Dimensions of Success and Motivation Needs Among Managers

In this study, we examined the relationship between needs for achievement (n Ach) and power (n Pwr) and the importance of six dimensions of life success among a sample of 454 managerial women and men in southeastern Florida. Results showed that n Ach was significantly correlated with all four work-related success dimensions: status/wealth, personal fulfillment, and professional fulfillment (positively), and with security (negatively). N Ach was not correlated with either of the two nonwork-related success dimensions of family relationship and social contribution. N Pwr was significantly correlated with all the same work-related success dimensions except professional fulfillment; it was also correlated significantly with the non work-related dimension of social contribution but not with family relationships.     

Adolescents' relationships with their mothers and fathers: associations with depressive disorder and subdiagnostic symptomatology

Family relationships across 3 groups of adolescents were compared: (a) those with unipolar depressive disorders (n=82); (b) those with subdiagnostic depressive symptoms (n=78); and (c) those without emotional or behavioral difficulties (n=83). Results based on multisource, multimethod constructs indicated that depressed adolescents, as well as those with subdiagnostic symptomatology, experience less supportive and more conflictual relationships with each of their parents than do healthy adolescents. These findings are notable in demonstrating that adverse father-adolescent relationships are associated with depressive symptomatology in much the same way as mother-adolescent relationships. As well, the findings add to the emerging evidence that adolescents with subdiagnostic symptoms experience difficulties in social relationships similar to those experienced by adolescents with depressive disorder.     

The subjective–agentic personality sector (SAPS): Introduction to the special issue on self,identity, and psychopathology

This special issue is predicated upon the premise that there exists a subjective–agentic personality sector (SAPS) that is crucially relevant to the understanding and treatment of psychopathology. SAPS is often overlooked by “trait” models in personality psychology. It is comprised of “hot” cognitions about one's self and identity as they unfold throughout the life span and are brought to bear on interpersonal relationships. There are four ways in which SAPS may be involved in psychopathology: (a) inherently, as a component of psychiatric disorders, (b) as a passive vulnerability dimension, namely by interacting with life stress, (c) as an active vulnerability dimension, that is, by propelling external situations that culminate in psychopathology, and (d) by constituting a central consequent of psychopathology (i.e., the scarring pattern, see below). In this Journal of Personality special issue, experts in personality and psychopathology demonstrate the centrality of SAPS in unipolar depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar spectrum disorder, eating disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, complex trauma and borderline personality disorder, social anxiety disorder, suicidality in the context of mood disorders, and recovery from schizophrenia. A commentary by Dan McAdams, a leader in the study of self and identity, concludes this special issue.     

Trait and social processes in the link between social support and affect: an experimental, laboratory investigation

This study investigated the extent to which the link between perceived social support and affect reflected support recipients' trait perceived support as well as three distinct social processes: the objective supportiveness of providers, the unique relationships among recipients and providers that were stable over occasions, as well as the unique relationships that varied across occasions. Ten recipients interacted with each of the same four providers on five separate occasions, for a total of 200 interactions. Recipients and independent observers rated recipient affect and provider support. Greater perceived support was related to greater positive affect for recipients' trait perceived support, as well as for relationships that were stable over occasions and relationships that varied across occasions. No social support effects were found for negative affect. Perceived similarity was a consistent predictor of recipients' support perceptions. Implications for social support models and interventions were discussed.     

Intra- and Inter-Individual Differences in Adolescent Depressive Mood: the Role of Relationships with Parents and Friends

Utilizing four waves of data from 1126 secondary school Dutch adolescents (Mage = 13.95 at the first wave; 53% boys), the current study examined the interplay between parent-adolescent and friend-adolescent relationship quality (satisfaction and conflict) in relation to adolescents’ depressive mood. Using multilevel analyses, the interacting effects of parent/friend relationship quality on depressive mood were tested at both the intra- and inter-individual level. Analyses at the intra-individual level investigated whether individual depressive mood fluctuated along with changes in their social relationships regardless of one’s general level of depressive mood; and analyses at the inter-individual level examined whether the average differences in depressive mood between adolescents were associated with different qualities of social relationships. We interpreted the patterns of interactions between parent and friend relationships using four theoretical models: the reinforcement, toxic friends, compensation, and additive model. The results demonstrate the covariation of parent- and friend- relationship quality with adolescents’ depressive mood, and highlight that parent and peer effects are not independent from each other—affirming the compensation and additive models at the intra-individual and the reinforcement and additive models at the inter-individual level. The findings highlight the robustness of the protective effects of parent and peer support and the deleterious effects of conflictual relationships for adolescent mental health. The results have implications for both the theoretical and practical design of (preventive) interventions aimed at decreasing adolescents’ depressive mood.     

