Genuine Growth Research Articles

A hero's journey tale: Experimentally altering perceived posttraumatic growth via cultural expectation primes

Introduction: Burgeoning research has demonstrated that self-reports of posttraumatic growth assess perceived posttraumatic growth (PPTG), which should be disambiguated from genuine growth. One possible reason trauma survivors report PPTG is embedded cultural expectations that individuals should grow from adverse events. Contributing to this cultural expectation are popular hero's journey stories in which a protagonist overcomes adverse events, transforming the protagonist into a hero, which mimic stories of posttraumatic growth. Methods: In two experiments, we experimentally tested whether priming participants with cultural expectations of trauma-related growth via popular hero's journey movies would result in subsequent increases in PPTG. A pilot study confirmed our selection of hero's journey and control movies. In Experiment 1, 669 participants were primed with either a hero's journey movie or a control movie, then subsequently reported PPTG for their own most distressing event. Results: Results revealed that participants primed with a hero's journey movie reported significantly higher levels of PPTG. This effect was qualified by an interaction such that for participants with high levels of identification with the protagonist, the experimental prime led to increased levels of PPTG; for participants with low levels of identification with the protagonist, the experimental prime led to decreased levels of PPTG. In Experiment 2 we replicated this interaction in an online community sample via MTURK. Discussion: Our results provide evidence that PPTG levels can be manipulated via experimental primes and underscore the role of cultural expectations. Specifically, cultural expectations can inspire PPTG for some, but discourage PPTG for others.

Role of Good Governance In Nation-Building: A Case of Iraq

In Iraq, the issue of access to good governance is very important for a variety of reasons, perhaps most notably its fall under US occupation for the period 2003-2011 when its political system was changed. Genuine human growth rediscovers the actual worth of human life, which has been distorted by successive wars and international sanctions, not to mention previous policies. Iraq also owns a massive wealth of enormous oil and gas reserves, as well as other resources, which requires a proper system to manage it, which may not be accessible in the first place, and is founded on the principles and practices of good governance. Another factor in this area is the nature of the Iraqi people, which is composed of numerous nationalities, religions, and sects, which may expose the country to a real crisis if a particular sect or nationality becomes dissatisfied with the current regime, as is currently the case in some provinces. This study seeks to re-emphasize what good governance is, the rationale for its emergence, and its various indicators, not to mention its role in nation-building, while also highlighting the most significant barriers to its application in Iraq, and thus pointing to the most critical ways to promote good governance in Iraq. The findings reveal that there are several barriers to obtaining and implementing good governance in Iraq, which are caused by a range of factors and need a very lengthy period of time to overcome

(Invited) Design of Nanostructured Materials By Electrochemical Approaches

The discovery of nanostructured materials led to ground-breaking findings and significant technological advancement in recent years and is therefore attracting continuous attention from both, academia, and industry for a variety of structural and functional applications [1]. To design nanostructured materials with new functionalities, we combine electrochemical and electroless chemical synthesis with structural studies on different length scales including transmission electron microscopy. The possibility to produce nanostructured metals containing nanoscaled twins, both growth twins and deformation twins, is considered as a promising approach for the synthesis of novel high-performance materials in recent years [1]. Unfortunately, the phenomenon of twinning occurs only in certain metals, such as copper and until recently, it seemed impossible to make aluminium with a high density of grown-in twins. In the present work, we demonstrate the use of electrodeposition as synthesis method to make Al layers with a high density of genuine growth twins [2]. This unexpected result demonstrates a versatile and cost-effective nanoengineering technique for the formation of pure Al layers with a high density of twins. The atomic structure of a twin in aluminium is shown in a transmission electron microscopy image (cf. Fig. 1). In high density, these symmetric lattice imperfections can yield a material that shows good electrical properties, high hardness and good deformability. In addition, we show that electrochemical synthesis approaches can be used to create high surface area functionalized foams and ordered nanostructures for potential sensing and energy-related applications [3-6].

