Guilty until proven innocent? – The Assumption of Care of a baby at birth

BackgroundThis paper provides an overview of the history of child protection, the associated law and the 2008 amendments to the Child and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 in relation to the Assumption of Care at birth Practice.ObjectiveTo explore the current practice of an Assumption of Care (AOC) where a newborn baby is removed from his/her mother at the time of birth, particularly focussing on the impact of the AOC on midwives.DiscussionAssumption of Care practices in NSW raise significant issues for midwives in relation to the midwifery codes of ethics and conduct and importantly, to their ability to work in ways that honour a “woman-centred care” philosophy. When midwives are exposed to conflict between workplace and personal or professional values such as the practice of AOC cognitive dissonance can occur.ConclusionsFurther research is required to understand the impact of current Assumption of Care. Broader research to not only look at effect on the midwife but also on other health professionals involved and the women who personally experience the removal of their baby at the time of birth. Consideration must also be given to ways of working with vulnerable families to enhance the acceptability and efficacy of maternity services and with associated agencies will decrease the need for Assumption of Care at birth.     

Public relations as “dirty work”: Disconfirmation,cognitive dissonance,and emotional labor among public relations professors

Public relations is among the least-respected professions in the world. Despite this uncomfortable fact, little research has seriously considered that public relations is perceived as a “dirty” profession, and how that perception translates into difficulties for public relations academics. Scholarship has not examined the lived experiences of public relations professors and how we reconcile our sense of self and self-respect in the mixed academic and professional environments that are often (un)intentionally disconfirming to our chosen area of study. Thus, this critical and self-reflexive essay takes up the challenge of dealing with the issues of disconfirmation, cognitive dissonance, and emotional labor that may be experienced by public relations professors in their interactions with colleagues, students, and even family members or friends.     

Beyond demand-control: Emotional labour and symptoms of burnout in teachers

Teaching is a profession that involves a high level of emotional labour. This includes such behaviours as surface acting (displaying an emotion that is not actually felt), deep acting (the activity undertaken to actually feel a required emotion), and suppression of emotion. In many professions, this emotional labour is thought to be related to high levels of burnout. The aim of our study was to show that emotional labour has a unique relationship with burnout that is separate from its relationship with the variables of the Demand Control Support (DCS) model. Emotional labour was studied, together with the variables of the Karasek Job Demand Control Support model, in a random sample of 365 mathematics teachers in the Netherlands. We used the Dutch Questionnaire on Emotional Labor (D-QEL) that measures: (1) surface acting, (2) deep acting, (3) suppression, and (4) emotional consonance. In line with other studies, job characteristics were found to be specifically related to emotional exhaustion. Surface acting was significantly related to depersonalization, and emotional consonance (the absence of emotional labour) was related to personal accomplishment. We conclude that whereas the DCS model has been valuable for understanding emotional exhaustion, emotional labour provides an additional perspective for understanding work stress.     

弑君者麦克白的病态人格

如果评价、分析莎士比亚笔下的麦克白弑君篡位动机及行为,一般总在个人野心、他人挑唆、权力腐蚀等层面考虑问题。这种分析尽管有故事文本提供的行为依据,但这仅仅是依据显性的文本内容,却忽略了隐性的暗示,由此导致文本的丰富性与多样性完全丧失。戏剧体裁形式丰富的隐性要素,使我们可以探讨多种深层原因。而借助社会心理学等理论,就会发现麦克白的病态人格,才是弑君篡位的根本因素。放大的挫败感,妄想型的迫害症,身份、角色转换时的心灵分裂,面对困境时的认知失调与“外化”企图以及消灭一切质疑、复仇的野心,成为麦克白弑君篡位的内在动机,也成为麦克白具有病态人格特征的具体表现。     

Cognitive dissonance and political attitudes: The case of Canada

While scholars accept that attitudes have an impact on behavior, cognitive dissonance theory asserts that behavior can, in turn, affect attitudes. The theory suggests attitudes may be transformed by the simple act of voting. Informed by dissonance theory and employing election study survey data from three Canadian federal elections, this article considers the impact of cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors on changes in party evaluations, arguing that elections serve as a significant stimulus for attitude change. Dissonance theory is found to be compatible with observed attitude changes between pre- and post-election questionnaires. Findings have implications for the study of attitude formation and change, the effects that campaigns and elections have upon voters, and survey design.     

