Self-esteem predicts quality of responding to interview questions when skill in responding is low

Self-esteem, skill in responding, and skill appraisals have each been posited to influence the quality of information gathered during interviews about witnessed events. This study examined whether self-esteem exacerbates or buffers skill related deficits and awareness of skill. Participants viewed a video, completed measures of self-esteem, estimated their skill in responding, responded to answerable and unanswerable questions about the video, and re-estimated their skill. Skill was indexed as effectiveness in resisting unanswerable questions. Moderated regression analyses showed that high self-esteem was associated with higher accuracy and fewer errors to answerable questions, but only when skill was low. Low skill individuals overestimated their ability. Following practice, low skill individuals with low trait self-esteem recalibrated their skill appraisals, while low skill high self-esteem individuals did not become aware of their lack of skill. When skill was high, self-esteem was not related to responding. Understanding the influence of self-esteem on the quality of information gathered during interviews about witnessed events requires attention to interactions with skill and performance appraisals.     

Refus transfusionnel

After a twenty-year hiatus, the issue of transfusion refusal issued by Jehovah's Witnesses comes up in legal news with the decision of May 20, 2022 rendered by the Council of State. During these 20 years the rights of patients and the autonomy of the person have been considerably strengthened. Although the refusal of treatment is clearly stated in the law, the High Administrative Court nevertheless maintains its position.     

Likable co-witnesses increase eyewitness accuracy and decrease suggestibility

This study examines the impact of likability on memory accuracy and memory conformity between two previously unacquainted individuals. After viewing a crime, eyewitnesses often talk to one another and may find each other likable or dislikable. One hundred twenty-seven undergraduate students arrived at the laboratory with an unknown confederate and were assigned to a likability condition (i.e., control, likable or dislikable). Together, the pair viewed pictures and was then tested on their memory for those pictures in such a way that the participant knew the confederate's response. Thus, the participant's response could be influenced both by his or her own memory and by the answers of the confederate. Participants in the likable condition were more accurate and less influenced by the confederate, compared with the other conditions. Results are discussed in relation to research that shows people are more influenced by friends than strangers and in relation to establishing positive rapport in forensic interviewing.     

Ferenczi's "Teratoma": A Result,not a Process

In Martin Stanton's 1990 monograph Sandor Ferenczi: Reconsidering Active Intervention , one of six exegetical chapters was titled "Teratoma", using Ferenczi's own word for malformations of (psychic) development. Since then, there has been a tendency in the larger Ferenczi literature to use "teratoma" as a metaphor, leading to the creation of many odd readings and contexts for this very specific, medical, anatomic term. When Stanton becomes expansive in viewing the teratoma as a "transitional object" which "negotiates a relationship between the growth of ideal-ego ideas in oneself and the outside 'influence' of inner systems of thought" (p. 176), he is entering the play-space that opened between Ferenczi and Groddeck during the 20s as Ferenczi's relationship with Freud became increasingly constricted. What this misses is that Ferenczi was a physician, as was Groddeck. For all their fanciful explorations of mind and body relatedness, for both Ferenczi and Groddeck there would be a shared background of certain basic terminology. In that medical terminology, "teratoma" refers to variable numbers of primordial germ cells in the embryo, which in the course of development become displaced, sequestered and grotesquely overgrown; they can never become the tissues they were meant to be. Their potential is forever squandered. "Monsters" they may be; "doubles" they may seem; but they are utterly non-viable. In his metaphorical application of the term "teratoma" to the natural history of (psychic) trauma, Ferenczi proposes a biological and psychological isomorphism that is both clinically illuminating and intuitively prophetic of the course of treatment of trauma, which he was discovering. Clinical and literary material are used to explore the gap between the anatomic teratoma and the psychic teratoma.     

Understanding the multiframe caricature advantage for recognizing facial composites

Eyewitnesses often construct a “composite” face of a person they saw commit a crime, a picture that police use to identify suspects. We described a technique (Frowd, Bruce, Ross, McIntyre, & Hancock, 2007) based on facial caricature to facilitate recognition of these images: Correct naming substantially improves when composites are seen with progressive positive caricature, where distinctive information is enhanced, and then with progressive negative caricature, the opposite. Over the course of four experiments, the underpinnings of this mechanism were explored. Positive-caricature levels were found to be largely responsible for improving naming of composites, with some benefit from negative-caricature levels. Also, different frame-presentation orders (forward, reverse, random, repeated) facilitated equivalent naming benefit relative to static composites. Overall, the data indicate that composites are usually constructed as negative caricatures.     