On The Impact of Psychotherapy on Psychological Growth: The Waning of Defenses

ABSTRACT A discussion of Micheal Reison’s “The Subjective Importance of Accommodation and Non-Accommodation: Expanding Brandchaft’s Ideas of Pathological Accommodation” explicates Dr. Bernard Brandchaft’s signature contribution—the defense of pathological accommodation. The imperative need to maintain attachment is seen as the primary goal of this defense. Pathological Accommodation is seen as a mode of maintaining attachments to caretakers, an unconscious, compulsively self-limiting behavior which occurs when a child experiences threats to his bond with a needed parent. In Kohutian terms, pathological accommodation functions to protect the self a child has been able to construct despite formidable obstacles. The term “accommodation” is traced through writings by Atwood, Stolorow, and Brandchaft. Accommodation, in Brandchaft’s terms, refers to the child’s response to relational trauma suffered when his or her emotional expressions and/or actions regularly evoke profoundly malattuned parental responses which threaten the child’s attachment bond. Dr. Reison’s case is reviewed through the lens of these ideas and Dr. Reison’s emotional attunement and genuine appreciation of his patient is appreciated. His genuine empathic understanding of his patient is seen as the foundation of the considerable psychological development and growth demonstrated in Reison’s very fine case report. Indeed, the genuine psychological growth demonstrated eventually made the defense of pathological accommodation unnecessary.

Towards inclusive growth in Africa

ABSTRACTIn view of inclusive growth (IG), a critical research question is: What adjustments to the growth process are necessary to ensure inclusive development? In attempting to answer this question, the paper investigates the concept of inclusive growth from different perspectives and examines the challenges and policy priorities for inclusive growth in the African context. Essential components of inclusive growth are identified. Given the promise it holds to help overcome the pressing obstacles of poverty, unemployment and inequality in a broad-based manner, IG is seen as instrumental in increasing Africa’s economic inclusivity. The question of how inclusive the growth of African economies ought to be, is essential for ensuring sustainable development, considering rising population growth rates. The paper makes a contribution to mapping the way forward towards reaching this goal. Key findings are a reinterpretation of genuine growth and how inclusivity criteria can be used to achieve it.

Social media, media and urban transformation in the context of overtourism

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to document how a traditional residential neighborhood, Ihwa village in Seoul, South Korea, is transformed into a tourist attraction and demonstrate the complexity of the overtourism phenomenon and the multifaceted conflicts among stakeholders that emerged in the course of urban transformation. Particularly, the study explores how tourism growth, urban transformation and overtourism are intertwined with each other and how the role of social media and media contributed to tourism growth and the transformation of an urban neighborhood.Design/methodology/approachThe study conducted text analytics (a big data analysis) using personal blogs and news articles. Our data for text analytics was defined to retrieve all news articles and blogs existent in the NAVER portal, the largest Korean portal and search engine, for the period between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2018. The data was collected using a web crawling program, TEXTOM version 3.0.FindingsText analysis of blog entries and news articles suggests that each medium has its unique role and domain to play. While the news media contributed to the initial surge of interest in Ihwa village, genuine growth of tourism in Ihwa village seems to be attributed to social media. Texts that appeared in blogs strongly indicated that people used their blogs to share their trip experiences, which can be subsequently assumed that blogs had an influential role in promoting a small place like Ihwa mural village, while news articles tended to highlight negative or unusual events occurred in Ihwa village. The study also addressed the multifaceted nature of the conflicts that were inherent in the issue of urban regeneration and how those conflicts were developed and manifested in the process of touristification and overtourism in Ihwa village. As touristification can manifest in various forms in different places, the case of Ihwa village demonstrates a unique development of touristification; private tourism companies or tourism agencies did not initiate or intend to cause tourism gentrification. Rather, touristification is a byproduct of urban revitalization through public art and is a result of interplay between the local government’s interest, social media and new tourist demand.Originality/valueText analytics using big data have rarely been attempted to understand the role of social media in relation to tourism growth and touristification of an urban tourism place. This study advances the literature by applying big data analysis to user-generated content in blogs. The study also contributes to the deeper understanding of a different developmental pattern of touristification in an urban tourism place as well as the complexity of the overtourism phenomenon and the multifaceted conflicts among stakeholders.

High density of genuine growth twins in electrodeposited aluminum.

