The Approval of Suicide: A Social-Psychological Model

This article develops and tests a model that seeks to explain individual variation in the approval of suicide. The model draws on the three leading theories of crime/deviance: strain, social learning, and social control theories. It is predicted that individuals will be most approving of suicide when (1) they have had major life problems that could not be solved through conventional channels, (2) they were taught or exposed to beliefs that favored or were conducive to suicide, and (3) they are not strongly attached or committed to conventional individuals and groups. These predictions are explored with data from the 1990 and 1991 General Social Surveys, based on a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States. The results provide partial support for the predictions, especially the second prediction, with the strongest correlates of suicide approval being education, political liberalism, and a set of religion variables.     

Mattering: A Foundation for Employment Counseling and Training

Clients and employment counselors need to feel that they matter, that they are significant to people around them. This article addresses the nature of mattering with respect to client service and counselor training.     

A General Method of Empirical Q-matrix Validation

In contrast to unidimensional item response models that postulate a single underlying proficiency, cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs) posit multiple, discrete skills or attributes, thus allowing CDMs to provide a finer-grained assessment of examinees’ test performance. A common component of CDMs for specifying the attributes required for each item is the Q-matrix. Although construction of Q-matrix is typically performed by domain experts, it nonetheless, to a large extent, remains a subjective process, and misspecifications in the Q-matrix, if left unchecked, can have important practical implications. To address this concern, this paper proposes a discrimination index that can be used with a wide class of CDM subsumed by the generalized deterministic input, noisy “and” gate model to empirically validate the Q-matrix specifications by identifying and replacing misspecified entries in the Q-matrix. The rationale for using the index as the basis for a proposed validation method is provided in the form of mathematical proofs to several relevant lemmas and a theorem. The feasibility of the proposed method was examined using simulated data generated under various conditions. The proposed method is illustrated using fraction subtraction data.     

Combining Methodologies in the Construct Validation Process: An Empirical Illustration

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) has received considerable support as a methodology for assessing construct validity. As with other methodologies, however, numerous problems can be encountered when using CFA to assess construct validity. Given the limitations of the CFA, Multitrait-Multimethod (MTMM), and analysis of variance (ANOVA) methodologies, a set of guidelines was developed. The guidelines recommend that the characteristics of the data set be used to determine how the three alternative construct validation methodologies can be used in combination. Examples from the research literature are discussed in order to demonstrate the application of these guidelines.     

A Social-Psychological Version of the Aesthetic Attitude

Abstract

Robert Latou Dickinson and Lura Beam. The Single Woman. Baltimore: Williams &; Wilkins, 1934. Pp. xix+469. $5. Reviewed by Raymond Royce Willoughby.     

Toward an Integrative Model of Affect Regulation: Applications to Social-Psychological Research

ABSTRACT This article describes a model of affect regulation that integrates research and theory from psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary perspectives on personality. It proposes that feelings are mechanisms for the selection and retention of behavioral and mental responses. Individuals select behaviors, coping strategies, and defensive strategies that regulate aversive affective states and maximize pleasurable ones. These affect regulation procedures are encoded as procedural knowledge and are activated under specific circumstances. Some regulation strategies are affect-specific, whereas others can be used to regulate multiple affects of similar valence. These procedures are often activated to resolve discrepancies between perceived and desired states of the self, significant others, and external circumstances. The utility of the model is demonstrated through a reinterpretation and integration of a number of disparate traditions in social psychology, including many of the classic experiments on social influence, in which the processing of emotionally relevant social information plays a substantial part.     

Social-Psychological Origins of Feelings of Presence: Creating Social Presence With Machine-Generated Voices

Two experiments were conducted to test several questions regarding very young children's (6–24 months) learning (i.e., simple action imitation and word learning) from video. Specifically, this study tested the video deficit, which is the tendency for infants and toddlers to learn significantly more effectively from live information than they do when identical information is presented on a screen. First, the video deficit was explored using two different tasks. Overall, the pattern of results was similar for action imitation and word learning. Specifically, the video deficit was present for both simple action imitation and for word learning in the middle cohort, but not present for younger and older children. Second, there was some mitigation of the video deficit from seeing socially meaningful actors for action imitation; however for word learning the effect only approached significance. Third, repetition helped children learn words more effectively, especially for the youngest and oldest cohort; however, repetition did not help for simple task imitation.     

An Empirical Validation of Bipolar Risk Perception Scaling Methods1

Bipolar rating scales (e. g., semantic differentials) are a common tool for gathering perceptions about attributes of persons, events, or activities. Researchers have questioned, however, whether individual responses are methodologically constrained when bipolar scales are used. Comparing both bipolar and unipolar scales, the present study investigates previous research findings on perceptions of risk by Fischhoff, Slovic, Lichtenstein, Read, and Combs (1978). The subjects in the current study (N= 94) rated the same 30 technologies, substances, and activities as in the Fischhoff et al. (1978) study but used unipolar scales. Correlational analysis indicated that some presumed antagonistic adjective pairs were indeed opposites, while others were not. On the other hand, factor analyses indicated that the same factors described by Fischhoff et al. (1978) were uncovered in the present study. However, the use of a unipolar methodology allowed us to refine the interpretations of both factors.     