Evangelism Challenges the Church's Identity

The gospel of Christ has spread to hundreds of linguistic and cultural communities. Christian churches have come face to face with an extraordinarily positive but nevertheless perplexing problem: Can the churches find the common core message of the holistic gospel or will the actual content of faith become relativized into the interpretation of interpretations? Despite the many different definitions of evangelism/evangelization, evangelism always leads to consideration of the basic questions of faith: its profound understanding and its reception. Evangelism involves the questions of what I believe or believe in, and of what I commit to. In the midst of the constant flow of information and the hectic tempo of life, evangelism challenges the church again and again to reconsider how the gospel can be expressed compactly, but in a rich, understandable, and true‐to‐life way. In the ecumenical discussion, the concept of “witness” as a form of evangelism is becoming increasingly important, because it comprises all the essential dimensions of the whole gospel. Evangelism challenges churches and their members to boldly bear witness by word and deed to Jesus Christ.     

The “Flip”—Sustaining Complexity and Multiplicity Post-Quarantine

This article describes poststructural ways of responding to the pandemic by looking for openings or gaps within more traditional ways of interacting with dilemmas. The author situates herself within a “positive deviance” epistemology, which looks for what already works rather than getting captured by the current problem. We “flip” what are the usual ways of responding and explore three different programs that illustrate inventive and assets-based approaches. Linking-Lives Storython, created specifically to utilize our COVID shelter-in-place experience; Re-Authoring Teaching: Creating a Collaboratory, begun 12 years ago to meet the needs of a widespread community; and Witness to Witness, a current response to contemporary disastrous situations—all have utilized technology to open possibilities for those who are helped as well as those who are helpers. The article shows how each program has specifically flipped more traditional ways of responding, but also how this “flip” employs a practice of “disciplined improvisation.” Each program has a built-in structure that depends on technology to make it work; each has a disciplined approach that allows the helpers to improvise to meet the needs of the receivers. It is this “flip,” this way of thinking, that can sustain us and our work in times of great complexity and multiplicity.     

Outsider Witness Groups as a Means of Professional Growth in Family Therapy Training: An Exploratory Qualitative Study

This exploratory qualitative study examines the experiences and meanings associated with family therapy trainees’ participation in the narrative practice of Outsider Witness Groups (OWG). At the Barcai Institute in Tel Aviv, we incorporate OWGs into our live clinical supervision courses. In some sessions, we offer the families undergoing therapy the opportunity to listen to the reflections of the group of trainees regarding what they witnessed during the session. Twenty-nine family therapy trainees participated in the study in five focus group interviews. Analysis of the interviews yielded four core themes regarding the trainees’ experiences: (i) Exploring the stance of the therapist; (ii) The art of listening; (iii) Reflection on hierarchy and boundary setting; and (iv) Negotiating self-disclosure. The findings indicate that family therapy trainees stand to benefit significantly in their professional journey, development, and growth from integrating OWG practices into their training. OWG fosters the development of critical reflectivity in trainees, including the deconstruction of common and taken-for-granted assumptions. It also fosters practices related to family therapy, and perhaps also to therapy in general. The findings also suggest that taking part in OWGs during training may contribute to family therapy trainees’ development of critical reflectivity as a means of introducing a more critical and political approach to therapy and developing their own preferred stories as therapists.     

英美法系中的心理学专家证人

专家证人指的是根据法庭的要求,依靠专业知识和技术,就法庭审案过程中所涉及的有关本专业的内容,向法庭提供的有科学依据的书面报告并直接出庭作证的各学科的专家。心理学专家证人就是心理学专家作为专家证人进行出庭作证。英美法系与我国实行的大陆法系存在着差异,该文希望通过系统地介绍英美法系心理学专家证人的发展历史及作用、心理学专家证人的工作程序、存在的争议、已有的实证研究等,为国内法律界和心理学界开辟一个新的视角,并探讨心理学专家证人在我国司法系统实施的可能性