We demonstrate electrodeposition as a synthesis method for fabrication of Al coatings, up to 10 μm thick, containing a high density of genuine growth twins. This has not been expected since the twin boundary energy of pure Al is very high. TEM methods were used to analyze deposited Al and its nanoscaled twins. DFT methods confirmed that the influence of the substrate is limited to the layers close to the interface. Our findings are different from those achieved by sputtering of Al coatings restricted to a thickness less than 100 nm with twins dominated by epitaxial effects. We propose that in the case of electrodeposition, a high density of twins arises because of fast nucleation and is additionally promoted by a monolayer of adsorbed hydrogen originating from water impurities. Therefore, electrodeposition is a viable approach for tailoring the structure and properties of thicker, deposited Al coatings reinforced by twins.

Does growth require suffering? A systematic review and meta-analysis on genuine posttraumatic and postecstatic growth.

Previous literature on growth after major life events has primarily focused on negative experiences and operationalized growth with measures which rely on the post hoc self-perception of change. Because this method is prone to many biases, two questions have become increasingly controversial: Is there genuine growth after major life events and does growth require suffering? The present meta-analysis is the first synthesis of longitudinal research on the effects of life events on at least one subdomain of psychological well-being, posttraumatic, or postecstatic growth. Studies needed to have a longitudinal design, assess changes through independent measures over time, and provide sufficient data to estimate change scores. The present meta-analysis comprises 364 effect sizes from 154 independent samples (total N = 98,436) in 122 longitudinal studies. A positive trend has been found for self-esteem, positive relationships, and mastery in prospective studies after both positive and negative events. We found no general evidence for the widespread conviction that negative life events have a stronger effect than positive ones. No genuine growth was found for meaning and spirituality. In the majority of studies with control groups, results did not significantly differ between event and control group, indicating that changes in the outcome variables cannot simply be attributed to the occurrence of the investigated life events. More controlled prospective studies are necessary to validate the genuine nature of postevent growth. Overall, the meta-analysis provides a systematic overview of the state of life event research and delineates important guidelines for future research on genuine growth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Epistemology as the Locus of Teacher Competence

The school is viewed as an element in a larger system of circular reasoning and circular causality which mitigates against genuine growth. Teacher education institutions have the potential to adaptively break into these circles by stressing those skills and attitudes from which innovation and growth have always sprung. Teacher competence should be defined as the extent to which a teacher can intellectually defend his practices and beliefs rather than as his conformity to current practices.

An alternative to ‘exodus capitalism’? Offshore services in Iloilo City, Philippines

ABSTRACTTheoretically informed by the relationships between growth poles and regional development, this article investigates two industries in Iloilo City, a secondary city in the Philippines: business processing outsourcing (BPO) and English as a second language (ESL). The empirical analysis is based on 46 interviews. First, the results of the empirical investigation demonstrate that Iloilo City should be considered a genuine growth pole with a substantial degree of enabling institutions. Yet, two qualifications need to be made. While information technology–business processing outsourcing (IT-BPO) is booming, the ESL industry is still small and is heavily reliant on Korean students. Second, while banking on offshore services enables the Philippines to encourage regional deconcentration, it remains to be seen whether future growth of the IT-BPO and ESL industries will result in attaining inter-regional balance and providing a decent alternative to overseas migration. The implications of the results relate to labour markets, endogenous regional development theories and international integration.

Tissue Biopsy in Infected Foot and Ankle Surgery

Category: Basic Sciences/Biologics Introduction/Purpose: When performing surgical debridement to treat chronically infected orthopaedic cases our unit routinely samples 5 intraoperative specimens for microbiology. Best practice and achieving accurate sampling would suggest that a new scalpel and forceps for each sampling site would yield the most valid results.The alternate option would be to use the same instruments. The aim of this prospective study was to compare the two techniques in treating infected foot and ankle cases. Methods: Ten consecutive patients undergoing debridement for foot and ankle infection were prospectively included. Both techniques were performed on same patient to minimise any bias related to the type of host and severity of infection. This was achieved by collecting 5 tissue samples from 5 different sites initially using fresh instruments for each . We then used the first scalpel and forceps to sample the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th sites again. Samples were labelled from 1 to 9 where the 6th to 9th samples were from the same sites as the 2nd to 5th samples but taken by different technique. This allowed differentiating a genuine growth at a particular site from a contaminant carried on from another site. Results: In 7 patients the scalpel transferred microorganisms from one site to another as some of the 5 sites showed no organisms when biopsied by fresh instruments but showed growth when sampled by the re-used first scalpel. In the remaining 3 patients, the growth form the sites sampled by re-used first scalpel was consistent with the growth from those sites when ampled by fresh instruments . Conclusion: Our preliminary results showed that fresh scalpel and forceps are required for each sampling site to avoid transferring contamination from one site to another. This helps guide the extent of future debridement and also the type of antibiotics to be used.

