Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Principles Of Incorporating Spirituality Into Professional Clinical Practice, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Incorporating spirituality into contemporary professional clinical practice has become more common in recent years most notably with the popular interest of mindfulness meditation, mindfulness based stress reduction, and yoga in particular. However, many other spiritual and religiously based assessment and treatment approaches have also been successfully utilized with a great deal of evidence-based research to support their use and effectiveness. The purpose of this brief article is to outline several guiding principles for those professionals interested in integrating spiritual and religious wisdom and approaches into their professional clinical practices in the spirit of diversity and multiculturalism sensitivity and respect. Psychology …

Relationship Science And Interventions: Where We Are And Where We Are Going, Kieran T. Sullivan, Erika E. Lawrence

Psychology

Relationship distress and divorce often have profound effects on couples and their children. Relationship science has long sought to prevent and alleviate relationship distress; this chapter is a summary of many important recent developments in the field. Ongoing challenges in studying and assisting intimate relationships are also discussed.

Nurturing Compassion Development Among College Students: A Longitudinal Study, Thomas G. Plante, Katherine Halman

Psychology

Little research exists on the development of compassion among college undergraduates. This study tracks changes in compassion and identifies factors associated with these changes over the course of undergraduate students’ college careers, from the time of admittance to the time of graduation. Compassion levels assessed at the point of college entrance accounted for 25% of the variance in compassion at the time of graduation. These findings provided evidence for the notion that compassion can continue to be cultivated once in college. Predictors such as diversity training, the frequency of religious service attendance, participation in community-based service-learning, political identification, and feeling …

Compassion Predictors In Undergraduates: A Catholic College Example, Erin S. Callister, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Compassion is sorely needed in contemporary society, including within faith-based colleges. Past research has examined the prevention of compassion fatigue in healthcare professions, but relatively little research exists on the predictors of compassion, particularly among student populations. This study examines the factors associated with higher compassion levels in graduating college seniors, revealing demographic, experiential, and beliefrelated factors contributing to compassion. Results suggest that the general profile of a highly compassionate graduating college senior is a student who is female, politically liberal, religious, studying the natural or social sciences, actively involved in community service or volunteering, and who has undergone workshops …

Implementation Of Best Practices In Online Learning: A Review And Future Directions, Matthew C. Bell, Patti Simone, Lisa C. Whitfield

Psychology

Best practices for helping students learn and retain information have been well established by research in cognitive science (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014; Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013). Specifically, repeated testing has been shown in numerous instances to enhance recall. In particular, we know that students retain information best when it has been recalled versus re-studied (Butler, 2010) and rehearsed with delayed (spaced) versus massed presentation (Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, & Rohrer, 2006), and when the items to be studied and later tested are similarly framed (McDaniel, Wildman, & Anderson, 2012). Although these effects were initially demonstrated in …

Homophobia In Non-Heterosexuals And Their Families, Merel Hermans

Psychology

Homophobia is described as the negative attitudes towards non-heterosexual individuals. The evolutionary advantage of homophobia and of sexualities other than heterosexuality remain poorly understood within evolutionary psychology. This research extends Gallup’s 1995 research, in which people were found to respond more negatively towards same-sex pairs (i.e. imagining their daughter spending time with a lesbian mother, and a son spending time with a gay father), than opposite-sex pairs.Gallup’s original study did not include lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, however given the increasing acceptance of these groups it is now appropriate to expand this research to include these groups. One …

The Mediating Effect Of Moral Beliefs On Responses To Cyberbullying Scenarios, Valdis Rice

Psychology

Just as in traditional bullying, bystanders play a pivotal role in cyberbullying as well. The current study sought to elucidate characteristics that distinguish individuals who act as passive bystanders from those who intervene on a victim’s behalf who is cyberbullied (“active bystanders”). Of particular interest was to examine whether empathy, moral beliefs and emotion regulation predict bystanding. Social self-efficacy, i.e., the belief in one’s ability to express one’s opinion and handle interpersonal conflict, was also examined. A sample of 400 college students completed a set of self-report instruments assessing these constructs and cyberbullying. Additionally, participants were asked how they would …

The Effects Of System Justification And Reminders Of Ingroup Disadvantage On Just World Beliefs, Lukas Sotola

Psychology

The tendency to believe that people get what they deserve—termed just world beliefs—is a pervasive phenomenon associated with acceptance of the suffering of others. We tested whether we could decrease just world beliefs. We experimentally manipulated system justification, and gave participants false feedback on a gender Implicit Association Test telling them that they favor the “opposite” gender. For female participants, this false feedback represented a reminder of their ingroup’s low status by suggesting that they support the status quo that disadvantages women. Participants then completed a self-report measure of just world beliefs. As an indirect measure of just world beliefs, …

Effects Of Massive Familiarization On Crossmodal Aesthetic Preference, Nicholas J. Voss, Dylan S. Campbell, Ronald S. Friedman

