Embodied Knowledge and Making Sense of Prenatal Diagnosis

Open-ended, qualitative interviews with women to whom amniocentesis was offered were analyzed to understand how women made sense of these tests. We found that women, whether tested or not, negotiated with biomedical information. They transformed it through identifiable processes, then wove it with their own instincts and beliefs and with their personal experiences, thereby creating embodied knowledge on which their decisions were based. Women who were and were not tested may have differed from each other when categorized on the basis of a final, binary choice, but they were more alike than unalike in reaching this point. The apparent importance of embodied knowledge suggests the critical role of the listening activities of the genetic counselor and of awareness of the validity and importance of women's complementary ways of knowing and doing in understanding the uses and meanings of prenatal genetic testing.     

Structuring Case-Based Ethics Training: How Comparing Cases and Structured Prompts Influence Training Effectiveness

This study examined how structuring case-based ethics training, either through (a) case presentation or (b) prompt questions, influences training outcomes. Results revealed an interaction between case presentation and prompt questions such that some form of structure improved effectiveness. Specifically, comparing cases led to greater sensemaking strategy use and decision-ethicality when trainees considered unstructured rather than structured prompts. When cases were presented sequentially, structuring prompts improved training effectiveness. Too much structure, however, decreased future ethical decision making, suggesting that there can be too much of a good thing when structuring case-based ethics education. Implications for designing ethics training programs are discussed.     

Decision Strategies and the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship in Face Recognition

The decision strategy used to select a choice set from an array of alternative options is known to affect the composition of the final choice set. Specifically, individuals incorporate more answers into their choice set when it is created by eliminating implausible items than when the set is created through the inclusion of plausible options. This difference is accounted for in a decision framework that posits a general reluctance to change the status quo (i.e., actively include or exclude an item). We extended this work to investigate, not only the decisions themselves, but also metacognitive judgments (i.e., confidence in the accuracy of the choice set). In two face recognition experiments, we tested the impact of decision strategy (Experiment 1) and confidence judgment strategy (Experiment 2) on the confidence–accuracy relationship. In Experiment 1, participants completed two blocks of recognition trials, one under inclusion (marking previously seen faces) and one under elimination (marking previously unseen faces) instructions. We observed superior resolution (i.e., discrimination between correct and incorrect) for inclusion trials, but only when they were completed prior to use of the elimination strategy. In Experiment 2, all participants completed face recognition trials under inclusion instructions, but we manipulated the strategy used to assess confidence. Again, we observed a significant impact of strategy on confidence–accuracy resolution. Thus, we observed that both the strategy employed to reach a decision and that employed to assess confidence affected the confidence–accuracy relationship. We discuss theoretical and applied (particularly for eyewitness identification and multiple‐choice testing) implications. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Stories We Tell: Introduction to the Special Issue on Ethical Challenges in Community Psychology Research and Practice

This Special Issue examines ethical challenges in community psychology research and practice. The literature on ethics in community psychology has remained largely abstract and aspirational, with few concrete examples and case studies, so the goal of this Special Issue was to expand our written discourse about ethical dilemmas in our field. In these articles, researchers and practitioners share stories of specific ethical challenges they faced and how they sought to resolve them. These first‐person narratives examine how ethical challenges come about, how community psychology values inform ethical decision making, and how lessons learned from these experiences can inform an ethical framework for community psychology.     

Exploring Decision Making Around Therapist Self‐Disclosure in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Background

Therapist self‐disclosure (TSD) usage varies greatly among different psychotherapy orientations. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that there are reasons for its judicious use, and a small number of researchers have proposed guidelines for how TSD should be used to help therapists across psychotherapy models make decisions around disclosure. However, there is almost no literature specifically exploring how cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) practitioners make decisions around employing TSD within the CBT framework.

Objective

This study aimed to explore how experienced CBT practitioners make decisions around TSD.

Method

In‐depth qualitative interviews were conducted with six clinical psychologists who were trained and experienced in CBT, and the interviews were analysed thematically.

Results

There were two overarching themes in terms of how they made decisions to self‐disclose: (A) the rules for TSD use, which included sub‐themes (a) it must have a clear purpose, (b) it must fit, (c) the therapist must maintain boundaries, and (d) the therapist must always reflect on his/her use of TSD; and (B) how they use TSD, which included subthemes of (a) using it as a tool for change and (b) using it to manage the therapeutic relationship.

