Social and Cultural Diversity

Adult Protective Services

Medical, legal, residential, custodial, and other services for adults who are unable to provide care for themselves or who have no friends, family who can care for them. Persons who receive these services are typically unable to act on their own behalves and, therefore, in danger of being harmed or harming others. Eligibility or need for services is usually determined by the courts.

AFDC (Aid To Families With Dependent Children)

Federal and state funded public assistance program providing financial assistance to poor children who lack parental support due to the parents' absence, incapacity, or death. Eligibility is determined by a means test (see below). AFDC regulations include AFDC-UP, which permits families with unemployed fathers to receive assistance.

Alateen

A fellowship of children of alcoholics, mostly aged 12-20 years old. Members share their experiences and provide one another support.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder (Korsakoff's Syndrome)

An alcohol-induced mental disorder characterized by amnesia after prolonged, heavy alcohol consumption

Alcohol Intoxication

Maladaptive behaviors (disinhibition of impulses, disturbances in judgment, slurred speech, etc.) that occur due to the recent ingestion of alcohol.

Androgyny

Having characteristics of both sexes. Androgynous people score high on both the Masculine and Feminine scales of Bem's Sex Role Inventory and, in comparison to sex-typed people, display greater flexibility, higher self-esteem and higher levels of achievement.

Antabuse

A drug used in the treatment of alcoholism, which when ingested with alcohol, produces unpleasant responses such as nausea, vomiting, and a pounding heart.

Attachment Hypothesis

Theory proposing that abused children are strongly attached to their abusing mothers. According to Bandura and Walter, this phenomenon occurs because mildly rejecting or punishing parents offer an intermittent schedule of reinforcement which serves to strengthen the child-parent relationship.

Attitude-Behavior Discrepancy

Refers to the finding that attitudes are often not accurate predictors of behavior. Some authorities, however, have identified specific situations in which attitudes can accurately predict behavior. Fishbein, for example, argues that attitudes are good predictors when they include a measurement of the person's behavioral intention.

Attribution

The assignment of causality to one's own behaviors or the behaviors of others. In general, people tend to attribute the behaviors of others to dispositional factors and their own behaviors to situational factors.

Authoritarianism

A personality type characterized by identification with and submission to authority, cynicism, prejudice, intolerance of ambiguity, and political conservatism. The F (Fascism) Scale was designed to assess authoritarianism.

Barriers To Treatment Of Spousal Abuse

These can include: A belief in sanctity of the family, rationalization, differing definitions of violence, factors related to battered individuals themselves (e.g., denial, low self-assertion), blaming the victim, professional impotence, overreaction, and excusing the assailant.

Black Racial Identity Development Model

Cross's Black Racial Identity Development Model consists of the following four stages: preencounter, encounter, immersion/emersion, and internalization.

Bureaus Of Public Assistance

Local, state, and federally funded organizations (e.g., Department of Welfare, Department of Social Services) that provide social and economic services to needy families. Manage programs such as AFDC and general assistance.

Bystander Apathy

The tendency of people to not intervene in emergency situations when others are present. Bystander apathy has been attributed to three factors: social comparison, evaluation apprehension, and diffusion of responsibility.

Child Abuse

Nonaccidental harm that is done to a person under the age of 18, whether it is done by the child's parents or other relative, by a guardian or caretaker, or by a stranger (Everstine and Everstine, 1983).

Closed Family System

A characteristic of abusive families; closed systems are characterized by rigidity, isolation, and resistance to outside intervention. Violence is often used as a means of control.

Co-Alcoholic

A significant other of an alcoholic who adapts to his or her dependent partner. Co-alcoholics feel trapped, but can leave the situation if they choose to.

Compliance

A change in behavior or attitude as the result of a direct request.

Conformity

A change in behavior or attitude as the result of indirect pressure.

Cultural Encapsulation

Refers to the tendency of counselors to interpret everyone's reality through their own cultural assumptions and stereotypes.

Cultural Paranoia

Term used to describe appropriate mistrust and suspiciousness of African-Americans toward whites resulting from racism and oppression. In therapy, may be a cause of nondisclosure.

Culture Of Poverty

Assumption that the poor are impoverished because of norms, values, and low levels of motivation that prevent them from taking advantage of opportunities available to them for achieving economic independence.

Deindividuation

A state of relative anonymity that allows group members to feel unidentifiable. Deindividuation has been associated with increases in antisocial behaviors, apparently because the deindividuated person's behavior is no longer controlled by guilt, fear of evaluation, or other inhibitory controls.

Dependent

According to the family systems theory of alcoholism, the role of the alcoholic in the alcoholic family system.