Situating social influence processes: dynamic, multidirectional flows of influence within social networks.

Social psychologists have studied the psychological processes involved in persuasion, conformity, and other forms of social influence, but they have rarely modeled the ways influence processes play out when multiple sources and multiple targets of influence interact over time. However, workers in other fields from sociology and economics to cognitive science and physics have recognized the importance of social influence and have developed models of influence flow in populations and groups-generally without relying on detailed social psychological findings. This article reviews models of social influence from a number of fields, categorizing them using four conceptual dimensions to delineate the universe of possible models. The goal is to encourage interdisciplinary collaborations to build models that incorporate the detailed, microlevel understanding of influence processes derived from focused laboratory studies but contextualized in ways that recognize how multidirectional, dynamic influences are situated in people's social networks and relationships.     

Family Capital,Children's Individual Attributes,and Academic Achievement

In this study, I examined relationships between family educational capital and measures of children's individual attributes and their academic achievement. Data were collected from 905 eleven-year-old Australian children (457 boys, 448 girls) and their parents. Families were classified into four opportunity structures defined conjointly by human capital and social capital. Within each opportunity structure, relationships among the variables were examined by investigating hierarchical regression models that included terms to test for possible linear, interaction, and curvilinear associations. The findings suggest that (a) within family opportunity structures defined by human and social capital, children's ability and cognitive attitudes and their family educational capital had modest to moderate associations with academic achievement and (b) there were family opportunity structure differences in the nature of the relationships among family educational capital, children's individual attributes, and their academic performance.     

Psychotherapie bei Depression

Due to significant limitations in mental and physical being, social relationships, and working and functional abilities, prevention and treatment of depressive disorders—predicted to be the most common disorder in 2030—are of particular importance. In the S3 guideline Unipolar Depression, psychotherapy has gained in significance for the acute treatment of unipolar depression. It is noteworthy that psychotherapy is in general recommended as monotherapy or in combination in all degrees of severity of depression. The lasting effects of longer-term psychotherapies are often underestimated. A reflection of the current body of evidence based on the empirical research paradigm and its impact on clinical practice is presented.     

Age and gender differences in and personality correlates of loneliness in different relationships

This study examined age and gender differences in and personality correlates of loneliness in different relationships. Loneliness was measured in three groups of subjects (college men, college women, and elderly women) with the Differential Loneliness Scale which assesses dissatisfaction with four types of relationships (Family, Larger Groups, Friendships, and Romantic/Sexual). Age and gender differences were significant. Compared to elderly women, college women expressed more dissatisfaction with their Family and Large Group relationships. Compared to college women, elderly women expressed more dissatisfaction with their Friendships and Romantic/Sexual relationships. With regard to gender differences, college men expressed more dissatisfaction with Family, Large Group, and Friendship relationships than college women. For each subject group, dissatisfaction scores were correlated with health status, locus of control, social support, depression, and self-consciousness. Correlations varied with type of relationship as well as with age and gender. The group differences and the varying patterns of correlations support the use of a multidimensional approach to the study of loneliness. Results are discussed in terms of previous research and future investigations.     

How Do Relationships Support Parenting? Effects of Attachment Style and Social Support on Parenting Behavior in an At‐Risk Population

The importance of supportive relationships for new parents has been the focus of both research and parenting interventions. Attachment style, typically viewed as a relatively stable trait reflecting one's comfort in social relationships, as well as social support, or one's perception of the social context, have both been found to be important for fostering engaged, involved parenting. Less is known, however, about how these variables work together to influence parenting behavior, especially in families at higher risk for negative child outcomes. Data were collected from 152 urban, predominantly African American, low-income parents when their children were 14 and 36 months of age. Results suggest that parents with more social support show greater increases in the frequency of positive parent-child activities over time, but that this effect is mediated by mothers' attachment style, specifically, their level of anxious/ambivalent attachment. Mothers with more social support tended to be less anxious/ambivalent about close relationships, and this in turn led to increases over time in the frequency of parent-child interactions. Mothers' tendency to avoid close relationships, however, while correlated with social support, was unrelated to changes in parenting behavior. Implications of these findings for program development, parenting, and the malleability of attachment style based on social context are discussed.     

