Understanding the Therapist Contribution to Psychotherapy Outcome: A Meta-Analytic Approach

Understanding the Therapist Contribution to Psychotherapy Outcome: A Meta-Analytic Approach. Robert J King et al. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, September 2017, Volume 44, Issue 5, pp 664–680, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10488-016-0783-9

Abstract: Understanding the role that therapists play in psychotherapy outcome, and the contribution to outcome made by individual therapist differences has implications for service delivery and training of therapists. In this study we used a novel approach to estimate the magnitude of the therapist contribution overall and the effect of individual therapist differences. We conducted a meta-analysis of studies in which participants were randomised to receive the same treatment either through self-help or through a therapist. We identified a total of 15 studies (commencement N = 910; completion N = 723) meeting inclusion criteria. We found no difference in treatment completion rate and broad equivalence of treatment outcomes for participants treated through self-help and participants treated through a therapist. Also, contrary to our expectations, we found that the variability of outcomes was broadly equivalent, suggesting that differences in efficacy of individual therapists were not sufficient to make therapy outcomes more variable when a therapist was involved. Overall, the findings suggest that self-help, with minimal therapist input, has considerable potential as a first-line intervention. The findings did not suggest that individual differences between therapists play a major role in psychotherapy outcome.

how feminist scholars can employ empirical evidence to weaken the popularized, patriarchal theory of sexual economics

Myths of Sexual Economics Theory: Implications for Gender Equality. Laurie A. Rudman
Psychology of Women Quarterly, Volume: 41 issue: 3, page(s): 299-313. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361684317714707

Abstract: The authors of sexual economics theory (Baumeister & Twenge, 2002; Baumeister & Vohs, 2004) argue that sex is a female commodity that women exchange for men’s resources; therefore, women (not men) are responsible for the cultural suppression of sexuality, ostensibly to preserve the value of sex. In this article, I describe the central tenets of sexual economics theory and summarize a growing body of research contradicting them. I also explain the negative implications of the claims of sexual economics theory for gender equality and heterosexual relationships. Researchers, clinicians, and educators engaged in understanding human sexuality may use the arguments provided in this article to counteract gender myths. This article also serves as a case study of how feminist scholars can employ empirical evidence to weaken a popularized, patriarchal theory.

Keywords: sexual economics theory, close relationships, human sexuality, gender equality

Predicting anti-vegetarian prejudice from pro-beef attitudes across cultures

What's your beef with vegetarians? Predicting anti-vegetarian prejudice from pro-beef attitudes across cultures. Megan Earle and Gordon Hodson. Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 119, 1 December 2017, Pages 52-55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.06.034

Highlights
•    Pro-beef attitudes are robust predictors of anti-vegetarian prejudice.
•    This association is found in the U.S.A., France, Brazil and Argentina.
•    For Americans, this relation is particularly strong.
•    Attitudes towards meat are crucial for anti-vegetarian prejudice cross-culturally.
•    Relation varies in magnitude across countries.

Abstract: Contrary to other forms of prejudice (e.g., racism), explicit expressions of anti-vegetarian/vegan prejudice are common. But this bias has only recently received empirical attention, with very little cross-cultural evidence. Some theoretical approaches (e.g., Social Identity Theory) focus on social factors in understanding intergroup relations, but there is growing recognition that individual differences may also be crucial in understanding group processes. Here we hypothesize that the degree to which an individual enjoys (likes/desires/consumes) beef may be systematically related to prejudice towards non-meat eaters. Using data from the U.S.A, France, Brazil, and Argentina (N = 1695) we find that pro-beef attitudes are a robust predictor of anti-vegetarian prejudice across cultures (β = 0.47), with a particularly strong association in the USA (β = 0.65), where 43% of anti-vegetarian attitudes are explained by individual differences in beef enjoyment. This work contributes a cross-cultural comparison of anti-vegetarian prejudice and its predictors to the rapidly expanding literature on bias towards this growing social group.

Keywords: Prejudice, Meat, Vegetarian, Cross-cultural

Invention of the alphabet: a non-institutional cultural product by illiterate Canaanite miners

Invention of alphabets...

Pharaoh's Land and Beyond: Ancient Egypt and Its Neighbors. Edited by Pearce Paul Creasman, Richard H. Wilkinson. Chapter XI, The Flow of Words: Interaction in Writing and Literature during the  Bronze Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0190229092

The high iconicity of the hieroglyphic script again played a key role on the stage of intellectual history at another crossroad of Egyptian and Levantine cultures. […]

Unlike the case of the Minoan and Anatolian scripts, the invention of the alphabet was not born in the environment of erudite scribes, but was apparently created as a non-institutional cultural product by illiterate Canaanite miners. Though they were experts in their professional field of mining, the inventors of the alphabet were far removed from the circles of professional writing in cuneiform and Egyptian. It is precisely this naïveté that allowed them to invent something completely new, as they were unencumbered by the scripts of their day. They were able to think outside the box, inventing a novel writing system--an alphabetic script made of fewer of thirty signs.

