How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Consider My Options Cognition,Verbal Strategies,and the Escalation of Intimacy

Previous research has revealed that individuals have expectations for the development of romance based on personal experience and cultural images. A series of research questions and hypotheses was generated and a sequence of hierarchical log-linear analysis models axis developed to test (a) the effect of gender and knowledge of relational stage and relationship type on prediction of next-occurring actions in the development of a romance, (b) the use of compliance-gaining strategies intended to advance a relationship to the next stage, and (c) justification of secondary goals in which participants reported why they chose the strategies they did as opposed to other alternatives. The data revealed effects for relational stage progression on prediction of ensuing actions. Ingratiation, explanation, and direct requests were popular strategies for developing intimacy. Gender differences in terms of secondary goals were reported. Results are discussed in terms of relational memory structures for the development of intimacy.     

Bias in the Counseling Process: How to Recognize and Avoid It

Counselors' vulnerability to inferential bias during the counseling process may result in misdiagnosis and improper interventions. This article provides readers with information regarding inferential bias. The inferential biases discussed include (a) availability and representativeness heuristics; (b) fundamental attribution error; (c) anchoring, prior knowledge, and labeling; (d) confirmatory hypothesis testing; and (e) reconstructive memory. Each bias is described and illustrated through fictitious case vignettes, and suggestions concerning what precautions counselors may do to avoid each type of bias are presented.     

Counselor Responsiveness to Client Religiousness

An understanding of the degree and Quality of client religiousness and the connections between client issues and religion can enhance counselor resposiveness to the potentially religious dimension of client issues.     

The Persistence of Status Differentials in Computer Conferencing

One feature of electronic communication media is its potential to remove the effects of occupational role identity. For better or for worse, electronic communication technologies may reduce occupational status differentials and allow individuals to communicate as equals. This article reports results from a study of health-care professionals engaged in an educational program using computer conferences over a five-month period. Results show that the content and network of communication among health-care professionals using the computer conference were significantly related to occupational roles. Specifically, physicians and hospital administrators were afforded higher status in computer conferences than nurses. The effects of occupational status differentials were manifest and became more established with greater use of the computer conferencing system. Status characteristics derived from the educational task also appeared to affect communication patterns. The importance of considering multiple social contexts when implementing information technology is discussed.     

Relational coping during deployment: Managing communication and connection in relationships

Wartime deployment involves prolonged separation and creates uncertainty, fear, and disorganization in families (M. J. Peebles‐Kleiger & J. H. Kleiger, 1994). This study examined how military wives/fiancées reported coping with the demands they associated with spousal deployment. Twenty‐six in‐depth interviews were conducted with wives and fiancées whose partners were currently deployed. Through qualitative analysis, 2 main coping themes emerged: (a) maintaining a mediated interpersonal connection and (b) choosing open versus restricted communication. Further analyses revealed that the former theme promoted 2 relationship functions (e.g., intimacy and positivity, confronting realities and fears) and the latter 4 functions (e.g., closeness, smooth reunion, outlet, and protection). On the basis of these coping strategies and functions, a conceptual framework for understanding relational coping communication patterns is proposed. Themes, practical applications, and theoretical implications are discussed.     

LANGUAGE INTENSITY AND RESISTANCE TO PERSUASION: A RESEARCH NOTE

Three hypotheses concerning the specific role of language intensity differentiation in both pretreatment and counterattitudinal messages were examined in two studies. The results indicate that low intensity pretreatments are more effective than either moderate or high intensity inoculations in conferring resistance to persuasion. The findings for refutational pretreatments were, therefore, not consistent with previous research. Future research in this area should be characterized by a greater degree of specificity concerning the possible effects of receiver expectations on subsequent attitude change.     

The adult attachment interview and self‐reports of romantic attachment: Associations across domains and methods

Two lines of research on adult attachment have emerged; both are based on Bowlby and Ainsworth's attachment theory, which in turn relies on evolutionary theory. Investigators in one tradition use the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) to assess “state of mind with respect to attachment.” The AAI has been validated primarily by its ability to predict the attachment classification of an interviewee's child in Ainsworth's “strange situation.” Investigators in the second tradition use self‐report measures to assess romantic “attachment style.” The self‐report measures have been validated by their ability to predict features of romantic/marital relationships. Although the two constructs. state of mind and romantic attachment, are importantly different and so would not be expected to relate highly, some of their components, especially ability to depend on attachment figures, should be related if both stem from a person's attachment history. We report associations between components, or aspects, of the two measures. Overlap occurs mainly in the areas of comfort depending on attachment figures and comfort serving as an attachment figure for others. Implications of the findings for attachment theory and research, as well as for evolutionary psychology, are discussed.     

RELIABILISM AND SAFETY

Abstract: Duncan Pritchard has recently highlighted the problem of veritic epistemic luck and claimed that a safety‐based account of knowledge succeeds in eliminating veritic luck where virtue‐based accounts and process reliabilism fail. He then claims that if one accepts a safety‐based account, there is no longer a motivation for retaining a commitment to reliabilism. In this article, I delineate several distinct safety principles, and I argue that those that eliminate veritic luck do so only if at least implicitly committed to reliabilism.     

Sexual Difference,Animal Difference: Derrida and Difference “Worthy of Its Name”

I challenge the age‐old binary opposition between human and animal, not as philosophers sometimes do by claiming that humans are also animals, or that animals are capable of suffering or intelligence, but rather by questioning the very category of “the animal” itself. This category groups a nearly infinite variety of living beings into one concept measured in terms of humans—animals are those creatures that are not human. In addition, I argue that the binary opposition between human and animal is intimately linked to the binary opposition between man and woman. Furthermore, I suggest that thinking through animal differences or differences among various living creatures opens up the possibility of thinking beyond the dualist notion of sexual difference and enables thinking toward a multiplicity of sexual differences.     

Social Commitment and Individualism in Counseling

Counselors highly value social commitment as complementary to their primary emphasis on the welfare of the individual client. This article discusses how the primary emphasis on the individual raises for counselors the possibility of a kind of therapeutic individualism inimical to social commitment and the common good. The importance placed on social commitment in counseling and the influence of therapeutic individualism are examined. It is proposed that the already significant role of social commitment in counseling can be enhanced by clarifying the balance between the individual and social perspectives.