Measuring Political Thinking: Development and Validation of a Scale for “Deliberation Within”

Compared to the concept of interpersonal deliberation, little is known about the underlying and preceding cognitive processes of citizens' deliberative discussions. The aim of this article is to develop a psychometric measurement for these processes, which—following an idea advanced by Goodin ( 2000, 2003 )—may be called “deliberation within.” The measurement is constructed based on theoretical definitions of the concept and further normative criteria of citizen deliberation. In three empirical studies using independent samples, the psychometric properties of the measurement are assessed, and evidence for its reliability as well as structural and criterion validity is offered. The resulting scale may serve as a useful instrument not only for deliberation research, but also for further communication research related to political processes.     

The Influence of Skills,Message Frame,and Visual Aids on Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases

In a large three week longitudinal study, we investigated the efficacy of framed messages for promoting condom use in sexually active young adults. We also investigated the influence of key risk literacy skills (i.e., numeracy and graph literacy) and visual aids (i.e., icon arrays) on the efficacy of framed messages. Finally, we investigated the underlying psychological mechanisms of behavioral change on the ability of icon arrays to improve message effectiveness. Results showed that framed messages including icon arrays increased adherence to self‐reported condom use by giving rise to enduring changes in attitudes and behavioral intentions, which influenced behavior. Icon arrays were found to be most beneficial among young adults with relatively low numeracy as long as they had high graph literacy. These findings build on the previous research in risk communication and extend psychological theories of health‐related decision making such as the theory of planned behavior. These findings also map the conditions under which well‐constructed visual aids can be among the most effective, transparent, and ethically desirable means of risk communication. Implications for risk communication and informed medical decision making are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling the Moral Dimension of Decisions

In this paper we explore the connections between ethics and decision theory. In particular, we consider the question of whether decision theory carries with it a bias towards consequentialist ethical theories. We argue that there are plausible versions of the other ethical theories that can be accommodated by “standard” decision theory, but there are also variations of these ethical theories that are less easily accommodated. So while “standard” decision theory is not exclusively consequentialist, it is not necessarily ethically neutral. Moreover, even if our decision‐theoretic models get the right answers vis‐à‐vis morally correct action, the question remains as to whether the motivation for the non‐consequentialist theories and the psychological processes of the agents who subscribe to those ethical theories are lost or poorly represented in the resulting models.     

The self in cyberspace

Abstract: Jung's concept of the Self is compared with current theories of identity formation in post‐modern society concerning the question: is the self constituted through experience and cultural influences—as it is argued by current theories in the social sciences—or is it already preformed inside the person, as Jung argues? The impact of communication media on the formation of identity in today's societies is discussed with a focus on internet communication and virtual realities. The resulting types of identities are conceptualized as polycentric which has surprising parallels to Jung's idea of the Self. The epistemology of constructivism and parallels in Jung's thought are demonstrated. Jung's work in this respect often appears contradictory in itself but this can be dealt with by a postmodern approach which accepts a plurality of truths.     

The theory of resilience and relational load

Resilience is one of the most profound constructs across disciplines. Yet, the largely atheoretical nature of the research on resilience continues to make it elusive. A new theory of stress and resilience in close relationships—the theory of resilience and relational load (TRRL)—is advanced to fill this void in the literature. The theory bridges communicative, perceptual, and physiological aspects of stress within the context of social relationships to explain personal/relational risk, resilience, and thriving. The TRRL examines how relational partners' and family members' communal orientation and maintenance of their relationships on a daily basis influence their communication during stressful moments, as well as their appraisals of the stress. The theory also details how these communication patterns and appraisals influence personal and relational health and adaptation. Finally, the concept of relational load is set forth, which is the wear and tear that chronic stress and depletion of one's emotional, psychological, and relational resources through repeated, stress‐related conversations can have on relationships. Ultimately, people need to continually invest in their relationships to prevent relational load and foster resilience and possible thriving.     

