From statistics to trust: Psychology in transition

Modern psychology has aimed at being a natural science. This has been difficult because psychological processes are influenced by indefinitely complex, irreversibly changing contexts. Attempting to circumvent these obstacles, one has resorted to a group level methodology yielding small statistical differences and correlations that fail to provide sufficient support for theoretical and practical advance. Turning from this “psycho-demography” to person-centered psychology involves a change from statistical analysis of group-averages to logical analyses of personal communications, and from studying causation (what leads to what?) to studying implication (what follows from what?) also called psycho-logic. Since communications depend on trust, this replaces statistics, both in research and practice. It is concluded that psychology can only be about the concrete, and that future advances may lie in developing psycho-logic in terms of semantic non-numerical computer algorithms.     

Sexuality and textuality

Post-Freudian theories have been criticized for abandoning what is basic to psychoanalysis: the biological body and sexuality as the source of intrapsychic motivation. Arguably, however, they are more present than ever before-for example, in explanations by theorists who propose therapeutic actions beyond interpretation, presymbolic enactments of procedural memories, or disclosures of the analyst's bodily states as an aspect of intersubjectivity. By contrast, the Freudian body was always a text whose mediated meanings require interpretation, for which Freud provided eloquent guides. It is this textuality, and not sexuality, that distinguishes a psychoanalytic approach: a psycho-logic constructed according to a grammar of desire that mediates experience and creates interpretable behavior, both in action and in speech. Theoretical changes in psychoanalysis are traced historically along the dimension of textuality, the example of perversion is invoked, and the conclusion drawn that any theoretical approach, traditional or post-Freudian, that expands an understanding of textuality contributes to the science of psychoanalysis.     

How wide is the widening scope of psychoanalysis and how solid is its structural model? Some concerns and observations

The author advances the thesis that in the past 35 years there has been a relatively silent but nonetheless significant movement within the mainstream of American psychoanalysis toward a more "modest" position. This movement has been stimulated from different sources, sometimes with diverse goals and different programs. One determinant was the reaction to the post-World War II euphoria in regard to psychoanalysis and its possible therapeutic powers. Another element has been the ongoing consolidation of our knowledge and understanding of the ego-psychological, structural-model approach to analytic theory and technique, an approach which emphasizes both intrapsychic conflict and compromise formations. A consequence of this more modest position has been a greater appreciation of the limitations of psychoanalysis as well as the significance of those limitations. This more realistic appraisal of psychoanalysis may not have encouraged the widening scope of the indications for analysis, but the enhanced understanding of its limitations offers the promise of more effective psychoanalytic work in areas that have not been considered ideal for the so-called "traditional" analysis. It is suggested that more sophisticated approaches in the analysis of resistance and character, of "conflict" (in distinction to "diagnoses"), together with a more applicable understanding of the psychoanalytic process, can all contribute to a deepening, if not necessarily widening, of our psychoanalytic endeavors.     

包容多样性的理论建构

Ye和Stam (2012)的评论中将Hong, Chao, Yang和Rosner (2010)标签成逻辑经验主义派, 他们认为这个派别常常“限制”了理论的应用和其本身的价值。为了向读者们提供一个对理论建立过程的更完整的理解, 同时也为了从这些迥异的观点中汲取更多知识, 在这篇文章中, 我们比较 Hong等人(2010)与Ye和Stam (2012)所建议的两种不同方法论之间的差异, 并将其放入更广阔的历史背景下进行论述。我们的主张是：每一种方法论都是有它自己的适用范围和局限性。对研究者来说, 保持在对待不同论点上开明和宽容的态度, 并避免本质化不同方法论间的差异也是十分重要的。     

