Theoretical, Developmental & Cultural Orientations of School-Based Prevention Programs for Preschoolers

Schools are the primary environment in which to conduct prevention programs for school-age children. Educators, policy makers, and psychologist argue that prevention efforts should begin as early as possible to maximize their effectiveness. Surprisingly, there are relatively few school-based prevention programs targeted for preschoolers. Given the evidence supporting earlier rather than later prevention efforts and the fact that many children in the United States attend preschool programs, more research on the feasibility and effectiveness of prevention programs administered in preschool environments is warranted. In this article, we review the existing literature on school-based prevention programs targeted for preschool children. We examine whether school-based prevention programs are theory driven, developmentally appropriate, culturally sensitive, and aimed specifically at symptom reduction or behavior promotion. Based on the findings of this review, our aim is to identify gaps in the prevention research literature regarding programs for preschoolers and propose research to address such gaps to create more effective school-based prevention programs for young children.     

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy With An East Indian Family*

This article discusses the use of the cognitive-behavioral approach to family therapy with an immigrant Indian family residing in the United States. Issues of acculturation and the emancipation of a young adolescent female are addressed as conflicts arise between her and her parents. The use of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is presented as a flexible mode of treatment because it allows for the modification of schemas in a way that is respectful to cultural underpinnings and allows the family the freedom to change in a manner that does not compromise their cultural values. Further discussion is directed toward the cultural variables that may be accommodated by the CBT approach and the elements that make the approach adaptable, particularly in cases involving Indian culture.The authors thank Eric Frey of Lehigh University for his assistance with the literature review.     

“God may NOT be a Personexcl;”: A Case of Cultural Construction of God Representations

This article raises the fundamental questions of God representations: What is the origin and nature of God representations in the context of culture? The subsequent questions that flow from this major question include: What are the psychoanalytic notions of culture and cultural experience? And what is the relationship between the self and God representation? Given the emphasis placed upon the nature of “individual” representational experience in psychoanalytic literature, this article presents a challenge to psychoanalytic object-relations theory by explicating the case of the Korean cultural construction of God representations. The author argues that to understand one’s images of God one needs to consider the relationship between the mental images one has constructed prior to one’s acquisition of language and cultural constructs that are collectively represented and symbolically embodied through the use of language.     

Finding the space between east and west: the emotional impact of teaching in St Petersburg

The paper describes our experience of teaching analytical psychology to a group of graduates of the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis in St Petersburg, our developing partnership as we struggled to teach and learn, each with our own assumptions, preconceptions and projections about the other, and the emotional impact of our radically different social, intellectual and political histories. We had to be affected to become effective. It draws on contemporary Jungian ideas to unpack the interpersonal dynamics involved when there are culturally different styles of learning, which created a complicated transference/countertransference matrix. We believe we have by now witnessed a process of individuation among our students and at the same time they too have witnessed some change and growth in us.     

知情同意在中国不适用吗——“文化差异论”的认知错误

知情同意是在当代生命伦理学中最有影响的概念,在大多数西方国家它已成为医疗实践和涉及人体的医学科学研究的一个基本的伦理要求。不少西方和中国学者认为,由于中西文化显著而根本的差异,知情同意不适宜于中国。指出了“文化差异论”的三个认知错误,即,文化差异论是建立在对中国文化和医学道德、西方文化以及知情同意的一系列误解之上的。基于文化的差异而拒绝知情同意在中国的适用性和必要性,显然不能成立。     

基于大数据的文化心理分析

随着大数据技术与文化心理学的融合发展, 计算文化心理学作为一门新兴交叉学科逐渐兴起, 大尺度、近乎全样本的文化心理分析真正得以实现。计算文化心理学关注的文化变量主要围绕个人主义/集体主义这一文化心理学使用最为广泛的维度展开, 分析方法包括特征词典、机器学习、社会网络分析、仿真模拟等, 分析思路包括时间维度上的文化变迁效应以及空间维度上的文化地理效应。当然, 计算文化心理学在为传统文化心理研究提供新方法、新范式的同时, 也存在解码失真、样本偏差、词语多义性、隐私风险等局限, 未来研究应重视变量理论解释、文化动态演化分析、学科深度整合、生态效度等问题。     

Help-Seeking Comfort and Receiving Social Support: The Role of Ethnicity and Context of Need

Examined help-seeking comfort and receiving social support among Latinos, African Americans, and European Americans across two contexts: in a communitywide emergency (Hurricane Andrew) and 2 years later in a nonemergency situation. In general, help-seeking comfort was a strong predictor of received support. Notwithstanding many similarities between the groups, the effects of ethnicity differed according to the context. In emergency, all groups reported similarly high levels of help-seeking comfort and received support. In nonemergency, help-seeking comfort declined for blacks and whites but not for Latinos. Although all ethnic groups reported receiving less social support in nonemergency, the decline in received support across contexts was most dramatic for Latinos. Situational, cultural, and differential resource loss explanations are offered to account for the findings.     

