Conducting industrial and organizational psychological research: institutional review of research in work organizations

Although informed consent is a primary mechanism for ensuring the ethical treatment of human participants in research, both federal guidelines and American Psychological Association ethical standards recognize that exceptions to it are reasonable under certain conditions. However, agreement about what constitutes a reasonable exception to informed consent is sometimes lacking. We presented the same protocols to samples of respondents drawn from 4 populations: Institutional review board (IRB) members, managers, employees, and university faculty who were not members of IRBs. Differences in perceptions of IRB members from the other samples with respect to the risks of the protocols without informed consent and on the feasibility of conducting the research in employment organizations are discussed in terms of implications for industrial and organizational psychology research.     

Individual and institutional conflict of interest: policy review by research universities in the United States

This paper is a discussion of efforts to manage real and potential conflicts of interest in university research in the United States. The focus is on the report by an Association of American Universities (AAU) task force that addresses both individual and institutional conflict of interest issues. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

On being lonely: fear of one's own aggression as an impediment to intimacy

This paper considers loneliness from the point of view of compromise formation and the development of fantasy as a means of defending against painful affect. Our idea is that at least one strand of loneliness derives from longing for an ideal object with whom one would never have to feel aggression and from whom no aggressive actions would have to be tolerated. The development of such a fantasy in a middle-aged man is traced to early loss of a parent with missed mourning, and is shown to be ameliorated by psychoanalytic treatment that allowed the mourning to take place.     

When less is more and when more is more: The mediating roles of capacity and speed in brain-behavior efficiency

An enduring enterprise of experimental psychology has been to account for individual differences in human performance. Recent advances in neuroimaging have permitted testing of hypotheses regarding the neural bases of individual differences but this burgeoning literature has been characterized by inconsistent results. We argue that careful design and analysis of neuroimaging studies is required to separate individual differences in processing capacity from individual differences in processing speed to account for these differences in the literature. We utilized task designs which permitted separation of processing capacity influences on brain-behavior relationships from those related to processing speed. In one set of studies, participants performed verbal delayed-recognition tasks during blocked and event-related fMRI scanning. The results indicated that those participants with greater working memory (WM) capacity showed greater prefrontal cortical activity, strategically capitalized on the additional processing time available in the delay period, and evinced faster WM-retrieval rates than low-capacity participants. In another study, participants performed a digit-symbol substitution task (DSST) designed to minimize WM storage capacity requirements and maximize processing speed requirements during fMRI scanning. In some prefrontal cortical (PFC) brain regions, participants with faster processing speed showed less PFC activity than slower performers while in other PFC and parietal regions they showed greater activity. Regional-causality analysis indicated that PFC exerted more influence over other brain regions for slower than for faster individuals. These results support a model of neural efficiency in which individuals differ in the extent of direct processing links between neural nodes. One benefit of direct processing links may be a surplus of resources that maximize available capacity permitting fast and accurate performance.     

The insanity sentence: Oregon's psychiatric security review board

In response to the dilemma of management of mentally ill persons who commit crimes, Oregon has created the Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) to administrate the supervision and treatment of insanity acquittees. This paper presents an overview of the PSRB structure and examines the quasi-criminal justice features of Oregon's Insanity Sentence. The primary goal of the PSRB is the protection of societý. The maximum sentence, had the individual been found guilty, becomes the PSRB's jurisdictional period for that former defendant. A review of the administrative rules for conditional release and revocation of release that the PSRB is now in the process of adopting are described. The authors conclude that the PSRB is a promising approach which offers better community protection and better treatment for mentally ill offenders (NGRIs) than does the present prison parole system.     

Breaking-up is hard to study: A review of two decades of dissolution research

The dissolution of romantic relationships can be conceptualized in many ways, from a distressing event or a consequential life decision to a metric of a relationship's success. In the current review, we assess how relationship science has approached dissolution research over roughly the past 20 years. We identified 207 studies (from 195 papers) published between 2002–2020 that captured relationship dissolution events and coded the papers for relevant features. The most common methodological approach to studying breakups was a self-report study (92%) in which relationships were tracked over time (72%) and breakups were treated as an outcome variable (79%). These results suggest that most research on dissolution has focused on predictors of it, rather than processes required to uncouple and circumstances surrounding the breakup itself. Coding revealed heterogeneous theoretical approaches, with the most common perspective across papers—social exchange/interdependence theory—informing only 15% of the papers coded. A majority (61%) of samples were representative of the nations, regions, or localities in which the studies were conducted. Yet, samples still tended to be disproportionately comprised of young, white individuals from Western countries. We conclude by discussing potential avenues for moving our understanding of relationship dissolution forward.     

Inventing the wheel once more or learning from the history of psychotherapy research methodology: Reply to Gaudiano's comments on review

Gaudiano's criticism of one part of my review of ACT outcome research (Öst, 2008) is refuted on all issues but one. It is clear that the average amount of grant support for the ACT-studies was smaller than that of CBT-studies, even if the proportion of studies having grant support was not lower. However, that fact should only influence 25% (2 out of 8) of the methodology variables on which ACT-studies had lower mean scores than CBT-studies. It is not acceptable that a relatively new treatment, such as ACT, should be evaluated by more lenient criteria than already established therapies like CBT. If proponents of a new treatment wish to claim that their therapy is empirically supported then they have to accept to be evaluated by the APA Task Force criteria. It is time that ACT researchers start using the current psychotherapy research methodology.     

