Therapeutic dialogue as a means of constructing identity complexity

In consonance with current postmodern ideas, this article assumes that the meaning content involved in psychotherapy is created anew rather than uncovered in an examination of a repressed unconscious. Content in therapy is seen as formulated through a client/therapist dialogue in which the goal is increased identity complexity. Within these assumptions, the question of constraints on the meaning constructed is addressed and suggested guidelines for potentially therapeutic content are presented. These ideas are illustrated through a case example.     

Validation of the CoRE Questionnaire for a Medical Journal Peer Review

If a peer review instrument asks concrete questions (defined as items that can only generate disagreement if reviewers have different degrees of expertise), then questionnaires could become more meaningful in terms of resolving subjectivity thus leading to more reviewer agreement. A concrete item questionnaire with well-chosen questions can also help resolve disagreement when reviewers have the same level of expertise. We have recently created the core-item reviewer evaluation (CoRE) questionnaire for which decision-threshold score levels have been created, but which have not been validated. This prospective validation of these thresholds for the CoRE questionnaire demonstrated strong agreement between reviewer recommendations and their reported score levels when tested prospectively at Clinical Medicine and Research. We conclude that using the CoRE questionnaire will help reduce peer reviewer disagreement. More importantly, when reviewer expertise varies, editors can more easily detect this and decide which opinion reflects the greater expertise.     

Access to social services as a rite of integration: Power,rights, and identity

Access to social services is a multifaceted and multifactorial process, involving social policy lines, services organization, and professional front line practices. It appears to have a crucial role in how personal social services work: depending on the way the process is handled, access to social services could provide a bridge to an inclusive and solidarizing community or worsen discrimination and marginalization. Many underline how studying the actual encounters between citizens and practitioners can provide a privileged site to highlight the interconnections between the abovementioned factors. This is the focus of our research that explored access in a specific Italian region using a case study strategy. After a pilot study, the main points of access to social services were identified, and three units were selected as best examples of different approaches. The three units were explored using mainly qualitative methods inspired by ethnography. We were able to gain in depth understanding of three cultural approaches to access, defined as the “ethical duty,” the “good organization,” and the “professional approach” and reach an in‐depth understanding of their impact on access. There is a vast literature on the power of street‐level bureaucrats, seen as similar to gatekeepers. However, our research suggests that specific organizational cultures also play an important part: different organizational cultures may impact the implementation of local social policy, the organizational procedures, and social workers' practices.     

Social psychology as a stable interpretative framework irrefutably committed to the scientific study of persons and society

Despite repeated opportunities to reconsider their natural science ambitions, social psychologists have not done so, and there are no obvious signs of this changing. Why? This paper pursues an answer to this question by defining the field after the fashion of Michael Polanyi's thought. According to Polanyi, interpretative frameworks develop from our primitive bodily encounters with the world and then are shaped by language into the vast conceptual systems of our culture. Concerning frameworks erected on our most fundamental beliefs (e.g., science), he says that we “live in [them] as in the garment of our own skin.” Frameworks such as this are not objects of critical evaluation but of commitment, and social psychology, as an outgrowth of positive philosophy, is an interpretative framework in this sense. Professionals' recent responses to the field's political makeup and replication failures demonstrate this. They aim primarily at preserving a natural science understanding of social psychology and point to the influence of belief-stabilizing mechanisms Polanyi finds operative in folk religious practices. These mechanisms appear at work also in psychology as a whole. They are implied, for instance, in the field's resistance to Sigmund Koch's authoritative judgement against its scientific self-conception in the latter half of the 20^th century. Noting this reveals the broader implications of this paper's definition of social psychology, but it also urges questions about truth and relativity that cannot be ignored. These questions are addressed briefly in the end where it is suggested that what psychology needs most of all is a change of heart, and that this will happen, if at all, not primarily through argument and evidence, but through persons who authentically believe in the veracity of a different framework.     

Women's participation in self‐help groups as a pathway to women's empowerment: A case of Nepal

Non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and the government of Nepal have made some effort to reduce poverty in Nepal by creating women's affiliation groups, some of which are micro‐credit organizations. Using capabilities as defined by Amartya Sen (Development as freedom, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000), which includes employment opportunities, women's ownership in productive resources such as land and/or homes, educational opportunities, and women's participation in decision‐making in the family, this study evaluated the extent to which women's ethnic group or caste affiliation affected a woman's likelihood of being empowered by participation in these groups. We analyzed a sample of 8,973 women which was taken from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey. Previous research has demonstrated that participation in gender‐based groups is correlated with higher economic status. This study adds to the literature on women's affiliation groups by investigating the impact of structural factors, such as caste and ethnicity, on women's self‐help group participation (women's groups and credit groups).     

Children's responses to angry adult behavior as a function of experimentally manipulated exposure to resolved and unresolved conflict

Children's past experiences with anger between adults are likely to affect their reactions to ongoing conflict episodes. Four- to ten-year-olds' responses to interadult anger were examined as a function of experimentally manipulated exposures to resolved and unresolved anger. To manipulate exposure histories, children were first presented with videotaped segments of both resolved and unresolved angry interactions. They were then presented with arguments between the two couples that were interrupted in progress; children were interviewed next. At the point of argument interruption, the couple with a history of unresolved anger was perceived by girls as more sad, expected by children to be more sad in the future, and expected to be less likely to either have a positive future outcome or to resolve their disputes, in comparison to the couple with a resolved anger history. Similarly, children tended to expect to feel sad themselves in the future, in response to the discordant versus the harmonious couple. Several age differences in affective responding were found.     

Modeling stereotypes and negative self‐stereotypes as a function of interactions among groups with power asymmetries

Stereotypes is one of the most researched topics in social psychology. Within this context, negative self‐stereotypes pose a particular challenge for theories. In the current work, we propose a model that suggests that negative self‐stereotypes can theoretically be accounted for by the need to communicate in a social system made up by groups with unequal power. Because our theory is dynamic, probabilistic, and interactionist, we use a computational simulation technique to show that the proposed model is able to reproduce the phenomenon of interest, to provide novel accounts of related phenomena, and to suggest novel empirical predictions. We describe our computational model, our variables' dynamic behavior and interactions, and link our analyses to the literature on stereotypes and self‐stereotypes, the stability of stereotypes (in particular, gender and racial stereotypes), the effects of power asymmetries, and the effects of intergroup contact.