Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Table Of Contents

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editor, Kristin L. Hansen

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.

Cover

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.

Between Identity And Truth: A Christ-Centered Perspective On Emotion, Mauro Properzi

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

Emotions are receiving a lot of attention in both academic and popular circles. In fact, our culture is increasingly characterized by emotionality in thought, expression, and personal interaction, with some positive but also many negative consequences. How should Christians respond to these developments in the secular culture? A Christ-centered approach to the emotions is the general theological foundation on which we need to ground our reflections and decisions about their nature and significance. Specifi- cally, by deepening our understanding of Jesus’s teachings on His identity, telos, life-giving reality, and sanctifying power, as aptly described in John 14:6, we may experience …

Patience As A Development Virtue And Common Therapeutic Factor, Vaughn E. Worthen Ph.D.

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

This article provides an overview of patience and its associated constructs by examining its role in five domains: (a) confidence and control; (b) distress tolerance; (c) relationship development, maintenance, and repair; (d) character development; and (e) spiritual maturation. It highlights initial evidence that patience contributes to increased self-regulation and impulse control, distress tolerance, self-compassion, mindfulness, empathy in relationships, perspective taking, use of cognitive reappraisals, prosocial ori- entation, character development, and spiritual maturation. Patience helps with coping with anxiety and depression, aids with handling uncertainty, facilitates relationship maintenance and repair, and sustains the ability to manage the ambiguities present during faith …

Religious Perfectionism: Utilizing Models Of Perfectionism In Treating Religious Clients, Michael D. Adams

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

Past research has asserted that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e., Mormons) have high rates of religious perfectionism. A historical investigation was performed exam- ining how the perception of perfectionism has changed within the field of psychology. The study first investigates early viewpoints (e.g., Freud, Horney, Adler, Ellis, Beck) that unanimously perceived perfectionism as negative and debilitating in an individual’s psychological adjustment. New research, which understood and measured perfectionism as a multidimensional construct, found both positive and negative components of perfectionism. Different theoretical understandings of perfectionism (e.g., behavioral, attachment, self-conscious emotions, acceptance, Big Five personality …

The Spirituality Of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: A Case Study, Stephen B. Morris Ph.D.

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

Although psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective and can be done briefly, it has fallen out of favor, especially with religiously oriented psychotherapists—including Latter-day Saint psychotherapists. The client in this case study is a 50-year-old, middle-class, Caucasian member of the Church. Using the case study as a framework, this paper describes and illustrates how psychodynamic psychotherapy can be seen as a spiritual endeavor that is compatible with both a traditional Christian orientation and a Latter-day Saint orientation. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first case report of psychodynamic psychotherapy with a Latter-day Saint client. This report may form part of the …

Analyzing Anger References In The Scriptures: Connections To Therapy In A Religious Context, Emily Swensen Darowski, Kristin L. Hansen, Aaron P. Jackson, Charles D. Flint, John Linford

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

People navigate life more successfully and find more joy when they are able to regulate emotion in healthy ways. Teaching and helping clients regulate emotion in healthy ways is an important part of many psychotherapy approaches. In this paper, we focus on the emotion of anger from a theistic therapy perspective, arguing that understanding the nature of God’s anger and human anger in the scriptures can inform theistic therapy practice. To establish this understanding, we analyzed cases of the word anger in the scriptures through content analysis (e.g., quantitative) and hermeneutic analysis (e.g., qualitative). Findings revealed that, while God was …

Full Issue

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.

