Mentor and protégé predictors and outcomes of mentoring in a formal mentoring program

This study examines the predictors and outcomes of mentoring received by participants of a 12-month formal mentoring program. Based on relationship theory, we examined how the personality of the individuals in the mentoring dyad, their perceived similarity, and mentor perceived support for mentoring contributed to relationship outcomes. The study includes data from both mentors and protégés at the program launch, midway through the program, and at program close. Mentor proactivity was related to more career and psychosocial mentoring; protégé’s perceptions of similarity to the mentor was related to more psychosocial mentoring. More mentoring was related to positive protégé and mentor outcomes, including improved protégé career clarity over the duration of the study.     

Sunk Cost and Commitment to Dates Arranged Online

The influence of prior, irretrievable, investment (sunk cost) on commitment to a date arranged online was investigated. Participants were recruited from an undergraduate population. There were 145 participants (86 female) with a mean age of 19.42 years. Participants took part in a computer simulation of the process of arranging a date online. Participants invested one of five amounts of sunk cost into this process. Participants were then presented with the choice of attending the date arranged online or attending a (superior) blind date. Participants chose how much time that they wanted to commit to the (inferior) date arranged online. Results revealed a significant sunk cost effect (p = 0.003). The implications of the sunk cost effect having an influence over human relationships are discussed.     

Integrating Care for Persons, Not Only Diseases

Integrated care is geared toward enhancing usual care and decision-making for common combinations of medical and mental health conditions, including the behavioral health and behavioral change aspects. Yet even with comprehensive and well-integrated care for health conditions and well-coordinated teamwork in place, some patients do not engage or respond to care in the way clinicians would like or predict. This troubles patients and clinicians alike and may be chalked up informally to things like medical complexity (multiple co-existing conditions), mental health conditions (that complicate care), or simply the case being considered complex or difficult. It also raises the question of how to address person-specific factors that interfere with care of whatever conditions the patient may have, and invites behavioral health clinicians in medical settings to look beyond care of conditions to the care of persons, and to look beyond disease-specific care management protocols to master generic practices of care management across whatever conditions the person may have. This person-centered emphasis is intrinsic to the concept of the “patient-centered medical home” which has burst into animated discussion and demonstration among providers, health plans, government plans, employer purchasers, and professional associations across public and private entities. This represents an opportunity for collaborative care clinicians to help shape the national state of the art in medical home and includes a range of person-oriented (rather than disease-oriented) practices for care management, including working systematically with complex patients and difficult patient–clinician relationships.     

Seeing close others as we see ourselves: One’s own self-complexity is reflected in perceptions of meaningful others

Although past research has established a correspondence between the content of knowledge about the self and close others, the current work evaluated the prediction that the self-concept also influences the structure of these perceptions. Specifically, we expected greater correspondence in the complexity of mental representations between the self and others included in the self. In Study 1, we found that self-complexity was related to the perceived complexity of a close other and that this outcome did not reflect a general tendency to perceive the world in a systematically complex or simple fashion (i.e., cognitive complexity). In Study 2, we found that the correspondence between self-complexity and complexity of representations of others increased for individuals more included in the self. Finally in Study 3, we observed that experimentally manipulating inclusion of other in the self resulted in perceived structural similarity between representations of the self and others. Implications of self-concept representation for social relationships are discussed.     

Fragmentation or Differentiation: Questioning the Crisis in Psychology

There is a recurrent discourse about the fragmentation of psychology and its crises as a science, which often leads to a disenchanted view about its future. To this discourse we oppose a developmental one, in which crises can be occasions for development, and in which development might imply differentiation. We first review why psychology can be said to be in crisis. We then situate the crisis in the pragmatics of doing psychology. Crises occur when psychologists have problems either working with other psychologists or with communities. We argue that collaborative research is a way to overcome these crises. Specifically we suggest three specific scientific activities that can lead to the development of psychology: collaborative research methods, the identification of nodal concepts that enable the bringing together of different approaches and disciplines, and the creation and maintenance of institutional spaces that enable creative, collaborative work.

