Go With the Flow or Fight the Power? The Interactive Effects of Social Dominance Orientation and Perceived Injustice on Support for the Status Quo

Previous research in social dominance theory has found an asymmetry in the relationship between social dominance orientation (SDO) and various hierarchy-enhancing ideologies, such that the relationship between the two variables is significantly more positive among high-status group members than among low-status group members (Sidanius, Pratto, & Rabinowitz, 1994; Sidanius, Levin, & Pratto, 1996). Perceptions of systemic injustice toward one's ingroup may help to explain this ideological asymmetry. The hypothesis of a three-way interaction among group status, SDO, and perceived injustice was tested by using survey responses from American university students to predict opposition to hierarchy-attenuating policies as well as levels of patriotism. Analyses revealed the presence of a three-way interaction (ps < .05). Ethnic minority students who scored high on SDO did not always maintain conservative policy stances or strong patriotic attachments—it depends on their level of perceived injustice. Implications for social dominance theory and system-justification theory are discussed.     

Experiential Group Psychotherapy Supervision

Following a review of various traditional models of supervising group therapy, an experiential model of supervising group in a group setting is presented. The model stresses the group aspect of the supervisory process, encourages group interaction, here-and-now responses and associations, and employs concepts from both object relations and group-as-a-whole theory to understand what is taking place. The model's premise is that case material presented in a supervision group stimulates parallel material in supervisees, which is then used to elucidate what has taken place in the therapy group being presented. Excerpts from one supervisory group are used to illustrate major features of the model.     

Sándor Ferenczi's Ideas and Methods and Their Relevance to Group Psychotherapy

Over the last 20years, I have been attempting to translate Ferenczi's significant discoveries into contemporary clinical practice. There are five basic Ferenczian concepts upon which I have elaborated a contemporary version, relevant for the conduct of an analytic group. The presentation of group interaction illustrates these five dimensions: 1. Confusion of Tongues Theory and Trauma; 2. Compassionate Confrontation; 3. Judicious Self-Disclosure; 4. Reparative Therapeutic Experiences; and 5. Group as Therapist to the Group Analyst.     

Giving and Receiving Help: Interpersonal Transactions in Mutual-Help Meetings and Psychosocial Adjustment of Members

The helping transactions that occur in group meetings have been theorized to be important therapeutic mechanisms within mutual-help (or self-help) groups. Hypothesized links between giving and receiving help and psychosocial adjustment were examined in a mutual-help group for individuals with serious mental illness (GROW). Participants' adjustment was assessed at two time points and helping behaviors were measured with observational coding of weekly group interactions during the period between assessments. Frequencies of helping behaviors were used to predict Time 2 adjustment after controlling for initial adjustment. Consistent with the helper therapy principle, giving help to others predicted improvements in psychosocial adjustment; giving advice was a unique predictor. Total amount of help received was not associated with adjustment, but receiving help that provided cognitive reframing was associated with better social adjustment. A predicted interaction suggested that receiving help was related to better functioning when members experienced high levels of group integration.     

Internal and external factors modulate food-calling in domestic hens

Two series of experiments investigated factors affecting utterance of food calls in the domestic hen, Gallus domesticus. The first series of experiments tested the effect of food preference and the hen’s internal state on the utterance of food calls. Different food types were presented first singly and then in a choice test to 20 hens, first when hens were laying, and then when they were maternal. The second series of experiments tested the effect of hunger level on the utterance of food calls in laying hens, and maternal hens with or without chicks. These two series of experiments showed that laying hens and maternal hens showed a similar marked preference for certain types of food, but laying hens very rarely emitted food calls, in contrast to maternal hens. This shows the effect of the bird’s psychophysiological state on her tendency to emit food calls. The more a maternal hen preferred a food type, the more food calls she emitted. This was observed from the beginning of a test in single-food tests as well as in choice tests. Hunger level positively affected food-call production under certain feeding conditions in maternal hens, but not in laying hens. When maternal hens were tested in the absence of their chicks, utterance of food calls was more sustained than in the presence of chicks. Received: 14 May 1998 / Accepted after revision: 11 October 1998     

Points of view analysis revisited: Fitting multidimensional structures to optimal distance components with cluster restrictions on the variables