[…]

Like the inventors of the Cretan and Anatolian hieroglyphs, the Canaanites borrowed the Egyptian idea of turning pictures into script. Yet, not being professional scribes and not working in the service of any official ideology or institution, they did not bother to invent a whole set of new icons. They adopted roughly two dozen icons from the hieroglyphs around them--those that they found useful for their own purposes--and added a few new signs of their own.


https://books.google.com/books?id=4zslDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT5&lpg=PT5&dq=%22The+Flow+of+Words:+Interaction+in+Writing+and+Literature+during+the++Bronze+Age%22&source=bl&ots=71Y_2QZ5t9&sig=8u3c5f6t42tcS6k9Qu-BuAgjadE&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Sex Differences in Distress from Infidelity in Early Adulthood and in Later Life: On Shackelford Et Al. 2004

IJzerman, Hans, Irene Blanken, Mark Brandt, Hanneke Oerlemans, Marloes v d Hoogenhof, and Mathé Oerlemans. 2017. “Sex Differences in Distress from Infidelity in Early Adulthood and in Later Life: A Replication and Meta-analysis of Shackelford Et Al. (2004)”. PsyArXiv. June 28. osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/3urkp.

Abstract: Shackelford and colleagues (2004) found that men, compared to women, are more distressed by sexual than emotional infidelity, and this sex difference continued into older age. We conducted four high-powered replications (total N = 1,952) of this effect and found different results. A meta-analysis of original and replication studies finds the sex difference in younger samples (though with a smaller effect size), and no effect among older samples. Furthermore, we found attitude toward uncommitted sex to be a mediator (although not consistently in the same direction) between participant sex and relative distress between sexual and emotional infidelity. We hypothesize that the discrepancies between the original and replication studies may be due to changing cultural attitudes about sex across time. Confirming this speculative interpretation requires further investigation.

An analysis of the effects of political ideology and ethnic identity on procedural justice

Sebastian Roché, Guillaume Roux, (2017) "The “silver bullet” to good policing: a mirage: An analysis of the effects of political ideology and ethnic identity on procedural justice", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 40 Issue: 3, pp.514-528, https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-05-2016-0073

Abstract:

Purpose: Procedural justice (PJ) during police-citizen interactions has often been portrayed as a “silver bullet” to good policing, as it could function as a means to gain trust, voluntary obedience and public cooperation. PJ research is based on the assumption that there exists “true fairness.” However, it is still unclear what people actually mean when they evaluate the police as “fair” in surveys. By focusing the analysis to underexplored aspects of PJ, namely, the identity and political antecedents of the attribution of procedural fairness, the authors highlight the social and ideological reasons that influence people’s perceptions of police fairness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Findings: The present study finds support for the notion that aggressive policing policies (police-initiated contacts, e.g. identification checks, road stops) negatively impacts attributions of fairness to police. In addition, the findings show that ***attributions of fairness are not only interactional (i.e. related to what police do in any given situation) or related to individual cognitive phenomena, but for the most part pertain to broader social and political explanations***. Political and ethnic cleavages are the key to understanding how police are judged by the public. ***The findings therefore question the nature of what is actually measured when fairness is attributed to police, finding that more punitive and conservative respondents tend to assess the police as fair***. The authors find that the attribution of fairness seems to correspond to upholding the existing social order.

---
Design/methodology/approach: In order to explain the attribution of fairness of police, the study comprises a range of independent variables organized into five overarching domains: prior experience with police, victimization, socioeconomic status and (disadvantaged) context of residence, ethnicity and political attitudes and punitive values. The analysis is based on a representative sample of France, as well as a booster sample of a deprived, urban province (Seine-Saint-Denis) in order to better incorporate ethnic effects into the model (March 2011; n=1.498, 18+).

Research limitations/implications: This study has limitations inherent to any cross-sectional survey and the findings pertain only to a single country (France). Furthermore, the authors did not analyze all possible confounding variables to perceived fairness.

Social implications: The findings pose a practical problem for police and government to implement, as the authors ultimately find that there is no single recipe, or “silver bullet,” for being deemed fair across all social, ethnic and political groups – and, of course, the expectations of one group might conflict with those of another.

Originality/value: The study demonstrates that existing theory needs to better incorporate those explanations of fairness which extend beyond interactional processes with police, and refer instead to the social and political cleavages in society.

Keywords: Ideology, Ethnic identity, Cleavage, Police-initiated contacts, Political attitudes

How do we know there are issues with our senses and that reality exists?