Disability Benefit

The provision of cash, products, and/or services to someone who is unable to perform certain activities due to a mental or physical condition. For example, SSI.

Disease Model Of Alcoholism

The conceptualization of alcoholism as a progressive disease that eventually leads to either insanity or death.

Disorganized Family Structure

A characteristic of abusive families. In these families, parents often lack parenting skills and are not capable of providing their children with appropriate guidance.

Dispositional Attribution

The attribution of one's own behavior or the behavior of another person to internal or psychological causes.

Elder Abuse

Physical battering, neglect, psychological, or emotional harm, or exploitation (e.g., financial) of an elderly person. Most often inflicted by those responsible for their care; e.g., their adult children, legal custodians, etc.

Employee Assistance Program

Programs within businesses that are concerned with rehabilitating employees with alcohol or drug (and other) problems.

Enabler

In an alcoholic family system, the member of the family, usually the spouse, who does everything possible to make the user stop drinking except what works: Confronting the user or leaving the relationship.

Family Hero

In an alcoholic family system, the family member who sees and hears what is happening and takes responsibility for the family pain by becoming successful and popular. The family hero is often the oldest child and is the 'good' child who offers dependability to a chaotic family.

Family Systems Theory Of Child Abuse

Views child abuse as a stabilizing or homeostatic device; i.e., the abuse maintains a balance in the family system.

Food Assistance Programs

For example, the Food Stamp, WIC, and school lunch programs. Social welfare benefits for qualified persons to ensure their nutritional needs are met.

Food Stamp Program

Federal food assistance program designed to improve the diets of poor and low income families by improving their ability to buy food; eligible persons receive coupons that may be used like cash to buy most foods (but not alcohol or tobacco products).

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

The theory that aggression is always motivated by frustration.

Fundamental Attribution Bias

The attribution error in which an observer tends to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when making attributions about an actor's behavior.

Gain-Loss Theory

Theory of attraction that proposes that liking is related to the pattern rather than amount of rewards. According to gain-loss theory, people tend to be most attracted to individuals who show increasing liking for them and to be least attracted to individuals who show decreasing liking for them.

General Assistance (GA)

State and local welfare program that provides means tested assistance (e.g., financial) to persons not eligible for categorical programs.

Homophobia

The irrational fear of homosexuals or homosexuality.

The irrational fear of homosexuals or homosexuality.

Troiden's model of gay/lesbian identity development distinguishes between four stages – sensitization; identity confusion; identity assumption, and identity commitment.

Ingratiation

A tactic of impression management that involves deliberately using techniques (e.g., agreeing, complimenting) to increase the liking of self by others.

Locus Of Control

A construct developed by Rotter to describe the extent to which an individual believes that life events are under his or her own control (internal locus of control) or under the control of external forces (external locus of control).

Lost Child

In an alcoholic family system, the family member who quietly withdraws from the system. Often the third child, the lost child is typically overwhelmed by older siblings and tends to be physically and psychologically isolated.

Mascot

In an alcoholic family system, the family member who plays the clown to relieve family tension and his or her own pain; usually the youngest child.

Means Test

Method of evaluating a person's financial means (based on income, debts, health, number of dependents, etc.). Results of the test are used to determine the person's eligibility to receive a benefit. If a person has the 'means' to pay for the services he or she is seeking, he or she is turned down. Means tests are used to determine eligibility for food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid, general assistance, etc.

Medicaid

Federal and state government funded program providing payment for medical and hospital services to those who cannot afford them; eligibility is determined by means testing.

Medicare

National health care program for the elderly. Eligibility is based on reaching age 65 rather than need.

Methadone

A synthetic opiate commonly used as a substitute for heroin in the treatment of heroin addiction.

Milgram's Obedience Studies

Studies in which subjects (teachers) were required to administer electric shock to confederates (learners) by an experimenter (authority) to test obedience to authority. Results showed that subjects were generally willing to obey an authority even when their obedience apparently had very negative consequences for another person.

Multisystems Approach

According to Boyd-Franklin, African American families respond best to a multisystems approach that addresses multiple systems, intervenes at multiple levels, and empowers the family by directly incorporating its strengths into the intervention. Systems that may be included in treatment include the extended family and nonblood kin, the church, and community resources.

Obedience

A form of compliance in which a behavior is performed at the direct order of another.

Overjustification

The notion that when individuals are externally rewarded for a task they previously found intrinsically interesting, their interest in the task will decrease.

Para-Alcoholic

A person who grows up with an alcoholic and learns and imitates maladaptive behaviors associated with alcoholism; i.e, the child of an alcoholic.