Conclusion

Participants’ decisions on whether or not to self‐disclose were strongly influenced by the CBT model, and this process went beyond what is suggested in the transtheoretical literature. Understanding this process may lead to the development of CBT‐specific guidelines for making TSD‐related decisions.     

Career Decision‐Making Self‐Efficacy Change in Italian High School Students

The authors explored the effects of a structured‐group career intervention among 280 Italian high school students. Hierarchical linear models indicated the intervention's effectiveness in increasing career decision‐making self‐efficacy and, consequently, career exploration, but not in decreasing career choice anxiety. In addition, partial confirmation was found for the moderating effects of participants' expectations and motivation to change on the relationship between career decision‐making self‐efficacy and career choice anxiety. The findings support the development of a systematic vocational guidance program in Italian schools.     

Counter‐intuitive moral judgement following traumatic brain injury

Several neurological patient populations, including traumatic brain injury (TBI), appear to produce an abnormally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements to moral dilemmas; they tend to make judgements that maximize the welfare of the majority, rather than deontological judgements based on the following of moral rules (e.g., do not harm others). However, this patient research has always used extreme dilemmas with highly valued moral rules (e.g., do not kill). Data from healthy participants, however, suggest that when a wider range of dilemmas are employed, involving less valued moral rules (e.g., do not lie), moral judgements demonstrate sensitivity to the psychological intuitiveness of the judgements, rather than their deontological or utilitarian content (Kahane et al., Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, 2011, 393). We sought the moral judgements of 30 TBI participants and 30 controls on moral dilemmas where content (utilitarian/deontological) and intuition (intuitive/counter‐intuitive) were measured concurrently. Overall TBI participants made utilitarian judgements in equal proportions to controls; disproportionately favouring utilitarian judgements only when they were counter‐intuitive, and deontological judgements only when they were counter‐intuitive. These results speak against the view that TBI causes a specific utilitarian bias, suggesting instead that moral intuition is broadly disrupted following TBI.     

Moral Utilitarianism and Attitudes Toward Animals

The majority of studies investigating attitudes toward animals have underscored the role of demographic and personality factors. The study of the role of general moral worldviews on attitudes toward animals represents an important complementary perspective. In the current study, we analyzed the relationship between moral utilitarianism toward humans and attitudes toward animals. In psychological and neuroscientific studies, moral utilitarianism has been shown to be related to empathy deficits. We expected that utilitarian decision making would be related to the endorsement of an instrumental representation of animals. We measured utilitarianism with the trolley problem, a hypothetical moral dilemma widely used in the psychological study of moral reasoning. A sample of 20,474 French adults answered an online survey measuring attitudes toward animals and moral decision making involving human beings. Results showed that irrespective of participants’ age and gender, there was a slight relationship between utilitarianism measured by the trolley dilemma and the endorsement of an instrumental representation of animal. Limitations and implications for future research are considered.     

Two Envelopes and Binding

This paper describes a way of defending a modification of Eckhardt's [2013] solution to the Two Envelopes Paradox. The defence is based on ideas from Arntzenius, Elga, and Hawthorne [2004].     

Be aware of the rifle but do not forget the stench: differential effects of fear and disgust on lexical processing and memory

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of discrete emotions in lexical processing and memory, focusing on disgust and fear. We compared neutral words to disgust-related words and fear-related words in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT), and in Experiment 3 an affective categorisation task. These tasks were followed by an unexpected memory task. The results of the LDT experiments showed slower reaction times for both types of negative words with respect to neutral words, plus a higher percentage of errors, this being more consistent for fear-related words (Experiments 1 and 2) than for disgust-related words (Experiment 2). Furthermore, only disgusting words exhibited a higher recall accuracy than neutral words in the memory task. Moreover, the advantage in memory for disgusting words disappeared when participants carried out an affective categorisation task during encoding (Experiment 3), suggesting that the superiority in memory for disgusting words observed in Experiments 1 and 2 could be due to greater elaborative processing. Taken together, these findings point to the relevance of discrete emotions in explaining the effects of the emotional content on lexical processing and memory.