The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior

Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that an understanding of human motivation requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. We discuss the SDT concept of needs as it relates to previous need theories, emphasizing that needs specify the necessary conditions for psychological growth, integrity, and well-being. This concept of needs leads to the hypotheses that different regulatory processes underlying goal pursuits are differentially associated with effective functioning and well-being and also that different goal contents have different relations to the quality of behavior and mental health, specifically because different regulatory processes and different goal contents are associated with differing degrees of need satisfaction. Social contexts and individual differences that support satisfaction of the basic needs facilitate natural growth processes including intrinsically motivated behavior and integration of extrinsic motivations, whereas those that forestall autonomy, competence, or relatedness are associated with poorer motivation, performance, and well-being. We also discuss the relation of the psychological needs to cultural values, evolutionary processes, and other contemporary motivation theories.     

Self psychology and projective identification—whither shall they meet? a reply to the editors (1995)

The concept of projective identification continues to be viewed as alien, even dangerous, by self psychologists. Six aspects of self‐psychology/intersubjectivity theory are explored in an attempt to understand the presumed incompatibility of self psychology and projective identification: 1) the empathic vantage point; 2) the focus on subjective reality; 3) the emphasis on the analyst's personal contribution; 4) the focus on selfobject experience; 5) the disruption—restoration process; and 6) the defining of transference and countertransference as “organizing activity.”; The self‐psychological/intersubjective concepts that come closest to describing the phenomenon of projective identification—that is, empathic immersion, affect resonance, and reciprocal mutual influence—fail to capture at least three of its essential elements 1) the patient's persistent, unconscious intent to communicate certain unformulated aspects of self through the other; 2) the analyst's sense of being “taken over”; by the patient's experience; and 3) the intensely visceral quality of the analyst's experience. It is argued that self psychology ignores this important form of patient communication to its own detriment and that the concept of projective identification needs to be reformulated in terms that are more experience near to self psychologists. It is suggested that there exists a normal, developmental need, a selfobject need, to communicate intolerable, unsymbolized affective experience through the other's experience—a need that remains more pervasive and intense in some of us than in others—and that the longed‐for selfobject response is to have one's communication received, contained, and given back in such a way that one knows the other has “gotten”; it from the inside out.     

Transplanting brains?

Brain transplant thought experiments figure prominently in the debate on personal identity. Such hypotheticals are usually taken to provide support for psychological continuity theories. This standard interpretation has recently been challenged by Marya Schechtman. Simon Beck argues that Schechtman's critique rests upon ‘two costly mistakes’—claiming that (1) when evaluating these cases, philosophers mistakenly try to figure out the intuitions that they think people inhabiting such a possible world ought to have, instead of pondering their own intuitions. Beck further asserts that (2) brain transplant thought experiments cannot confirm any given theory of personal identity but rather they can only rule out theories. I argue on grounds of the social ontology of personhood that Beck has things back to front. Since our concept of personhood is shaped and informed by contingent de facto norms and structures of the natural world, and as such is heavily normatively laden, the conceptual genesis of personhood must be taken into account. This calls for constructing thought experiments as realistically as possible in order to trigger reliable intuitions. Furthermore, drawing on recent evidence from cognitive science, an empirically informed look at brain transplant thought experiments considering ‘Embodied Cognition’ reveals that Beck's arguments not only fall short for supporting psychological continuity theories, but also suggests an advantage of Schechtman's ‘Person Life View’.     

Transcending common sense in psychological theorizing: A developmental perspective

The necessity for transcendence of any particular system of common sense in psychologists' theorizing is reiterated in the process of analyzing Smedslund's response to the author's previous (Valsiner, 1985) critical analysis of the role of common sense in psychology. It is emphasized that the ways of how personally unique construction of meaning in individuals' ontogenies proceed are directed by social canalization, which guarantees sufficient (but not absolute) similarity in persons' individual thinking and acting. Such similarity forms the basis for intelligibility of interpersonal communication. A developmental perspective can overcome two opposite traditions in non-developmental psychologies which either disregard common sense, or make it the criterion of adequacy of thinking towards which psychological theories should strive. In contrast, it is suggested that common sense be studied in conjunction with research on psychological phenomena for which it serves as their context, and that generalizations about psychological phenomena retain information about the common-sense frames of the phenomena.     

