When worlds collide: The romantic relationship experiences of bisexual-identifying Asian American men

Relationships, their processes, and outcomes are shaped by sociocultural norms and practices. The specialty of counseling psychology emphasizes the importance of a holistic understanding of the social context of lived experience as it affects health and well-being. We used a queer paradigm and an intersectional approach to inquire about the romantic relationship experiences of 15 bisexual-identifying Asian American men (BIAAM) who were at least 23 years old. In-depth interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a constructivist grounded theory approach. A recursive process of coding resulted in findings that focused on the influence of gender and bisexual stigma on romantic relationship experiences. Relationship experiences were constructed in the context of White hegemonic masculinity norms requiring the performance of dominance and emotional restriction. Experiences of bisexual stigma included fears of rejection from gay and Asian communities that shaped the choice of partners and disclosure and concealment decisions. BIAAM create and maintain their romantic relationships in a social context that challenges them to straddle socially constructed binaries and hierarchies for performing gender, sexuality, and race. We discuss the implications of the findings for culturally competent and effective intervention.     

Homily at the Opening Prayer of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches

This is the text of the homily at the opening prayer of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches on 31 August 2022. The homily was based on Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, a narrative in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. Despite wide gaps of religious belief, gender, culture, and lifestyle, Jesus took the woman seriously and spoke to her on a personal level.     

Job Stress and Employee Well-Being Among Airline Personnel in an Asian Developing Country

This study examined the relationship between job stress and employees' well-being in a developing country in Asia. Job stress was operationalized in terms of perceived experiences at jobs which were chronic in nature. Employee well-being was operationalized in terms of organizational commitment, job involvement, and job satisfaction. Data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire from 150 employees working in a national carrier in a developing country in Asia. Pearson correlation and moderated multiple regression were used to analyze the data. Job stress was significantly related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Moderated multiple regression did not support the role of gender as a moderator of the stress–outcome relationship.     

Partial reinforcement and autoshaping of the pigeon's key-peck behavior

Pigeons were exposed to continuous and partial reinforcement (25%) schedules in an autoshaping procedure. The number of trials and/or pairings per session were equated across two factorial group sets and all groups were trained for a fixed total number of acquisition trials (192). When acquisition was analyzed as a function of reinforcements delivered, the groups receiving fewer number of trials per session acquired the response faster, independently of the percentage of reinforced trials. Moreover, the number of reinforcements to satisfy an acquisition criterion was a monotonic function of the number of trials per session but not of the schedule. The results are discussed in relation to the neocontinuity and the scalar expectancy theories.     

Statistical analysis of binary relational data: Parameter estimation

Binary interaction data, measuring the presence or absence of a relation between pairs of actors in a “dyadic interaction situation,” are commonly gathered to study the social structure of the group of actors. Recent developments have made the statistical analysis of such data statistically easier and more substantively sophisticated. These developments allow researchers to simultaneously study several sociometric structural properties, such as reciprocity, differential popularity, and equivalence of actors. Building on this research, we review the stochastic models responsible for this breakthrough, and discuss methods for estimating expected values and model parameters. Throughout, we also highlight recent advances designed to incorporate nodal or actor attribute data into the relational data analysis. We conclude with an example illustrating these ideas based on conversational activities among actors in a group of eight people.     

Understanding Asian parenting from a Rasch perspective

This study examines the factor structure of Asian child‐reported parenting from a Rasch perspective. Participants comprised 291 sixth graders (11 to 13 years) in Singapore. Six different aspects of parenting were measured, namely warmth, rejection, structure, chaos, autonomy support, and coercion. Rasch Analysis was used to transform ordinal data into linear measures; category functioning was examined; residual‐based principal components were analysed; differential item functioning was assessed; and items and subjects that were misfitting were removed. Results showed that parenting comprised six dimensions, namely warmth, autonomy support, structure‐control, structure‐warmth, chaos, and negative parenting. The findings suggest that it is important for Asian parents to provide guidance to their children (in structure‐control and structure‐warmth) and reaffirms the relevance of warmth in Asian parenting.     

The illusion of the framing effect in risky decision making

The present study elucidates that the illusion of framing in risky decisions is induced by the expected losses with the shift of independent or complementary schemata. Throughout three studies, the reversal of risk preferences in the gain and loss frames was confirmed when the expected number of losses was unknown. When it was known, however, the reversal was reduced in Study 2 where the decision makers were informed of all the options in both frames, and eliminated in Study 3 where they elaborated the numbers of lives at stake before making decisions. Further, the complementary schema was more pervasive when the number of expected losses was known, while the independent schema was more common when the number was unknown. These results imply that the illusion of framing is due to the shift of schemata concerning the lives saved and lost. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Acculturation,self‐construal,mental and physical health: An explorative study of East Asian students in Germany

The present study explores acculturation and its associated aspects of two East Asian student groups with different levels of exposure to German culture (100 international students from East Asian countries [IS]; 61 second generation students of East Asian descent [SGS]). First, we investigated the relationships between acculturation, self‐construal, depressive and somatic symptoms, and differences between the student groups in these variables. Second, the four acculturation types (integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization) were examined regarding their relationship to self‐construal and health outcomes. The results showed that the acculturation dimensions (mainstream, heritage) were relevant to the level of depressive symptoms for IS which was not the case for SGS. Furthermore, IS reported more somatic symptoms whereas there was no difference between the two groups in the level of depressive symptoms. In the analysis of acculturation types, assimilated and integrated students were characterized by high independent self‐construal, while separated and integrated students showed high interdependent self‐construal. Assimilated students displayed the least depressive symptoms of all acculturation groups. This study highlights different characteristics of East Asian students in acculturation, self‐construal and health outcomes, and discusses the complexity of the relationships between acculturation types and health.     

Structural Effects of Poverty on Children

This paper evaluates the perceived benefit to a group of thirty caring professionals of a brief training in Child-centred play therapy. Play therapy enables a child to create fictional worlds and in this way make sense of the real world. By playing in the presence of the therapist, who provides a trusting relationship and at times shares the play, the child is able to obtain relief from the negative effects of distress, sadness, anger or shame. All course participants had adult counsellor qualifications and worked with vulnerable children (n= 25, age range = 56, mean years of experience = 10). The course was delivered in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa via theory presentations; case presentations; practical skills demonstrations and instruction with tutor feedback and self-development awareness group teaching methods. Questionnaires provided qualitative data for consideration and analysis. Key findings included: pre-training prevalent feelings of inadequacy to meet the therapeutic needs of vulnerable children using adult style counselling; post-training perceived raised awareness of the therapeutic power of play with positive impact on professional and personal lives; perceived increase in therapeutic play skills and increased ease in establishing therapeutic rapport. Training was largely beneficial increasing the confidence, knowledge and skills of the course participants.     

‘He thinks Krishna is his friend’: Domestic space and temple sociality in the socialisation beliefs of immigrant Indian Hindu parents

This paper reports results from a study of the cultural belief systems, or ethnotheories, of Asian Indian Hindu parents in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, in the USA. I adopted a cultural, developmental psychological approach and, over a one-year period, used caregiver diaries, ecological inventories, repeated in-depth interviews and participant observations to gain access to the ethnotheories of the parents. These immigrant parents emphasised family ties, unprompted adherence to the daily routine, knowledge of cultural origins and religiously inflected moral values. Exploring the nuances of their emphasis on cultural origins and moral and religious values, particularly as those relate to Hinduism and its transnational rearticulation, I show how the parents utilised domestic spaces and the temple as dual venues to systematically socialise their children into a new form of Hindu religious and ‘Indian’ ethnic identity in the USA.