Psychology

An investigation was carried out to determine whether familiarization to the experience of visual dissonance would have crossmodal effects on the preference for dissonant and consonant musical stimuli. We hypothesized that subjects who viewed a large number of disharmonious color combinations would come to show greater liking for dissonant musical stimuli than their counterparts who had seen either harmonious or single color images. Findings showed that there was no difference in preference between groups, though musical experience and score on a benign masochism measure predicted larger differences between average ratings of consonant and dissonant chords. These results are discussed in …

Psychometric Properties Of The Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale, Thomas G. Plante, Jesus Mejia

Psychology

The Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale (SCBCS) is a five-item scale intended to operationalize and measure compassion. Santa Clara University has been administering the SCBCS, along with other demographic questions, to all new entering as well as exiting graduating students for the past decade. Previous research has utilized compassion scores and demographic data collected from these surveys in both between and within-subject designs to examine compassion among these undergraduate students. The purpose of the current study was to examine the reliability and validity of the SCBCS through various psychometric tests utilizing 6,763 responses that have been collected in recent years. …

Recognition Of Depression, Anxiety, And Alcohol Abuse In A Chinese Rural Sample: A Cross-Sectional Study, Yu Yu, Mi Hu, Hui-Ming Liu, Joyce Yang, Liang Zhou, Shui-Yuan Xiao

Psychology

Background

Under-utilization of mental health services is a global health issue. Recognition of mental disorders, as the first step to seeking help from professional sources, has been well studied in developed countries, yet little is known about the situation in rural areas of developing countries like China. The purpose of the study is to understand the recognition of depression, anxiety, and alcohol abuse and its predictive factors in a Chinese rural sample

Methods

Face-to-face interviews were conducted on a representative rural adult sample in a cross-sectional study in China (N = 2052). Respondents were presented with three vignettes depicting …

The Third Voice: Do Enhanced E-Books Enhance The Benefits Of Shared Story Reading With Preschoolers?, Katie Ciffone, Andrew Weaver, Kirsten Read

Psychology

This study from which this paper draws examined the benefits of reading plain e-books (with parental instruction) compared to enhanced e-books (with limited parental direction) with 3- to 5-year-old children. Interaction was measured through parent-child verbal communication and eye contact. Engagement was measured through time spent visually focused on the story, and retention was measured through open-ended story event recall questions and multiple-choice story vocabulary questions. There were no differences between the enhanced and plain e-book conditions in children’s qualitative engagement with the story, or in the amounts of vocabulary or story events they retained. While enhanced e-books resulted in …

Narrative Inquiry: An Interview With Michael Bamberg, Michael Bamberg, Carolin Demuth

Psychology

No abstract provided.

Do Slower Life History Strategies Reduce Sociodemographic Sex Differences?, C. E. Chavarria Minera, A. J. Figueredo, L. G. Lunsford

Psychology

No abstract provided.

Local Cultures In Institutional Contexts: The Functions Of Academic Departments In Liberal Arts Colleges, M Pifer, V. Baker, L. G. Lunsford

Psychology

No abstract provided.

Binational Same-Sex Couples And Families, Daniela Domínguez, Jacqueline E. Coppock

Psychology

Historically, the topics of same-sex marriage and immigration reform have been debated as separate political issues. Both issues, however, have impacted the lives of LGBTQ immigrants and their American partners. Presently in the United States, families that include same-sex binational couples are part of the increasingly diverse family landscape. Binational couples are defined here as same-sex partnerships in which one spouse or partner is an American citizen or resident and the other is a foreign national. For years, the ideological underpinnings inherent in immigration laws separated committed couples, forced couples into exile, and resulted in the deportation of partners/spouses of …

Acculturation And Bicultural Efficacy Effects On Chinese American Immigrants’ Diabetes And Health Management, Kevin M. Chun, Christine M.L. Kwan, L. A. Strycker, Catherine A. Chesla

Psychology

The primary goal of this study was to examine effects of bicultural efficacy, or perceived confidence in dealing with bicultural acculturation stressors, on type 2 diabetes management and health for first-generation, Cantonese-speaking, Chinese American immigrants (N=162) recruited for a larger community-based diabetes intervention study (Chesla et al., 2013). The current study also tested whether a new Bicultural Efficacy in Health Management (BEFF-HM) scale is a more robust predictor of diabetes and health outcomes than proxy (years in the U.S.) and general acculturation measures. Hierarchical regression analyses of cross-sectional data revealed that high BEFF-HM was significantly related to positive outcomes on …

Beyond Mindfulness: Expanding Integration Of Spirituality And Religion Into Psychotherapy, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Since the publication of Bergin’s classic 1980 paper “Psychotherapy and Religious Values” in the Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology, an enormous amount of quality research has been conducted on the integration of religious and spiritual values and perspectives into the psychotherapy endeavor. Numerous empirical studies, chapters, books, blogs, and specialty organizations have emerged in the past 35 years that have helped researchers and clinicians alike come to appreciate the value of religion and spirituality in the psychotherapeutic process. While so much has been accomplished in this area of integration, so much more needs to occur in order for the …