The aim of this study Was to explore the relationship of effort in learning mathematics to university students' personality traits, epistemic beliefs, self-efficacy and achievement goals. Two different aspects of effort were measured: students' self-reports concerning effort invested in understanding and mastering learning materials and time spent weekly in learning mathematics. Participants were 200 engineering students in their second year of study. Students completed questionnaire on personality traits, epistemic beliefs (simplicity and justification), self-efficacy beliefs, achievement goals and their previous achievement in mathematics. Results show that achievement goals, epistemic and self-efficacy beliefs, as well as previous mathematics achievement, were significantly related to perceived effort. However, time invested in learning mathematics was significantly related to consciousness and achievement goals. The achievement goals theory had substantive explanatory value in explaining individual differences in invested effort.
The survey was carried out on a representative sample of the adult population of Croatia with the aim of measuring social distance towards the Montenegrins, Bosnians, Slovenians and Serbs in 2002, 2005 and 2008.The research results gathered using the Bogardus scale showed a relatively large social distance toward all nationalities which varies significantly from nation to nation. Croatian citizens expressed the greatest social distance toward Serbs and the lowest toward Slovenians. These differences are mostly caused by the war and disintegration of Yugoslavia. The greatest war conflict was with the Serbs, while there was no war conflict with Slovenians at all. In addition, the results show that the social distance decreases with time. There was a significant decrease in social distance in 2008 towards Montenegrin and Bosnian people, but also toward Serbs in comparison to 2002. However, the social distance toward Slovenians is higher in comparison to 2005 due to the unresolved border issues which stopped Croatian entry negotiations to EU.
Reviews the film, Volver, directed by Pedro Almodovar (2006). At the beginning of this extraordinary film, women in a small Spanish town tend to the graves of their departed; at the end, what some would consider a female ghost nurses a relative with cancer, as a haunting shot of a wooden door with cracks of light slowly turns dark, reminding us that in the blackness that will engulf us at the end, only the caring of others can give us solace. Within the circle of the living taking care of the dead and the dead taking care of the living, director Pedro Almodovar takes us through a unique journey that includes murders, incestuous abuse, and, surprisingly, in the midst of it all, laughter--and an affirmation of life through the ways in which, albeit imperfectly, women care for others. In the female universe of Volver, Almodovar presents a morality that does not shy away from the complexities and ambiguities of real life and is based on caring for others and interconnectedness. (Less)
Reviews the book, Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis: An Evidence-Based Approach by Steven Jay Lynn and Irving Kirsch (see record 2005-13464-000). Steven Jay Lynn and Irving Kirsch are two of the most prolific and best-regarded hypnosis researchers in the world, besides working as clinicians, so they can discuss authoritatively both the empirical support for different hypnotic interventions and provide verbatim hypnotic scripts and discussion of practical clinical considerations. Both authors endorse a psychosocial approach to hypnosis theory and research and prefer cognitive-behavioral interventions. To their merit, however, they have also integrated into their text some verbalizations and concepts (e.g., utilization) based mostly on the clinical work of Milton Erickson (see Yapko, 2003) and, although they do not cover it in depth, refer approvingly to psychodynamic approaches to hypnosis. The book provides a comprehensive and empirically supported introduction to the clinical use of hypnosis, which various meta-analyses have shown to powerfully enhance both psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies. (Less)
Reviews the book, From Trauma to Transformation by Muriel Prince Warren (see record 2006-03012-000). The reviewer believes this book is a disorganized, rambling, uninformed, and poorly written text. The only reason the reviewer finished reading the book was because of the commitment to write this review. The book's scholarship-or lack of it-is even worse than the book's organization. The author makes mistakes that a good student in an introductory psychology course would know enough to avoid. She does not seem to realize that multiple personality disorder has been termed dissociative identity disorder since at least 1994 (APA, 1994), states that a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) requires two months to have gone by (it is actually one), confuses psychopathy with psychopathology, incorrectly states that there have been no national studies of reactions to 9/11 (see, e.g., Schuster et al., 2001; Silver, Holman, McIntosh, Pouli, & Gil-Rivas, 2002), fails to refer to the critical literature on critical incidental debriefing (e.g., Bisson, 2003), and disregards most of the vast literature on psychological reactions to trauma. It is also remarkable that in a book that centers on the innovative applications of hypnotherapy to help trauma victims (back cover), the author fails to even show awareness of international guidelines developed specifically in this regard (Cardena, Maldonado, Van der Hart, & Spiegel, 2000). The writing is substandard, but here the publisher, Crown House, deserves at least equal blame. One would expect a competent copy editor to know the difference between prostrate and prostate and effect and affect and to know how to spell anecdote, among many other mistakes. More important, the writing is full of incoherent, illogical, and trite statements (among them, that introspection is an unconscious process; that hypnosis relaxes the amygdala; that after trauma, physiology become biology; and so on). Finally, the reviewer cannot avoid highlighting the deplorably ethnocentric perspective throughout the whole book. The author repeatedly states that we live in a new world because everyone in the United States has been traumatized by the 9/11 attacks, ignoring the fact that many inhabitants throughout the world (including many areas of the United States) have been severely traumatized by other disasters such as war, famine, and physical and sexual violence, among others. This book would not get a passing grade as an undergraduate psychology term paper; why the author and the publisher believed that it was worth publishing surpasses the reviewers comprehension. (Less)
Gothika breaks new ground in forensic psychology by implying a new defense: innocent by reason of spirit possession. The film, on its surface, deals with a number of other psychological issues. Its heroine, Dr. Miranda Gray, is a criminal psychologist who works in an institution for the criminally insane. There is discussion of repression as a survival tool, episodes of apparent psychogenic amnesia, and speculations on the psychology of serial rapists and killers. All of these, however, are but a flimsy cover for a poorly constructed, illogical plot that does as much disservice to the presentation of psychological matters as to the enjoyment of a good ghost story.
A mysterious serial killer is hunting other serial killers - and one FBI agent suspects there may be more to the vigilante than they imagine.
