Assessing the costs, benefits, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit of psychological assessment: we should, we can, and here's how

To the extent that assessment improves the effectiveness of treatment, prevention, or other services, it can be said to be effective. If an assessment is as effective as alternatives for improving treatment and less costly, it can be said to be cost-effective. If that improvement in the effectiveness of the service is monetary or monetizable, the assessment can be judged beneficial. And, if the sum of monetary and monetizable benefits of assessment exceeds the sum of the costs of treatment, the assessment can be said to be cost-beneficial. An overview of cost-related issues is followed by practical strategies that researchers and administrators can use to measure incremental costs, incremental effectiveness, and incremental benefits of adding psychological assessments to other psychological interventions.     

Children's capacity to agree to psychological research: knowledge of risks and benefits and voluntariness

A series of studies investigated the capacity of children between the ages of 7 and 12 to give free and informed consent to participation in psychological research. Children were reasonably accurate in describing the purpose of studies, but many did not understand the possible benefits or especially the possible risks of participating. In several studies children's consent was not affected by the knowledge that their parents had given their permission or by the parents saying that they would not be upset if the children refused. In contrast, other studies found that children were much more likely to stop their participation if the experimenter said explicitly that she would not be upset if they stopped. We suggest that experimenters should pay more attention to describing the possible risks and benefits of participation in research, and that they should also make it clearer to children that they are free to stop once they have begun.     

Correcting Misperceptions About Cognitive Processing Therapy to Treat Moral Injury: A Response to Gray and Colleagues (this issue)

We respond to the commentary by Gray, Nash, and Litz (this issue) regarding the use of cognitive processing therapy (CPT) to address moral injury as described in our previous publication (Wachen et al., 2016). In their commentary, Gray et al. posit that CPT is inappropriate when applied to the treatment of war-related traumas involving “real moral and ethical transgressions” (i.e., moral injuries). However, Gray and colleagues’ assertions are centered on a premise that is incorrect, namely that CPT is based on the idea that “self-blame and guilt are inherently illogical or inaccurate,” and that CPT assumes that all beliefs associated with moral injury are erroneous. On the contrary, we acknowledge that self-blame and guilt may be accurate responses to warzone trauma, yet disagree that CPT is not suitable in these situations. This response serves to clarify some of the inaccurate interpretations of the treatment as stated by Gray and colleagues, and reiterates the position of CPT on many of the issues that were raised. Specifically, we discuss the use of Socratic questioning within CPT to address the issue of moral injury. Furthermore, we highlight the strong evidence base for the use of CPT in treating veterans and active military. Until it has been determined through empirical study, it is premature to assert that CPT is insufficient in addressing moral injury in combat personnel.     

What we think we do (to each other): how personality can bias behavior schemas through the projection of if-then profiles

People's knowledge about others includes not only person schemas about the typical traits of others but also behavior schemas about the likely interpersonal consequences of different behaviors. In this article, it is argued that perceiver effects can be interactive at the level of behavior schemas. A person's own personality configuration of if-then responses in social interactions (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) may contribute to that person's beliefs about the meaning and impact of relational behaviors more generally. In consequence, people who experience strong (or weak) responses to behaviors that vary along a particular trait dimension, such as warmth-coldness, may expect others to experience similarly strong (or weak) responses to those same kinds of behaviors. In 3 studies, people who were high in trait communion expected others to respond more strongly to behaviors that varied in warmth-coldness than did people who were low in trait communion, and people who were low in trait agency expected others to respond more strongly to behaviors that varied in assertiveness-unassertiveness than did people who were high in trait agency. Studies 2 and 3 provided evidence that participants' behavior schemas were based on assumptions derived from their own if-then personality profiles.     

Introduction to the special section on dissemination: dissemination research and research dissemination: how can we close the gap?