I guess that the other animals do the same...

Pavlovian conditioning–induced hallucinations result from overweighting of perceptual priors. A. R. Powers, C. Mathys, P. R. Corlett. Science  Aug 11 2017, Vol. 357, Issue 6351, pp. 596-600. DOI: 10.1126/science.aan3458

Abstract: Some people hear voices that others do not, but only some of those people seek treatment. Using a Pavlovian learning task, we induced conditioned hallucinations in four groups of people who differed orthogonally in their voice-hearing and treatment-seeking statuses. People who hear voices were significantly more susceptible to the effect. Using functional neuroimaging and computational modeling of perception, we identified processes that differentiated voice-hearers from non–voice-hearers and treatment-seekers from non–treatment-seekers and characterized a brain circuit that mediated the conditioned hallucinations. These data demonstrate the profound and sometimes pathological impact of top-down cognitive processes on perception and may represent an objective means to discern people with a need for treatment from those without.

My comment: We all suffer from hallucinations in our lives... An example is hearing our phone ringing very briefly and very softly when it is not possible that it sounded (no coverage, total isolation, and other phones could not be heard piercing the thick walls). We check and immediately find that no call is pending of being attended to. These researchers found that the cerebellum in some way dispells the hallucination with a constant check of past expectations and beliefs against reality, but some people with schizophrenia hear, with great confidence, sounds or voices ***five times*** more frequently than healthy controls. The more advanced is the illness, the less activity is seen in the cerebellum.

Academic competencies: Their interrelatedness and gender differences at their high end

Bergold, S., Wendt, H., Kasper, D., & Steinmayr, R. (2017). Academic competencies: Their interrelatedness and gender differences at their high end. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(3), 439-449. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000140

Abstract: The present study investigated (a) how a latent profile analysis based on representative data of N = 74,868 4th graders from 17 European countries would cluster the students on the basis of their reading, mathematics, and science achievement test scores; (b) whether there would be gender differences at various competency levels, especially among the top performers; (c) and whether societal gender equity might account for possible cross-national variation in the gender ratios among the top performers. The latent profile analysis revealed an international model with 7 profiles. Across these profiles, the test scores of all achievement domains progressively and consistently increased. Thus, consistent with our expectations, (a) the profiles differed only in their individuals’ overall performance level across all academic competencies and not in their individuals’ performance profile shape. From the national samples, the vast majority of the students could be reliably assigned to 1 of the profiles of the international model. Inspection of the gender ratios revealed (b) that ***boys were overrepresented at both ends of the competency spectrum***. However, there was (c) some cross-national variation in the gender ratios among the top performers, which could be partly explained by women’s access to education and labor market participation. The interrelatedness of academic competencies and its practical implications, the role of gender equity as a possible cause of gender differences among the top performers, and directions for future research are discussed.

My comment: men are disproportionatelly brutish, have more sickos, have more retarted individuals and commit more crimes than women... but also the most intelligent of the population are desproportionately men.

I say this with a heavy heart; when a child I was a rabid militant feminist, and later I was a theoretical feminist (that is, I believed the girls were superior in most aspects to us and were the same in general intel, what me measure with IQ tests), until a few months ago. Not anymore.

Predicting real-world outcomes: Critical thinking ability is a better predictor of life decisions than intelligence

Predicting real-world outcomes: Critical thinking ability is a better predictor of life decisions than intelligence. Heather A. Butler, Christopher Pentoney, and Mabelle P. Bong. Thinking Skills and Creativity, Volume 25, September 2017, Pages 38-46, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.06.005

Highlights
•    Critical thinking and intelligence predicted the occurrence of real-world outcomes.
•    Those higher in critical thinking and intelligence reported fewer negative life events.
•    Critical thinking was a stronger predictor of real-world outcomes than intelligence.

Abstract: We all probably know someone who is very intelligent, but does blatantly stupid things. Despite evidence that intelligence predicts a variety of life outcomes, the relationship between intelligence and good thinking is less clear. This research explored whether critical thinking ability or intelligence was the better predictor of real life events. Community adults and college students (n = 244) completed a critical thinking assessment, an intelligence test, and an inventory of life events. Individuals with higher critical thinking scores and higher IQs reported fewer negative life events. Critical thinking more strongly predicted life events than intelligence and significantly added to the variance explained by IQ. There is ample evidence that critical thinking can be taught, so there is hope that teaching critical thinking skills might prevent the occurrence of negative life events. We advocate for critical thinking instruction as a way to create a better future for everyone.

Check also: Wisdom and how to cultivate it: Review of emerging evidence for a constructivist model of wise thinking. Igor Grossmann. European Psychologist, in press. Pre-print: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qkm6v/