I Matter to My Friend,Therefore I am Happy: Friendship,Mattering, and Happiness

Decades of empirical research have shown that friendship experiences are an essential predictor of happiness. However, what might account for the relationship between friendship and happiness? Two studies investigated perceived mattering (Marshall, J Adolesc 24:473–490, 2001) as a mediator of the association between friendship quality and happiness. Study 1 showed that perceived mattering to one’s best friend mediated the relationship between friendship and happiness. Study 2 replicated the findings of the first study and showed that mattering in friendships accounts for the role of friendship quality in happiness across the three closest friendships of the individual. The results are discussed in terms of the theoretical importance of understanding how friendship is related to happiness.     

Concept empiricism: a methodological critique

Thanks to Barsalou's, Damasio's, Glenberg's, Prinz' and others' work, neo-empiricism is gaining a deserved recognition in the psychology and philosophy of concepts. I argue, however, that neo-empiricists have underestimated the difficulty of providing evidence against the amodal approach to concepts and higher cognition. I highlight three key problems: the difficulty of sorting out amodal predictions from neo-empiricist predictions, the difficulty of finding experimental tasks that are not best solved by imagery and the difficulty of generalizing findings concerning a given cognitive process in a given context to other cognitive processes or other contexts. Finally, solutions to these three problems are considered.     

Validation of Basic Empathy Scale: Exploring a Korean Version

The Basic Empathy Scale was designed to measure the multidimensional aspects of empathetic feelings, such as cognitive and affective empathy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Korean version of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES). The Korean version of BES was administered to a sample of early adolescents aged 12–14 (N = 1524). The result of confirmatory factor analysis showed a two-factor solution with method effects associated with negatively worded items to be the most adequate model. Empathy was positively correlated with the measure of attachment, negatively correlated with the measure of bullying problems, and exhibited satisfactory internal consistency. BES proved to be a reliable assessment tool for empathy in a Korean adolescent sample. Moreover, in line with the previous research, girls were found to score significantly higher in both cognitive and affective empathy than boys.     

Validation of a measure of perfectionism

This article describes perfectionism, or the holding of and striving for unrealistically high standards, and presents two studies undertaken to investigate the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the Perfectionism Scale (PS; Burns, 1980). College students in the first study completed the PS, several other measures of high standards, and measures of constructs that, conceptually, are differentially related to perfectionism. Correlational analyses indicated that the Perfectionism Scale has convergent and discriminant validity and seems to measure self-oriented perfectionism. The second study attempted to determine the predictive validity of the PS by testing a vulnerability model of subclinical depression outlined in Hewitt and Dyck (1986). PS scores were used to predict depressed mood changes in female college students following failure on important and unimportant tasks. As expected, the results indicated that perfectionism interacted with failure on important versus unimportant tasks to produce dysphoric mood. Evidence for the predictive validity of the PS was thus shown. Several directions for future research are discussed.     

Forms of Aggression,Social-Psychological Adjustment,and Peer Victimization in a Japanese Sample: The Moderating Role of Positive and Negative Friendship Quality

The purpose of these studies was to examine the frequency and stability of relational and physical aggression and their associations with social-psychological adjustment or peer victimization, and how friendships are involved in the relations between forms of aggression and peer victimization in Japanese children. The sample consisted of 452 (Study 1) and 138 (Study 2) children who were in the fourth and fifth grades. Results of Study 1 demonstrated that relational aggression was uniquely and more strongly associated with internalizing adjustment problems than physical aggression. Moreover, Study 2 revealed that relational aggression and physical aggression were stable over a 6-month period and the stability of relational aggression was reinforced by negative friendships (i.e., high levels of exclusivity and friend victimization). Further, the association between relational aggression and relative increases in relational victimization was attenuated by positive friendships (i.e., high levels of intimacy, companionship, and friendship satisfaction). Interestingly, friendships were unrelated to physical aggression and its relation to physical victimization. The age and gender of the children in the two studies were also examined. Cultural and developmental processes involving forms of aggression, friendships, social-psychological adjustment, and peer victimization were discussed.     

Description and First Steps Toward the Empirical Validation of the Plan Formulation Method for Couples

The aim of this paper is to empirically assess the reliability of the plan formulation method for couples, a procedure for formulating the case, planning, and monitoring the couple therapies according to control-mastery theory. We hypothesized that when couples are looking for couple therapy, they have an unconscious couple’s plan for the therapy, which includes the couple’s goals; the pathogenic beliefs that the partners want to disprove; the traumas from which these beliefs originated and that the partners want to master; the vicious relational circles that make the couple suffer and that the couple wants to break; the virtuous relational circles that are expressions of the couple’s resources and that the couple wants to fuel; and the relational insights that may help the couple get better. Our study involved 15 couples treated by four experienced therapists. Four raters independently formulated each couple’s plan based on the first three sessions following a standard procedure, and we calculated the intraclass correlation for pooled judges’ ratings. For a subsample of three couples—who before and after treatment had completed the dyadic adjustment scale (DAS) and the outcome questionnaire-45.2 (OQ-45.2)—the compatibility of the therapists’ interventions with the couples’ and partners’ plans was assessed. The relationship between the ratings of compatibility, DAS and OQ-45.2, was assessed. The results showed excellent interjudge reliability for each couple’s plan formulation (average ICC?=?0.82), attesting to the validity of the procedure; and preliminary data on the therapeutic process suggested that therapists’ interventions compatible with couple’s plans could help partners achieve good outcomes.