Transcript Practical Applications of Awareness, Courage, and Love

Practical Applications of Awareness, Courage, and Love:
Solving Contemporary Issues Through Social Connection
Michael Thurston-Rattue, M.A. (Hons)
Mavis Tsai, Ph.D.
Jonathan W. Kanter, Ph.D.
Robert J. Kohlenberg, Ph.D.
Adam M. Kuczysnki, B.S.
Racism in
st
21
Century America
Psychological Literature and Workshop Introduction
Intergroup
Anxiety
(Plant &
Devine, 2003)
Intergroup
Contact
Theory
(Pettigrew,
1998)
“Fast
Friends”
(Reis and
Shaver, 1998)
Methods
Black and White Students (N = 35)
Assigned to one of two identical 6-hour workshops
Measures: CoBRAS (Color Blind Racial Attitudes Survey),
Intergroup Anxiety and Avoidance Scale, Symbolic
Racism Scale, and Implicit Attitudes Test
Opening with ACT: Individual Exercises to
Break Down Barriers
• Sentence Completion Game, e.g., “Mary had a little_______”.
• Similarly, “________are the best dancers” and “________are smarter
than everyone else”.
• Shark Tank Exercise: builds on the idea that the very process of trying
not to have certain thoughts makes them more likely to happen.
• Instantiating ACT Principles: Acceptance and Cognitive Defusion.
Continuing with FAP: Group Exercises to Build
Relationships
Eye Contact
Exercise
Dig Deep Exercise
(2 people), Loss
Exercise (3-4
people) and Large
Group Disclosure
Exercise (15
people)
1) Selfdisclosure
2) Reinforcing
feedback
3) Reflection on
feedback
Connecting with FAP
Each exercise is an example of Rule 2, intended to evoke CRB2s related to intimacy and self-disclosure.
Consequently this allows people to engage in Rule 3 with each other.
Mission Statement Exercise; encourages Rule 5.
Quantitative Results
• Analyses of the data yielded no trends in the data. According to our
measures the workshop did not reduce racism.
Why?
1. The students scored low at baseline, meaning there was little room
for them to move on our explicit measures.
2. The IAT displayed very poor test-rest reliability within the control
group, and therefore was not a validly performing measure for our
experimental group.
Qualitative Results
Students (N = 20) took part in semi-structured qualitative interviews to discover their
thoughts on how the workshop could be improved, their experiences during the workshop
and whether they noticed any changes in themselves since the workshop.
i) Decreased stereotyping, e.g., “It’s difficult to humanize somebody whom you don’t really
have a lot of interactions with…but at that workshop you realize that there are more
similarities than differences between black and white people.”
ii) Increased awareness of the effect of personal histories on behavior, e.g., “…[now when] I
meet someone and they’re rude to me I don’t think ‘oh, they’re a mean person’, I think ‘oh,
something must have happened to them; they have a back-story.’”
iii) Deepened social connections, e.g., “I think the best part about it for me, was watching
people transform. Seeing people go from being cooped up and defensive, having their
walls up, and slowly over the course of the workshop, have their walls come down, and
share more and more to the point where they’re crying and they’re experiencing
something that they don’t get to experience in everyday life.”