One of the greatest challenges facing health promotion and disease prevention is translating research findings into evidence-based public health and clinical practices that are actively disseminated and widely adopted. Despite the tremendous strides made in developing effective disease prevention and control programs, there has been little study of effective dissemination of evidence-based programs to and adoption by community, public health, and clinical practice settings. This special section provides a venue in which to highlight exemplary dissemination research efforts while also identifying limitations in research to date and framing important future research questions. This issue establishes a resource for investigators interested in dissemination research, with relevance to health psychology. In this sense, it can serve as a benchmark by which to examine subsequent progress. The 6 articles reflect the state of the science in dissemination research for the promotion and adoption of health behavior change interventions.     

Yes we can!: prejudice reduction through seeing (inequality) and believing (in social change)

We investigated the effect of differential perceived efficacy to reduce racial inequality (in the context of increased awareness of illegitimate in-group advantages) on White Americans' intergroup attitudes and antidiscrimination behavior. White American university students read a passage describing the underrepresentation of African Americans in their university's faculty and then wrote letters to the university administration in support of appointing more African Americans to the faculty. We experimentally varied feedback concerning efficacy to change institutional racism. Before writing their letters, participants were told that there was a low, moderate, or high chance that their efforts would be effective. Later in the experiment, participants' perceived efficacy to influence their university system was measured. Intergroup attitudes improved and antidiscrimination actions increased among participants with higher perceived efficacy in comparison with participants with low perceived efficacy. Collective guilt partially mediated the effects of efficacy beliefs on antidiscrimination actions and fully mediated the effects of efficacy beliefs on intergroup attitudes.     

Gender (mis)measurement: Guidelines for respecting gender diversity in psychological research

Empirical evidence affirms that gender is a nonbinary spectrum. Yet our review of recently published empirical articles reveals that demographic gender measurement in psychology still assumes that gender comprises just two categories: women and men. This common practice is problematic. It fails to represent psychologists' current understanding of gender, violates our ethical principles as scientists, and can result in gender misclassification. Psychologists' reliance on binary measures also conveys an exclusionary attitude that is contrary to recent ethical recommendations and contrary to the growing public concern about transgender rights. We extend five simple, no‐cost recommendations that begin to resolve these ethical and methodological problems: use and report, nonbinary gender measures; report the prevalence of nonbinary participants; clarify their inclusion and treatment in analysis; and use gender inclusive language. We also address common concerns expressed by researchers, including whether measuring “sex” resolves the issue and whether gender‐inclusive measures confuse or offend participants.     

Connecting the dots: Mobilizing theory to reveal the big picture in social psychology (and why we should do this)

During the past 20 years, practices in social psychology have drifted toward the publication of brief research reports as the main outlet for empirical findings, resulting in an exponential increase of the number of publications in our field. Recent developments questioning the reliability of these findings have increased the focus on (methodological) details and have prompted efforts to establish the robustness of isolated phenomena. Both types of developments carry the danger of impeding rather than promoting progress in the field. We can only build a cumulative knowledge base when we succeed in connecting these dots. Developing and examining broader theories about psychological processes and their implications can help connect different insights and elucidate their further implications in a way that can be used and understood within and beyond the boundaries of our discipline. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What do we measure and how do we elicit it? The case for the use of repertory grid technique in multi-party psychological contract research

ABSTRACT

The psychological contract is a multi-faceted construct and, with the rise of gig work, increasingly the contract extends beyond the conventional employer-employee relationship to encompass multi-party exchanges. Against this backdrop, the question of what should be measured when assessing the contract and how it should be elicited remains a significant issue for scholars. We argue that the potential of psychological contract theory as an explanatory lens in understanding contemporary multi-party working relationships is constrained by two key limitations inherent in conventional measurement approaches. Firstly, such approaches have favoured singular rather than multiparty perspectives, and secondly, they have broadly accorded equal weight and significance to the content dimensions unearthed, despite the fact that they may differ markedly in how they are understood by each party to the employment relationship. In order to remedy these shortcomings, we make the case for adopting repertory grid technique as a methodological framework to address measurement limitations and to more rigorously assess the content of the complex multi-party psychological contract.     