Proxemics

The study of spatial relations in human behavior. Refers to personal space in interpersonal relations, as well as the spatial relations in social structure such as home, work, etc, which promote specific types of interaction.

Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model

The Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model (Atkinson, Morten, & Sue) distinguishes between five stages that people experience as they attempt to understand themselves in terms of their own culture, the dominant culture, and the oppressive relationship between the two cultures. The five stages are: conformity, dissonance, resistance and immersion, introspection, and integrative awareness.

Reactance

The tendency to resist being influenced or manipulated by others.

Rehabilitation

In the mental health field, assisting impaired or disabled persons by facilitating life-style changes and providing psychotherapy and skills training. The aim is to restore functioning to the greatest degree possible.

Role Ambiguity

Occurs when role expectations are inconsistent or insufficient. Can result in stress, anxiety, and lowered satisfaction and productivity. Inconsistent role expectations can also produce role conflict.

Role Conflict

Occurs when expectations about a person's role vary within a single group, a person's roles in different groups are incompatible, or a person's values or attitudes conflict with the requirements of his or her group role. Role conflict is associated with anxiety, lowered satisfaction and productivity, and increased absenteeism from the group and dropout (Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman, 1970).

Rosenhan's Pseudopatient Study

Research that demonstrated the role of social context and labeling on impression formation. Once admitted to a mental hospital, Rosenhan's pseudopatients were viewed, especially by hospital staff, as mental patients even though they did not exhibit any abnormal behaviors.

Scapegoat

Abused children frequently serve as the family 'scapegoat'; i.e., they are blamed as the source of marital discord.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Occurs when an expectation about a group or person influences the way the group or person is perceived and treated. Can occur when counselors have biases about certain groups and may adversely affect treatment; e.g., if a counselor believes that the poor are poor because they are too lazy to work, he or she might not follow through on a poor client's request for vocational assistance.

Self-Perception Theory

The theory that individuals make attributions about their own attitudes and behaviors on the basis of observations of their own behaviors and other external cues.

Self-Serving Bias

In causal attributions, the tendency to attribute one's successes to internal factors and one's failures to external factors.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual activity between an adult or much older person and a child (Carson and Finkelhor, 1982).

Situational Attribution

The attribution of one's own behavior or the behavior of another person to external causes (e.g., characteristics of the task or the environment).

Social Class

A social category of persons based on wealth, status, power, educational attainment, and background.

Social Comparison Theory

The theory that individuals use other people as sources of comparison to evaluate their own attitudes and behaviors.

Social Distance

The personal or social space that is appropriate in a given group or society. For example, some cultures encourage physical contact while others are uncomfortable with intimate contact and prefer physical distance.

Social Exchange Theory

A theory of social relationships that proposes that people evaluate relationships in terms of the costs and gains associated with them.

Social Power

Methods used to induce compliance in another person. French, Raven, and Kruglanski have identified six bases of social power: coercive, reward, expert, legitimate, referent, and informational.

Socio-Economic Class (Or Status; SES)

Categorization of groups of people according to their level of income or education, value orientation, location of residence, etc. (e.g., upper, middle, and working classes).

Spouse Abuse

An abused spouse is a woman (or man) who has received deliberate, severe, and repeated demonstrable physical injury from his or her marital partner (Gayford, 1975). Although recent research indicates that men are also sometimes victims of spousal abuse, most of the information available about spousal abuse refers to the abuse of women by their male partners.

Status

An individual's standing relative to others in a group or in society. An individual's status is typically determined by his or her social role(s). Status can be inherent (such as male, female, old, young) or acquired (such as parent, doctor).

Superordinate Goals

Goals that can be achieved only when individuals or members of different groups work together cooperatively. These have been found useful for reducing intergroup conflict.

Symbiotic Family Ties

Characteristic of some abusive families. Involves the parents turning away from each other and looking to their child as a source of love and support. If the child is unable to fulfill the parents' needs, he or she often becomes the target of abuse. May involve generally blurred boundaries and role confusion.

Victim Blaming

Notion that a person is responsible, at least to some extent, for being harmed, disadvantaged, etc.; e.g., believing that a poor person is too lazy to work.

White Racial Identity Development Model

According to Helms, white racial identity development involves two phases: abandoning racism (statuses 1-3) and developing a nonracist white identity (statuses 4-6). Her White Racial Identity Development Model involves six statuses (stages): contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudo-independence, immersion-emersion, and autonomy.

Zimbardo's Prison Study

Prison simulation study that demonstrated that people alter their behaviors to fit their assigned roles.