The development of the Broaching Assessment Scale: A client-rated measure of therapists' broaching behaviour in clinical counselling.

Objective: Addressing ethnic-cultural topics during the process of psychotherapy, i.e. broaching, is considered highly important for ethnic minority clients who consult mental health care services. Surprisingly little is known, however, about clients' perception of a therapist's broaching qualities, and how clients' mental construction of broaching translates into behavioural broaching acts a therapist may display.Method: Based on previous work and nine in-depth interviews with ethnic minority clients, a client-rated measure of therapists' broaching behaviour was developed and psychometrically evaluated in two samples. Sample 1 (N = 252 UK ethnic minority clients) was used to empirically delineate the factor structure of an initial item set. Participants were then resolicited to complete a revised item pool.Results: The empirical structure resulted in a final 25-item broaching instrument with five subscales probing into therapists' broaching behaviour. This Broaching Assessment Scale (BrAS) was validated in Sample 2 (N = 239 US ethnic minority clients). Strict measurement invariance of the factor structure was observed across the two samples and distinctive correlational patterns with therapeutic process measures were found.Conclusion: The BrAS provides new insights on how sensitivity to ethnic-cultural topics can be targeted along its concrete features, and is a promising tool for conceptualizing culturally sensitive mental healthcare assessment.

Correction: Adaptation and validation of the Johnson-Lecci scale to assess anti-white bias among black UK minority group members.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277077.].

Good-enough Care? How Patients' Perceptions of Counselors' Professional Skills Relate to Everyday Life in Forensic Long-stay Units.

The overall goal of long-term forensic care is to strive toward acceptable levels of adaptation and quality of life (QoL) of the forensic patient in the institutional context. While the bulk of the literature has focused on the deleterious consequences of personality pathology in this regard, research investigating the contribution of the quality of the therapeutic relationship has remained rather scant. Assuming that the perceived competence of the direct counselor, as perceived by patients, forms an important aspect in this regard, the central aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between patients' perceptions of their therapist's professional skills, their self-reported maladaptive behavior on the ward, and their experienced QoL. To this end, we recruited patients (N = 60) in long-stay forensic units and investigated their perceptions of 10 specific skills displayed by their therapist, along a "too little-too much" rating scale. The results revealed that patients who had the overall impression that their counselor was equipped with an adequate set of professional skills showed less maladaptive behavior and perceived a higher QoL on the ward. Conversely, at a more specific competence level, only a positive relationship between a counselor's predictability and self-reported QoL was found. Taken together, these results highlight that an overall professional skill evaluation matters in the context of forensic patients' adaptation and QoL in their long-stay units, with the counselor's predictability serving as a crucial aspect in obtaining the most favorable outcomes.

Procedural fairness in ethnic-cultural decision-making: fostering social cohesion by incorporating minority and majority perspectives.

Recent research describes how procedural fairness can be used to resolve issues related to ethnic-cultural matters. The central finding in this strand of literature is that when minority members experience procedurally fair treatment by societal actors regarding ethnic-cultural issues, this will lead to a range of outcomes that are beneficial for social cohesion. Although these results are promising, it remains yet to be shown that such group-specific treatment fairness does not hamper social cohesion by inciting misapprehension among members of non-recipient groups. Therefore, the present study set out to examine two central questions. First, how would minority group members respond to treatment fairness of citizens belonging to another minority group? Second, how would majority group members respond to treatment fairness of citizens belonging to minority groups? Two experimental studies (total N = 908) examined these questions. In Study 1, we compared ethnic-cultural minorities' reactions to procedurally (un)fair treatment of their own versus a different minority group. In Study 2, we compared minority and majority group members' responses to procedurally (un)fair treatment of minority group members. Results show that minority group member reactions to ethnic-cultural procedural fairness emanate from a shared bond with the fairness recipient(s) of the other minority group. Conversely, majority group members' reactions are driven primarily by a perceived moral obligation to act rightfully toward members of disadvantaged groups. Taken together, our results suggest that ethnic-cultural procedural fairness enactment fosters societal unity among different groups, possibly strengthening social cohesion for well-being and prosperity among members of these groups.

The public's preferred level of involvement in local policy-making.

We investigated what people consider the optimal level of citizen involvement in local policy decision-making. This is an important question to answer, given that civil servants and politicians are increasingly confronted with the pressure to add a participatory layer to representative democratic policy-making. Across five empirical studies (total N = 1470), we consistently found that, overall, the most preferred decision-making model is a balanced model in which citizens and the government are equally involved. Despite this preferred 'overall' pattern of equal involvement, we identified three subgroups within the citizenry with different preference curves: Some citizens prefer a model in which citizens and the government are truly equal partners, whereas others prefer a model in which either the government or citizens are relatively more involved in the policy decision-making process. The main contribution of our work is thus that we identified a perceived 'overall' optimal level of citizen engagement, and variations to that optimum depending on citizens' individual traits. This information might be helpful to policy-makers in developing effective citizen participation processes.

Empathy for a Black Woman Victim of Police Sexual Violence: The Roles of Crime-Related Stress and Stereotype Attributions.