P300 Event-Related Potentials To A Phoneme Discrimination Task Requiring A Motor Response, Kaitlyn Chelsea Turner

Theses and Dissertations

Speech perception typically takes place within the auditory cortex as evidenced by data collected using quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG). The purpose of this study was to determine if motor responses influence speech perception. We examined P300 event-related potentials during oddball stimulus recognition tasks that either required or did not require a motor response. Based on a review of the literature, it was hypothesized that similar areas of the brain would be activated in both the motor response task and the same task without a motor response immediately following the button-push condition. Two syllables, /ba/ and /ga/, were presented to 20 native …

Fear And Career Decision-Making Difficulties: Guiding Individuals With Career Indecisiveness, Jordan Hanks

Student Works

Individuals with fear-based career indecisiveness exhibit extreme career decision-making difficulties (CDD) which prevent them from successfully making career decisions. Fear must be recognized as a significant contributor to indecisiveness in order to aid those with fear-based career indecisiveness. Career guidance professionals may help indecisive individuals by first identifying the causes of indecisiveness and the decision-making fear. Career indecisiveness may have either low career self-efficacy or low emotional intelligence as a contributor, each of which impact individuals differently. Career indecisiveness also involves either a fear of failure or a fear of commitment, which may contribute to CDD. Guidance for these individuals …

Comparing Reunified And Residential Care Facility Children's Wellbeing In Ghana: The Role Of Hope, Spencer L. James, Jini L. Roby

Faculty Publications

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) stipulates children are entitled to “a family environment…of happiness, love and understanding”. Recent work on deinstitutionalization of children from residential care has found important child wellbeing differences, particularly around hope. Using data from Ghana—a country that has initiated reintegration of children from residential care facilities, therefore providing a natural opportunity for comparative research—we used hope, whether the child has been reunified with family/caregivers or remained in the care facility, and a statistical interaction of the two, along with controls, to predict the Child Status Index, an internationally-established measure of child …

Effects Of Exercise On Clinical Couple Interactions, Samantha Karma-Jean Simpson

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that exercise has the potential to improve couple relationships. This study contributes to current literature by examining the associations between exercise, its duration, and its intensity and daily clinical couple interactions. Participants were 22 married couples in a treatment-as-usual setting who completed daily diaries about daily behaviors and marital interactions. Multilevel models were run, and results showed that wives who exercised were more likely to report a negative interaction with their husband that day. When wives exercised longer, both they and their husbands were more likely to report positive interactions that day. Interestingly, if husbands exercised longer …

Contributions Of Target-Lure Similarity And Sensory Modality To Lure False Alarms, Daniel Kent Bjornn

Theses and Dissertations

The processes of pattern separation and pattern completion are very important in the correct discrimination of similar memories. Much research has been conducted on these processes, but there are some gaps that need to be addressed. First, there is some debate as to whether false alarms to lure items come about because of a failure to accurately encode a memory or a failure to retrieve a memory. Second, much of the research on pattern separation and pattern completion in humans is done with visual stimuli and contributions of stimulus modality to these processes are not well understood as a result.Study …

Insider Perspectives Of Mate Selection In Modern Chinese Society, Szu-Yu Lin

Theses and Dissertations

With the increased exposure to Western cultures and the transition towards modernization, Chinese society has experienced substantial social change, which has influenced marital relationships. Although recent research has documented contemporary patterns of marital interaction, less is known about what Chinese adults consider to be an ideal marital partner and what their parent' roles play in the mate selection process. What do contemporary Chinese adults value in a partner? How much parental influence is involved in choosing an ideal marital partner? These questions were addressed by conducting six focus groups in Taipei, Taiwan. The focus groups included a total of 51 …

A Gis Approach To Archaeological Settlement Patterns And Predictive Modeling In Chihuahua, Mexico, Haylie Anne Ferguson

Theses and Dissertations

In this study I analyzed the pattern of settlement for known Medio period (A.D. 1200–1450) sites in the Casas Grandes region of Chihuahua, Mexico. Locational data acquired from survey projects in the Casas Grandes region were evaluated within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) framework to reveal patterns in settlement and site distribution. Environmental and cultural variables, including aspect, cost distance to nearest ballcourt, ecoregion, elevation, local relief, cost distance to nearest oven, cost distance to Paquimé, slope, soil, terrain texture, topographic position index, cost distance to nearest trincheras, vegetation, vegetation variety to 100 meters, vegetation variety to 500 meters, cost …

