Mood-related changes in construing self and others

Two repertory grids were administered to 31 Canadian undergraduates (20 women and 11 men) in which they rated themselves and 10 personal acquaintances on 11 supplied constructs. For the initial (baseline) grid they followed neutral instructions. For the second grid, they rated the same figures while listening to happy music and attempting to recall pleasant memories. The results from both grids closely approximated a set of theoretical predictions derived from a model of interpersonal judgment by Lefebvre, Lefebvre, and Adams-Webber (1986) within the framework of personal construct theory.     

Asymmetry in human cognition: further replication and extension

Vladimir Lefebvre proposed an algebraic model of self-reflexion in the 1980s. He viewed reflexion as a product of the structure and computational rules of Gamma algebra and his equations are considered metaphors for how consciousness is structured. From the framework of this model, Lefebvre hypothesized an asymmetry in human cognition. One of the early studies supporting his model was conducted by Victorina Lefebvre. Over the years, other studies have been conducted, but not all have shown similar support as the original findings of Victorina Lefebvre. This study attempted to extend her findings in testing whether or not other ambiguous stimuli could be used in support of the model.     

列斐伏尔与现代世界的日常生活批判

列斐伏尔的《现代世界的日常生活批判》一书,是他从马克思哲学观点出发．批判现代消费社会的一本重要著作。在这本书中,列斐伏尔指出：现代社会是一个被控消费的官僚社会,这是一个风格消失、意义走向零度化的社会,日常生活世界成为资本主义社会意识形态的共谋者。从日常生活批判出发,以文化革命日常生活中的异化现象,构成了列斐伏尔的理论主题。     

‘Everyone who wants to,can be a Körtti’: how young people negotiate the religious space of a revivalist movement

19th century Protestant revivalist movements have played an important role in Nordic societies at large. In this article, I explore young people’s socio-spatial construction of the Awakening movement, one of the largest traditional yet vibrant revivalist movements under the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. In doing so, I aim to reveal how youths define their collective religious identity in a time when non-institutional and private emphasis on religion prevails. In addition, vague membership, ritual-centred participation, and the significance of the annual gathering raise topical questions regarding belonging. I build my analysis on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of social space. The research data consist of interviews with young people (aged 14–18) and the narratives the young people wrote themselves. These data are complemented with my observations from the movement’s summer gathering. The findings reveal the agency of the young people as ‘inhabitants’ (Lefebvre) of tradition-based religious space.     

Globalization and the Evolution of Democratic Civil Society: Democracy as Spatial Discourse

At its core, the evolution of democratic civil society is a process of transcending existing, historical social space, a process that desires to dissolve “political society” into “civil society” and with it to reformulate space as more democratic, participatory public space, and global spheres of interaction. In this article, the author examines the implications of globalization and the evolution of democratic civil society. Drawing on the work of French theorists de Certeau and Lefebvre, the author examines the nature of space as a social construct and the importance of understanding space as a practiced place in relation to the evolution of democratic civil society that makes transnational space a practiced place for global civil society. The author argues that as globalization spreads across nation-states, spatial forces produced by economic, cultural, and political discourses and practices give way to the potential for the evolution of democratic civil society.     

Modeling an experiment on construing self and others

In this paper we analyze the results of two repertory grid experiments in which subjects categorized themselves and others on bipolar constructs (Adams-Webber and Rodney, Canadian Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 1983, 15, No 1, 52–59). We attempt to explain these results on the basis of the assumption that the subjects relied upon a special “algebraic processor” for modeling the self and others, previously described by Lefebvre (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1980, 22, 83–120; Algebra of conscience: A comparative analysis of western and soviet ethical systems, 1982, Reidel: Dordrecht; Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1985, 29, 289–310).     

The Space That Difference Makes: On Marginality,Social Justice and the Future of the Health Humanities

Feminist theorist and educator, bell hooks, asserts that to seek true liberation one must choose marginality. One must choose to occupy the space outside the binary between colonizer-colonized, hegemonic center-periphery, and us-them in order to create a location of possibility. This essay will reveal the practice of social justice as the navigation of the space that difference makes and argue that choosing marginality provides a framework for health humanities work towards social justice in health care. The space of the launderette that is depicted in Hanif Kureishi’s 1986 film, My Beautiful Laundrette, provides an example of choosing marginality and illustrates how difference structures both real and imagined spaces, which influences how individuals ultimately perceive one another. We will draw from the work of bell hooks; political geographer, Edward Soja; and Marxist philosopher, Henri Lefebvre, to demonstrate the importance of the health humanities’ position at the margin to traditional health care education.     

Learned Resourcefulness and Situation-Specific Coping with Stress

This study examined whether individuals who report a broad repertoire of coping skills vary their coping efforts as a function of situational factors. Three weeks prior to their midterm exam, 80 graduate students completed Rosenbaum's (1980b) Self-Control Schedule, which assessed subjects' learned resourcefulness. High (HR) and low (LR) resourcefulness groups were created by using the upper and lower thirds of the distribution. On the day of the exam and a week later, prior to receiving results, subjects completed the Strain Questionnaire (Lefebvre & Sandford, 1985), Ways of Coping Checklist (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985), and other self-report measures. Results showed that HR subjects significantly reduced their problem-focused coping efforts from preparation week to waiting week, whereas LR subjects did not. In contrast, LR individuals reported significantly more wishful thinking, distancing, tension reduction, keeping to self, and self-blame during waiting week. For both measurement weeks, HR individuals reported significantly less stress symptoms than LR subjects.     

