Confidentiality, privacy, and the facilitating role of psychoanalytic organizations

Burgeoning external threats to confidentiality by claims to clinical information create unprecedented challenges for psychoanalysts. Internal threats arise from the use of clinical material for educational, scientific and historical purposes. Traditionally, confidentiality is considered a patient's right and an analyst's obligation; privacy is not usually stated as a professional requirement. Little consideration has been given to the impact of the confidentiality and privacy dilemmas that analysts encounter throughout their careers. There has been no systematic examination of the confidentiality policies of psychoanalytic organizations, nor has their role in facilitating maintenance of patient confidentiality and analysts' privacy been made explicit. The research reported here was undertaken to address these issues and to obtain baseline information about the current confidentiality policies and practices of psychoanalytic organizations in three English-speaking countries (Britain, Canada and the USA). The author discusses survey results in the light of the challenges which arise at each phase of the analytic career. She makes suggestions as to how psychoanalytic organizations can and should facilitate analysts' resolutions of contemporary confidentiality and privacy dilemmas.     

Simplicity and probability in causal explanation

What makes some explanations better than others? This paper explores the roles of simplicity and probability in evaluating competing causal explanations. Four experiments investigate the hypothesis that simpler explanations are judged both better and more likely to be true. In all experiments, simplicity is quantified as the number of causes invoked in an explanation, with fewer causes corresponding to a simpler explanation. Experiment 1 confirms that all else being equal, both simpler and more probable explanations are preferred. Experiments 2 and 3 examine how explanations are evaluated when simplicity and probability compete. The data suggest that simpler explanations are assigned a higher prior probability, with the consequence that disproportionate probabilistic evidence is required before a complex explanation will be favored over a simpler alternative. Moreover, committing to a simple but unlikely explanation can lead to systematic overestimation of the prevalence of the cause invoked in the simple explanation. Finally, Experiment 4 finds that the preference for simpler explanations can be overcome when probability information unambiguously supports a complex explanation over a simpler alternative. Collectively, these findings suggest that simplicity is used as a basis for evaluating explanations and for assigning prior probabilities when unambiguous probability information is absent. More broadly, evaluating explanations may operate as a mechanism for generating estimates of subjective probability.     

Studying the Practice of Cooperation and Collaboration Within an International Research Project on the Everyday Lives of Families

The aim of this paper is to analyse the sociocultural dynamics underlying collaborative research. The article is based on an international collaborative project on the everyday lives of working families in Italy, Sweden and the USA. The aim of this paper is to show that collaborative research does not necessarily produce collaboration: this is possible only with very strong rules between partners. It proposes a distinction between collaboration and cooperation, and uses this distinction to examine intergroup and intragroup joint activity. Through the analysis of the communicative exchanges occurring between researchers, the paper highlights conditions in which cooperation can become fruitful collaboration.

Triangulating School Climate: Areas of Convergence and Divergence Across Multiple Levels and Perspectives

Students often have differing perceptions of their school's climate. Although these subjective perceptions can be meaningful outcome predictors, discrepancies create challenges for those seeking to globally characterize or intervene to improve the climate of a school. Trained, independent  observers can provide insights on perceptible and ostensibly malleable aspects of the school; however, the extent to which these observations help us to understand differences in students’ report of school climate has not been examined. To study this, we assessed convergence and divergence between independent observers’ assessments and students’ perceptions of school climate at the classroom and school levels. Data come from the Maryland Safe and Supportive Schools Initiative (MDS3), which included 20,647 students and observations of 303 teachers in 50 high schools. Students responded to survey items regarding safety, engagement, and environment; independent observers assessed teachers’ classroom practices and the school physical environment. A three-level model partitioned variance to the individual, classroom, and school levels. The variance in students’ climate perceptions was primarily between students, with most classroom and school intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) ranging from 0.01 to 0.08, though one was as high as 0.20; however, observations explained large percentages of between-school variation in climate (58%–91%). Findings suggest the potential utility of outside observations for explaining school-level variation in school climate to inform decision-making and future research.     

