Power and Action in Critical Theory Across Disciplines: Implications for Critical Community Psychology

Although critical scholarship and community psychology share similar aspirations, the links between them remain unexplored and under-theorized. In this article we explore the implications of critical scholarship in various specialties for the field of community psychology. To understand the contributions of critical scholarship to a theory of power and action for social change, we conducted a systematic analysis of a ten-year period of publications in seven journals associated with the critical scholarship tradition. We created precise criteria for the concepts of power and action and applied them to the publications. Results indicate an interesting paradox at play. Whereas community psychology is more action oriented than critical scholarship, its actions fall short of challenging institutionalized power structures and the status quo; and whereas critical scholarship is more challenging of the status quo than community psychology in theory, it has failed to produce viable actions that challenge the status quo. We discuss the implications of this state of affairs for the development of a more critical community psychology.     

Daily Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Accommodation and Relationship Functioning in Military Couples

Romantic partners’ accommodation of trauma survivors’ posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (e.g., taking on tasks, survivors avoid participating in social withdrawal) is associated with lower relationship satisfaction for both partners and survivors. Little is known about associations of partner accommodation with other aspects of relationship functioning, like intimacy. Sixty‐four male military veterans with at least subclinical PTSD and their partners participated in a 2‐week daily diary study. Veterans completed nightly measures of PTSD symptoms, while female partners completed nightly measures of accommodating behaviors performed that day. Both partners reported feelings of intimacy each night. Multilevel models revealed that accommodation was significantly, negatively associated with feelings of intimacy, with stronger effects for partners (t = ?8.70) than for veterans (t = ?5.40), and stronger effects when veterans had lower (t = ?7.43) rather than higher (t = ?5.20) levels of daily PTSD symptoms. Therapists should consider accommodating behaviors as a potential impediment to relationship intimacy, particularly when veterans have less severe symptoms of PTSD. Accommodating behaviors are an ideal treatment target in behavioral couple therapies.     

A Social Network Analysis of Friendship and Spiritual Support in a Religious Congregation

Religious congregations are social settings where people gather together in community to pursue the sacred (Pargament, 2008). Such settings are important to understand as they provide a context for individuals to develop relationships, share ideas and resources, and connect individuals to larger society (Todd, 2017a). Yet, research to date has not deeply examined the inherently relational nature of religious congregations. Thus, in this study, we used social settings theory (Seidman, 2012; Tseng & Seidman, 2007) to develop and test hypotheses about relationships within one Christian religious congregation. In particular, we used social network analysis to test hypotheses about relational activity, popularity, and homophily for friendship and spiritual support types of relational links. Our findings demonstrate how relational patterns may be linked to participation in congregational activities, occupying a leadership role, a sense of community and spiritual satisfaction, stratification, socialization, and spiritual support. Overall, this advances theory and research on the relational aspects of religious congregations, and more broadly to the literature on social settings. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for theory and religious congregations also are discussed.     

Parents' experiences in Child Protective Services: analysis of a dialogical group process

The authors qualitatively examine parent experiences in groups for persons seeking parental rights through Child Protective Services (CPS). The study focuses on 16 custody-seeking parent figures who participated in dialogical groups designed from a Collaborative Language Systems perspective. The grounded-theory analysis shows that parents initially described overwhelming emotions and conflictual relationships with CPS. It also identifies five therapeutic group processes that appeared to influence perceptions of hope and personal power and contribute to how parents position themselves relative to CPS: validation, sharing practical information and networking, highlighting strengths and resources, supportive confrontation, and sharing stories of change. The analysis provides insight into CPS parents' experiences, suggests that dialogical approaches may have potential to assist in reshaping experiences in CPS, and draws attention to the need for interventions at the structural and administrative levels.     

An approach to preventing coparenting conflict and divorce in low-income families: strengthening couple relationships and fostering fathers' involvement

In the context of current concern about levels of marital distress, family violence, and divorce, the SFI study is evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention to facilitate the positive involvement of low-income Mexican American and European American fathers with their children, in part by strengthening the men's relationships with their children's mothers. The study design involves a randomized clinical trial that includes assignment to a 16-week couples group, a 16-week fathers group, or a single-session control group. Couples in both group interventions and the control condition include partners who are married, cohabiting, and living separately but raising a young child together. This article presents the rationale, design, and intervention approach to father involvement for families whose relationships are at risk because of the hardships of their lives, many of whom are manifesting some degree of individual or relationship distress. We present preliminary impressions and qualitative findings based on our experience with 257 families who completed the pretest, and the first 160 who completed one postintervention assessment 9 months after entering the study. Discussion centers on what we have learned and questions that remain to be answered in mounting a multisite preventive intervention to strengthen relationships in low-income families.     

Is Silence More Golden for Women than Men? Observers Derogate Effusive Women and their Quiet Partners

Couples in which the woman is more verbally disinhibited than the man (man-more-inhibited couples) report lower satisfaction than couples in which the man is more verbally disinhibited (woman-more-inhibited couples). A violation of traditional gender roles is hypothesized to underlie this phenomenon. It was predicted that members of man-more-inhibited couples would be rated less likeable than woman-more-inhibited couples, and disinhibited men would be rated more competent than other males and females. To test these hypotheses, 95 undergraduate participants from a southwestern US university viewed a videotaped conflict between a man-more-inhibited or woman-more-inhibited couple. As predicted, members of man-more-inhibited couples were rated less likeable than members of woman-more-inhibited couples and disinhibited husbands were rated more competent than all other targets.     

Collaboration inflation: Egocentric source monitoring errors following collaborative remembering

Following collaborative remembering, people may adopt their partner's contributions as their own memory. In two studies, we asked people to study partially overlapping lists of words. During collaborative remembering, dyads either worked to include all words no matter who studied them or limited recall to only words studied by both dyad members. This differential focus on source information during collaborative recall impacted performance on a later source memory test. Nonetheless we found frequent source monitoring errors that displayed an egocentric bias. People were more likely to claim their partner's contributions as their own memories than attribute their memories to their partners. In collaborative remembering, people work to construct an agreed upon version of the past that quickly becomes each individual's memory.