Global Change: New Challenges for Psychology

Perception of environmental degradation and awareness of environmental hazards came gradually, and was followed by collective action. Global change is different because of its specific features, which raise new issues for action-oriented psychological research. The lack of consensus among scientists, the global nature of the change, and the type of risk are analysed in order to develop an agenda for research. Priority should be given to acquiring a better knowledge of the cognitive process in the face of serious danger with a high margin of uncertainty.     

The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the 21st Century

Research on political terrorism, which began in the early 1970s, faces some persistent problems. These involve defining the concept, collecting empirical data, building integrative theory, and avoiding the attribution of terrorism to personality disorders or "irrationality." Furthermore, analysis risks being driven by events or the concerns of policymakers. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that psychological explanations of terrorism must take multiple levels of analysis into account, linking the individual to the group and to society. Future research should critically examine the assumption that a "new terrorism" has appeared at the end of the 20th century. Analysts should also take advantage of 30 years of history to develop comparisons and developmental studies that look not only at the causes of terrorism but at changes in terrorist strategy, the termination of terrorist campaigns, government decision-making, and policy effectiveness.     

Archival Data: Advantages and Disadvantages for Research in Psychology

Archival data may be thought of as any sort of information, previously collected by others, amenable to systematic study. Here, the focus is on information that may be used to answer questions related to psychological phenomena, with an overview of the myriad sources of data available to the psychological researcher, and the advantages and disadvantages of secondary versus primary data use. Particularly creative uses of archival data and good examples of archived studies, along with resources for those interested in archival data, are given.     

Environmental Psychology and Quality of Life Research

Applied Research in Quality of Life -     

Gender Research in Spanish Psychology: An Overview for International Readers

In the last decades, many political and socioeconomic transformations occurred in Western countries with a considerable impact on gender equality. In this special issue, we aim to show how these transformations can generate changes in gender research by presenting Spain as an example of remarkable growth in gender studies, following the intense societal advancement of the country toward gender equality policies. In particular, we examine the evolution of gender research in Spain analyzing the presence of Spanish gender research in international journals, national journals, book reviews, and conferences. This first volume also includes a presentation of several original studies covering three specific research areas: gender stereotypes, gender violence, and gender issues at work. Finally, we discuss how the unique socioeconomic scenario created in this country may serve for international readers and gender researchers.     

International Organisations in Psychology: The International Council of Psychologists

Cet article décrit le développement de ľassociation International Council of Psychologists. II donne des détails sur sa contribution à Finternationalisation de la psychologic
This paper looks at the International Council of Psychologists in an international perspective. Its history is briefly traced and its contributions to the internationalisation of psychology are discussed. The point is made that today our interest in international organisations -is guided by the extent to which this aim is reached.     

Social Identity, Health and Well-Being: An Emerging Agenda for Applied Psychology

The social environment comprising communities, families, neighbourhoods, work teams, and various other forms of social group is not simply an external feature of the world that provides a context for individual behaviour. Instead these groups impact on the psychology of individuals through their capacity to be internalised as part of a person's social identity. If groups provide individuals with a sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging (i.e. a positive sense of social identity) they tend to have positive psychological consequences. The impact of these identity processes on health and well-being is explored in the contributions to this special issue. In this editorial, we discuss these contributions in light of five central themes that have emerged from research to date. These themes address the relationship between social identity and (a) symptom appraisal and response, (b) health-related norms and behaviour, (c) social support, (d) coping, and (e) clinical outcomes. The special issue as a whole points to the capacity for a social identity approach to enrich academic understanding in these areas and to play a key role in shaping health-related policy and practice.     

Some Cultural Facilitators and Deterrents for the Development of Psychology: The Role of Graduate Research Training

Traditional evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of graduate research training conducted in developed countries normally include a series of educational and curricular criteria. In order to accommodate this analysis to developing countries and to understand the problem fully from a global perspective, it is imperative that, in addition, a socio-cultural-political and economic context be provided to the analysis. This allows for a clearer scrutiny of deficiencies, and permits differential, ecosystem-based changes and interventions directed at improving and reforming the current status of research graduate training in psychology.     

