The Cultural Closet: The South Asian American Experience of Keeping Romantic Relationships Secret

Many South Asian Americans face challenges when they are in romantic relationships outside of their racial, ethnic, or religious group. Because of values associated with dating and marriage, one challenge is disclosing the relationship to family. South Asian Americans often hide their relationships, and we propose that this experience has parallels to the closet for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. In this article, we name this experience the “cultural closet” and discuss the associated theory, context, consequences, and counseling implications. Muchos americanos surasiáticos afrontan desafíos cuando se encuentran en relaciones amorosas fuera de su grupo racial, étnico o religioso. Uno de los desafíos es revelar la relación a su familia, a causa de los valores asociados con las citas y el matrimonio. Con frecuencia, los americanos surasiáticos ocultan sus relaciones, y proponemos que esta experiencia tiene correspondencias con el armario para personas lesbianas, gais, bisexuales, transexuales y queer. En este artículo, denominamos esta experiencia el “armario cultural” y discutimos la teoría, el contexto, las consecuencias y las implicaciones para la consejería asociadas.     

儒家敬畏的核心文化心理特征及其内在理路

儒家围绕敬畏的心理机制、对象、涵育和效用构建了敬畏的理论体系。敬畏是主体在自觉体认崇高价值时所持守的旨在自我超越的既崇敬又谨畏的理性化道德情感; 儒家以内在的道德本心作为敬畏的本根,并将其落实为道德实践中对人伦、自然、生命、职事和人文等的外在崇高价值的敬畏; 儒家敬畏涵育围绕心理动力、内在涵养、外在范导和积习沉淀系统展开,可谓环环相扣、层层递进; 敬畏作为进德修业之基不仅不会戕害自由、尊严与创造,反而是达至无入而不自得的洒落境界的必由之路。     

状态性平和亦或是倾向性平和?平和的概念、测量与文化差异

加强社会心理服务体系建设,培育平和与理性等积极的社会心态,需要深入研究心理学视角下的平和。对状态性平和与倾向性平和进行区分,可以更好地理解平和。状态性平和研究与平和直接相关的情绪和心境范畴,即东方文化强调的安适恬淡和平静心境。西方文化语境下,平和主要涉及的是倾向性平和,描述其跨时空稳定的倾向,强调平和的超越性、不被偏差影响的内在中立性以及非暴力性的人格。西方平和仅仅强调平静,东方平和还强调和谐。目前,倾向性平和尚未作为独立概念进入心理学研究领域,这正是中国特色心理学的研究方向。未来,应确定倾向性平和的概念和结构、开发倾向性平和的测量工具并且开展倾向性平和的本土化和跨文化研究。     

Examining differences in minority versus majority preschoolers on social categorization and perceived intergroup distance

We examined the differences between majority and minority children (i.e., group membership) on racial categorization and perceived cultural distance, among 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children, in low diversified schools. We used a spontaneous social categorization task using pictures of children from three different racial groups broadly represented in France (Europeans, Black‐, and North‐Africans), and an evaluation of the perceived cultural distance between participants' in‐group and the racial group represented in the picture, adapted to children and based on three factors (language, eating habits, and music). Results revealed an effect of age on racial categorization: the older the children, the more successful they are in this task. They showed a significant effect of the racial group represented in the photos on perceived cultural distance: members of minority groups (i.e., Black‐ and North‐Africans) were evaluated as more different compared to those of the majority group on each of the factors. Finally, we got an interaction between participants' in‐group and the racial group represented in the pictures, for the language factor: members of the majority group perceived as more different photographs representing minorities peers than those representing majority peers, while participants belonging to minority groups perceived no differences between photographs, according to the racial criteria.     

Applying a Process-Oriented Model of Cultural Competence to Behavioral Activation for Depression

Efforts to integrate cultural competence and evidence-based treatments (EBTs) typically take the form of cultural adaptations of EBTs, characterized by modifications to the existing treatment based on presumed cultural notions of a given race or ethnic group. Much less attention has been given to ways EBTs can integrate a process model of cultural competence, which focuses on what clinicians do in-session to identify and integrate key cultural factors for a given individual in the treatment. Our objective is to consider how a process model of cultural competence (Shifting Cultural Lenses) can be integrated with an EBT (Behavioral Activation). We present a theoretical rationale for integrating the SCL model with BA and illustrate this integration, which provides an additional approach to bringing culture to treatments and shows promise for identifying clinicians’ in-session behaviors that reflect cultural competence.     

Who Is This God of Whom You Speak? Counseling Students' Concept of God

Many clients bring a belief in God or a Higher Power into counseling sessions. What is less clear, however, is how counselors conceptualize “god,” which may affect how spirituality is integrated in the counseling process. To explore this question, the authors conducted a concept map study of god images among counseling students. Results suggest that students harbor broad and diverse conceptualizations of god, which may affect the counseling process.     

Wild Things: Stories,Transition, and the Sacred in Ecological Social Movements

This article examines the role of stories in ecological activism. It first situates stories inside object ecologies, encompassing relationships of reliance, care, and maintenance of things. It suggests that ecologies of this sort work as an extended mind where our cognition takes place and meaning is apprehended, so that what we can think of is always a function of what we have “at hand.” The article then considers how these ecologies are impacted by discourses on climate change and peak oil, which stress the impossibility to keep ordering our lives through the same entanglements that have supported them so far. A dissonance arises between the sort of demands and dependencies we are still subject to on a daily basis and the anticipation that those demands and dependencies shall not be able to endure. Stories of transition, which tread a middle ground between denial and collapse hysteria, dissipate this tension. In so doing, they contribute to the growing of alternative sacred forms, working as attractors that constitute groups as moral collectives. These forms are woven through alternative entanglements of objects, bodies, and other stories, providing determinate implication for action, from the indeterminacy of the unknowns of climate change and peak oil.     

Effect of attention control on sustained attention during induced anxiety

Anxiety has wide-reaching and complex effects on cognitive performance. Although it can intrude on cognition and interfere with performance, it can also facilitate information processing and behavioural responses. In a previous study, we showed that anxiety induced by threat of shock facilitates performance on the Sustained Attention to Response Task, a vigilance test, which probes response inhibition to infrequent nogo stimuli. The present study sought to identify factors that may have contributed to such improved performance, including on- and off-task thinking (assessed with thought probes) and individual differences in attention control, as measured with the Attention Control Scale. Replicating our prior finding, we showed that shock threat significantly reduced errors of commission on the nogo trials. However, we extended this finding in demonstrating that this effect was driven by subjects with low attention control. We therefore confirm that anxiety increases inhibitory control of prepotent responses—a mechanism which is adaptive under threat—and show that this effect is greater in those who rely more upon such prepotent responding, i.e., those with low attentional control.     

EXTENDING THE GLOBAL ACADEMIC TABLE: AN INTRODUCTION

Before commenting on the papers from a recent interdisciplinary gathering of scholars from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, a case is made for regional academia conversations today, because international conferences, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are still dominated by “Western” traditions, discourse, and protocols. After touching on the relative stability or variability of phenomena and procedures in the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, political and cultural questions are considered along with some of the ongoing consequences of the East Asian adoption of the European model of the modern research university.     

Healing Humiliation: From Reaction to Creative Action

In the midst of global crises, feelings of humiliation are intensified (Lindner, 2008 ; Moïsi, 2009 ). Counselors are often on the front lines of suffering during turbulent times. This article explores how the dynamics of humiliation are coming to the forefront of concern around the globe. Applying a relational framework, the authors examine the impact of humiliation, offering a case example that illustrates how counselors can lead their clients out of destructive reactions into creative action.