Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Clergy Sexual Abuse In The Roman Catholic Church: Dispelling Eleven Myths And Separating Facts From Fiction, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

The sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church has made headline news across the country and world for years. Yet, even with such remarkable publicity, so much misinformation and myths about the problem persist. It is important for psychologists, as well as other mental health professionals, to be better informed about these myths and misinformation in order to better serve their clients who may be impacted by the story. Those impacted include not only clerical abuse victims, their families, and clerics themselves but also Catholics in general, who may be troubled and demoralized by the ongoing and unfolding crisis …

Relationship Between Religion, Spirituality, And Psychotherapy: An Ethical Perspective, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Spirituality and religion are typically a critically important element of most people’s lives. They offer an overarching framework for making sense of the world and a strategy to cope with life’s stressors. They provide a community and a way to wrestle with life’s biggest questions regarding meaning, purpose, and suffering. Mental health professionals are mandated to behave in an ethical manner defined by their codes of ethics. These codes typically understand religion and spirituality a multiculturalism issue. Professionals need to be respectful and responsible and pay close attention to potential implicit bias, boundary crossings, and destructive beliefs and practices. Working …

Further Developments Of The Santa Clara Ethics Questionnaire, Thomas G. Plante, Anna Mccreadie

Psychology

Ethics and ethical decision-making are critically important for high-functioning communities, including those on college campuses. This brief paper provides further research support for the Santa Clara Ethics Questionnaire, a brief and no-cost 10-item questionnaire assessing general ethics. The questionnaire was administered to 329 university students along with several other measures to assess convergent and divergent validity. Results suggest that compassion, hope, and self-esteem predict about one-third of the variance in ethics scores. Implications for future research and use are discussed.

Comparing To Ingroup And Outgroup Members: Do We Assimilate, Contrast, Or Neither?, Kathryn Bruchmann, Meghan C. Evans

Psychology

Previous work studying social comparisons suggests that people are likely to assimilate to ingroup members (e.g. Ledgerwood & Chaiken, 2007) but can also contrast from ingroup members if outgroup members are present (Blanton, Miller, & Dye, 2002). The present research built upon these findings by including a no-comparison control group to test for true contrast and assimilation effects. Across two studies, women primed with a gender-math stereotype received false feedback about their performance on a math task; and in some conditions, they learned of the performance of ostensible male and/or female co-participants. Relative to a no-comparison control, we did not …

Social Connectedness And Eating Disorder Symptomatology, Nicole Nunez

Psychology

Eating disorders are a well-known and well-documented issue with known deleterious effects on one’s health. Because of this fact, it is important to identify protective factors against the development and/or maintenance of eating disorders. Social support has been identified as a factor that can play a role in recovery from eating disorders. While the importance of social support has been broadly examined in research, social connectedness specifically has been explored less explicitly. Social connectedness involves feelings of belonging, identification with others, and healthy social interaction. This study sought to assess the role of social connectedness in eating disorder symptomatology. We …

Emotion Processing In The Survival Paradigm, Destiny Valentine

Psychology

The literature shows that words processed according to their survival relevance typically produce a memory advantage. Similarly, words containing an emotional connotation tend to lead to better memory. The current study examined whether combining both the survival processing effect and the emotion processing advantage would cause an interaction that amplified the effects on memory. Using a modified version of the traditional survival processing paradigm, participants rated emotion words (positive, negative, or neutral) on their relevance to a survival context or home-moving control context. They were later given a surprise recall task for the rated words. The results did not show …

The Impact Of Exposure To The Thin Ideal On Chocolate Cravings In U.S. -Born Women, Kathryn M. Helm

Psychology

Food cravings are experienced by a large proportion of the population and have a variety of negative implications- including overweight/ obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. Prior research has shown a lack of support for biological causes of craving. As such, we look to other factors such as culture, cognition, and sex, to explore why such factors have an influence on craving. The purpose of this study is to look at the impact of viewing thin ideal images on chocolate cravings in United States born women-including (but not restricted to) their reports of ambivalence towards chocolate. Participants were randomized …

The Santa Clara Ethics Scale, Thomas G. Plante, Anna Mccreadie

Psychology

Ethics and ethical decision-making are important for well-functioning communities and societies, including college campuses. Yet, there are very few high quality, cost-effective, relevant, and easy-to-use assessment instruments currently available. This paper introduces the new Santa Clara Ethics Scale, a very brief no-cost questionnaire assessing general ethics. The 10-item scale was administered to 200 university students along with several other measures to assess convergent and divergent validity. Information regarding the validity and reliability of the scale along with test utility is presented. Implications for future research and use are discussed as well.

Race/Ethnicity And Geographic Access To Urban Trauma Care, Elizabeth L. Tung, David A. Hampton, Marynia Kolak, Selwyn O. Rogers, Joyce Yang, Monica E. Peek

Psychology

Importance Little is known about the distribution of life-saving trauma resources by racial/ethnic composition in US cities, and if racial/ethnic minority populations disproportionately live in US urban trauma deserts.

Objective To examine racial/ethnic differences in geographic access to trauma care in the 3 largest US cities, considering the role of residential segregation and neighborhood poverty.

Design, Setting, and Participants A cross-sectional, multiple-methods study evaluated census tract data from the 2015 American Community Survey in Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles (LA), California; and New York City (NYC), New York (N = 3932). These data were paired to geographic coordinates of all adult …

Ignatian Banners Of Hope And Support For Recently Detained Immigrant Families, Daniela Domínguez

Psychology

University of San Francisco (ASUSF) decided to allocate a portion of its annual budget each year to assist undocumented students with non-tuition dollars, most often used for the growingly expensive cost of living within the Bay Area. One year prior, in 2015, USF’s School of Law launched its Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic to represent unaccompanied children and migrant women with children in Northern California and the Central Valley.

Altogether, these acts of solidarity demonstrate how Jesuit institutions have strived for greater acceptance and empowerment of migrants and refugees. Contributing to this effort, the collection of essays in this book …

Foster Youth Perspectives: Self-Reported Strengths And Resilience, Julia Nelson, Rosana Aguilar, Saralyn Ruff Dr.

Psychology

This study examines the relational resilience, emotional self-efficacy, and self-reported strengths of foster youth, using a community based participatory research framework. The aggregate of research to date focuses on detrimental circumstances foster youth have experienced and the associated psychopathology. The present study expands the focus to individual strengths, informing our understanding of resiliency among foster youth.

A survey was co-created with foster youth focused on demographic background, perceptions of strengths, and resilience. This survey included items from the positive acceptance of change / secure relationships subscale of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-CDSC), and emotional self-efficacy subscale of the Self-Efficacy Questionnaire …