Relationships of collective orientation and cohesion to team outcomes

The relationships of collective orientation and cohesion to team outcomes were compared for 373 high school students on 12 different types of two-person teams performing simple problems in mathematics. Scores on collective orientation and cohesion were highly correlated with each other and with team outcomes but not statistically distinct from each other.     

Interpersonal orientation and the accuracy of personality judgments

Are those who are more invested in developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships able to provide more accurate judgments of others' personality characteristics? Previous research has produced mixed findings. In the present study, a conceptual framework was presented and methods were used that overcome many of the problems encountered in past research on judgmental accuracy. On four occasions, 102 judges watched a 12‐min videotaped dyadic interaction and described the personality of a designated target person. Judges' personality characteristics were described by self, parents, and friends. Results revealed that psychological communion was positively associated with judges' accuracy in rating targets' personality characteristics. In addition, whereas women were more communal and provided more accurate judgments than men, the relationship between communion and accuracy held after controlling for the effect of gender. Finally, preliminary findings suggested that interpersonally oriented individuals may sometimes draw on information about themselves and about stereotypical others to facilitate accurate judgments of others.     

Internal cohesion psychotherapy: The nature,principles and application

Psychotherapy is widely used to treat different mental health disorders and emotional difficulties. The main objective of psychotherapy is to help clients become aware of and have control over their thoughts, moods, feelings and behaviours, as well as create healthy strategies to respond to challenging situations. Since the existing psychotherapy approaches and other methods of treatment are not always effective in treating mental health disorders, there is still space for new approaches to fill this gap. In this paper, we provide information about internal cohesion psychotherapy, which is a new integrative approach. This paper presents a new approach to eclectic psychotherapy, focussing on four detrimental aspects of human functioning through different time perspectives.     

Interpersonal orientation in context: correlates and effects of interpersonal complementarity on subjective and cardiovascular experiences

Interpersonal orientation (IO) generally refers to individual differences in preference for social interaction. The influence of IO, however, likely depends on the nature of complementarity within the interpersonal context. Using the interpersonal circumplex and Five-Factor Model, we first selected a measure of IO characterized by affiliation and neuroticism. Second, we examined the influence of IO on subjective, physiological, and nonverbal experiences as a function of experimentally manipulated complementarity or noncomplementarity. We hypothesized that women in noncomplementarity conditions (i.e., women low in IO working with a friendly confederate, women high in IO working with an unfriendly confederate) would experience the interpersonal situation more negatively compared to women in complementarity conditions. Study results confirmed this prediction, with noncomplementarity in IO resulting in greater physiological reactivity, greater likelihood to attempt nonverbally to restore complementarity, more partner-related thoughts, and a reduced desire to seek out attention compared to women working in complementarity conditions. Implications for research on IO as a person variable are discussed.     

On feeling understood and feeling well: The role of interdependence

The present research examined whether people feel happier and healthier when they feel more understood in daily social interactions. A two-week diary study showed that people reported greater life satisfaction and fewer physical symptoms on days in which they felt more understood by others. Moreover, we found that individuals who tend to see themselves in relations to others (i.e., women or those scored high on interdependent self-construal measure) showed a stronger association between daily felt understanding and daily life satisfaction or physical symptoms. These findings demonstrate that daily social experiences, such as felt understanding, are associated with daily well-being, particularly for individuals with greater interdependent self-construal.     

Age differences in motivational orientation toward physical activity: an application of social-cognitive theory

According to social-cognitive theory, an individual's motivation to engage in physical activity is based on three postulates: self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and self-evaluated satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The purpose of the present study was to examine age, gender, level of education, and level of activity in relation to those postulates in 2,298 Australians aged between 18 and 78. The authors conducted regression analyses for self-efficacy and for outcome expectations as dependent variables; age, gender, education level, and level of physical activity served as independent variables. Chi-square analyses assessed differences in the health incentive to exercise, the perceived level of activity, and the perceived level of fitness. Results indicated significant age differences on all variables. The older individual felt lower self-efficacy in relation to physical activity and expected fewer benefits from participating in physical activity. However, older individuals who engaged in physical activity rated themselves as more active and fit than nonexercisers of their same age and gender. Physical activity and level of education were positively correlated with self-efficacy, and men were more efficacious than women were. The implications are that interventions aimed at increasing participation in physical activity should take into consideration differences in incentives.     

Belief and feeling: evidence for an accessibility model of emotional self-report

This review organizes a variety of phenomena related to emotional self-report. In doing so, the authors offer an accessibility model that specifies the types of factors that contribute to emotional self-reports under different reporting conditions. One important distinction is between emotion, which is episodic, experiential, and contextual, and beliefs about emotion, which are semantic, conceptual, and decontextualized. This distinction is important in understanding the discrepancies that often occur when people are asked to report on feelings they are currently experiencing versus those that they are not currently experiencing. The accessibility model provides an organizing framework for understanding self-reports of emotion and suggests some new directions for research.     

Interpersonal relatedness,self-definition,and their motivational orientation during adolescence: a theoretical and empirical integration

The authors examined a theoretical model linking interpersonal relatedness and self-definition (S.J. Blatt, 1974), autonomous and controlled regulation (E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan, 1985), and negative and positive life events in adolescence (N = 860). They hypothesized that motivational orientation would mediate the effects of interpersonal relatedness and self-definition on life events. Self-criticism, a maladaptive form of self-definition, predicted less positive events, whereas efficacy, an adaptive form of self-definition, predicted more positive events. These effects were fully mediated by the absence and presence, respectively, of autonomous motivation. Controlled motivation, predicted by self-criticism and maladaptive neediness, did not predict negative events. Results illustrate the centrality of protective, pleasure-related processes in adaptive adolescent development.     

