Positive psychology: Past,present, and (possible) future

A survey study and two experiments were done to test the hypothesis that social flow is more enjoyable than solitary flow. In the survey study it was found that recalled social flow experiences were rated more enjoyable than solitary flow experiences. In the first experiment when challenge and skill were the same across social and solitary conditions, social flow was reported to be more enjoyable than solitary flow. In the second experiment when the level of social interdependence was manipulated it was found that participants in highly interdependent teams reported more joy in flow than individuals performing less interdependently. In both experiments, people playing simple paddleball games reported and expressed more joy performing with others than alone. Taken together, the three investigations support the conclusion that doing it together is better than doing it alone. Solitary flow, while quite enjoyable, is not as enjoyable as social flow.     

Mikel Burley (ed.): Wittgenstein,religion, and ethics

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states: retrieval,behavior, and experience

The tip-of-the-tongue state (TOT) is the feeling that accompanies temporary inaccessibility of an item that a person is trying to retrieve. TOTs have been studied experimentally since the seminal work of Brown and McNeill (1966). TOTs are experiences that accompany some failed or slow retrievals, and they can result in changes in retrieval behavior itself, allowing us to study the interplay among experience, retrieval, and behavior. We often attribute the experience of the TOT to the unretrieved target, but TOTs are based on a variety of cues, heuristics, or sources of evidence, such as partial information, related information, and cue familiarity, that predict the likelihood of overcoming retrieval failure. We present a synthesis of the direct-access view, which accounts for retrieval failure, and the heuristic–metacognitive view, which accounts for the experience of the TOT. We offer several avenues for future research and applications of TOT theory and data.     

'Geraniums (red) and Delphiniums (blue)': Trauma,Ethics, and Medical Communications

More official complaints about medical treatment in the UK relate to poor communications than to wrong diagnoses. This article, in considering the importance of communications training for clinicians, is structured into three sections. From use of a story that introduces the idea of miscommunication and trauma in the first section, the article moves, in the second, to a theorisation of trauma as a concept, addressing issues of intersubjectivity, the relationship between embodied and psychological being, and ethics. From this, the third section engages directly with medical communications training, exemplifying a particular literary-studies approach to matters of communication.     

Emotional (Non-)Expression and Health: Data,Questions, and Challenges

The available evidence on the relationship between expression and non-expression of emotions (E/NE) and health is selectively and critically reviewed. It is concluded that research in this field still lacks conceptual lucidity with regard to the many existing E/NE concepts. Despite the fact that few studies adopted appropriate designs for examining causal relationships, some intriguing results have been reported showing promise for the future. These results involve prospective associations between E/NE and chronic disease, such as cardiovascular disease and HIV infection related outcomes. Future studies have to better discriminate between (i) various forms of E/NE, (ii) different (social) contexts of E/NE as well as different cognitive decision processes underlying E/NE, and (iii) individuals for whom different forms of E/NE may be adaptive. We recommend that besides (quasi)experimental studies on the potential mechanisms involved, more prospective studies are conducted in this field in order to allow for causal inferences.     

Further clarification on the Hom, Mitchell, Lee, and Griffeth (2012) model: Reply to Bergman, Payne, and Boswell (2012) and Maertz (2012)

In this article, we reply to Bergman, Payne, and Boswell (2012) and Maertz (2012), who commented on our reconceptualization of the employee turnover criterion and proximal withdrawal states (Hom, Mitchell, Lee, & Griffeth, 2012). We agree with some points (e.g., anticipated destinations) but take issue with others (e.g., turnover intentions as the criterion). Nonetheless, our aim is to clarify our integrative formulation about mindsets for organizational participation and withdrawal. In our view, the current process of "article-commentaries-reply" advances our collective understanding of staying and leaving, which is of longstanding interest to scholars in industrial and organizational psychology, organizational behavior, and human resource management. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The (In)flexible self: Psychopathology,mindfulness, and neuroscience

Clinical and neuroscientific evidence indicates that transdiagnostic processes contribute to the generation and maintenance of psychopathological symptoms and disorders. Rigidity (inflexibility) appears a core feature of most transdiagnostic pathological processes. Decreasing rigidity may prove important to restore and maintain mental health. One of the primary domains in which rigidity and flexibility plays a role concerns the self. We adopt the pattern theory of self (PTS) for a working definition of self. This incorporates the pluralist view on self as constituted by multiple aspects or processes, understood to constitute a self-pattern, i.e. processes organized in non-linear dynamical relations across a number of time scales. The use of mindfulness meditation in the format of Mindfulness Based Interventions (MBIs) has been developed over four decades in Clinical Psychology. MBIs are promising as evidence-based treatments, shown to be equivalent to gold-standard treatments and superior to specific active controls in several randomized controlled trials. Notably, MBIs have been shown to target transdiagnostic symptoms. Given the hypothesized central role of rigid, habitual self-patterns in psychopathology, PTS offers a useful frame to understand how mindfulness may be beneficial in decreasing inflexibility. We discuss the evidence that mindfulness can alter the psychological and behavioral expression of individual aspects of the self-pattern, as well as favour change in the self-pattern as a whole gestalt.We discuss neuroscientific research on how the phenomenology of the self (pattern) is reflected in associated cortical networks and meditation-related alterations in cortical networks. Creating a synergy between these two aspects can increase understanding of psychopathological processes and improve diagnostic and therapeutic options.     

