Modified Sociometric Technique Facilitating Group Psychotherapy: Using a Sociogram with Sharing and Reverse Sharing in a Process Group Psychotherapy Session

Author(s):  
Shelley J. Korshak

Psychodramatists often use structured techniques for creating cohesion in psychotherapy groups, but process group psychotherapy is ordinarily unstructured. When one group member in an ongoing psychotherapy process group voiced her ambivalence about being in the group, the therapist introduced a structured exercise of a pen-and-paper sociogram and directed the sharing both forward and in reverse. The result was greater connectedness among group members, as well as increased liveliness and cohesion in the group as a whole. This article presents the use of this directed technique and discusses the rationale, the intervention, and the outcome.

Author(s):  
Shelley J. Korshak Firestone ◽  
Adam Blatner

Psychodrama group work differs from process group psychotherapy in salient ways, one being the structure of the sessions. Both modalities use group members to support each other, but in psychodrama, the group focuses on a situation of one of the members that is then enacted experientially; in process group psychotherapy, the group follows the verbal interchanges among the members. This article describes each of the two orientations and presents examples of the addition of a process group session to close a psychodrama workshop, on one hand, and presents examples of the insertion of sociometry and psychodrama techniques into process group sessions, on the other. Drawing from both orientations gives the therapist access to a wider repertoire of techniques than either orientation offers alone, and the overall effectiveness of the therapist familiar with both approaches is enhanced by the increased spontaneity and enriched understanding achieved from working with both modalities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emine Bilgi ◽  
Hasan Hüseyin Özdemir ◽  
Ayhan Bingol ◽  
Serpil Bulut

Objective This study will evaluate how decreasing depression severity via group psychotherapy affects the cognitive function of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) who are also diagnosed with depression and cognitive dysfunction. Method MS patients completed the Brief Repeatable Battery of Neuropsychological Tests and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The group members diagnosed with depression and cognitive dysfunction underwent group psychotherapy for 3 months. Upon completion of psychotherapy, both tests were readministered. Results Depression and cognitive dysfunction were comorbid in 15 (13.9%) of patients. Although improvement was detected at the end of the 3-month group psychotherapy intervention, it was limited to the BDI and the Paced Auditory Test. Conclusion Group psychotherapy might decrease cognitive impairment in MS patients.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (17) ◽  
pp. 4375-4380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Zerubavel ◽  
Mark Anthony Hoffman ◽  
Adam Reich ◽  
Kevin N. Ochsner ◽  
Peter Bearman

Why do certain group members end up liking each other more than others? How does affective reciprocity arise in human groups? The prediction of interpersonal sentiment has been a long-standing pursuit in the social sciences. We combined fMRI and longitudinal social network data to test whether newly acquainted group members’ reward-related neural responses to images of one another’s faces predict their future interpersonal sentiment, even many months later. Specifically, we analyze associations between relationship-specific valuation activity and relationship-specific future liking. We found that one’s own future (T2) liking of a particular group member is predicted jointly by actor’s initial (T1) neural valuation of partner and by that partner’s initial (T1) neural valuation of actor. These actor and partner effects exhibited equivalent predictive strength and were robust when statistically controlling for each other, both individuals’ initial liking, and other potential drivers of liking. Behavioral findings indicated that liking was initially unreciprocated at T1 yet became strongly reciprocated by T2. The emergence of affective reciprocity was partly explained by the reciprocal pathways linking dyad members’ T1 neural data both to their own and to each other’s T2 liking outcomes. These findings elucidate interpersonal brain mechanisms that define how we ultimately end up liking particular interaction partners, how group members’ initially idiosyncratic sentiments become reciprocated, and more broadly, how dyads evolve. This study advances a flexible framework for researching the neural foundations of interpersonal sentiments and social relations that—conceptually, methodologically, and statistically—emphasizes group members’ neural interdependence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 2752-2761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward H. Chang ◽  
Erika L. Kirgios ◽  
Aneesh Rai ◽  
Katherine L. Milkman

We highlight a feature of personnel selection decisions that can influence the gender diversity of groups and teams. Specifically, we show that people are less likely to choose candidates whose gender would increase group diversity when making personnel selections in isolation (i.e., when they are responsible for selecting a single group member) than when making collections of choices (i.e., when they are responsible for selecting multiple group members). We call this the isolated choice effect. Across six preregistered experiments (n = 3,509), we demonstrate that the isolated choice effect has important consequences for group diversity. When making sets of hiring and selection decisions (as opposed to making a single hire), people construct more gender-diverse groups. Mediation and moderation studies suggest that people do not attend as much to diversity when making isolated selection choices, which drives this effect. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, decision analysis.