Locating Religion in the Context of Charitable Food Assistance: An Ethnographic Study of Food Banks in a Finnish City

This article explores how, for whom, and to what extent religion is part of the reality that people enter into as they seek food assistance from a religious organization. Drawing from an ethnographic study of food assistance places in a Finnish city and applying Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a theoretical approach, the article describes the role of religion in the perceived, conceived, and lived space of charitable food provision in a secular Nordic welfare state. The findings show how the role of religion in the context of food assistance is subject to particular contexts and that this role is socially produced in the practices of the food banks, in the goals of the food providers, and in the lived experiences of the food recipients. The findings suggest that charitable food assistance is a social space where divergent readings of space as either religious or secular are potentially contested. The study provides a novel approach to understanding food assistance with its interconnections with religion and poses further questions for policy development, for religious organizations engaged in charitable food provision, and for future research.     

个人奋斗及其相关研究

个人奋斗作为个人目标概念中最有代表性的一种,是一种特定的、与情境目标有关的人格意向结构,指的是个体通过日常行为所努力达成的特性生活目标。根据目标理论的层次结构,个人奋斗及类似概念被统称为人格中的“中层”目标单元。文章选取Emmons的个人奋斗理论,从个人奋斗的基本概念及其测评开始,论述其与幸福感、人格特质的相关关系,并简要评述了几种不同的个人目标理论,呈现了一种与传统特质理论不同的人格研究方法     

The Personal/Group Discrimination Discrepancy: Women Talk About Their Experiences1

Participants in research on discrimination consistently rate discrimination directed at their group higher than at themselves personally as a member of that group. In order to examine this personal/group discrimination discrepancy, women were asked to spontaneously verbalize their thoughts as they made ratings for personal and group discrimination on 11-point scales. In Study 1, university women who raised a greater number of life domains for group discrimination than for personal discrimination showed a larger personal/group discrimination discrepancy because of lower ratings for personal discrimination. An analysis of participants' protocols revealed that many attended to different domains when rating personal and group discrimination, and that these participants showed a larger personal/group discrimination discrepancy because of lower ratings for personal discrimination. Participants' ratings for group discrimination did not differ as a function of the number or content of the domains. The findings were replicated in Study 2 with working women, and are identified as two contributing factors to the personal/group discrimination discrepancy. The societal implications of the results are discussed in terms of the tendency for disadvantaged group members to downplay their personal experience with discrimination because it does not fit the stereotype of what is being experienced by the group.     

Acculturation and depressive symptoms in Muslim university students: personal-family acculturation match

The relationships of personal acculturation and of personal-family acculturation match to depressive symptoms were investigated in a sample of 68 Muslim university students. Two dimensions of personal and family acculturation were assessed: heritage and mainstream culture identification. Participants completed the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (Ryder, Alden, & Paulhus, 2000 ) and the depressive disorder subscale of the Psychiatric Diagnostic Screening Questionnaire (Zimmerman & Mattia, 1999 ). For personal acculturation, individuals with high personal heritage culture identification reported fewer lifetime (but not past-year) depressive symptoms. In contrast, individuals with high personal mainstream culture identification reported more past-year (but not lifetime) depressive symptoms. The hypothesis that a match between personal and family acculturation orientation would be associated with fewer depressive symptoms was supported for heritage culture identification only. For past-year depression, the two match conditions (low or high personal and family heritage culture identification) were associated with significantly fewer depressive symptoms than a low personal/high family mismatch but did not differ from a high personal/low family mismatch. For lifetime depression, a high personal/high family match was associated with significantly fewer depressive symptoms than all other conditions. Findings suggests that, for Muslims, a match of high personal and high family heritage culture identification may act as a protective factor for the experience of depressive symptoms both in the short term (past year) and in the long term (lifetime).     

Qualified therapists’ experience of personal therapy

Recent work shows that the majority of therapists strongly value personal therapy for what it can bring to their professional practice, and for personal development. The aim of this study was to explore qualified therapists’ experiences of personal therapy. Of the 220 qualified therapists who were contacted via post and asked to take part in a questionnaire study, 48 returned the completed questionnaire, which consisted of a series of closed and open questions. Two‐thirds of respondents had engaged in personal therapy. The two most frequently cited reasons for engaging in personal therapy were personal growth and personal distress. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) identified two broad domains: impact on the person and impact on the professional. Results show that those surveyed recognised the value of personal therapy to themselves as a form of self‐care and personal development. Personal therapy was valued in professional practice as a form of experiential learning from being in the client role. The limitations of this research included a relatively low response rate, raising the question of whether those most likely to have had positive experiences of personal therapy were more likely to participate. Future research might deliberately seek to understand negative experiences of personal therapy. Other avenues for future research include the need to understand how experiences of therapy relate to gender, profession, and therapeutic orientation.     