An application of bi‐logical theory to the study of psychic change and mourning4

The authors propose that the process of psychic change involves the ‘working through’ of mourning for the loss of ‘theories of life’ that are based on narcissistic omnipotent beliefs. These theories need to be changed by other more realistic ones regarding how to resolve the inherent and natural problems of existence. Questioning the ‘truth’ of these theories of life, as well as the acquisition of the perception of the existence of time, makes up part of the process referred to, and this applies to the analyst in a certain way as much as to the patient. Such problems are lived, re‐edited and revised in the transference/countertransference relationship. The authors present a clinical illustration. They explore the concepts of symmetry, asymmetry, homogenization and differentiation in MatteBlanco's bi‐logical theory and propose that these are important to the comprehension of the dynamic of the psychic changes which occur in a non‐static analytic process.     

Early communication in dyads with visual impairment

The ability of dyads with restricted access to the visual channel of communication to establish a reliable pre‐linguistic communicative signalling system has traditionally been viewed as problematic. Such a conclusion is due in part to the emphasis that has been placed on vision as central to communication by traditional theory. The data presented in this paper question these assertions. The results of a longitudinal study exploring the nature of early dyadic interactions in dyads with visual impairment are presented. The dyads' use of three types of non‐visual behaviour—touch, vocalizations and facial orientation—were investigated in terms of their potential as alternatives to visual communication. It is argued that the results are evidence that visually impaired dyads engage in sophisticated communicative exchanges prior to infants' acquisition of language. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Anxiety, signal anxiety, and unconscious anticipation: neuroscientific evidence for an unconscious signal function in humans

A central tenet of psychoanalysis, and arguably of any comprehensive theory of mind, is the existence of a psychological unconscious. Years of clinical investigation into the nature of unconscious processes have facilitated the development of psychoanalysis as a clinical method. Empirical investigations of unconscious mental processes, however, have lagged behind clinical inquiry. With few exceptions, attempts to understand unconscious processes using rigorous experimental controls have remained sequestered in scientific domains other than psychoanalysis, where they have proliferated recently. In view of this recent upsurge of research on unconscious processes outside of psychoanalysis, efforts to integrate such knowledge into general theories of psychopathology and clinical investigation are critical. In this paper, an interdisciplinary approach is taken to the study of one aspect of unconscious mental functioning--what Freud originally termed signal anxiety. Signal anxiety is examined using information from cognitive psychology and learning theory, psychophysiology, behavioral neuroscience, and psychoanalytic theory. Though the original concept of signal anxiety is supported by recent research, it is concluded that signal anxiety is probably best thought of not as the affect of anxiety but as a subset of unconscious mental processes that have a signal function of anticipating danger. Such unconscious anticipatory processes are a general feature of the mind that includes responses to both real and imagined (neurotic) appraisals of a situation. The neurophysiological structures and processes associated with unconscious anticipation in humans are just beginning to be understood.     

内部动机与外部动机的关系

内部动机与外部动机的关系问题在20世纪90年代重新成为动机研究的热点。该文综述了内部动机与外部动机关系的实验研究与理论研究状况。认为实验研究经历了外部动机削弱内部动机、外部动机与内部动机共存、外部动机能够对内部动机产生促进作用三个阶段,研究者的心理学立场是造成分歧结果出现的重要原因;不同的理论模式各有所长,尤其是自我决定理论的新进展“有机辨证元理论”中关于需要的阐述是近期动机研究的亮点,在更高层次上实现了对内部动机与外部动机关系的整合。并提出探讨内部动机与外部动机具体成分之间的关系,检验特质状态与情境状态中二者的相互作用,及心理需要对情境与动机的中介机制应当成为未来研究的方向     

In Search of a Reconciliation Between Semiotics,Thermodynamics and Metasystem Transition Theory

The disciplines of cybernetics, semiotics and thermodynamics investigate evolutionary processes quite independently from each other. The aim of this paper is to draw the parallels and point out the possibility and necessity of a reconciliation between these disciplines. The concept of metasystem transition has been proposed by Turchin as a quantum of evolution from a cybernetic point of view. Semiotic processes are of prime importance for the realisation of metasystem transitions in the course of evolution. From a thermodynamic point of view, the emergence of more complex, self-producing agents depends on the emergence of more advanced forms of semiosis. As an evolutionary consequence, more symbolic forms of semiosis that allow higher competence for abstraction and anticipation emerge.     