The Psychology of Courage: Modern Research on an Ancient Virtue

While drawing on a limited field of articles and chapters on courage, the editors of The Psychology of Courage: modern research on an ancient virtue have postulated a viable history of the evolution of courage in psychology and chosen a select set of articles which advocate the influence of some of the more modern approaches to psychological thought, while relying only slightly on the historical and alternative views of courage. An alternative view and application of courage presented here examines the impact of courage as a component of a dynamic system. This dynamic systems approach allows for courage to have an interactional impact on the individual regardless of cultural identity or label.     

Power, Sex, and Violence: A Psychological Reconstruction of the 20th Century and an Intellectual Agenda for Political Psychology

Power, sex, and violence are three themes that characterize a good deal of 20th-century experience. Connections among these themes can be demonstrated through archival and field studies and by laboratory experiments, in the core disciplines of political psychology as well as in literature and art. Understanding and explaining this power-sex-violence fusion is an urgent theoretical and practical imperative. Two tasks are especially critical: understanding the nature of power-striving and how it might be tempered, and understanding how and why people construct "differences" among themselves. With its broad interdisciplinary tradition, its variety of traditional and innovative methods, and its links to the real world of human affairs, political psychology is well placed to assume this intellectual agenda.     

Some Implications of Recent Research in Social and Developmental Psychology for Counseling Practice

Blocher sees four implications for counseling as a result of the additions to research and theory building of social, developmental, and general psychology. From social influence theory, from cognitive, behavioral, humanistic, and developmental research (and their hyphenated combinations) he offers a prototype “systematic eclectic” task-model directed toward implications (1) counseling is a social influence process, (2) counseling centers on the client's cognitive activity, (3) a major variable in the outcome of counseling is the level of the client's cognitive development, and (4) counselors may need intervention programs to raise cognitive levels.     

The CHIC Model: A Global Model for Coupled Binary Data

Often problems result in the collection of coupled data, which consist of different N-way N-mode data blocks that have one or more modes in common. To reveal the structure underlying such data, an integrated modeling strategy, with a single set of parameters for the common mode(s), that is estimated based on the information in all data blocks, may be most appropriate. Such a strategy implies a global model, consisting of different N-way N-mode submodels, and a global loss function that is a (weighted) sum of the partial loss functions associated with the different submodels. In this paper, such a global model for an integrated analysis of a three-way three-mode binary data array and a two-way two-mode binary data matrix that have one mode in common is presented. A simulated annealing algorithm to estimate the model parameters is described and evaluated in a simulation study. An application of the model to real psychological data is discussed. T. Wilderjans is a Research Assistant of the Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders (Belgium). The research reported in this paper was partially supported by the Research Council of K.U. Leuven (GOA/2005/04). We are grateful to Kristof Vansteelandt for providing us with an interesting data set. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.     

The Development of an Analytic Perspective in the Group Leader: Some Basic Thoughts

Previous experience working with individuals on a one-to-one basis along with previous analytic therapy are important prerequisites for analytic group training. Training must emphasize understanding of group-as-a-whole processes, such as basic assumption life, complex transference manifestations, as well as awareness of one's countertransference toward individuals, subgroups and the group-as-a-whole. Specific concepts derived from object-relations theory such as projective identification are crucial to master. Personal analytic group therapy is recommended.     

The Reconstitution of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion

For the Internationale Gesellschaft für Religionspsychologie (International Association for the Psychology of Religion [IAPR]), its XIVth conference, held on September 28-30, 2001, in Soesterberg, The Netherlands, was an important event. Although the terrorist attacks on the United States (September 11, 2001) prevented several colleagues from traveling to The Netherlands, the conference attracted a substantial number of participants from 20 countries, most of them European, but also including colleagues from Australia, India, and the Americas. The central topic, "Coping with religion"-an ambivalent formulation, chosen on purpose to bring to the fore a variety of perspectives on psychology's dealing with religion in theory, research, or therapy-allowed for fascinating plenary sessions and a wealth of interesting paper sessions, in which also psychological research other than that related to coping was also reported. Most important for this short note is a report on the General Meeting of the membership of the IAPR.