Color, consciousness, and the isomorphism constraint

The relations among consciousness, brain behavior, and scientific explanation are explored in the domain of color perception. Current scientific knowledge about color similarity, color composition, dimensional structure, unique colors, and color categories is used to assess Locke's "inverted spectrum argument" about the undetectability of color transformations. A symmetry analysis of color space shows that the literal interpretation of this argument--reversing the experience of a rainbow--would not work. Three other color to color transformations might work, however, depending on the relevance of certain color categories. The approach is then generalized to examine behavioral detection of arbitrary differences in color experiences, leading to the formulation of a principled distinction, called the "isomorphism constraint," between what can and cannot be determined about the nature of color experience by objective behavioral means. Finally, the prospects for achieving a biologically based explanation of color experience below the level of isomorphism are considered in light of the limitations of behavioral methods. Within-subject designs using biological interventions hold the greatest promise for scientific progress on consciousness, but objective knowledge of another person's experience appears impossible. The implications of these arguments for functionalism are discussed.     

Sales-as-practice: an introduction and methodological outline

There are strong indications that sales practices are currently being redefined from the ground up and that many of the inherited conceptual models of selling will not hold into a future that is defined by new selling techniques and technologies. This paper introduces a research perspective that can provide an important source of insight into how sales work and salespeople are currently being reconstituted: the sales-as-practice approach. In common with ‘practice turns’ evident in other business literature, such as the recent marketing-as-practice or the by now well-established strategy-as-practice approach, sales-as-practice requires of researchers to develop a sensitivity towards salespeople's ways of doing and being in social and material contexts. While acknowledging potential limitations, we identify some significant benefits of adopting this approach for our conceptual understanding of the sales domain, particularly in understanding persistence and transformation in sales practices, in paying attention to the role of material objects in configuring these practices and in appreciating the role of such practices in producing salespeople's ways of being. Moreover, we argue that becoming more closely acquainted with sales professionals' lifeworlds can aid in bridging the perceived divide between academic and practitioner knowledge in our domain.     

Decision making, risk taking and psychological time: Review of empirical findings and psychological theory

Three domains of research (1) involvement in past and future events, (2) knowledge of the past and the future, and (3) value as a function of time (discounting) were used to elucidate man's limitations when he makes decisions based on earlier experience with consequences in the close and distant future. Evidence from all three areas illustrate that man is captured in a narrow time-space sphere around "here and now".—One consequence of this limitation is that risk-willingness increases the longer ahead the outcome of a decision is likely to occur. To specify, the less we are involved in, the less we know of and the less the consequences are evaluated the larger is our willingness to make decisions with future risks. Learning from experience seems to play a minor role in improving decision making. Ill-defined problems and non-distinct outcomes make "economic man" fairly useless as a norm for decision making in decisions with longranging effects and of a non-repititive character.—The paper ends with a discussion of strategies that can compensate for the limitations of distal cognition.     

‘You're the doctor,Doctor!’: is social constructionism a helpful stance in general practice consultations?

This paper considers the advantages and limitations of using a social constructionist stance in general practice, and is illustrated with two case examples. An approach is suggested for clinical practice using social constructionism and biomedical knowledge dialectically, each as a commentary on the limitations of the other.     

Gender role identity from an ego developmental perspective

This study, designed to respond to current limitations in gender role identity measurement, presents a conceptual and empirical approach to gender role identity that relies on ego developmental theory. To begin the process of construct validation of this approach to gender role identity, gender role identity was examined in relation to ego development, gender, and marital status. Gender role identity was measured via an interview adapted from Waterman and by the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Ego development was assessed via Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. The sample consisted of 107 young adult men and women, married and single. In support of construct validity, the gender role interview was found to be correlated with the ego development measure. In support of discriminant validity, different patterns of correlates by gender were found between the gender role interview and the Bem Sex Role Inventory.     

