Changing the System by Changing the Workforce: Employing Consumers to Increase Access, Cultural Diversity, and Engagement

Services to families have traditionally been delivered in a medical model. This presents challenges including workforce shortages, lack of cultural diversity, lack of training in strength-based work, and difficulty in successfully engaging and retaining families in the therapy process. The system of care (SOC) effort has worked to establish formal roles for caregivers in SOC to improve services. This paper provides an example of one community's efforts to change the SOC by expanding the roles available to caregivers in creating systems change. It describes the model developed by Communities of Care (CoC), a SOC in Central Massachusetts, and its evolution over a 10 year period. First person accounts by system partners, caregivers hired into professional roles as well as a family receiving services, demonstrate how hiring caregivers at all levels can change systems and change lives, not only for those being served but for the caregiver/professionals doing the work. It also demonstrates, however, that change at the system level is incremental, takes time, and can be fleeting unless an ongoing effort is made to support and sustain those changes.     

Domain-specificity and individual differences in worry

Worrying is generally perceived to be an undesirable mental state. An evolutionary approach suggests, however, despite the potential distress, worry may function to focus individuals’ attention on evolutionarily-relevant tasks. In the current study (N = 193), we demonstrated that participants’ primary worries were focused within domains central to reproductive success and mate-value. Furthermore, mating strategy predicted worries in the domains of social status and mating. Neuroticism, as an individual difference reflecting vigilance to threats, was correlated with worry about fitness-relevant but not fitness-irrelevant domains. The current study documents the first domain-specific assessment of worries and complements this analysis with intriguing individual difference predictors of worry.     

Why More Intelligent Individuals Like Classical Music

The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical problem in social and behavioral sciences. The Savanna‐IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals but that general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values and preferences. Recent work on the evolution of music suggests that music in its evolutionary origin was always vocal and that purely instrumental music is evolutionarily novel. The Savanna‐IQ Interaction Hypothesis would then imply that more intelligent individuals are more likely to prefer purely instrumental music than less intelligent individuals, but general intelligence has no effect on the preference for vocal music. The analyses of American (General Social Surveys) and British (British Cohort Study) data are consistent with this hypothesis. Additional analyses suggest that the effect of intelligence on musical preference is not a function of the cognitive complexity of music. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reflection and reasoning in moral judgment

While there is much evidence for the influence of automatic emotional responses on moral judgment, the roles of reflection and reasoning remain uncertain. In Experiment 1, we induced subjects to be more reflective by completing the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) prior to responding to moral dilemmas. This manipulation increased utilitarian responding, as individuals who reflected more on the CRT made more utilitarian judgments. A follow-up study suggested that trait reflectiveness is also associated with increased utilitarian judgment. In Experiment 2, subjects considered a scenario involving incest between consenting adult siblings, a scenario known for eliciting emotionally driven condemnation that resists reasoned persuasion. Here, we manipulated two factors related to moral reasoning: argument strength and deliberation time. These factors interacted in a manner consistent with moral reasoning: A strong argument defending the incestuous behavior was more persuasive than a weak argument, but only when increased deliberation time encouraged subjects to reflect.     

从西方理论心理学的崛起看中国理论心理学发展——兼论中国理论心理学建构

心理学能够从对实证资料积累的追求中解放出来,转而注重学科自身的理论反思与理论建构,是心理科学逐渐走向成熟的一种表现。随着西方理论心理学的崛起,中国心理学理论研究也逐渐得到重视,出现很多有价值的理论成果,但在心理学元理论和实体理论的建设上,仍旧过度依赖欧美心理学,原创性的元理论和实体理论几乎没有。在研究的规模、研究领域、研究水准、研究方法乃至研究从业者数量上的差距也使中国理论心理学发展显得步履维艰。然而,西方理论心理学的崛起却可以给中国理论心理学发展带来重要启示,在对中国理论心理学建构过程中,要积极对国外理论心理学的理论思维和理论研究方法进行筛淘,加强原创性的理论建设,处理好理论与实践、引进与创新、反思和建构的关系。     

Psychometric properties of the Coach-Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (CART-Q) in seven countries

Objectives

In the sport context, the coach-athlete relationship has been viewed and studied as a universal phenomenon. It is thus important to assess the universality of the psychometric scale that is used to measure the quality of coach-athlete relationships. The present study examined the cultural equivalence or measurement invariance of the Coach-Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (11-item, athlete version CART-Q).

