Rates of change in psychological processes

The reasons for the attractiveness of the hypothesis of preservation of the products of early experience are discussed with reference to the different types of constructs in developmental theory. It is suggested that a scholar's attitude for or against preservation of a child's qualities will depend, in part, on the nature of the specific evidence.     

A cultural psychological analysis of cultural change

Life experience appears to be transforming in contemporary societies, with changes taking place in Asia being particularly substantial. There is strong public interest in understanding how these changes affect individual psyches. Scientific understanding of this issue, however, has not kept pace with change. Research findings from Western societies, the USA in particular, provide a model for understanding and predicting patterns of cultural change in Asia. However, the applicability of the model in this region requires critical examination. This article presents an overview of the available evidence in this research field, reviewing available psychological research that examines cultural change in the USA, China, Japan, and Australia. This paper's aim is to stimulate interest in this research area within the community of Asian social psychologists as our Asia‐based insights have much to contribute to the fundamental research question at stake, and the nature of the interplay between a changing social ecology, cultural environment, and participating psyches.     

The psychological impacts of global climate change

An appreciation of the psychological impacts of global climate change entails recognizing the complexity and multiple meanings associated with climate change; situating impacts within other social, technological, and ecological transitions; and recognizing mediators and moderators of impacts. This article describes three classes of psychological impacts: direct (e.g., acute or traumatic effects of extreme weather events and a changed environment); indirect (e.g., threats to emotional well-being based on observation of impacts and concern or uncertainty about future risks); and psychosocial (e.g., chronic social and community effects of heat, drought, migrations, and climate-related conflicts, and postdisaster adjustment). Responses include providing psychological interventions in the wake of acute impacts and reducing the vulnerabilities contributing to their severity; promoting emotional resiliency and empowerment in the context of indirect impacts; and acting at systems and policy levels to address broad psychosocial impacts. The challenge of climate change calls for increased ecological literacy, a widened ethical responsibility, investigations into a range of psychological and social adaptations, and an allocation of resources and training to improve psychologists' competency in addressing climate change-related impacts.     

How psychological resources facilitate adaptation to organizational change

The purpose of this 1-year follow-up study among 580 police officers is to investigate whether identity-related resources are positively related to adaptive behaviour during times of organizational change. Combining the social identity perspective with resources theories, we hypothesized that leader–member exchange (LMX) and personal resources (meaning-making and organization-based self-esteem) are positively related over time. In addition, we hypothesized that resources captured before change implementation, show a positive relationship with adaptivity captured during change. Structural equation modelling analyses showed that LMX and personal resources were positively related. Further, all T1 resources were positively related to T2 adaptivity. The study emphasizes the importance of managing identity-related resources during turbulent times, in order to foster behavioural adaptation to change.     

The new Russia: The challenge of psychological change

Abstract

The outcome of the rapid transformation of Russia to a democratic and market‐oriented society will involve not only political and economic changes but a crucial psychological factor as well. Vital to this transformation will be the development of a ‘psychology of democracy,’ a psychology that elaborates the possibilities and implications of freedom and responsibility and personal self‐actualization.     

Induced change and stability in psychological and social systems

Summary This research showed important new cyclical causal connections derived from prior knoweldge and extending it. The cyclical causal connections appeared between a paricular kind of training, negotiation skills (psychological), influence (social), self-esteem (psychological), and risk taking (social), and back to negotiaion skills (psychological) in a particular community action group, andperhaps in most community action groups in similar conditions. The theory explicates a theory of community empowerment, a cyclical series of pyschological and social forces that move in revolution and respond to shock with both change and restabilization. The findings provide an explication of the paradox of social change and stability in a community: Both the change (developmental or decremental) and the stability (sustaining or stifling) lie in the relationships between social and psychological variables, the very relationships that both propel and limit change in the levels of the variables, once the change is initiated.This an extensive revision of a paper read at the annual meetings of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 1982. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Steve W. Banspatch and John Wallace for their assistance in analyzing these data. I also acknowledge the cooperative efforts of the citizens of this community, their school board members, and school administrators, who very firmly wished to remain anonymous.     

Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001

The diaries of 1,084 U.S. users of an on-line journaling service were downloaded for a period of 4 months spanning the 2 months prior to and after the September 11 attacks. Linguistic analyses of the journal entries revealed pronounced psychological changes in response to the attacks. In the short term, participants expressed more negative emotions, were more cognitively and socially engaged, and wrote with greater psychological distance. After 2 weeks, their moods and social referencing returned to baseline, and their use of cognitive-analytic words dropped below baseline. Over the next 6 weeks, social referencing decreased, and psychological distancing remained elevated relative to baseline. Although the effects were generally stronger for individuals highly preoccupied with September 11, even participants who hardly wrote about the events showed comparable language changes. This study bypasses many of the methodological obstacles of trauma research and provides a fine-grained analysis of the time line of human coping with upheaval.     

Use of change scores in redundancy analyses of multivariate psychological inventories

Both canonical and multiple-regression redundancy analyses were computed on the 20 separate subscale change-scores for the Eight State Questionnaire (8SQ) and the Differential Emotions Scale (DES-IV), using a sample of 212 undergraduate students. In comparing the measurement overlap of the two measures, it was important, since state-change dimensions were of interest, that across- occasions difference scores be used rather than single-occasion absolute scores. Viability of this approach was demonstrated and only minor redundancy was evident for the 8SQ and DES-IV instruments. On the present evidence, it appears that both inventories are tapping essentially discrete psychological variance (allowing for trait contamination) and that probably neither instrument alone is an adequate measure of the total ‘mood-state sphere’.     

Assessing psychological change in adulthood: an overview of methodological issues

This article reviews the current status of methods available for the analysis of psychological change in adulthood and aging. Enormous progress has been made in designing statistical models that can capture key aspects of intraindividual change, as reflected in techniques such as latent growth curve models and multilevel (random-effects) models. However, the rapid evolution of statistical innovations may have obscured the critical importance of addressing rival explanations for statistical outcomes, such as cohort differences or practice effects that could influence estimates of age-related change. Choice of modeling technique and implementation of a specific modeling approach should be grounded in and reflect both the theoretical nature of the developmental phenomenon and the features of the sampling design that selected persons, variables, and contexts for empirical observation.     

A social psychological approach to internally based change in the schools

An analysis of current models of delivering preventive psychological and educational services in schools is presented. It is argued that both traditional school psychologists and university-affiliated psychologists are restricted from influencing change process in schools. An alternative approach to psychoeducational change is developed whose fundamental feature involves the engagement of internally responsible socioeducational specialists by schools. Several issues bearing upon the viability of the proposed role are discussed based upon the author's experiences in pursuing the suggested interventions.     

Human behavioral contributions to climate change: psychological and contextual drivers

We are facing rapid changes in the global climate, and these changes are attributable to human behavior. Humans produce this global impact through our use of natural resources, multiplied by the vast increase in population seen in the past 50 to 100 years. Our goal in this article is to examine the underlying psychosocial causes of human impact, primarily through patterns of reproduction and consumption. We identify and distinguish individual, societal, and behavioral predictors of environmental impact. Relevant research in these areas (as well as areas that would be aided by greater attention by psychologists) are reviewed. We conclude by highlighting ethical issues that emerge when considering how to address human behavioral contributions to climate change.     

Trauma, change, and psychological health in the 21st century

The impact of stressful life events on health has been the object of inquiry for decades. Health care professionals have studied how stressful life events may precipitate or contribute to the onset of illness. Traumatic events and experiences can profoundly affect physical and psychological well-being, which in turn may predispose an individual to greater resilience or greater vulnerability to life stresses. Examined herein is the relationship between life stresses--including social stressors, political stressors, and environmental stressors--and the critical health related issues that psychologists need to prepare for in both the science and the practice of psychology over the next decade and during the 21st century.     