THE AMBIGUITY OF MORAL EXCELLENCE: A Response to Aaron Stalnaker's “Virtue as Mastery”

This response draws on Saba Mahmood's work on Muslim subjectivities in order to consider how Stalnaker's conceptualization of virtue might be applied to non‐Confucian sources. I argue that when applied cross‐culturally, Stalnaker's revised definition of “skillful virtue” raises normative and metaethical questions about what counts as a skill versus a mere bodily practice, the process by how skill is acquired, and how we can both allow for the ambiguity of skills and continue to make constructive arguments about them.     

Questionable research practices among Brazilian psychological researchers: Results from a replication study and an international comparison

Research on scientific integrity is growing in psychology, and questionable research practices (QRPs) have received more attention due to its harmful effect on science. By replicating the procedures of previous research, the present study aimed at describing the use of QRPs among Brazilian psychological researchers and to make an international comparison with previous studies in other countries—the US and Italy. Two hundred and thirty-two Brazilian researchers in the field of psychology answered questions related to 10 different QRPs. Brazilian researchers indicated a lower tendency to engage in two QRPs (failing to report all of a study's dependent measures; deciding whether to collect more data after looking to see whether the results were significant) when compared to their Italian and North American counterparts, but indicated a higher tendency to engage in two other QRPs (selectively reporting studies that “worked”; not reporting all of a study's conditions). Most of the sample did not admit integrity conflicts in their own research but indicated that others have integrity problems, as observed in previous studies. Those discrepancies could be attributed to contextual and systemic factors regarding different publication demands among the different nations. Further studies should focus on identifying the antecedents of QRPs.     

Science and the Future of Theology: Critical Issues

The ambivalent reputation of theology as an academic discipline is attributed to the often circular character of its procedures based on presumed authoritative sources. Recently, science too has come under the shadow of "postmodernist" critiques but, it is argued, has been able to withstand them successfully and make epistemologically warrantedclaims to be depicting reality—thereby vindicating human rationality. Evolutionary epistemological considerations also reinforce confidence in the more general deliverances of the human exploration of reasonableness through inference to the best explanation (IBE). The consequences of applying IBE, with its associated criteria, in theological investigation are considered in relation to theology as it is and as it might be. A number of issues critical for thedevelopment of a credible theology are identified. In spite of the challenging and somewhat negative view of contemporary theology to which this leads, hope is expressed that a genuinely credible "evangelical,""catholic," and liberal theology may yet emerge for the new millennium.     

Mothering under political violence: Post-traumatic symptoms,observed maternal parenting practices and child externalising behaviour

Using the family stress model as our conceptual framework, we explored whether observed maternal parenting practices (positive and coercive) account for the associations between mothers' post-traumatic stress symptoms and children's externalising behaviours. Mothers' self-reported post-traumatic stress symptoms, observed maternal practices, and reports of children's externalising behaviour were collected from 123 Israeli mothers and their children, who were exposed to ongoing rocket attacks in southern Israel. A structural equation model revealed that mothers' post-traumatic stress symptoms were linked with greater maternal coercive parenting practices, which in turn were associated with more externalising behaviours in children. The study highlights the crucial role of maternal distress and mothers' parenting skills in the development of externalising behaviours in children exposed to chronic political violence. These results suggest that prevention interventions designed to promote parenting skills for mothers exposed to political violence may be beneficial for children's healthy development.     

如何激发员工绿色行为?绿色变革型领导与绿色人力资源管理实践的作用

鉴于当今环境问题的严峻性, 如何激发绿色行为逐渐成为社会各界关注的一个话题。本研究从绿色变革型领导和绿色人力资源管理实践两大绿色管理利器入手, 探究两者能否共同激发员工绿色行为。基于以往文献, 本研究提出两组竞争性假设：基于线索一致理论, 认为绿色变革型领导与绿色人力资源管理实践正向交互影响员工绿色行为; 此外, 基于领导替代理论, 认为绿色变革型领导与绿色人力资源管理实践负向交互影响员工绿色行为。研究1a (N = 91)和研究1b (N = 220)采用实验法, 发现绿色变革型领导与绿色人力资源管理实践发挥协同作用, 正向交互预测员工绿色行为。研究2采用问卷法, 搜集了三时点上下级配对数据(N = 173), 不仅再次支持了研究1的发现, 还进一步揭示环保目标清晰度的中介作用。以上结果支持了线索一致性理论在绿色管理领域的适用性, 并启示企业在绿色管理过程中可以软硬兼施, 联合运用绿色变革型领导和绿色人力资源管理实践两大策略。