Design

Cross-sectional study.

Methods

A total of 1363 athletes from Belgium (N = 200), Britain (N = 382), China (N = 200), Greece (N = 115), Spain (N = 120), Sweden (N = 169), and United States of America (N = 177) completed the CART-Q.

Results

Multi-group mean and covariance structure (MACS) analyses supported the factorial validity of the CART-Q in a three-first-order factor model across the seven countries. An examination of the latent mean differences of the CART-Q revealed some variation in terms of the intensity that athletes perceive in the quality of the relationship with their coach across the different countries.

Conclusions

Overall, these results supply additional evidence of the psychometric properties of the CART-Q and highlight that it is a sound instrument that can be applied cross-culturally.     

From the perverse pact to universal conflicts

We psychoanalysts – as split subjects – are not immune to charismatic leaders who preach violence against selected targets depicted as the cause of all evils. Freud, in Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, alerted us against such leaders, who can manipulate by transforming us into an uncritical mass. This would be the social equivalent of the perverse pact in repressive desublimation between the superego and the id at the expense of the ego: the latter is put to sleep, and the superego exhorts the id to do violence and regress. Socially, these perverse pacts often take place with the superego represented by charismatic leaders who foster identification with themselves, put the egos of their audiences to sleep through manipulation and thus address an amorphous mass that they can direct towards violence and destruction. An event in which such a phenomenon apparently occurred will be discussed to show how urgent it is to revisit psychoanalytic writings on these matters in order to withstand the temptation to be herded by manipulative leaders. This will certainly protect psychoanalysis and allow for its transmission. It is up to us to exercise the critical analysis that psychoanalytic tools equip us for so that we can detect such summons to perverse pacts and denounce them.     

Cognitive processes in psychological adaptation to miscarriage: A preliminary report

Abstract

Twenty-two women who wished to continue their pregnancies were interviewed several months after their first miscarriage. Levels of anxiety and depression showed an extremely high degree of variability. Cognitive processes in the form of a search for meaning, mastery and self-enhancement hypothesised to be important in adaptation to negative events were assessed. Having an explanation for the miscarriage and the experience leading to a general reappraisal of values were associated with lower levels of intrusive thoughts. A belief in a medical cause was linked to lower anxiety. Women believed that neither they themselves nor their doctors could exert much influence over the outcome of future pregnancies. Stronger belief in personal control was associated with higher anxiety levels. There is a need to consider not only the emotional consequences of miscarriage but also the cognitive mediators influencing such responses and although based upon a small sample this study initiates that process.     

The relationship between religion and cardiovascular outcomes and all-cause mortality in the women's health initiative observational study

Some studies suggest that religiosity may be related to health outcomes. The current investigation, involving 92,395 Women's Health Initiative Observational Study participants, examined the prospective association of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and strength and comfort from religion with subsequent cardiovascular outcomes and death. Baseline characteristics and responses to religiosity questions were collected at enrollment. Women were followed for an average of 7.7 years and outcomes were judged by physician adjudicators. Cox proportional regression models were run to obtain hazard ratios (HR) of religiosity variables and coronary heart disease (CHD) and death. After controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, and prior health variables, self-report of religious affiliation, frequent religious service attendance, and religious strength and comfort were associated with reduced risk of all-cause mortality [HR for religious affiliation = 0.84; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.75–0.93] [HR for service attendance = 0.80; CI: 0.73–0.87] [HR for strength and comfort = 0.89; CI: 0.82–0.98]. However, these religion-related variables were not associated with reduced risk of CHD morbidity and mortality. In fact, self-report of religiosity was associated with increased risk of this outcome in some models. In conclusion, although self-report measures of religiosity were not associated with reduced risk of CHD morbidity and mortality, these measures were associated with reduced risk of all-cause mortality.