Differences from Racial Dialogue
Future Directions
Incorporating
measures of
social
connectedness
Adapt Social
Connectedness
Scale and the
Inclusion of the
Other in the Self
Scale
Therapists’ Multicultural Training
Thank you
Michael J. Thurston-Rattue
[email protected]
The Interpersonal Connections Study
• A brief, 4-session, intervention targeting social connection
• Manualized ACL protocol adapted for various relationship types and
brevity
• Session 1: Life history; Skills review; Homework: risk & self care log
• Session 2: Ways people feel cared about; Bringing longing into the moment;
Homework: risk & self care, closeness generating questions
• Session 3: Empathy & constructive conflict; Homework: risk & self care,
practices for increasing intimacy, bucket list
• Session 4: Speaking from the heart; Review, Appreciations & goodbye
• Long-term goal: Create powerful and effective drop-in groups for
increasing social connection around the globe
Methods
• Random assignment into groups:
• FAP group (7 coaches: 5 female (2 Ph.D., 3 M.S.), 2 male (1 Ph.D., 1
M.S.; each supervised 5-6 sessions per dyad)
• Control Group (a brief BA intervention to schedule 1-hour
activities for four weeks)
• Baseline, post, and 1-month follow-up assessments
Targeted Awareness, Courage, Love Skills
Methods
• N=58 individuals (29 dyads)
• 38 Romantic
• 2 Family
• 18 Friends
FAP
Activity
n
28
30
Age
29.2 (8.7)
30.6 (11.1)
Gender
54% female
60% female
72% Caucasian
67% Caucasian
43% 4-yr College
40% 4-yr College
64% Romantic
0% Friends
36% Friends
67% Romantic
7% Family
27% Friends
Ethnicity
• Self-report measures:
Education
• Fear of Intimacy
Relationship type
• FAP Intimacy Scale
• Observational Coding
• Social Support Task
• Interpersonal Connections Discussion:
FAP Intimacy Scale (FAP-IS)
• Measures the degree of intimacy within a specific relationship
• Scale 0-6 (“Not at all” to “Completely”)
• 14 items, sample items:
• I felt comfortable telling this person things that I do not tell other people
• I trusted this person with my deepest thoughts and feelings
• I revealed to this person what I feel are my shortcomings
Leonard, R. C., Knott, L. E., Lee, E. B., Singh, S., Smith, A. H., Kanter, J., Norton, P. J., &
Wetterneck, C. T. (2014). The development of the Functional Analytic Psychotherapy
Intimacy Scale. The Psychological Record.
Fear of Intimacy Scale (FIS)
• Measures fear related to intimacy
• Scale 1-5 (“Not at all characteristic of me” to “Very characteristic of me”)
• 35 items, sample items include:
• If O were upset I would sometimes be afraid of showing that I care.
• I might be afraid to confide my innermost feelings to O.
• I would feel at ease telling O that I care about him/her.
Descutner, C. J., & Thelen, M. H. (1991). Development and Validation of a Fear-ofIntimacy Scale. Psychological Assessment, 3, 2, 218-225.
Inclusion of Others in the Self Scale (IOS)
1
2
5
3
6
4
7
Results
IOS
Conclusion: Both groups improve on IOS, a
simple measure of closeness
Results
FAP-IS
Conclusion: On FAP-IS, FAP group improves
at post but improvement doesn’t last.
(This is looking at the whole sample.)
Results
FIS
Conclusion: On Fear of Intimacy, neither
group improves.
(This is looking at the whole sample.)
We recruited ANYONE who wanted to improve their
relationship, so our sample included people who
were already doing quite well.
What if we look just at the people who had room to
improve?
Results
FIS
Conclusion: When you look at those with
low pretreatment fear of intimacy…
neither
group improves on Fear of Intimacy.
No differences for low pretreatment fear of intimacy
Results
FIS
Conclusion: When you look at those with
high pretreatment fear of intimacy…
Significant interaction for high pretreatment fear of intimacy
F (2, 54) = .3.45, p = .038
FAP significantly lower at Post and 1-month follow-up
FAP n = 13, Activity n = 16
only the FAP group improves on Fear of
Intimacy.
Results
FAP-IS
Conclusion: When you look at those with
low pretreatment fear of intimacy…
neither group improves on FAP-IS.
No differences for low pretreatment fear of intimacy
Results
FAP-IS
Conclusion: When you look at those with
high pretreatment fear of intimacy…
Significant interaction for high pretreatment fear of intimacy
F(1.4, 36.7) = 5.83, p = .01
FAP significantly lower at Post and 1-month follow-up
FAP n = 13, Activity n = 16
only the FAP group improves on FAP-IS.
Thank you!
• Project Coordinator: Adam Kuczynski
• CSSC Director & Data Analysis: Jonathan Kanter
• Study coaches:
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Andrew Fleming
Andy Paves
Crissy Anderson
Haley Douglas
Maria Santos
Nicole Stettler
Sarah Sullivan-Singh