Alltag mit der Depression des Partners

Objective. Clinical research on the quality of interpersonal relationships in individuals with unipolar depression supports the idea that the family plays a major role in the development and the course of major depression. In order to further explore how family functioning relates to unipolar depression, the authors examined changes in family functioning as viewed by the patients' spouses. Methods. Interview data from 54 spouses of patients with unipolar depression were analysed as part of the baseline assessment of a study on the economic and health burden experienced by families with mentally ill relatives. Results. Having a family member with a current major depressive disorder is a general stressor for families and has implications for the health and well-being of the patient's spouse. Depressive symptoms affect a wide range of aspects of marriage and family life and result in a process of adaptation and transformation of the patient's family. Thus, in assessing burden experienced by spouses particular attention should be paid both to the social environments and to different aspects of the relationship as perceived by the patient's spouse in order to further understand the factors mediating the interaction between major depression and family functioning.     

Metarelational models: Configurations of social relationships

Beyond cognizing persons and social relationships, people also think about combinations of relationships: metarelational models (MeRMs). If relationships are words, then MeRMs are syntax; if relationships are atoms, MeRMs are chemical compounds. MeRMs are the motivated, emotionally experienced, morally directive models for generating, understanding, coordinating, planning, evaluating, modulating, sanctioning, and redressing configurations of social relationships. Previous research and theory on triads and balance, networks, cross‐cutting ties, and kinship systems has explored the causal connections among social relationships, but MeRM theory posits something more: shared, culturally informed MeRMs that people use to jointly construct meaningful coordinated action. The social interactions of nonhuman animals and pre‐verbal infants indicate that they use MeRMs, supporting the contention that core innate cognition includes the basic structures of MeRMs. There are six elementary kinds of MeRMs, and recursive linking of relational models (RMs) generates indefinitely more. MeRMs shape individual psychology, relationships, groups, institutions, and cultures. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social outcomes in childhood brain disorder: a heuristic integration of social neuroscience and developmental psychology

The authors propose a heuristic model of the social outcomes of childhood brain disorder that draws on models and methods from both the emerging field of social cognitive neuroscience and the study of social competence in developmental psychology/psychopathology. The heuristic model characterizes the relationships between social adjustment, peer interactions and relationships, social problem solving and communication, social-affective and cognitive-executive processes, and their neural substrates. The model is illustrated by research on a specific form of childhood brain disorder, traumatic brain injury. The heuristic model may promote research regarding the neural and cognitive-affective substrates of children's social development. It also may engender more precise methods of measuring impairments and disabilities in children with brain disorder and suggest ways to promote their social adaptation.     

Correlates and predictors of positive mental health for school going children

The relationship between positive mental health and well-being was examined in 604 North Indian high school and secondary high school going children aged 11–18 years. The study employed various scales such as Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF; Keyes, 2005), Scale of Positive and Negative Experiences (SPANE) and Flourishing Scale (FS; Diener et al., 2010), World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF, 1996) and Personal Well-being Index Scale-School Going Children (PWI-SC; Cummins & Lau, 2005). The MHC-SF predicted the positive mental health and the various predictors used in this study were SPANE, FS, WHOQOL-BREF and PWI-SC. Positive mental health was found positively correlated with SPANE P, life satisfaction, personal well-being, flourishing and all four domains of quality of life (physical health, psychological well-being, social relationships and environmental health) and negatively correlated with SPANE N. Well-being measures of flourishing, SPANE P, SPANE-N, all four domains of quality of life (physical health, psychological well-being, social relationships and environmental health) significantly predicted children’s positive mental health (49% of variance) and its dimensions like emotional well-being (41% of variance), social well-being (24% of variance) and psychological well-being (47% of variance).     