Theoretical approaches to psychological trauma: Implications for research and practice

In recent years, a range of counselling and psychotherapy interventions have been developed in work with clients and patients suffering from the psychological effects of trauma. This paper outlines various theoretical models of psychological trauma, selected because they can specifically encompass both the external aetiology (i.e. the traumatic event) and also explain (to a greater or lesser extent) the enormous range of reactions to that event. These models are critically discussed in terms of their implications for counselling practice, and as guides to further research. Examples are given of ways in which the author has drawn on different theoretical frameworks to inform her own therapeutic practice in work with people experiencing post‐traumatic stress disorder.     

Building a research base for community services for children and families: What we know and what we need to learn

We examine the knowledge base for community-based mental health services for youth and their families. A brief historical perspective on the development of community services is presented, and the fundamental components of a comprehensive child mental health service system are described. Outcome studies for service components as well as the service system as a whole are summarized. Research related to the context of treatment, i.e., service setting, cost, is presented. The authors conclude that a research base for child and family services is emerging, but there is still a paucity of well designed studies that address the complexities of a community-based system as well as the critical outcome questions that need to be addressed. Finally, promising service system developments are described and recommendations for future research are presented.     

The role prioritization model: How communal men and agentic women can (sometimes) have it all

Men and women are persistently associated with breadwinning and caregiving roles and related stereotypes. A role prioritization model (RPM) is presented that accounts for the conditions under which penalties and benefits arise due to perceived fulfillment or neglect of communal/caregiving roles (typically associated with women) and agentic/breadwinning roles (typically associated with men). Our model makes unique contributions to understanding gender stereotyping and negative evaluations for stereotype violation (i.e., backlash). First, behaviors suggesting low prioritization of one's traditional gender role—when women appear to neglect caregiving and men neglect breadwinning—produce particularly harsh judgments. Second, behaviors indicating successful balancing of role prioritization (e.g., men who augment breadwinning with communal behavior and women who augment childrearing with agentic behavior) allow avoidance of backlash. The RPM is useful for organizing existing research on gendered perceptions and for understanding perceptions of men and women who violate gender norms to create greater gender equality.     

Symptom modelling can be influenced by psychiatric categories: choices for research domain criteria (RDoC)

Psychiatric researchers typically assume that the modelling of psychiatric symptoms is not influenced by psychiatric categories; symptoms are modelled and then grouped into a psychiatric category. I highlight this primarily through analysing research domain criteria (RDoC). RDoC’s importance makes it worth scrutinizing, and this assessment also serves as a case study with relevance for other areas of psychiatry. RDoC takes inadequacies of existing psychiatric categories as holding back causal investigation. Consequently, RDoC aims to circumnavigate existing psychiatric categories by directly investigating the causal basis of symptoms. The unique methodological approach of RDoC exploits the supposed lack of influence of psychiatric categories on symptom modelling, taking psychiatric symptoms as the same regardless of which psychiatric category is employed or if no psychiatric category is employed. But this supposition is not always true. I will show how psychiatric categories can influence symptom modelling, whereby identical behaviours can be considered as different symptoms based on an individual’s psychiatric diagnosis. If the modelling of symptoms is influenced by psychiatric categories, then psychiatric categories will still play a role, a situation which RDoC researchers explicitly aim to avoid. I discuss four ways RDoC could address this issue. This issue also has important implications for factor analysis, cluster analysis, modifying psychiatric categories, and symptom based approaches.     

Saying no (to a story): personal identity and negativity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - The concept of narrativity and narrative identity has two birth certificates: it is linked to the phenomenological tradition—beginning with...     