个人自立与自我图式、他人图式

根据前期系列研究的结果提出了高个人自立者的自我图式、他人图式均比低个人自立者积极的假设, 从外显和内隐两个方面分别设计实验对个人自立高分组和低分组各30名大学生进行了研究, 以检验该假设。研究1采用形容词4级评定任务, 结果发现：①在反应时指标上, 高、低个人自立组的差异不显著; ②在评价等级指标上, 个人自立高分组对积极词的评价等级显著高于低分组, 对消极词的评价等级边缘显著的低于低分组。研究2采用外来情绪Simon任务(extrinsic affective Simon task, EAST), 结果发现：①在反应时指标上, 在过去自我和将来自我条件下, 高、低个人自立组的EAST分数没有显著差异, 在现在自我条件下, 个人自立高分组的EAST分数显著高于低分组; 在过去、现在和将来他人条件下, 个人自立高分组的EAST分数均显著高于低分组。②在错误率指标上, 高、低个人自立组的差异不显著。总的来看, 两个子研究的结果均支持了研究假设。     

What Makes Mental Associations Personal or Extra‐Personal? Conceptual Issues in the Methodological Debate about Implicit Attitude Measures

Over the last decade, a new class of indirect measurement procedures has become increasingly popular in many areas of psychology. However, these implicit measures have also sparked controversies about the nature of the constructs they assess. One controversy has been stimulated by the question of whether some implicit measures (or implicit measures in general) assess extra‐personal rather than personal associations. We argue that, despite empirical and methodological advances stimulated by this debate, researchers have not sufficiently addressed the conceptual question of how to define extra‐personal in contrast to personal associations. Based on a review of possible definitions, we argue that some definitions render the controversy obsolete, whereas others imply fundamentally different empirical and methodological questions. As an alternative to defining personal and extra‐personal associations in an objective sense, we suggest an empirical approach that investigates the meta‐cognitive inferences that make a given association subjectively personal or extra‐personal for the individual.     

Altering access to autobiographical episodes with prior semantic knowledge

Within autobiographical knowledge, semantic and episodic memory are traditionally considered separate, but newer models place them along a continuum, which raises the possibility of an intermediate form of knowledge - personal semantics. This study tested how different types of semantics – general semantics and two forms of personal semantics – impact access to personal episodic memories. In two experiments, participants made a series of true/false judgments about a prime statement, which reflected a general semantic fact, a context-dependent (e.g., repeated event) or context-independent (e.g., trait), personal semantic fact and then retrieved a specific past episodic memory. There was a significantly stronger priming effect for accessing specific episodic memories after judging personal semantic facts versus general facts. We also found that context-dependent and -independent personal semantic facts had separable priming effects on episodic memory. These findings support a continuum model of memory and verifies that there are multiple forms of personal knowledge.     

Resilience is associated with better recovery in Chinese people diagnosed with coronary heart disease

This study investigated the impact of personal resilience (a composite measure of optimism, perceived control and self-esteem) on outcome measures in 67 Chinese coronary heart disease patients in response to an 8-week rehabilitation programme. The effect of personal resilience on posttraumatic growth attributed to the onset of heart disease was also examined. Results indicated that coronary heart disease patients high in personal resilience achieved better outcomes than those low in personal resilience, as indicated by higher physical and mental summary measures in SF-36, lower cholesterol levels and better performance on the 6?min walk test. Moreover, personal resilience was demonstrated to be a significant predictor of the level of posttraumatic growth although the rehabilitation programme exerted a weak mediating effect on the link between personal resilience and posttraumatic growth. Findings were discussed in relation to clinical implications of the construct of personal resilience and the intervention programme.     

Peer victimization and self‐esteem of ethnic minority group children

An experimental study was carried out among Turkish children (10 to 12 years) living in the Netherlands for examining the relationship between peer victimization and self‐esteem. Related to the social psychological distinction between personal and social identity, a distinction was made between personal and ethnic self‐esteem and between personal and ethnic victimization. It was found that personal self‐esteem negatively predicted personal victimization but not ethnic victimization, and ethnic self‐esteem tended to predict ethnic victimization but not personal victimization. Furthermore, peer victimization had a negative causal effect on momentary self‐feelings independent of the level of self‐esteem. In addition, peer victimization based on ethnic group membership had a somewhat stronger negative effect on self‐feelings than victimization based on personal characteristics. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cracking the Code: Using Personal Narratives in Research

The use of personal narratives in research across the field of psychology has dramatically increased in recent years. In studies spanning a wide range of topics, personal event narratives have provided especially valuable insights into the processes and products of cognitive development. This article offers a guide for researchers who might use personal narratives in research currently or in the future. Issues and best practices surrounding collecting, transcribing, and coding personal narratives are presented. Practical challenges, commonly used methods, and recommended guidelines are described. Illustrations of different types of personal narrative coding systems are offered. The article also highlights benefits of and resources for conducting personal narrative research.