transfer across languages? That is, do the overlapping conceptual representations for translation equivalents provide a sufficient basis for such priming? In Experiment 1 (N=96) participants carried out a deep encoding task, and priming between languages was statistically reliable, but attenuated, relative to within-language priming. Experiment 2 (N=96) replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and assessed the contributions of conceptual and non-conceptual processes using a levels-of-processing manipulation. Words that underwent shallow encoding exhibited within-language, but not between-language, priming. Priming in shallow conditions cannot therefore be explained by incidental activation of the concept. Instead, part of the within-language priming effect, even under deep-encoding conditions, is due to increased availability of language-specific lemmas or phonological word forms.