Community Psychology at the Crossroads: Prospects for Interdisciplinary Research

Effective engagement in interdisciplinary work is critical if community psychology is to achieve its promise as a field of ecological inquiry and social action. The purpose of this paper and special issue is to help make the benefits of interdisciplinary community research clearer and to identify and begin to address its challenges. Although some areas of psychology (e.g., biological, cognitive and health) have made substantial interdisciplinary strides in recent decades, progress in community psychology (and related areas) is more modest. In this article we explore the prospects for expanding and improving interdisciplinary community research. Challenges include designs, measures, and analytical frameworks that integrate multiple levels of analysis from individuals through families, organizations, and communities to policy jurisdictions, and the complexities involved in simultaneously bringing together multiple disciplinary collaborators and community partners. Challenges to interdisciplinary collaboration common to all disciplines include the disciplinary nature of academic culture and reward structures, limited funding for interdisciplinary work and uncertainties related to professional identity and marketability. Overcoming these challenges requires a synergy among facilitative factors at the levels of the interdisciplinary project team (e.g., the framing question; embedded relationships; leadership), the investigators (e.g., commitment to new learning; time to invest), and the external context (e.g., physical, administrative, economic and intellectual resources and support for interdisciplinary work). We conclude by identifying several exemplars of effective interdisciplinary collaborations and concrete steps our field can take to enhance our development as a vibrant community-based, multilevel discipline increasingly devoted to interdisciplinary inquiry and action.     

Relational Turbulence Theory: Explaining Variation in Subjective Experiences and Communication Within Romantic Relationships

This essay extends the relational turbulence model as a framework for understanding communication in romantic relationships. Following the relational turbulence model, relational turbulence theory identifies relational uncertainty and interdependence as parameters that shape subjective experiences, but the theory clarifies the theoretical processes underlying their distinctive effects. In addition, relational turbulence theory articulates causal processes linking cognitive appraisals and emotions to communication. Relational turbulence theory also describes how episodes characterized by biased appraisals, intense emotions, and volatile communication coalesce into global evaluations of relationships as turbulent. In turn, the theory addresses the effect of relational turbulence on personal, relational, and social outcomes. Finally, the theory explains how communication can contribute to the development of both turbulence and resilience in romantic relationships.     

Multilevel Measurement of Dimensions of Collaborative Functioning in a Network of Collaboratives that Promote Child and Family Well-Being

Evaluating collaboration between community partners presents a series of methodological challenges (Roussos and Fawcett in Annu Rev Public Health 21:369-402, 2000; Yin and Kaftarian 1997), one of which is selection of the appropriate level of analysis. When data are collected from multiple members of multiple settings, multilevel analysis techniques should be used. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) is an analytic approach that incorporates the advantages of latent variable measurement modeling and multilevel modeling for nested data. This study utilizes MCFA on data obtained from an evaluation survey of collaborative functioning provided to members of 157 community collaboratives in Georgia. This study presents a well-fitting measurement model that includes five dimensions of collaborative functioning, and a structural component with individual- and collaborative-level covariates. Findings suggest that members' role and meeting attendance significantly predicted their assessment of collaboration at the individual level, and that tenure of collaborative leaders predicted the overall functioning of the collaborative at the collaborative level. Dimensionality of collaborative functioning and implications of potentially substantial measurement biases associated with selection of respondents are addressed.     

Council-Based Approaches to Reforming the Health Care Response to Domestic Violence: Promising Findings and Cautionary Tales

Councils are commonly formed to address social issues including intimate partner violence (IPV). Research suggests that councils may be well positioned to achieve proximal outcomes, but that their success may depend on contextual factors. The current study compared providers and health care settings at two points in time to explore the degree to which the Health Care Council achieved proximal outcomes in the health care response to IPV, including: (a) providers' reported capacity to screen for IPV, (b) providers' beliefs about IPV as a health care issue and about the IPV screening process, (c) providers' screening behaviors and (d) organizational policies and protocols to encourage screening. This study, while preliminary, provides support for council-based efforts to stimulate change in the health care response to IPV and also highlights the central role that organizational environment plays in shaping desired outcomes.     

Applications of Collaborative Helping Maps: Supporting Professional Development,Supervision and Work Teams in Family‐Centered Practice

Collaborative, family‐centered practice has become an influential approach in helping efforts across a broad spectrum of human services. This article draws from previous work that presented a principle‐based, practice framework of Collaborative Helping and highlighted the use of Collaborative Helping maps as a tool both to help workers think their way through complex situations and to provide a guideline for constructive conversations between families and helpers about challenging issues. It builds on that work to examine ways to utilize Collaborative Helping maps at worker, supervisory, and organizational levels to enhance and sustain collaborative, family‐centered practice and weave its core values and principles into the everyday fabric of organizational cultures in human service agencies and government agencies that serve poor and marginalized families and communities.