Brand Communication Through Social Media Influencers: How Organizations Can Advance Effective Relationships With Smis In Brazil, Andressa Ferreira Gaertner

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to shed light on how brands can build relationships with social media influencers (SMIs). By replicating Pang et al. (2016) research in different cultural settings, the present study identified internal and external influences that are important for SMIs routines in Brazil, generating additional enlightenment into the Mediating the Media model for SMIs and evaluating to what extent cultural differences may impact the proposed theoretical framework. The research was conducted in two major parts. The first replicated the method used previously by Pang et al. (2016), performing in-depth interviews with eight SMIs. In the second …

The Development Of A Reliable Change Index And Cutoff For The Score-15, Cara Ann Nebeker Adams

Theses and Dissertations

The Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation version 15 (SCORE-15) is an assessment used to assess for clinical change in family functioning. The SCORE-15 has been demonstrated in the past to be a reliable and valid measure for assessing for clinical change and is largely used throughout the UK. However, the SCORE-15 lacks the ability to determine whether an individual's change in family functioning is clinically significant. This study aims to establish a reliable change index and clinical cutoff score based on a US sample so that researchers and clinicians can determine clinically significant change. A sample of 63 clinical …

Understanding Men's Involvement In Marital Interventions, Thomas Jack-Esplin White

Theses and Dissertations

Past research has shown how personality characteristics and demographics influence the likelihood of couples and individuals participating in marital interventions. However, these studies do not focus on the factors that influence men’s participation and are limited to their respective sample frames, making them difficult to generalize to a population. A nationally representative, population-level study of newlywed males may help to provide more generalizable insights regarding the factors that influence men’s participation in marital interventions. The current study had two purposes. First, this study sought to examine the personality and demographic factors that influenced the likelihood of men participating in a …

The Effects Of Teacher Background On How Teachers Assess Native-Like And Nonnative-Like Grammar Errors: An Eye-Tracking Study, Wesley Makoto Schramm

Theses and Dissertations

Studies have shown that composition and L2 writing teachers give different scores (Golombek, Weigle, Boldt, & Valsecchi, 2003) and focus on different features (Brown, 1991) when assessing student writing, which is assumed to be due to the differences in their background and training (Santos, 1992; Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995). Error gravity is thought to be one reason why composition and L2 writing teachers give different scores (Rifkin & Roberts, 1995). Common methods for examining error gravity were to analyze scores and responses given by the raters and to have raters reflect on the rating process and analyze their responses. Only …

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Among Sexual Minority Youth: An Etiological And Treatment Overview, Lauren C. Smithee, Brock W. Sumner, Roy A. Bean

Faculty Publications

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) among sexual minority youth (SMY) is a problem that is growing in attention yet is understudied and requires an informed response from therapists who engage in clinical work with youth. This paper proposes a unique model of treatment for working with SMY who engage in NSSI, accounting for proximal, distal, and systemic factors that influence the etiology of NSSI. This model is based on a review of two bodies of clinical literature: (a) treating adolescent NSSI and (b) working with SMY and their families. As an etiological theory of self-harm, Nock (2009) is applied to SMY, factoring …

The Pornography Debate: Religiosity And Support For Censorship, Brian A. Droubay, Robert P. Butters, Kevin Shafer

Faculty Publications

Pornography has become an increasingly salient topic in public discourse. We sought to better understand the role of religiosity in shaping people’s support of policy stances against pornography, in the form of censorship, using nationally representative data from the 2014 General Social Survey (n = 1676). Results from logistic regression indicate that high religiosity significantly increases odds of supporting censorship. Holding control variables at their sample means, the least religious persons had a predicted probability of 0.09 of supporting censorship, compared to 0.57 for the most religious respondents. We discuss these findings within the context of the current public …

Full Journal 13_2, Intuition Journal

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

No abstract provided.