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Christine Portier ◽  
Shelley Stagg Peterson

Our study examined middle grade students’ participation in wikis during their two-month social studies unit co-taught by two teachers as part of a larger action research project. Using an analysis of 42 grades 5 and 6 students working together in eight wiki writing groups, we report on the frequency and types of revisions they made to collaboratively-written essays, and the distribution of the workload across group members in each of the wiki groups. Discussion data with 16 students from these wiki groups helps contextualize our analysis.Our findings suggest that given their extended time to write, students revised frequently, making replacements more often than they deleted, added or moved content. Students indicated a willingness to change others’ contributions and to have their own contributions revised by others in order to improve the quality of the essays. The majority of their revisions were at the word level, rather than at sentence, paragraph, and whole-text levels. One student in each group contributed significantly more frequently than any other group member. There were no gender or grade patterns in the frequencies or types of contributions that students made to the wikis.


2007 ◽  
Vol 274 (1615) ◽  
pp. 1287-1291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Pays ◽  
Pierre-Cyril Renaud ◽  
Patrice Loisel ◽  
Maud Petit ◽  
Jean-François Gerard ◽  
...  

It is generally assumed that an individual of a prey species can benefit from an increase in the number of its group's members by reducing its own investment in vigilance. But what behaviour should group members adopt in relation to both the risk of being preyed upon and the individual investment in vigilance? Most models assume that individuals scan independently of one another. It is generally argued that it is more profitable for each group member owing to the cost that coordination of individual scans in non-overlapping bouts of vigilance would require. We studied the relationships between both individual and collective vigilance and group size in Defassa waterbuck, Kobus ellipsiprymnus defassa , in a population living under a predation risk. Our results confirmed that the proportion of time an individual spent in vigilance decreased with group size. However, the time during which at least one individual in the group scanned the environment (collective vigilance) increased. Analyses showed that individuals neither coordinated their scanning in an asynchronous way nor scanned independently of one another. On the contrary, scanning and non-scanning bouts were synchronized between group members, producing waves of collective vigilance. We claim that these waves are triggered by allelomimetic effects i.e. they are a phenomenon produced by an individual copying its neighbour's behaviour.


Author(s):  
William S. Breitbart ◽  
Shannon R. Poppito

This chapter provides instructions for conducting the sixth session of meaning-centered group psychotherapy. The reader is instructed to introduce and explore the topic of ‘Creative Sources of Meaning’ and the guiding theme ‘Creativity, Courage, and Responsibility.’ By the end of Session 6, group members will have a solid understanding of the significance of the creative sources of meaning (creativity, courage, and responsibility) as important resources for meaning in their lives.


Author(s):  
William S. Breitbart ◽  
Shannon R. Poppito

This chapter provides instructions for conducting the first session of meaning-centered group psychotherapy. The reader is instructed to introduce facilitators and group members to one another, introduce patients to a general overview of the intervention (including treatment goals, structured weekly topics, and logistics), become familiar with each patient’s story of illness, introduce patients to the first session topic of Viktor Frankl’s work and foundations of meaning, and share definitions of meaning and conduct the “meaningful moments” experiential exercise.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1032-1041 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Pasek ◽  
Crystal Shackleford ◽  
Julia M. Smith ◽  
Allon Vishkin ◽  
Anne Lehner ◽  
...  

Does God want people to favor coreligionists or to treat in-group and out-group members equally? To test people’s beliefs about God’s moral preferences, we conducted three preregistered studies. Study 1 was a field study with Christian and Muslim Fijians ( N = 188). Study 2 was an online study with Jewish Israelis ( N = 384). Study 3 was a field study with Christian and Hindu Fijians ( N = 539). Across studies, participants indicated whether an in-group member should sacrifice his life to save five in-group members (in one dilemma) or out-group members (in a second dilemma). For each dilemma, they then indicated what God would prefer. Participants believed that, compared with themselves, God would more strongly approve of an in-group member saving out-group members. Results generalize results from previous studies with Muslim Palestinians, providing cross-cultural evidence that religious believers think God prefers more universal moral reasoning than they do themselves.


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