Points of view analysis (PVA), proposed by Tucker and Messick in 1963, was one of the first methods to deal explicitly with individual differences in multidimensional scaling, but at some point was apparently superceded by the weighted Euclidean model, well-known as the Carroll and Chang INDSCAL model. This paper argues that the idea behind points of view analysis deserves new attention, especially as a technique to analyze group differences. A procedure is proposed that can be viewed as a streamlined, integrated version of the Tucker and Messick Process, which consisted of a number of separate steps. At the same time, our procedure can be regarded as a particularly constrained weighted Euclidean model. While fitting the model, two types of nonlinear data transformations are feasible, either for given dissimilarities, or for variables from which the dissimilarities are derived. Various applications are discussed, where the two types of transformation can be mixed in the same analysis; a quadratic assignment framework is used to evaluate the results.The research of the first author was supported by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW); the research of the second author by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO Grant 560-267-029). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the European Meeting of the Psychometric Society, Leuven, 1989. We wish to thank Willem J. Heiser for his stimulating comments to earlier versions of this paper, and we are grateful to the Editor and anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.     

A PERSONALIZED SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION FOR TEACHING CHECKING ACCOUNT SKILLS TO ADULTS WITH MILD DISABILITIES

This study evaluated the efficacy of a personalized system of instruction to teach checking account skills to persons with mild disabilities. Using a self-paced manual, 8 participants in two groups were taught to write checks, complete deposit slips, and reconcile monthly bank statements. Four participants were assessed for generalization from the classroom to community sites and demonstrated nearly perfect performance. A multiple probe design showed that acquisition occurred sequentially for each skill only after training using the self-paced manual. Follow-up sessions demonstrated that participants maintained the checking account skills. The results provide evidence of the effectiveness and adaptability of a personalized system of instruction for teaching complex monetary skills to persons with mild disabilities.     

EFFECTS OF COLLATERAL PEER SUPPORTIVE BEHAVIORS WITHIN THE CLASSWIDE PEER TUTORING PROGRAM

A classwide peer tutoring procedure was implemented in an urban elementary school classroom to improve students' spelling performance. Three students combined untrained or collateral tutoring behaviors with the core behaviors initially taught. To explore the function of these natural and spontaneous behaviors, a multielement single-subject experiment with replications was conducted. Results indicated that the additional tutoring behaviors increased (a) the academic response frequencies of 3 tutees and (b) the weekly spelling achievement of 1 target tutee. The remaining class members were successfully taught and continued to use these behaviors over the final 3 weeks of the school year. These findings are discussed with regard to academic instruction, natural communities of peer reinforcement, and the social validation of intervention procedures.     

The journey towards active self-care and empowerment: Insights from a thematic analysis of a women's therapeutic expressive writing group (UK)

There is a strong evidence base that demonstrates the beneficial impact of engaging in therapeutic writing tasks, often with reference to the successful emotional processing of traumatic life events. This paper looks to explore the experiences and impact of a community-based therapeutic expressive writing group, which embraced a direct psychoeducational model to enhance emotional well-being in a group of women. From an experiential qualitative position that embraces a “hermeneutics of empathy”, this study uses a thematic analysis (TA) methodology (informed by the work of Braun & Clarke (2013) to explore the group members' narratives obtained through semistructured interviews. The study reveals the significance of a number of key factors, including the importance of the group setting, the identification of core therapeutic writing activities, the beneficial impact of skilled and supportive therapist facilitation, and the emotional value in “letting go” of unhelpful thoughts and feelings in order to strengthen psychological well-being and resilience. The findings have important implications for service commissioning and the proactive delivery of effective time-limited, low-cost mental health interventions within primary settings across society.     

“I'm Moderna,what are you?” Evidence that people favor those who received their same brand COVID-19 vaccine

In two studies, we investigated the extent to which people are biased toward people with the same COVID-19 vaccine brand using a monetary allocation task. Informed by theoretical approaches to intergroup bias and the minimal-groups paradigm, we expected that, when deciding how to allocate financial resources among three different people—each with an equal need for assistance but a different COVID-19 vaccine brand—people would allocate more money, on average, to those who received the same versus different vaccine brand than participants personally received. We found in Study 1 (N = 94) that people given a hypothetical $10.00 experimental endowment allocated an average of $2.00 more when a person was a member of their vaccine ingroup than to those from their vaccine brand outgroup. We replicated this effect in Study 2 (N = 219), finding that people continued to allocate more money ($1.42) to a person from their vaccine brand ingroup versus those from their vaccine brand outgroup. Taken together, this work suggests that, among vaccinated people, the brand of another person's vaccine meaningfully influences the allocation of monetary resources and that people are biased toward people with the same COVID-19 vaccine brand. Implications for social identity theories are discussed.