教师心理素质状况调查与研究

本研究通过对学校的教师和校长进行调查 ,从创新精神、自信心、人际关系、情绪调适等方面 ,研究学校教师和校长们的心理素质状况。结果显示 ,创新精神方面与教师的学历程度有关 ,并存在显著性差异 ;性别方面 ,男性与女性比较 ,在创新精神、自信心、情绪调适方面存在显著性差异 ;人际关系方面 ,班主任与不是班主任的差异呈显著性 ;校长或教导主任与普通教师相比 ,在情绪调适与创新精神方面具有显著性差异 ,并在各因子及总积分上普遍高于普通教师     

Coping with Low Pay: Cognitive Dissonance and Persistent Disparate Earnings Profiles

The paper focuses on an employee’s perception of his or her own labour market outcome. It proposes that the basic earnings function, by adopting an approach that ignores perception effects, is likely to result in biased results that will fail to understand the complexities of the wage distribution. The paper uses an orthodox job search framework to illustrate the nature of this problem and then adapts the model to take onboard the theory of cognitive dissonance. The search model indicates how workers may adopt a coping strategy in order to reduce the disutility associated with the wage underpayment that develops. Then, by modelling cognitive dissonance, the paper highlights the weaknesses of using purely human capital proxies to understand labour market outcome. The analysis goes some way to explaining why individuals with equivalent human capital investment can have disparate earnings profiles.     

Sunk-cost fallacy and cognitive ability in individual decision-making

This paper reports on a laboratory experiment aiming at documenting the sunk-cost fallacy in individual decision-making and at identifying the role of the cognitive ability in its manifestation. For this purpose, the design rules out loss aversion and cognitive dissonance, identified by the literature as being the main psychological drivers of the bias. The sunk-cost fallacy is identified by comparing a low and a high sunk-cost treatment, respectively, against a control group that does not incur a sunk cost. There is evidence of a weak manifestation of the sunk-cost fallacy, which is statistically significant only for the high sunk-cost treatment. However, strong evidence of the fallacy was found among the high-cognitive-ability subjects. Finally, although cognitive ability is predictive of status-quo bias, it was not found to reduce the sunk-cost bias.     

A novel way of responding to dissonance evoked by belief disconfirmation: making the wrongdoing of an opponent salient

ABSTRACT

Based on dissonance theory, we predicted that individuals who supported a political figure (Donald Trump), were exposed to information about his wrongdoings, and believed the veracity of this information would be most likely to share social media that points to incidents in which opponents also engaged in wrongdoing. Participants (N = 409) varying in their support for Trump were exposed to information concerning his alleged wrongdoings (or a neutral article). They viewed a meme of a political rival (Hilary Clinton) that alluded to her alleged wrongdoings, and reported how likely they would be to share the meme (and indicated how accurate they believed the Trump article was). Results supported the prediction, suggesting that dissonance may cause individuals to emphasize the wrongdoings of opponents.     

Appropriate Therapeutic Care for Families with Pre-Pubescent Transgender/Gender-Dissonant Children

In recent years, a new phenomenon has been observed in U.S. culture, that of pre-pubescent children transitioning socially from one gender role to another, with the support of their families. As this phenomenon becomes more widespread, families, schools and other institutions will turn to mental health care professionals for guidance in navigating new territory. Such children have often been assessed for gender identity disorder; the traditional treatment plan for those so diagnosed included attempts to steer their gender behavior in more “gender-appropriate” directions. Allowing such children to self-actualize, viewing their behavior as indicative of innate identity, is a relatively new approach. This paper will focus on the social worker’s or therapist’s role in helping pre-pubescent children and their families, should the families decide identity actualization is the path they would prefer.