STELLAR POPULATIONS FROM SPECTROSCOPY OF A LARGE SAMPLE OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES ATZ> 1: MEASURING THE CONTRIBUTION OF PROGENITOR BIAS TO EARLY SIZE GROWTH

We analyze the stellar populations of a sample of 62 massive (log Mstar/Msun > 10.7) galaxies in the redshift range 1 < z < 1.6, with the main goal of investigating the role of recent quenching in the size growth of quiescent galaxies. We demonstrate that our sample is not biased toward bright, compact, or young galaxies, and thus is representative of the overall quiescent population. Our high signal-to-noise ratio Keck LRIS spectra probe the rest-frame Balmer break region which contains important absorption line diagnostics of recent star formation activity. We obtain improved measures of the various stellar population parameters, including the star-formation timescale tau, age and dust extinction, by fitting templates jointly to both our spectroscopic and broad-band photometric data. We identify which quiescent galaxies were recently quenched and backtrack their individual evolving trajectories on the UVJ color-color plane finding evidence for two distinct quenching routes. By using sizes measured in the previous paper of this series, we confirm that the largest galaxies are indeed among the youngest at a given redshift. This is consistent with some contribution to the apparent growth from recent arrivals, an effect often called progenitor bias. However, we calculate that recently-quenched objects can only be responsible for about half the increase in average size of quiescent galaxies over a 1.5 Gyr period, corresponding to the redshift interval 1.25 < z < 2. The remainder of the observed size evolution arises from a genuine growth of long-standing quiescent galaxies.

Education and Economic Growth: A Meta-Regression Analysis

Summary This paper surveys the literature which examines the effect of education on economic growth. Specifically, we apply meta-regression analysis to 57 studies with 989 estimates and show that there is substantial publication selection bias toward a positive impact of education on growth. Once we account for this, the genuine growth effect of education is not homogeneous across studies, but varies according to several factors. Specifically, it is attributed to differences in education measurement and study characteristics, mainly model specification as well as type of data used, and the quality of research outlets where studies are published, e.g., academic journals vs. working papers.

Does a Windfall Lead to a Downfall? A Study of Mineral Rents and Genuine Growth in Selected African Countries

The mining industry helps governments to increase revenues resulting in job creation, infrastructural development and enhancing the standard of living of the local communities. However, it is also a potential source of environmental pollution and rent-seeking. This study examines the relationship between mineral rents and genuine income in a multivariate panel data analysis in Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, South Africa and Zambia at the aggregate and industrial levels. The findings suggest that mineral revenues have been a blessing to these countries at the aggregate level but affected industrial growth negatively. These findings support evidence in the literature that mineral resource abundance slows growth in industrial output. The study also reveals that growth in mineral rich countries is principally driven by investment in capital and energy consumption. It is therefore recommended that mineral revenues should be invested in capital and alternative energy sources to boost aggregate and industrial growth.