Ambivalence under scrutiny: Returning to the future

Abstract

This Special Issue on the study of ambivalent processes in psychology integrates issues from contemporary evolutionary, cognitive, and cultural psychology with new directions of formal models that are available in qualitative mathematics. Tribute is paid to the pioneer of the study of ambivalence—Else Frenkel-Brunswik. Her work antedates most of our contemporary efforts in this field. Becoming free from the limits of its obsession with numbers in lieu of “measurement”, psychology at our time faces the challenge of investigation of dynamic psychological complexity. Contemporary mathematics—which is qualitative in its nature—provides new opportunities for psychology. New mathematical models—based on topology (Morse functions) and from intuitionistic formal logic (theory of locales)—are shown to provide promising new directions for future research on ambivalence. The emphasis on mathematical tools as enablement devices for psychological theorizing leads psychology to the need to create new kinds of generalized understanding of complex psychological processes.     

Correlations, Contextuality and Quantum Logic

Quantum theory is a probabilistic theory that embodies notoriously striking correlations, stronger than any that classical theories allow but not as strong as those of hypothetical ‘super-quantum’ theories. This raises the question ‘Why the quantum?’—whether there is a handful of principles that account for the character of quantum probability. We ask what quantum-logical notions correspond to this investigation. This project isn’t meant to compete with the many beautiful results that information-theoretic approaches have yielded but rather aims to complement that work.     

Theories of mind in infancy

This paper reviews and evaluates various theories of the origins of theory of mind in infancy. In what a theory of mind consists is first considered. It is argued that any theory of mind has two important features. Firstly, a theory of mind recognizes, at least, the existence of psychological relations between agents and objects, including some relations which involve “action at a distance”. Secondly, in a theory of mind, self and other are equivalent in that both can act equally as agents of psychological relations. Any theory of the development of theory of mind must explicate how it is possible to acquire an understanding of these two features. With this requirement in mind, four main types of recent theories are considered — modularity theories, Piagetian theories, matching theories, and intersubjectivity theories. While no decision is made amongst these theories, suggestions for further improvement in theorizing on this topic are presented.     

Why did the new physics force out the old?

The aim of my paper is to demonstrate that Special Relativity and the early quantum theory were created within the same programme of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and Maxwellian electrodynamics. I shall try to explain why classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics were “refuted” almost simultaneously or, in other words, why the quantum revolution and the relativistic one both took place at the beginning of the 20th century. I shall argue that the quantum and relativistic revolutions were simultaneous since they had a common origin—the clash between the fundamental theories of the second half of the 19th century that constituted the “body” of classical physics. The revolution's most dramatic point was Einstein's 1905 photon paper that laid the foundations of both special relativity and the old quantum theory. Hence the dialectic of the old theories is crucial for theory change. Later, classical physics was forced out by the joint development of quantum and relativistic sub‐programmes. The title of my paper can be reformulated in Bruno Latour's terms: The Einstein Revolution or Drawing Models Together.     

试论家庭治疗的理论基础

按照历史发展的顺序,从精神分析、系统论与控制论、依附理论以及建构主义这四个方面对家庭治疗的理论基础进行了论述,并对这四种理论取向对家庭治疗的贡献以及依附理论与家庭治疗的异同进行了探讨.     

Solidarity and Reciprocity Between People With and Without Disabilities

Governments of contemporary welfare states call upon citizens to care for people with psychiatric or intellectual disabilities. This is deemed sensible and morally just. However, social–psychological theory suggests that stereotyping may stand in the way of engaging into contact. Sociological theory suggests that the giving of help is based on either balanced or generalized reciprocity. Balanced reciprocity depends on one's ability to ‘pay back’, which people with disabilities may have trouble doing. Generalized reciprocity depends on close social bonds, while people with disabilities often have fewer social bonds than other citizens. The current study aimed to find out whether citizens—despite socio‐psychological and sociological theories expecting otherwise—enter into supporting relationships with people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities. Although we found socio‐psychological and sociological theory to be largely correct, we also found people to be more creative than theory assumes. A smile can be experienced as a return gift, thus including people with intellectual disabilities in the web of balanced reciprocity. Some people create new social bonds to include people with disabilities: they feel close to them because they had a job in the healthcare sector or because they had a family member with a disability. In disadvantaged neighbourhoods, recognition of each other's problems can create feelings of similarity and concomitant reciprocity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.