Mindreading and Dispositional Inference: MIM Revised and Extended

In response to the very insightful commentaries in this issue, I revised the multiple inference model (MIM) in two significant respects. First, I gave greater attention to the limits of mindreading, clarifying circumstances when perceivers merely infer traits within a target person. Second, and of greater importance, I more clearly specified the role of automaticity within the model, suggesting that much processing occurs in parallel. Rather than following a rigid sequence, inferences about situations, intentionality, mindreading, and traits can occur either intuitively or can occur in the context of analytic thought.     

Clinical Correlates of Dispositional Forgiveness

The present study examined relationships between the variables of depression, shame, guilt, psychological maltreatment, and dispositional forgiveness. The methodology included the completion of questionnaires by 280 university and community college participants. Results indicated that all factors of dispositional forgiveness were negatively related to depression, to shame, and to all factors of psychological maltreatment. Partial correlations further revealed positive associations between guilt and dispositional forgiveness. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated the unique contribution of psychological maltreatment to dispositional forgiveness beyond that of depression, shame, and guilt. Implications of results for clinical practice and future research are discussed.     

Bias in Conditional Inference: Implications for Mental Models and Mental Logic

Three experiments are reported in which subjects are given the opportunity to make any of the four inferences associated with conditional statements: modus ponens (MP), denial of the antecedent (DA), affirmation of the consequent (AC), and modus tollens (MT). The primary purpose of the research was to establish the generality and robustness of polarity biases that may be occasioned by systematic rotation of negative components in the conditional rules. In Experiments 1 & 2, three forms of conditionals were used: “if (not) p then (not) q”, “(not) p only if (not) q” and “(not) q if (not) p”. Experiment 1 used a conclusion evaluation task, whereas Experiment 2 used a conclusion production task. In Experiment 3, thematic conditionals were presented with and without a preceding scenario.

The biases investigated were (a) affirmative premise bias—the tendency to draw more inferences from affirmative premises and (b) negative conclusion bias—the tendency to draw more inferences with negative conclusions. The suggestive evidence for affirmative premise bias in the literature was not supported: very little evidence was found for it in the current experiments. Robust findings of negative conclusion bias were, however, found across the three experiments, although the bias was mostly restricted to DA and MT inferences. This suggests that the bias is best regarded as a difficulty with double negation.

The results are discussed with respect to both the mental logic and mental model accounts of propositional reasoning. Neither theory as currently formulated can explain all of our findings, although a plausible revision of each is considered.     

Attitude,Inference, Association: On the Propositional Structure of Implicit Bias

The overwhelming majority of those who theorize about implicit biases posit that these biases are caused by some sort of association. However, what exactly this claim amounts to is rarely specified. In this paper, I distinguish between different understandings of association, and I argue that the crucial senses of association for elucidating implicit bias are the cognitive structure and mental process senses. A hypothesis is subsequently derived: if associations really underpin implicit biases, then implicit biases should be modulated by counterconditioning or extinction but should not be modulated by rational argumentation or logical interventions. This hypothesis is false; implicit biases are not predicated on any associative structures or associative processes but instead arise because of unconscious propositionally structured beliefs. I conclude by discussing how the case study of implicit bias illuminates problems with popular dual‐process models of cognitive architecture.     

Alcohol Counseling in Hospital Trauma: Examining Two Brief Interventions

Hospital trauma centers intervene with patients who incur alcohol‐related injuries. This prospective study, using professional counselors and trainees, investigated brief counseling interventions (BCIs). Participants were randomized to either a conventional BCI examining quantity and frequency of drinks or a personalized BCI exploring overintoxication. No statistically significant difference between risky drinkers randomized to either intervention in a hospital trauma center was observed. Findings indicate that a personalized BCI may be an alternative to a quantitative BCI in reducing risky alcohol consumption.     

Sex Bias in Clinical Judgment: Later Empirical Returns

This paper updates an earlier review of research on sex bias in psychological evaluation and psychotherapy. The experimental analogue continues to dominate the literature and to return a resoundingly negative verdict. This evidence, however, is often discounted on the grounds of the analogue's transparency and clinical impoverishment. Naturalistic data have likewise failed to support claims of widespread sex bias, but have nonetheless whetted suspicions that gender and sex role attributes affect circumscribed clinical decisions. These correlational field studies are often dismissed, however, on the basis of their inadequate control for potential confounds. This empirical deadlock is discussed within the context of the sexual politics of research and of methodological preference in particular. The interpretive gerrymandering that has plagued this literature is linked to an unwillingness to be open about the sex role heritage of research strategies themselves and the deep personal and political investments at stake.     

Prediction and Clinical Inference: Forty Years Later

The earlier controversy between clinical and statistical prediction has faded into the shadows. Few people today challenge the necessity for both approaches in seeking to develop and apply knowledge. In more contemporary terms, the issue of which prediction method should be preferred involves choosing between a quest for historical truth (i.e., correspondence demonstrated by staristical methods) and a quest for narrative truth (i.e., coherence achieved by clinical formulations).     