Gender influences as an impediment to knowledge sharing: when men and women fail to seek peer feedback

Little research has considered how work team characteristics influence feedback-seeking behavior among team members. The authors' aim in this research was to identify central sources of influence on feedback-seeking behavior in a mixed-gender context. They placed men and women in work groups of varying gender composition. The participants then participated in a gender-biased (perceived as either male-oriented or female-oriented) negotiation exercise. Findings indicated that the gender of the participant, the team's gender composition, and the gender orientation of the task influenced feedback-seeking behavior among team members.     

When clinical care is like research: the need for review and consent

The prevailing “segregated model” for understanding clinical research sharply separates it from clinical care and subjects it to extensive regulations and guidelines. This approach is based on the fact that clinical research relies on procedures and methods—research biopsies, blinding, randomization, fixed treatment protocols, placebos—that pose risks and burdens to participants in order to collect data that might benefit all patients. Reliance on these methods raises the potential for exploitation and unfairness, and thus points to the need for independent ethical review and more extensive informed consent. In contrast, it is widely assumed that clinical care does not raise these ethical concerns because it is designed to promote the best interests of individual patients. The segregation of clinical research from clinical care has been largely effective at protecting research participants. At the same time, this approach ignores the fact that several aspects of standard clinical care, such as clinician training and scheduling, also pose some risks and burdens to present patients for the benefit of all patients. We argue that recently proposed learning health care systems offer a way to address this concern, and better protect patients, by developing integrated review and consent procedures. Specifically, current approaches base the need for independent ethical review and more extensive informed consent on whether an activity is categorized as clinical research or clinical care. An ethically sounder approach, which could be incorporated into learning health care systems, would be to base the need for independent ethical review and more extensive informed consent on the extent to which an activity poses risks to present patients for the benefit of all patients.     

Social conditions for human happiness: A review of research

Empirical research on happiness took off in the 1970s and accelerated after the emergence of positive psychology by 2000. Today this has resulted in some 23,000 research findings. In this article, I take stock of the findings on social conditions for happiness and distinguish between conditions at the macro level of society, the meso level of organisations and the micro level of individual conditions. A new review technique is applied, an online findings archive is used, in which research findings on happiness are described in a uniform way and sorted by subject.     

When less is more: Consumer aversion to unused utility

A series of experiments demonstrates that consumers exhibit aversion to waste during forward-looking purchase. These experiments further reveal that such behavior is driven by distaste for unused utility, a reaction that is shown to be distinct from an aversion to squandering money. Waste aversion is especially pronounced when consumers anticipate future consequences and deprivation is salient. In addition to demonstrating robustness across consumers and marketing contexts, the results also demonstrate how waste aversion can lead to self-defeating behavior in which consumers forego desired utility. Finally, the present research demonstrates and discusses the implications of waste aversion for a variety of marketing issues, including buy-rent markets, bundling, and the fundamental distinction between goods and services.     

Mental health literacy of those with major depression and suicidal ideation: an impediment to help seeking

Mental health literacy is the knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders that aid their recognition, management, or prevention, and is an important determinant of help seeking. This has relevance in suicide prevention, particularly for those with major depression, the clinical condition most frequently associated with suicidal behavior. In this study of a random and representative community sample, a vignette depicting classical features of major depression was presented to subjects along with questions related to mental health literacy. The responses of those with major depression, as delineated by the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders instrument, both with and without suicidal ideation, were compared to those of a third group of respondents. The results demonstrated that despite increased professional contact by those with major depression and suicidal ideation, there were few differences among the three groups on either open-ended or direct questions related to mental health literacy. This indicates that increased professional contact in itself was not related to increased mental health literacy, and suggests that more specific psychoeducational programs are required.     

The psychoanalyst: On becoming more human than otherwise

Classical psychoanalytic technique, which called for the role of the analyst to be a scientific observer, removed from interaction with the patient, imposed such restrictions on the analyst that often his or her simple human responsiveness to the patient was curtailed. Harry Stack Sullivan revolutionized the field by introducing the concept of “participant observation,” and others of his time made similar observations. Gradually, over the years, analysts have become more real, more human, and more interactive with their patients. Contrary to classical opinion, this departure from the original technique does not interfere with analytic work, and, in fact, enhances it, if the analyst monitors and analyzes the reactions of patients to this more human engagement. Examples are provided to support this conclusion. Murray Krim is a supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Adjunct Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Postdoctoral Program at Adelphi University, and supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.     

Less is more: The availability heuristic in early childhood

This study examined whether young children are influenced by the subjective experience associated with an easy or difficult recall when making memory decisions. Seventy‐one children, aged 4, 6, and 8 years, were asked to generate either a small (easy condition) or large (hard condition) number of first names. Statistical analyses revealed that participants in the hard condition were more likely to infer that they did not know many names than participants in the easy condition, contrary to what would be expected if children based their memory judgement on the objective number of recalled items. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that children as young as 4 years old rely on the subjective experience of ease to regulate their decision‐making processes. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.