Counterproductive Work Behavior and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) are two seemingly opposite types of active and volitional behaviors. However, previous research on the mutual relationships between these two types of behavior has yielded inconclusive results. Such relationships are of particular interest in countries such as Poland, which is still in the process of economic and social transformation from a communist to a capitalist system. Therefore, the current study sought to re-examine the relationships between OCB and CWB in a large sample of Polish employees. One thousand and fifty-one employees were recruited from small, medium, and large Polish enterprises to take part in the study, and they completed questionnaire measures of CWB and OCB. The results showed that the overall frequencies of CWB and OCB were statistically significantly correlated. However, while some dimensions of OCB were found to be significantly negatively correlated with certain categories of CWB, one dimension of OCB was significantly positively correlated with CWB. Cluster analysis allowed for distinguishing of four subgroups of participants with different profiles of CWB and OCB, including a subgroup that exhibited equal levels of OCB and CWB and a subgroup that exhibited high levels of CWB cooccurring with increased frequencies of some dimensions of OCB. These results demonstrate that, overall, CWB and OCB are relatively independent and unrelated constructs; however, their particular dimensions may show a more complex pattern of relationships.     

The Cognative Structure of Role Norms in Taiwan

This study explores the implicit cognitive structure of role norms in Taiwan. Subjects were asked to make direct pair-wise similarity judgments of 28 role relationships in terms of the way the actor role should treat the object role (e.g., father to son vs. son to father). INDSCAL and cluster analyses were used to delineate the implicit cognitive structure underlying the similarity judgments. INDSCAL showed that Taiwanese implicitly use two dimensions, closeness–distance and dominance–submission, to construct role norms. The first dimension showed that the norm for nuclear family relationships is to love and care for each other. The second dimension revealed that the norm for status-differential relationships such as father–son or supervisor–subordinate is to behave in accordance with one's status. Cluster analysis indicated four major clusters of role relationships, of which the hierarchical family cluster was the most prominent. Taiwanese adults and college students have similar cognitive structures and use relational models to construct their system of role norms. These relational models include complementarity, communality sharing, authority ranking, and equality matching. The implications of these findings for Confucian ethics and theories of Chinese social behavior are discussed.     

Depression and the complete state model of health

Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In order to specify the contents of this positive state, the Complete State Model of Health (CSMH) considers mental health as a series of symptoms of hedonia and positive functioning, operationalized by measures of subjective, psychological, and social well-being. This model has empirically confirmed two new axioms: (a) rather than forming a single bipolar dimension, health and illness are correlated unipolar dimensions, and (b) the presence of mental health implies positive personal and social functioning. In the present article, we have taken the CSMH as the theoretical framework for the study of depression. Confirmatory factor analyses did not support the first axiom. In fact, the model that posits that measures of mental illness and health form a single bipolar dimension provided the best fit to the data.     

Working models of romantic attachment and the subjective quality of social interactions across relational contexts

Two diary studies examined the effects of domain‐specific representations of romantic relationships (assessed using the Relationship Questionnaire in Study 1 and the Revised Experiences in Close Relationships questionnaire in Study 2) on the subjective quality of social interactions across four relational contexts: those with a romantic partner, family member, platonic friend, or acquaintance/other. In both studies, domain‐specific romantic attachment, particularly attachment avoidance, was more strongly related to subjective experiences of social interactions involving a romantic partner than those with family members, platonic friends, or acquaintances/others. These results complement previous diary research using earlier categorical measures of attachment and elaborate upon the contextual effects of the attachment behavioral system in naturally occurring social interactions with different relational partners. The conditions under which working models of different relationship domains should influence interpersonal functioning are discussed, and a context‐congruence hypothesis of attachment effects, which encompasses the current findings and generates further predictions, is detailed.     

关系模式框架下的具身社会关系

具身认知受到越来越多关注, 社会心理学家认为社会关系与个体水平的认知一样都包含了具身方面, 这一问题最直接的解释框架是关系模式理论(Smith, 2008)。Fiske认为人类有4种基本关系类型：公共共享(CS)、等级排序(AR)、平等匹配(EM)和市场定价(MP), 前三种都是具身的, 与不同的具身线索存在联系, 也得到了实证支持。当前具身社会关系研究存在不足, 例如解释范围有限、缺乏整合和深入研究等。未来可以从婴幼儿的发展性研究等入手。