Knowledge,context, and social standards

This paper defends the view that standards, which are typically social in nature, play a role in determining whether a subject has knowledge. While the argument focuses on standards that pertain to reasoning, I also consider whether there are similar standards for memory and perception.Ultimately, I argue that the standards are context sensitive and, as such, we must view attributions of knowledge as indexical. I exploit similarities between this view and a version of the relevant alternatives reply to skepticism in order to defend this reply against the objection that it is ad hoc.A shorter version of this paper, entitled Knowledge and Context, was presented as a symposium at the 1986 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association and appeared in the Journal of Philosophy 83 (October 1986) 574-83. Because of space limitations, much of the material in sections 1 and 2 of this longer version was compressed into footnotes. Section 3 and many of the footnotes were deleted entirely and the argument of section 5 was presented in a condensed form. I am grateful to Frederick Schmitt and the editors of Synthese for the opportunity to present the paper in its original form.     

Women showing off: notes on female exhibitionism

The limitations of the phallocentric cast of earlier psychoanalytic formulations of "female exhibitionism" linger into the present. In part this connects to certain historical expectations for women's social behavior, and to the vicissitudes of Freud's insufficient knowledge of women in his libidinal psychosexual phasing used as a basis for analytic understanding. The contemporary fade of libido theory contributes to the neglect of such topics as they relate to the biological body. Yet ease and conflict regarding conscious and unconscious female body image representations related to that stepchild of theory-pregnancy and childbirth in particular-play a major role in female body display. Recognition of such body fantasies and female body meanings from early childhood into maturity tends to be marginalized within all of the psychoanalytic theories current today. The focus here on female exhibitionism suggests a normative spectrum for pleasurably active sex seeking and pleasurable procreative desire and fantasy that is present in a female's use of her body and which (of course, but secondarily) can become caught up in conflict. Two cases accenting analyses of female "showing off" behavior are included.     

知识差异和知识冲突对团队创新的影响

通过情景模拟实验比较了高低知识差异和有无知识冲突两个变量四个水平下的团队创新度。结果表明,知识差异和知识冲突存在着交互作用;当知识差异较小时,知识冲突对于团队创新度具有积极作用;当知识差异较大时,知识冲突所起的是一种震荡作用;当团队不存在知识冲突时,较高的知识差异对团队创新度具有积极作用;存在知识冲突时,高知识差异团队和低知识差异团队的创新度没有显著差异     

Analyzing a priori knowledge

There are four approaches to analyzing the concept of a priori knowledge. The primary target of the reductive approach is the concept of a priori justification. The primary target of the nonreductive approach is the concept of a priori knowledge. There are two approaches to analyzing each primary target. A theory-neutral approach provides an analysis that does not presuppose any general theory of knowledge or justification. A theory-laden approach provides an analysis that does presuppose some general theory of knowledge or justification (call it the background theory). Those who embrace a theory-laden analysis incur a special burden: they must separate the features of their analysis that are constitutive of the a priori from those that are constitutive of the background theory. My goal is to illustrate how the failure to separate these features leads to erroneous conclusions about the nature of a priori knowledge.

Reinforcement in applied settings: figuring out ahead of time what will work.

This article reviews the practical value of conceptual attempts to specify the circumstances of reinforcement ahead of time. Improvements are traced from the transituational-reinforcer approach of Meehl (1950), through the probability-differential model of Premack (1959, 1965), to the response deprivation and disequilibrium approach (Timberlake, 1980, 1984; Timberlake & Allison, 1974). The application value of each approach is evaluated on the grounds of simplicity, accuracy, and adaptability. The article shows that the disequilibrium approach accounts for and extends current empirically driven techniques of reinforcement control and examines some of its limitations. The disequilibrium approach clarifies how current knowledge can be used to predict more accurately the circumstances of reinforcement and invites the collaboration of applied and basic research in its further development.     

