The critical impact of Frantz Fanon and Henri Collomb: race, gender, and personality testing of North and West Africans

In 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General declared publicly that culture counts in mental health care. This welcome recognition of the role of culture in mental health appears somewhat belated. In 1956, Frantz Fanon and Henri Collomb both presented culturally sensitive studies of the Thematic Apperception Test at the major French-language mental health conference. The contrast between these two studies and between the careers of Fanon and Collomb reveals some of the difficulties in creating cultural and gender sensitivity in psychiatry or psychology.     

Can Implicit Theory Influence Construal Level?

Beliefs about stability and change are captured by individuals’ implicit theories. Incremental‐theorists believe that human traits and world‐dispositions are malleable and can change through effort, whereas entity‐theorists believe that human traits and world‐dispositions are fixed. In this research we find that the implicit theory an individual holds influences an important aspect of the cognitive process, namely, the level of construal at which information is processed. In three studies we demonstrate that, compared to entity‐theorists, incremental‐theorists adopt a more abstract level of information construal, and the increased cognitive flexibility afforded by an incremental‐theory mindset explains this effect.     

An automated odor test for rats

The odor-testing apparatus described consists of a circular open-field area opening into four glass tubes, each with an odor source at the far end. When a rat is introduced, each tube is blocked by a grid; when the rat has touched each grid (sampled each odor), the tubes automatically open and recording of preference behavior starts. Two measures of preference are recorded by a photocell outside each tube, the number of visits and the time spent near the odor source. A uniformity test with food odor in all tubes showed that the apparatus did not promote position bias. In two separate sensitivity tests, one with food odor and one with estrous female urine odor, male rats significantly preferred an attractive odor in one tube to odorless controls. The apparatus yields relatively sensitive and reliable odor preference determinations by ensuring sampling of each odor before data are recorded and by eliminating visual, auditory and gustatory cues.     

“Alexa,who am I?”: Voice Assistants and Hermeneutic Lemniscate as the Technologically Mediated Sense-Making

Human Studies - In this paper, I argue that AI-powered voice assistants, just as all technologies, actively mediate our interpretative structures, including values. I show this by explaining the...     

Spirituality and Subjective Religiosity among African Americans, Caribbean Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites

Patterns and correlates of self-perceptions of spirituality and subjective religiosity are examined using data from the National Survey of American Life, a nationally representative study of African Americans, Caribbean Blacks and non-Hispanic Whites. Demographic and denominational correlates of patterns of subjective religiosity and spirituality (i.e., religious only, spiritual only, both religious/spiritual and neither religious/spiritual) are examined. In addition, the study of African Americans and Caribbean Blacks permits the investigation of possible ethnic variation in the meaning and conceptual significance of these constructs within the U.S. Black population. African Americans and Caribbean Blacks are more likely than Non-Hispanic Whites to indicate that they are "both religious and spiritual" and less likely to indicate that they are "spiritual only" or "neither spiritual nor religious." Demographic and denominational differences in the patterns of spirituality and subjective religiosity are also indicated. Study findings are discussed in relation to prior research in this field and noted conceptual and methodological issues deserving further study.     

Succession and survival in psychotherapy organizations

Abstract: This paper examines the world of psychotherapy by applying a systemic and psychodynamic understanding of the family business as a way of understanding the dilemmas and challenges of leadership succession. Oedipal factors are explored as an important theme within the succession process. This exploration is set within the context of what function psychotherapy has performed in society over the last thirty years. The hypothesis is that the first generation of leaders aimed to provide containment for the individual citizen at a time of failed dependency in society. The suggestion is that this gave way to the primary task for the second generation, which has been to focus on the therapist in training. The challenge for the third generation is to develop a meaningful role for psychotherapy today and to ensure survival at a time when other shorter therapies such as CBT are gaining ascendancy over longer term psychoanalytic psychotherapy.     

Use of Integrity Tests May Reduce Workers’ Compensation Losses

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the use of integrity tests in personnel selection would reduce the cost of worker’s compensation claims in organizations representing four different industries.     

It Takes Nine Days to Iron a Shirt: The Development of Cognitive Estimation Skills in School Age Children

Data are presented for 315 elementary school-aged children (K–11) who took the Biber Cognitive Estimation Test, a 20-item test with five estimation questions in each of four domains: quantity, time/duration, weight, and distance/length. Performance showed significant development yearly until around the age of nine years, with much slower development subsequently. No gender effects were found. Age and fund of knowledge correlated with overall test performance. Fund of information accounted for a large proportion of the variance in estimation skills for children 8 years and under, but not for children 9 years and older. Since estimation skills require retrieval and manipulation of relevant knowledge and inhibition of impulsive responding and are necessary in many everyday tasks, it was anticipated that this test may provide a useful measure of judgment and estimations and may correlate with other executive skills in school-aged children.