Filling-in models of completion: rejoinder to Kellman, Garrigan, Shipley, and Keane (2007) and Albert (2007)

There has been a growing interest in understanding the computations involved in the processes underlying visual segmentation and interpolation in conditions of occlusion. P. J. Kellman, P. Garrigan, T. F. Shipley, and B. P. Keane and M. K. Albert defended the view that identical contour interpolation mechanisms underlie modal and amodal completion. In the current rejoinder, the author provides further psychophysical evidence against this view and argues that no physiological data support the claim that modal and amodal contours are represented identically at any stage of processing. The author also shows that the illusory glass surfaces that Kellman et al. and Albert upheld as evidence against his arguments about luminance constraints in completion are explained by theoretical principles that he has previously articulated, and variants of these illusions receive no explanation within either of the models Kellman et al. and Albert propose. The author shows that the principles needed to explain these percepts embody fundamental asymmetries in the way that relative depth shapes segmentation and interpolation processes and that models of completion that lack these constraints--such as P. J. Kellman, P. Garrigan, and T. F. Shipley's and M. K. Albert's --cannot account for a host of documented completion phenomena.     

Nature, culture, and explanations for erotic plasticity: reply to Andersen, Cyranowski, and Aarestad (2000) and Hyde and Durik (2000)

R. F. Baumeister's (2000) article on erotic plasticity was criticized by B. L. Andersen, J. M. Cyranowski, and S. Aarestad (2000) for not being biological enough and by J. S. Hyde and A. M. Durik (2000) for being too biological. Both critiques were based on drawing a polarized caricature of R. F. Baumeister's actual view, although the two caricatures are opposites. Actually, neither commentary questioned the gender difference R. F. Baumeister documented; rather, the dispute is about how to explain it, which is indeed a challenge remaining for further work. Although both commentaries provided valuable suggestions about how to approach an explanation, neither approach can provide a coherent account until various theoretical problems are resolved and seemingly contrary empirical findings are addressed.     

Reproduction,Ethics, and the Law: Feminist Perspectives (Book)

It is often claimed that if technology becomes too intrusive it can be reigned in by better technologies and laws that restrict access. This article argues through a series of propositions and observations why these standard solutions will invariably fall short, and why civility--and the placed communities out of which civility arises--is our best hope against technological assaults on privacy. The article ends with a brief discussion of what sorts of personal and professional commitments a civil culture entails.     

Occlusion, symmetry, and object-based attention: comment on Behrmann, Zemel, and Mozer (1998)

The validity of M. Behrmann, R. Zemel, and M. Mozer's (1998) finding that object-based attention can be directed toward occluded objects is examined in 3 experiments. In M. Behrmann et al.'s (1998) original study, participants made speeded judgments of whether the numbers of bumps attached to 2 arms of an X shape were the same or different. The 2 sets of bumps belonged either to a single object, 2 different objects, or 2 separated parts of an occluded object. Unfortunately, this objecthood manipulation was confounded by the symmetry of the stimuli. Experiment 1 replicated M. Behrmann et al.'s main results using identical stimuli. Experiments 2a and 2b dissociated objecthood from symmetry. The results suggest that the effects of object-based attention found by M. Behrmann et al. are largely due to symmetry. The stimuli used in M. Behrmann et al. are not appropriate for examining the relation between object-based attention and occlusion.     

Work,Nonwork, and Sleep (WNS): a Review and Conceptual Framework

The current paper expands on traditional views of the work-nonwork interface to incorporate the critical component of sleep. We integrate past theoretical and empirical work from the sleep and organizational science literatures to inform a novel framework that will facilitate research evaluating associations among work, nonwork, and sleep, the three major areas of life. We propose that attitudes, behaviors, and states emerging in work and nonwork domains cannot be fully understood without taking into account upstream and downstream sleep quantity and quality effects. Rather, periods of sleep bookend engagement in work and nonwork roles. Thus, we propose the work, nonwork, and sleep (WNS) conceptual framework and, in doing so, identify specific, underlying resource mechanisms (i.e., human energy and time) operating both intra-individually and inter-individually. We also discuss contextual factors that act as predictors and moderators of these relationships. We suggest that a unifying framework explaining connections and underlying processes among work, nonwork, and sleep is necessary for applied psychology and management disciplines to significantly contribute to future research, intervention development and dissemination, and ultimately policy change. We provide a number of avenues for future investigation, including relevant special populations and methodological approaches. Although a plethora of work-nonwork theoretical frameworks exist, none have incorporated the third major area of life: sleep. We call for the expansion and acknowledgement of sleep, an important source of variance in everyday attitudes, behaviors, and states, and ultimately in long-term organizational, family, and individual health and well-being.     

Context,goal, utility,and relevance: A reply to Evans (2002) considering Oaksford (2002)

Yama (2001) argued that the matching bias effect was an amalgam of a genuine matching effect and a set size effect. However, Evans (2002) pointed out some problems with Yama's argument. One was on the matching index used in Yama (2001). The others concerned a gap between Yama's (2001) interpretation of matching bias and Evans' (1998) recent discussions that had placed emphasis on the problem of implicit negation. I reply to these claims taking Oaksford (2002) into consideration. Further, I propose a framework connecting context, goal, utility, and relevance, and including a hierarchical structure of goals. I argue that theories of reasoning can be developed and extended with the framework.