错误信念任务中的知识偏差

有观点指出,年幼儿童在错误信念任务上的发展变化,不是发生了概念变化的质变,而是知识偏差的表现。知识偏差是指当我们尝试理解一个更不知情的观点时,不能忽略自己拥有的额外信息并受此影响而产生偏差的倾向。本文对知识偏差的含义及其在错误信念任务中可能产生的影响做了较为详细的综述和分析,并就在错误信念任务中消除知识偏差影响的可能性进行了探讨。     

Assertion, Practical Reason, and Pragmatic Theories of Knowledge

Defenders of pragmatic theories of knowledge (such as contextualism and sensitive invariantism) argue that these theories, unlike those that invoke a single standard for knowledge, comport with the intuitively compelling thesis that knowledge is the norm of assertion and practical reason. In this paper, I dispute this thesis, and argue that, therefore, the prospects for both "high standard" and "low standard" invariantist theories are better than the pragmatists contend. I also provide a limited defense of the "high standard" approach, and contend that if one abandons the thesis that knowledge is the norm of assertion and practical reason, the most serious arguments against it lose their force.     

Incurable suffering from the “hiatus theoreticus”? Some epistemological problems in modern medicine and the clinical relevance of philosophy of medicine

Up to now neither the question, whether all theoretical medical knowledge can at least be described as scientific, nor the one how exactly access to the existing scientific and theoretical medical knowledge during clinical problem-solving is made, has been sufficiently answered. Scientific theories play an important role in controlling clinical practice and improving the quality of clinical care in modern medicine on the one hand, and making it vindicable on the other. Therefore, the vagueness of unexplicit interrelations between medicine's stock of knowledge and medical practice appears as a gap in the theoretical concept of modern medicine which can be described as Hiatus theoreticus in the anatomy of medicine. A central intention of the paper is to analyze the role of philosophy of medicine for the clarification of the theoretical basis of medical practice. Clinical relevance and normativity in the sense of modern theory of science are suggested as criteria to establish a differentiation between philosophy of medicine as a primary medical discipline and the application of general philosophy in medicine.     

Children of depressed parents: an integrative review

This article reviews the various literatures on the adjustment of children of depressed parents, difficulties in parenting and parent-child interaction in these families, and contextual factors that may play a role in child adjustment and parent depression. First, issues arising from the recurrent, episodic, heterogeneous nature of depression are discussed. Second, studies on the adjustment of children with a depressed parent are summarized. Early studies that used depressed parents as controls for schizophrenic parents found equivalent risk for child disturbance. Subsequent studies using better-defined samples of depressed parents found that these children were at risk for a full range of adjustment problems and at specific risk for clinical depression. Third, the parenting difficulties of depressed parents are described and explanatory models of child adjustment problems are outlined. Contextual factors, particularly marital distress, remain viable alternative explanations for both child and parenting problems. Fourth, important gaps in the literature are identified, and a consistent, if unintentional, "mother-bashing" quality in the existing literature is noted. Given the limitations in knowledge, large-scale, long-term, longitudinal studies would be premature at this time.     

The Overconfidence Phenomenon as a Consequence of Informal Experimenter-Guided Selection of Almanac Items

The paper argues for an ecological approach to realism of confidence in general knowledge. It is stressed that choice of answer to almanac items and confidence judgments derive from knowledge structures formed by adaptation to a natural environment. People are regarded as well-calibrated to their natural environments and the overconfidence phenomenon is seen as a consequence of the procedures involved in the creation of "traditional" general knowledge items, rather than as the result of a cognitive bias. An experiment is reported showing that when items are informally selected by human "selectors," instructed to select items that differentiate between more and less knowledgeable subjects, we observe poor calibration and the usual overconfidence phenomenon. However, when the item selection is "debiased" and the objects to be compared in the almanac items are selected randomly from a natural environment the overconfidence phenomenon disappears and we observe good calibration, and good resolution. These results support an ecological approach to realism of confidence and suggest that general procedures for debiasing overconfidence may be unwarranted.     

Considerations in the choice of interobserver reliability estimates

Two types of interobserver reliability values may be needed in treatment studies in which observers constitute the primary data-acquisition system: trial reliability and the reliability of the composite unit or score which is subsequently analyzed, e.g., daily or weekly session totals. Two approaches to determining interobserver reliability are described: percentage agreement and "correlational" measures of reliability. The interpretation of these estimates, factors affecting their magnitude, and the advantages and limitations of each approach are presented.