Optimism, pessimism, and change of psychological well-being in cancer patients

Whereas most previous studies have assessed optimism/pessimism as a unidimensional construct, there is increasing awareness that optimism and pessimism may represent two partially independent dimensions. In this study, the role of optimism and pessimism for the maintenance of psychological well-being was assessed in 161 newly diagnosed cancer patients. Before the start of chemotherapy, more positive affect balance was associated with higher optimism and lower pessimism. Over the course of 9 months following diagnosis, pessimism predicted negative change in affect balance, whereas no effect of optimism appeared. Higher levels of perceived side-effects of chemotherapy were associated with negative change in affect balance. However, an interaction effect of perceived side-effects with pessimism indicated that this was only the case in patients with above-median levels of pessimism. The conclusion is drawn that it may be more important to be less pessimistic than to be optimistic when diagnosed with cancer.     

The role of psychological climate in facilitating employee adjustment during organizational change

The current research tested a theoretical model of employee adjustment during organizational change based on Lazarus and Folkman's () cognitive-phenomenological framework. The model hypothesized that psychological climate variables would act as coping resources and predict improved adjustment during change. Two variations of this model were tested using survey data from two different organizational samples: 779 public hospital employees and 877 public sector employees. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation analyses were conducted in order to evaluate the models. Results showed that employees whose perceptions of the organization and environment in which they were working (that is, psychological climate) were more positive, were more likely to appraise change favourably and report better adjustment in terms of higher job satisfaction, psychological well-being, and organizational commitment, and lower absenteeism and turnover intentions.     

Another way to think about psychological change: experiential vs. incremental

The traditional pre-post treatment difference reflects an incremental notion of change, where a quantity of some psychological function is added to (or subtracted from) a pretreatment quantity. This study presents a complementary, experiential notion of change. Rather than a difference, change is a feeling or experience of having changed, a feeling that one is different than before. Based on a post-treatment interview the Change after Psychotherapy (CHAP) is a method to quantify/rate such ‘differentness’ in terms of how extensively or radically the patient feels having changed. A pre-post quasi-experimental study (N = 49) comparing the CHAP with ratings on the Global Assessment of Functioning, the Karolinska Psychodynamic Profile and the Comprehensive Psychopathological Rating Scale-Self-Affective is reported. The results showed the CHAP to be a reliable, valid and sensitive way to assess an experiential kind of CHAP.     

Job stress and attitudes toward change: The mediating effect of psychological attachment

The present study explores the indirect effect of job stress on attitudes toward change through individuals’ psychological attachment (organisational commitment mindsets and job embeddedness). The sample comprised N = 350 employees (black African: 67%; males: 69%; 26–40 years: 67%) who were affected by organisational change in the South African fast-moving consumer goods sector. The participants completed self-report measures on their job stress and psychological attachment experiences and their attitudes towards organisational change. The analysis applied structural equation modelling to test for the mediation effect of psychological attachment on the link between job stress and attitudes toward change. The findings suggest job stress to have a direct negative effect on job embeddedness and a positive, direct effect on attitudes toward change. Low levels of job embeddedness had a direct effect on positive attitudes toward change and mediated the link between job stress and attitudes toward change. The study contributes to organisational change theory by suggesting that experiences of job stress lower employees’ job embeddedness and this lowered sense of attachment translates into change-supportive attitudes.     

Narcissism,identification, and longitudinal change in psychological health: Dynamic predictions

The narcissist has been described as “dependent on others to provide confirmation of the grandiose ego ideal” (American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.). The present study shows how the combination of dependent identification and unhealthy narcissism leads to decreasing psychological health across 42 years of adulthood. Change in psychological health is studied in 156 participants of the Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. We predicted that longitudinal decline in psychological health, as assessed by longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling analyses of the California Personality Inventory v3 scale [Gough, H. G., & Bradley, P. (1996). California Psychological Inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press], would be predicted by the joint presence in early adulthood of maladaptive narcissism [Wink, P. (1992). Three narcissism scales for the California Q-set. Journal of Personality Assessment, 58, 51–66] and defensive identification [Cramer, P. (1991a). The development of defense mechanisms: Theory, research and assessment. New York: Springer-Verlag]. In contrast, we predicted healthy narcissism would be positively related to psychological health throughout adulthood. Predictions were confirmed via regression analyses including interaction terms, and are explained by the insoluble conflict that occurs when narcissistic gratification is dependent on the admiration of others, but the tie to others interferes with independent growth and accomplishment.