How help during pregnancy can undermine self-efficacy and increase postpartum intentions to quit

Pregnancy reflects a common experience for women in today's workforce, yet recent data suggest that some women scale back or leave the workforce following childbirth. Considering these effects on women's careers, researchers have sought to understand the underlying dynamics of these decisions. Here, we explore a paradoxical reason for weakened postpartum career attitudes: help that women receive during pregnancy. We integrate stereotype threat and benevolent sexism theories to explain how the effects of help on postpartum intentions to quit may be transmitted through reductions in work self-efficacy. In doing so, we consider the role of perceived impact—or the extent to which help interferes with versus enables women's perceived ability to continue performing their work role. Results of a weekly diary study of 105 pregnant employees suggest that work-interfering help led to decreased self-efficacy for work during the following week. Furthermore, there was an indirect effect of average help received at work during pregnancy on postpartum intentions to quit the workforce through reductions in work self-efficacy that was stronger insofar as help was work-interfering versus work-enabling. Taken together, our results highlight unintended negative consequences that occur when others provide ineffective support to women at work during pregnancy.     

Hypnosis, reporting bias, and suggested negative hallucinations.

We examined the role of reporting bias in hypnotic negative hallucinations by using a paradigm in which reporting bias was assessed independently of perceptual change. In Experiment 1, highly hypnotizable subjects reported significant loudness reductions when tested for hypnotic deafness. Later, however, these subjects biased their reported loudness reductions in the absence of perceptual change, and their reporting bias scores were almost as large as their hypnotic deafness reports. Subjects also biased their ratings of strategy use. In Experiment 2, ratings of blindness given in response to a hypnotic negative visual hallucination suggestion were significantly correlated with reporting bias scores obtained in this paradigm. Although hypnotic blindness and hypnotic deafness correlated significantly, the partial correlation between these variables was nonsignificant when reporting bias scores were statistically controlled. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Hypnotically created pseudomemories: further investigation into the "memory distortion or response bias" question.

In order to study whether pseudomemories represent actual memory distortions or are a result of response bias, 60 highly hypnotizable subjects and subjects from the general population were divided into 4 experimental groups and were tested for pseudomemory manifestation after receiving a false suggestion. Of the 4 groups of subjects, 3 were offered a monetary reward as a motivation to distinguish false suggestion from actual occurrence. Pseudomemory manifestation was found to be significantly higher among subjects not offered a reward than among subjects who were offered such an reward. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Gender and Wellness: A Multidimensional Systems Model for Counseling

An expanded view of health is advocated for assessment and treatment of individual clients in helping them achieve and maintain their maximum potential for high-level wellness. In addition, moderating variables, such as culture, age, and gender differences, have an impact on every dimension of health and wellness. In this article a multidimensional systems model for wellness is described, and gender differences along those dimensions are reviewed. Application of the model and implications for counseling are discussed. Finally, two illustrative case examples, one man and one woman, are described.     

Relationship of racial stressors to blood pressure responses and anger expression in black college students

The physiological effects of racism, as a stressor, were examined as they related to blood pressure (BP) and anger experiences in Black college students. Current research has failed to consider the stressful effects of racism as a factor contributing to the higher incidence of essential hypertension among Blacks. Twenty-seven Black college students viewed three excerpts showing racist situations involving Blacks; anger-provoking, nonracist situations; and neutral situations. After each scene, BP was taken, and a mood checklist was administered. The Framingham Anger Scale and the Anger Expression Scale were administered. Analyses revealed that BP significantly increased during the presentation of racist stimuli but not of anger-provoking or neutral stimuli. Self-reports of state anger, as measured by the mood checklist, were significant for both the anger-provoking and racist stimuli. BP scores were significantly correlated to the two trait anger measures. Exposure to racist stimuli was associated with BP increases among Blacks. Such cumulative exposure to racism may have important implications for the etiology of essential hypertension.     

The interaction of pronunciation rules and lexical representations in reading aloud

Two experiments examined the role of pronunciation rules and of lexical information in pronouncing letter strings. In Experiment 1, subjects pronounced pseudowords varying in the strength of the rules needed to pronounce them, as well as in the availability of a lexical model. In Experiment 2, the stimuli were words varying in rule strength and in usage frequency. The pronunciation times from both experiments displayed an interaction between rules and lexical information: When the rules necessary were strong, the relative availability of lexical information was less important than when the rules were weak. The results were discussed with respect to both traditional dual-process models of pronunciation and models proposing the use of lexical analogies.