When feeling bad leads to feeling good: guilt-proneness and affective organizational commitment

The authors posit that higher levels of guilt-proneness are associated with higher levels of affective organizational commitment. To explain this counterintuitive link, the authors suggest that a dispositional tendency to feel guilt motivates individuals to exert greater effort on their work-related tasks that, in turn, strengthens their affinity for the organization. The authors tested this idea using a laboratory study and field data from 2 samples of working adults. Individuals who are more guilt-prone reported higher levels of organizational attachment compared with less guilt-prone individuals. Furthermore, mediation analyses indicate that the link between guilt-proneness and affective commitment is driven by greater task effort. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the affective drivers of commitment in organizations.     

Toward an Interpersonal Model of Codependence and Contradependence

Codependence is used increasingly to describe various dysfunctional relationships. This article differentiates codependent from contradependent behavior and defines both in an interpersonal context. A model is proposed to address gender issues, diagnosis, and treatment from an emotional health perspective.     

Convenience orientation and white-collar criminogenity: an empirical study

The theory of convenience suggests that white-collar crime is committed in situations where alternative legitimate actions to avoid problems are more painful and stressful. The extent to which individuals in privileged positions choose to break the law in difficult situations is dependent on their convenience orientation. For example, people with a strong convenience orientation can have a tendency to believe that bankruptcy might be avoided through tax evasion and bank fraud. However, the empirical study in this article provides limited support for the suggestion that convenience orientation has a direct influence on the propensity to crime in terms of criminogenity. Rather, there can be several statistically significant effects from convenience that are indirectly related to criminogenity. The most significant effect is that more conveniently oriented respondents believe that financial crime can solve problems and contribute to exploit possibilities.     

Towards an Integration of Interpersonal Risk Models of Depression and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: A Commentary on What Constitutes Interpersonal Therapy

The article by Dobson, Quigley, and Dozois on interpersonal model provides a very useful guide on how to extend cognitive behavioural models of depression to incorporate interpersonal vulnerabilities that influence how depressed people behave towards others. The point is made that interpersonal processes are very likely to influence the onset and course of depression. In this commentary, I extend this analysis further examining the evidence on how interactions within close relationships, particularly couple relationships, interact with individuals' depression. Evidence is also cited on the effectiveness of couple‐based therapy in treating depression.     

Why it is crucial to understand thinking and feeling: An analysis and application to drug abuse

Behavior analysis has long accepted the legitimacy of the analysis of private events in a natural science of behavior. However, the topic has languished as a focus of empirical research in either applied or basic arenas. We argue that recent empirical work examining the bidirectional nature of verbal relations may shed light on the role of private events in complex human behavior. Skinner argued that although it would be possible to analyze private events, we need not, because thoughts and feelings were viewed as co-occuring products of the same contingencies that are responsible for changes in overt responses. However, the bidirectional transformation of stimulus function inherent in verbal behavior changes the way that private events participate in complex behavioral episodes for verbal organisms. We examine why we have reached such a conclusion, with special emphasis on the role of self-awareness. Finally, we conclude with an application of our analysis to the problem of substance abuse.     

Toward an exploration of feeling of strangeness in schizophrenia: perspectives on acousmatic and everyday listening

The aim of this study was to investigate abnormal perceptual experiences in schizophrenia, in particular the feeling of strangeness, which is commonly found in patients' self-reports. The experimental design included auditory complex stimuli within 2 theoretical frameworks based on "sensory gating deficit" and "aberrant salience," inspired from conventional perceptual scales. A specific sound corpus was designed with environmental (meaningful) and abstract (meaningless) sounds. The authors compared sound evaluations on 3 perceptual dimensions (bizarre, familiar, and invasive) and 2 emotional dimensions (frightening and reassuring) between 20 patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and 20 control participants (CTL). The perceptual judgment was rated on independent linear scales for each sound. In addition, the conditioning-testing P50 paradigm was conducted on 10 SCZ and 10 CTL. Both behavioral and electrophysiological data confirmed the authors' expectations according to the 2 previous theoretical frameworks and showed that abnormal perceptual experiences in SCZ consisted of perceiving meaningful sounds in a distorted manner and as flooding/inundating but also in perceiving meaningless sounds as things that become meaningful by assigning them some significance. In addition, the use of independent scales to each perceptual dimension highlighted an unexpected ambivalence on familiarity and bizarreness in SCZ compatible with the explanation of semantic process impairment. The authors further suggested that this ambivalence might be due to a conflicting coactivation of 2 types of listening, that is, every day and musical (or acousmatic) listening.     

Sex-role orientation and fear of success: Clarifying an unclear relationship

Inconsistencies in research concerning the relationship between fear of success (FOS) and sex-role orientation may be due to the use of sex-role inventories considering masculinity and femininity as endpoints of a bipolar continuum. The Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974), which treats masculinity and femininity as separate dimensions, was administered to 218 female undergraduates in addition to measures of FOS, achievement motivation, and performance. It was predicted that women who were androgynous (high feminine and high masculine) would evidence less FOS than women who were high masculine or high feminine. It was also predicted that women who embraced masculine characteristics (androgynous or sex-reversed) would be higher in both achievement motivation and performance than low masculine women. Both predictions were confirmed. Sex-reversed women were highest in FOS.This research was conducted with the support of a David Ross Grant from the Purdue Research Foundation to Dr. Kay Deaux and the author. Thanks are extended to William A. Fisher, Dr. Kay Deaux, and Dr. Elizabeth Farris for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. All correspondence should be addressed to Brenda Major, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Buffalo, 4230 Ridge Lea Road, Buffalo, New York 14226.