How to consistently link extraversion and intelligence to the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene: on defining and measuring psychological phenotypes in neurogenetic research

The evidence for associations between genetic polymorphisms and complex behavioral/psychological phenotypes (traits) has thus far been weak and inconsistent. Using the well-studied Val158Met polymorphism of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene as an example, we demonstrate that using theoretical models to guide phenotype definition and measuring the phenotypes of interest with a high degree of specificity reveals strong gene-behavior associations that are consistent with prior work and that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Only after statistically controlling for irrelevant portions of phenotype variance did we observe strong (Cohen's d = 0.33-0.70) and significant associations between COMT Val158Met and both cognitive and affective traits in a healthy male sample (N = 201) in Study 1: Carriers of the Met allele scored higher in fluid intelligence (reasoning) but lower in both crystallized intelligence (general knowledge) and the agency facet of extraversion. In Study 2, we conceptually replicated the association of COMT Val158Met with the agency facet of extraversion after partialing irrelevant phenotype variance in a female sample (N = 565). Finally, through reanalysis of a large published data set we showed that Met allele carriers also scored higher in indicators of fluid intelligence after partialing verbal fluency. Because the Met allele codes for a less efficient variant of the enzyme COMT, resulting in higher levels of extrasynaptic prefrontal dopamine, these observations provide further support for a role for dopamine in both intelligence and extraversion. More importantly, the present findings have important implications for the definition of psychological phenotypes in neurogenetic research.     

Inductive inference or inductive behavior: Fisher and Neyman-Pearson approaches to statistical testing in psychological research (1940-1960)

The application of statistical testing in psychological research over the period of 1940-1960 is examined in order to address psychologists' reconciliation of the extant controversy between the Fisher and Neyman-Pearson approaches. Textbooks of psychological statistics and the psychological journal literature are reviewed to examine the presence of what Gigerenzer (1993) called a hybrid model of statistical testing. Such a model is present in the textbooks, although the mathematically incomplete character of this model precludes the appearance of a similarly hybridized approach to statistical testing in the research literature. The implications of this hybrid model for psychological research and the statistical testing controversy are discussed.     

Special issue preamble: Digit ratio (2D:4D) and individual differences research

The sexually differentiated second-to-fourth digit ratio (2D:4D) is currently frequently utilized in individual differences research as a putative indicator of the masculinizing brain organization effects of prenatal testosterone. This preamble introduces the journal special issue on this theme, entitled “Digit ratio (2D:4D) and individual differences research”. Notes regarding the background, history, and recent progress of 2D:4D research are provided, and the background of the special issue and the contents of its 11 research articles are briefly summarized.     

Further evidence of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory’s validity problems: A meta-analytic investigation—Response to Miller, Maples, and Campbell (this issue)

Miller, Maples, and Campbell (this issue) present evidence that Rosenthal and Hooley’s (2010) concerns regarding the Narcissistic Personality Inventory’s (NPI) relation to psychological health may be unwarranted. To resolve this issue empirically, we conducted a meta-analysis (k = 54, N = 38,932). Meta-analytic results revealed that a subset of NPI items were indeed problematic; items that function poorly at differentiating narcissists from non-narcissists accounted entirely for the NPI’s connection to psychological health. These items were also strongly associated with self-esteem, but unrelated to aggression/anger. In contrast, the remaining NPI items were unrelated to psychological health, but associated with aggression/anger. We conclude that although the NPI measures narcissism, its poorest functioning items also link it to outcomes unrelated to narcissism.     

Coinductive models and normal forms for modal logics (or how we learned to stop worrying and love coinduction)

We present a coinductive definition of models for modal logics and show that it provides a homogeneous framework in which it is possible to include different modal languages ranging from classical modalities to operators from hybrid and memory logics. Moreover, results that had to be proved separately for each different language—but whose proofs were known to be mere routine—now can be proved in a general way. We show, for example, that we can have a unique definition of bisimulation for all these languages, and prove a single invariance-under-bisimulation theorem.We then use the new framework to investigate normal forms for modal logics. The normal form we introduce may have a smaller modal depth than the original formula, and it is inspired by global modalities like the universal modality and the satisfiability operator from hybrid logics. These modalities can be extracted from under the scope of other operators. We provide a general definition of extractable modalities and show how to compute extracted normal forms. As it is the case with other classical normal forms—e.g., the conjunctive normal form of propositional logic—the extracted normal form of a formula can be exponentially bigger than the original formula, if we require the two formulas to be equivalent. If we only require equi-satisfiability, then every modal formula has an extracted normal form which is only polynomially bigger than the original formula, and it can be computed in polynomial time.