Exploring Agentic Treatments For Anxiety And Depression, Tyler H. White

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Agency and mental illness are hypothesized to be related. Agency may contribute to mental illness (specifically, anxiety and depression) by impacting the amount of choices in one’s life (LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011; Schwartz, 2004). Effective treatment for the mentally ill targets causes of mental disorders, so if agency is related to mental illnesses, then it logically should be incorporated in treatment. Agentic treatment, which consists of any form of treatment that explicitly acknowledges the importance and the reality of agency, has been shown to be effective (Myers, 2016; Patterson et al., 2016; Slife, 2004). Effective agentic treatment includes autonomy groups …

School Of Rock: The Relationship Between Music Training And Academic Academic Achievement, Clayton Hadlock

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Music education has been a key part of human culture for thousands of years (Cartwright, 2013). As children often begin to receive musical education during grade school, many researchers have begun to investigate whether musical training may benefit other areas of academics. This literature review evaluates the overall effectiveness of musical training on academic performance for three different age groups: pre- and elementary school children under 12 years old; middle and high school-age adolescents between 12 and 18 years old; and college and university students over 18 years old. Musical training here includes instrumental and vocal training, as well as …

Cultural Influences On Regulating Emotion, Gyuyi Kang

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Emotional regulation is an important aspect of our social lives that can build or weaken relationships. Regulating emotion is influenced by many factors and culture is one of many important factors that has a striking influence on how people regulate their emotion. The world can be divided into two major cultures: independent and interdependent culture. Most Western countries show characteristics of independent culture while most Eastern countries show the characteristics of interdependent culture. Depending on what culture we are from, we will exhibit differences in emotion regulation on, behavior, and emotional coping strategies. Thus, understanding cultural differences is especially crucial …

Treating Comorbid Ptsd And Bpd: A Dialectical Approach, Meredith Pescatello

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

According to the Biosocial Developmental Model for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), individuals with a biological vulnerability (i.e., heightened emotional sensitivity and impulsive tendencies), plus an invalidating environment may develop BPD (Crowell, Beauchaine, & Linehan, 2009). Individuals with BPD are especially difficult to treat, because of their “extreme emotional, behavioral, and cognitive dysregulation” (Crowell, Beauchaine, & Linehan, 2009). Though challenging to treat, BPD can be successfully treated using Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) (Linehan, 1993; Linehan 2015). Similarly, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is complex and often burnout inducing to treat, because of the intensity of the emotional content related to traumatic events …

Healthy Habits To Reduce Sleep Deprivation In College Students, Jenna L. Bair

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Abstract

Sleep can affect many regular functions in the body. Consequently, the physiological and psychological effects of sleep deprivation have many ramifications, including long-term health issues, depression, and eating disorders (Alhola & Polo-Kantola, 2007; Beiter et al., 2015; Jarcho, Slavich, Tylova-Stein, Wolkowitz, & Burke, 2013; Ozsoy, Besirli, Unal, Abdulrezzak, & Orhan, 2015). Despite the importance of sleep for regulative processes, studies indicate that the general population does not receive adequate sleep quality or length (Watson et al., 2017). College students represent a large demographic and often do not obtain enough sleep (Gaultney, 2010). Thus, it is proposed that collegiate institutions …

The Cognitive Effects Of Late Bilingualism On Executive Functions: Lifelong Benefits, Rachel Casper

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Late bilinguals, those who learn a language past the critical period, are often thought to not receive much benefits from their language learning in comparison to their early bilingual counterparts. A large of body of recent research suggests otherwise. Late bilinguals receive the same cognitive benefits as early bilinguals; these benefits are in higher levels of executive functions, specifically in inhibitory control and attentional switching. Higher levels of executive functions assist learners in improving their mental processing and cognitive health over the course of their lifetime. Aging bilinguals have greater cognitive health due to more white and gray matter density. …