The Doctoral Degree in Counselor Education and Supervision

The doctoral degree in Counselor Education and Supervision (CES) is a terminal or final degree in the field of counseling. This article, provides an abbreviated look at the development of the CES doctoral degree, reviews the development of accreditation standards, reports on current status of the doctoral degree, and comments on the possible future of the CES doctoral degree.     

The Evolution of Empathy

Therapeutic empathy has been an often-used construct by counseling professionals. Through that usage, the term has evolved in meaning and significance from its original presentation by Carl Rogers. This article traces that evolution by identifying its users and contributors over the past 20 years. These include counselor-practitioners, counselor educators, researchers, and increasingly, the public. The resulting changes have implications for future research directions, counselor training, and the practice of counseling.     

The fit and implementation of sexual harassment law to workplace evaluations

Three studies used videotaped harassment complaints to examine the impact of legal standards on the evaluation of social-sexual conduct at work. Study 1 demonstrated that without legal instructions, college students' judgment strategies were highly variable. Study 2 compared 2 current legal standards, the "severity or pervasiveness test" and a proposed utilitarian alternative (i.e., the rational woman approach). Undergraduate participants taking the perspective of the complainant were more sensitive to offensive conduct than were those adopting an objective perspective. Although the utilitarian altemative further increased sensitivity on some measures, it failed to produce a principled judgment strategy. Finally, Study 3 examined the kinds of errors that full-time workers make when applying the "severity or pervasiveness" test to examine more closely the sensitivity of the subjective approach.     

Religiosity and Mental Health: A Meta–Analysis of Recent Studies

A meta–analysis was performed in an attempt to clarify the proposed relationship between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Specific focus was given to the issue of definition, namely, whether differences in researchers' conceptualizations of religiosity and mental health could account for the various contradictory findings by psychologists of religion. Analysis of 34 studies conducted during the past 12 years revealed that the definitions of religiosity and mental health utilized by psychologists in this field were indeed associated with different types and strengths of the correlations between religiosity and mental health. Discussion of results assesses the fit between relevant theory and the pattern of change in effect size across categories of religion and adjustment, and concludes with implications for therapeutic uses of religious involvement.     

The psychology of telling murder stories: do we think in scripts,exemplars, or prototypes?

According to the story model of Pennington and Hastie, jurors collect information at trial and modify it with general knowledge to create case stories. Schank and Ableson argue that human memory is organized to tell and understand stories. However, Finkel and Groscup questioned the use of manipulated, experimenter-constructed narratives to demonstrate the existence of multiple prototypical crime stories. We interviewed 76 jury eligible, death qualified citizens and asked them to imagine a first-degree murder scenario, describing the events that led to the killing. We coded the presence of dichotomous variables in the resulting stories and identified at least three shared story prototypes using cluster and profile analysis. We conclude that people do not store crime stories as simple prototypes and comment on the implications of this finding for legal decision-making.     

Physiological profiles of overtrained and stale athletes: A review

Abstract

Recently, it has become apparent that many athletes are exposed to very high volumes of intense training. Sometimes, rather than adapting normally to the training stimulus (i.e., improving in performance), the athlete experiences a reduction in his or her performance capacity. This occurrence has been termed overtraining or a state of staleness. The intent of this review is to characterize the physiological changes found in athletes exposed to overtraining or exhibiting a state of staleness. Changes and responses in five general physiological systems are discussed 1) neuromuscular, 2) cardiovascular, 3) metabolic-endocrine, 4) im-munological, kind 5) kinanthropometric. Perturbations within each of the major physiological systems associated with physical performance have been reported. Inconsistencies, however, exist in the degree and nature of the physiological changes. The present treatment for staleness consists of rest, and in some cases, complete abstention from training and sporting activities may be necessary. Many athletes find such treatment practices extremely undesirable. Unfortunately, until more extensive research examining the physiological changes and responses of the overtrained/stale athlete is conducted, few other recourses appear to exist.     

Is the Critical Point for Aperture Crossing Adapted to the Person-Plus-Object System?

When passing through apertures, individuals scale their actions to their shoulder width and rotate their shoulders or avoid apertures that are deemed too small for straight passage. Carrying objects wider than the body produces a person-plus-object system that individuals must account for in order to pass through apertures safely. The present study aimed to determine whether individuals scale their critical point to the widest horizontal dimension (shoulder or object width). Two responses emerged: Fast adapters adapted to the person-plus-object system by maintaining a consistent critical point regardless of whether the object was carried while slow adapters initially increased their critical point (overestimated) before adapting back to their original critical point. The results suggest that individuals can account for increases in body width by scaling actions to the size of the object width but people adapt at different rates.     

The effect of mortality salience on the evaluation of humorous material

The motivational aspects of humor are considered from the perspective of terror management theory, testing the hypothesis that exposure to the mortality salience manipulation will result in an alteration in participants' appreciation of humorous material. Participants rated several comic strips, indicating how funny they found the jokes. The differential relevance of various forms of jokes to the process of terror management was also examined by having participants rate their appreciation of jokes that address issues of varying applicability to existential concerns. Results indicate that mortality salience results in an exacerbation of the evaluation of humorous material, and that jokes' relative centrality to terror management processes produces differing evaluative responses. Theoretical and practical implications are examined.     

Spirituality,Religion, and CACREP Curriculum Standards

Survey data of the general population, counselors, and counselor educators indicate that spiritual and religious issues are therapeutically relevant, ethically appropriate, and potentially significant topics for counseling and counselor education in secular settings. In this article, the authors propose that a balanced, thoughtful inclusion of these topics in Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) core curriculum areas is a reasonable and sound approach to preparing counselors to work ethically and effectively with these issues in secular counseling settings. Methods and examples for achieving this inclusion are presented for each of the CACREP core curriculum areas.