Police sexual violence has been ranked as the second most common form of misconduct among police officers. Moreover, there is evidence that Black women are at heightened risk of being victims of such police violence. A report titled Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women has brought international attention to the minimal empirical focus on such police violence toward Black women. To address this lacuna in the literature, using an incident of police sexual assault of a woman, we assessed whether victim's race and participants' level of crime-related stress (i.e., stress due to crime victimization) would influence empathic responding toward the victim. Prolific participants (N = 411) first completed a measure of crime-related stress. They then read an article describing a White police officer's sexual assault of a Black or White woman. Next, participants completed a racial stereotype-related measure (i.e., Black women's higher sexual proclivity) and a stereotype-unrelated measure (i.e., perceived victim untrustworthiness), and reported their victim-directed empathic responding. At high stress levels, participants reported less empathy for the Black (relative to White) victim. At low stress levels, there was greater Black victim-directed empathy. The race effects on empathy were mediated by heightened attribution of Black women-related stereotypical beliefs to the Black victim at high stress levels and by diminished attribution at low stress levels. In sum, we addressed the lacuna in the literature on police sexual violence against Black women while providing evidence that stress can play a critical role in the occurrence of the oft-cited outgroup-directed empathy deficit.

Violent Assault on a Chinese Man: COVID-19 Psychosocial Resource Loss Diminishes Right Wing Authoritarianism Variability in Societal Reactions.

We examined whether prejudice-related personality characteristics (i.e., right wing authoritarianism [RWA]) and COVID-19-driven psychological resource loss might predict perpetrator-directed punitive responding (i.e., support for criminal charges) to a COVID-19-related attack on a Chinese victim by a White male. Across two studies, participants completed an RWA measure and reported the extent they had experienced COVID-19-related psychosocial resource loss. They then read a passage describing the COVID-19-related physical assault. For both studies, at low resource loss levels, low RWA participants reported greater punitive responding toward the perpetrator than high RWA participants. This RWA-punitive responding association was mediated by greater victim-directed suffering sensitivity (i.e., empathy) for Study 1 and greater anti-perpetrator reactions (i.e., hate crime perceptions) for Study 2. The RWA association with the relevant outcome variables (i.e., suffering sensitivity, anti-perpetrator bias, and punitive responding) was eliminated at high psychological resource loss levels. Specifically, low and high RWA participants reported similar reactions. While previous research has demonstrated that high RWA individuals tend to report greater outgroup-directed prejudicial responses due to COVID-19-driven perceptions of threat, our findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic can also elicit feelings of resource loss that can diminish the egalitarian reactions typically reported by low RWA individuals. In sum, we demonstrate that experiencing difficult life circumstances such as COVID-19 psychosocial resource loss can diminish supportive reactions toward victimized minority group members even among low RWA participants who are typically expected to be more sensitive to the struggles of those who are disadvantaged.

"Say Her Name": Symbolic Racism and Officer Valuing Predict White Americans' Reactions to the Fatal Police Shooting of a Black Woman.

A report entitled Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women underscores the paucity of research examining police violence toward Black women. This study focused on how valuing a White police officer and symbolic racism moderate reactions when the officer fatally shoots a Black or White woman during a traffic stop. At high levels of officer valuing, symbolic racism was positively associated with perceptions the victim presented a threat to the officer, but negatively associated with support for punishing the officer and perceived victim compliance; these associations were stronger when the victim was Black relative to White. At low officer valuing levels, there was no variability in the link between symbolic racism and the outcome variables as a function of victim race. Implications for bias in judicial outcomes for the victim and officer are discussed.

Adaptation and validation of the Johnson-Lecci scale to assess anti-white bias among black UK minority group members.

The present study (total N = 901) set out to construct and validate a culturally sensitive instrument to examine anti-White bias among Black UK minority group members. Our novel measure of anti-White bias-which we called the AWB scale-was based upon the Johnson-Lecci scale (JLS; 2003) a questionnaire designed to measure anti-White attitudes among Black Americans. Studies 1 and 2 provided converging evidence for the AWB's four-factor dimensionality, its structural characteristics, its temporal stability and its external validity in Black UK samples, attesting to the consistency of minorities' experience of anti-majority bias in two very different societal contexts. Moreover, Study 3 evidenced our measure's utility for understanding reactions to various relevant contemporary societal events. Theoretical contributions to the literature on intergroup bias are delineated and compared with majority-to-minority prejudice.

The contribution of teacher, parental and peer support in self-reported school and general well-being among ethnic-cultural minority and majority youth.

Social support has been shown to be a crucial element in the well-being of children and adolescents. The present research article investigated how various sources of social support (i.e., parental support, teacher support and peer support) are related to school well-being and general well-being,. A survey was administered to N = 12,215 primary school pupils, pertaining to three ethnic-cultural groups, i.e., the national majority group, the Eastern European minority group and the Middle Eastern minority group. The results showed that perceived teacher support was most strongly and positively related to school well-being, although peer support was also an important determinant of school well-being. All three sources of perceived support were positively related to general well-being. Furthermore, and contrary to previous research, no significant differences were found between both minority groups and the national majority in terms of perceived teacher support. Conversely, both minority groups reported lower perceived parental and peer support. It was further shown that minority status moderated the relationship between the various sources of support and school well-being, although it should be articulated that these effects sizes were fairly small. School diversity, finally, did not yield any relevant effects. Similarities and differences with the existing literature on school well-being are delineated, and potential explanations for these divergences are discussed.