Genuine Wealth Growth Rates across Canada from 1997 to 2008

Genuine Wealth Growth Rates across Canada from 1997 to 2008

Exploitation versus exploration in multinational firms: Implications for the future of international business

Given the economic weight of multinational corporations and their privileged access to resources, many different scenarios can be built about the future of international business and about the future impact of international business on economic, technological, and social development. In this paper, we argue that multinationals do not form a uniform organisational population, and we provide empirical evidence of the existence of traditional, rigid entities seeking benefits from low-risk exploitative strategies on one hand, and of flexible multinationals seeking higher performance levels by balancing the trade-offs between exploration and exploitation on the other hand. As these two sub-populations compete with one another for resources, we use a population ecology perspective to study likely ecological scenarios for the future. Our conclusion is that traditional multinationals tend to prevail over flexible multinationals, and the conditions required for a future society to allow a genuine growth of flexible multinationals are unlikely. This implies that multinationals remain primarily exploitative, and that as such, they will only be associated with marginal economic, technological, and social developments in the future. Other organisational forms, such as entrepreneurial small business and communities of practices are shown to be much more likely vehicles through which society can progress and innovate.

On Three Forms of Thinking: Magical Thinking, Dream Thinking, and Transformative Thinking

The author believes that contemporary psychoanalysis has shifted its emphasis from the understanding of the symbolic meaning of dreams, play, and associations to the exploration of the processes of thinking, dreaming, and playing. In this paper, he discusses his understanding of three forms of thinking—magical thinking, dream thinking, and transformative thinking—and provides clinical illustrations in which each of these forms of thinking figures prominently. The author views magical thinking as a form of thinking that subverts genuine thinking and psychological growth by substituting invented psychic reality for disturbing external reality. By contrast, dream thinking—our most profound form of thinking—involves viewing an emotional experience from multiple perspectives simultaneously: for example, the perspectives of primary process and secondary process thinking. In transformative thinking, one creates a new way of ordering experience that allows one to generate types of feeling, forms of object relatedness, and qualities of aliveness that had previously been unimaginable.

Measuring the lengthening kinetics of aligned nanostructures by spatiotemporal correlation of height and orientation

Owing to their inherent tortuosity, the collective height of vertically aligned nanostructures does not equal the average length of the individual constituent nanostructures, and therefore temporal height measurement is not an accurate measure of the genuine growth kinetics. We use high-resolution spatial mapping of alignment by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) to transform real-time measurements of array height to the average length of the nanostructures. Applying this approach to carbon nanotube (CNT) forest growth transforms the kinetics from a sub-linear to a linear relationship with time, highlighting the potential for insights into the limiting growth mechanisms of CNTs and other one-dimensional nanostructures.

The Poverty of Statistics and the Statistics of Poverty

This paper offers a critique of the picture of world growth and world inequality generally disseminated by international agencies. The positive view commonly presented depends on the widespread consensus that economic performance should be measured using ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ (PPP) statistics, instead of market exchange rates. Although originally conceived narrowly as a basis for comparing living standards, PPP indicators are now indiscriminately promoted as an unexceptionable standard for comparing and aggregating national income statistics. This article highlights the flaws in the PPP approach by accepting the claims made on their behalf at face value. It shows that, even on the basis of these claims, the wrong conclusions have been drawn. By comparing PPP and market exchange rate measures of inequality it shows that what really took place, at the end of the last century, was a systematic reduction in the prices of consumption goods in the Third World. PPP statistics have concealed this underlying and unsustainable trend, allowing it to be packaged as a stable reduction in poverty. Neither genuine growth, nor lasting poverty reduction was achieved over this period. The fall in the price of consumer goods masked a systematic failure to overcome the central problem of development—the high price of capital goods, which PPP statistics understate, and of intermediate goods, which they completely omit.

Humanism or Professionalism? The White Coat Ceremony and Medical Education

In this article, the author challenges the widely held assumption that humanism and professionalism are necessarily complementary themes in medical education. He argues that humanism and professionalism are two very different value systems with different rationales, different goals, and different agendas. Whereas humanism is a universal, egalitarian ideology, professionalism represents the parochial, culturally determined practices of a particular professional group that may or may not conform to lay expectations. Distinguishing professionalism from humanism is crucial to understanding the divergent attitudes of providers and lay persons with regard to health care delivery and physician behavior. Moreover, it highlights the tension that medical students experience as they are tacitly asked to leave behind their lay, humanistic values and embrace a new professional identity, a transition that the common blurring of humanism and professionalism fails to recognize. In this context, the Arnold P. Gold Foundation's widely acclaimed White Coat Ceremony for entering medical students may actually be inhibiting, rather than encouraging, the genuine growth of humanism in medicine.