Where Does I Stand? Reflections on Home and Identity Ensnared in a Cultural Narrative

In this paper the author explores a cultural narrative that she suggests rests on the concepts of the Feminine and Masculine as such, employing both as though they contain an agreed set of universal givens. These givens are extrapolated from an androcentric perspective on female and male bodies, in particular their biological functions regarding reproduction. The metaphors of the baby-in-womb, mother’s preoccupation with child and heteronormative sexual relations are the primary cyphers for the narrative. She suggests that remaining unconscious of this narrative, such that it is taken as a universal given, can hamper a person’s relation to themselves, the world and others. The author names two concepts, Home and Identity: Home being an hospitable and accommodating space with Identity denoting the one who inhabits the space. In the narrative these two are unhelpfully categorized as belonging to the Feminine and the Masculine respectively. For ease of understanding the author uses a capital letter to designate an abstract idea, and lower case when referring to the concrete or particular. Clinical examples are given throughout the paper to illustrate how acknowledgement and awareness of this narrative might free the analyst or therapist to think more broadly around issues pertaining to space and identity.     

Reduction of faking with the use of a forced-choice personality test: Cross-cultural comparisons between South Korea and the United States

Forced-choice format tests have been suggested as an alternative to Likert-scale measures for personnel selection due to robustness to faking and response styles. This study compared degrees of faking occurring in Likert-scale and forced-choice five-factor personality tests between South Korea and the United States. Also, it was examined whether the forced-choice format was effective at reducing faking in both countries. Data were collected from 396 incumbents participating in both honest and applicant conditions (N_SK = 179, N_US = 217). Cohen's d values for within-subjects designs (ds_within) for between the two conditions were utilized to measure magnitudes of faking occurring in each format and country. In both countries, the degrees of faking occurring in the Likert-scale were larger than those from the forced-choice format, and the magnitudes of faking across five personality traits were larger in South Korea by from 0.07 to 0.12 in ds_within. The forced-choice format appeared to successfully reduce faking for both countries as the average ds_within decreased by 0.06 in both countries. However, the patterns of faking occurring in the forced-choice format varied between the two countries. In South Korea, degrees of faking in Openness and Conscientiousness increased, whereas those in Extraversion and Agreeableness were substantially decreased. Potential factors leading to trait-specific faking under the forced-choice format were discussed in relation to cultural influence on the perception of personality traits and score estimation in Thurstonian item response theory (IRT) models. Finally, the adverse impact of using forced-choice formats on multicultural selection settings was elaborated.     

Inverting the Object of Study: Recalibrating the Frame of Reference in Study Abroad Experiences

This essay is concerned with study abroad experiences as opportunities for student cognitive development, using the interpretive lens of educational psychologist William G. Perry. A standard and often valuable assignment in courses on world religions is a site visit to a religious institution in one's local area. This may concretize otherwise abstract materials and help students reflect on ways in which the lived experience of religion differs from its presentation in course texts and other academic materials. Increasingly, study abroad trips are being offered as extended and more intensive ways of bringing this material to life, offering students opportunity to see lived religion within another cultural framework. At the heart of this paper is the contention that such study abroad experiences function not simply as longer, more intense versions of site visits but, rather, as experiences that invert the subject and object of study. The worldview of the student becomes a primary object of study, which is examined, as it were, by the particulars of the religion(s) under investigation and the cultures of which said religion(s) are a part. Where site visits offer students an opportunity to visit the strange amidst the familiar, study abroad trips provide opportunities for students to become the strange within a recalibrated familiar. The subject becomes the object and is interrogated by the context of study. While local, stateside site visits can offer a degree of such dislocation, their brevity, together with some degree of assimilation to the larger culture flows on the part of the local religious institution being visited, most often mitigates any significant inversion. Students generally see such institutions as either mildly or wildly exotic, but always within their frame of reference, which constitutes the norm. When abroad, the normative experience of students is often subverted in ways that lay bare the assumptions behind such views and makes possible another world in which to live. Simply put, the subject and object of study change places. If this inversion is carefully attended to, it can provide rich insight into not only the topics nominally being studied but also occasion opportunity for real cognitive development on the part of the student. This essay is published alongside of six other essays, including a response from John Barbour, comprising a special section of the journal (see Teaching Theology and Religion 18:1, January 2015).