Memory Bias in Recovered Clinical Depressives

Abstract

Emotions can be regarded as the manifestations of a system that realises multiple concerns and operates in an uncertain environment. Taking the concern realisation function as a starting point, it is argued that the major phenomena of emotion follow from considerations of what properties a subsystem implementing that function should have. The major phenomena are: the existence of the feelings of pleasure and pain, the importance of cognitive or appraisal variables, the presence of innate, pre-programmed behaviours as well as of complex constructed plans for achieving emotion goals, and the occurrence of behavioural interruption, disturbance and impulse-like priority of emotional goals. The system properties underlying these phenomena are facilities for relevance detection of events with regard to the multiple concerns, availability of relevance signals that can be recognised by the action system, and facilities for control precedence, or flexible goal priority ordering and shift.

A computer program, ACRES, is described that is built upon the specifications provided by this emotion theory. It operates in an operator-machine interaction involving the task of executing a knowledge manipulation task (the knowledge domain happens to be about emotions). ACRES responds emotionally when one of his concerns (e.g. errorless input, being kept busy, receiving varied input, not being killed) is touched upon. Responses are social signals, shifts in resource allocations to the operator, interruption of current task-directed processing, and refusal to accept instructions. His flow of behaviour shows much of the preference-based predictability, response interference, goalshifts, and social signalling of human and animal emotional behaviour.     

循证医学—检验临床推理的新模式

循证医学 (ｅｖｉｄｅｎｃｅ -ｂａｓｅｄｍｅｄｉｃｉｎｅ ,ＥＢＭ )起源于 19世纪中叶 ,近年来在国际临床医学领域越来越受重视 ,其核心思想是任何临床医疗决策的制定都应基于客观的科学研究依据。个人的经验推理是临床医师通过学习与实践获得的。医生们每天都在凭教科书、经验和某些专业知识对病人的治疗作出重要决定 ,但他们可能会忽略对诊治病人具有重要影响的一些问题。经验医学的直接后果是一些真正有效的疗法因不为公众所了解而长期未被临床采用 ;而另一些实际无效甚至有害的疗法 ,因从理论上推断可能有效而在长期、广泛推广使用。…     

Certainty and Uncertainty: The Two Faces of the Hindsight Bias

“Hindsight Bias” is a person's tendency, after learning about the actual outcome of a situation or the correct answer to a question, to distort a previous judgment in the direction of this new information. In the literature, hindsight bias has been mostly discussed as an inevitable result of a “judgment under uncertainty.” We think that the hindsight bias is due to memorial as well as inferential processes: Whereas certainty about the recollection is memorial and concerns the recollective experience, certainty at the time of the judgment is inferential and concerns the individual's metaknowledge (“I know that I knew that”). In two experiments participants' feelings of certainty were measured indirectly (Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996) by giving participants the option of leaving those questions unanswered about which they felt uncertain. This free-report option was offered to half of the participants in the first estimate phase (concerning time of judgment) and to the second half in the memory phase (concerning the recollective experience). At the end of the session, participants were presented again with the questions they had skipped and were now required to answer them. This procedure allowed us to compare the amount of hindsight bias for the skipped, uncertain items to the spontaneously answered, certain ones. Both experiments demonstrated that the hindsight bias is a result of the interaction of both uncertainty and certainty.     

Resampling-Based Inference Methods for Comparing Two Coefficients Alpha

The two-sample problem for Cronbach’s coefficient \(\alpha _C\), as an estimate of test or composite score reliability, has attracted little attention compared to the extensive treatment of the one-sample case. It is necessary to compare the reliability of a test for different subgroups, for different tests or the short and long forms of a test. In this paper, we study statistical procedures of comparing two coefficients \(\alpha _{C,1}\) and \(\alpha _{C,2}\). The null hypothesis of interest is \(H_0 : \alpha _{C,1} = \alpha _{C,2}\), which we test against one-or two-sided alternatives. For this purpose, resampling-based permutation and bootstrap tests are proposed for two-group multivariate non-normal models under the general asymptotically distribution-free (ADF) setting. These statistical tests ensure a better control of the type-I error, in finite or very small sample sizes, when the state-of-affairs ADF large-sample test may fail to properly attain the nominal significance level. By proper choice of a studentized test statistic, the resampling tests are modified in order to be valid asymptotically even in non-exchangeable data frameworks. Moreover, extensions of this approach to other designs and reliability measures are discussed as well. Finally, the usefulness of the proposed resampling-based testing strategies is demonstrated in an extensive simulation study and illustrated by real data applications.     

论条件推理中的两种"高概率结论效应"

用随机抽取的139名大学生和研究生被试,对Oaksford设计的4条条件推理规则的认可度,以及对组成这4条条件推理规则的前后件认可度进行了评定,并根据被试对"条件规则"、组成条件规则的"前件"和"后件"等三个因素上的评定结果各区分为"高"和"低"两个水平.而后对被试在不同评定条件下对每条规则的四种推理结果进行了统计分析.实验结果既支持Oaksford等提出的"推理者对组成条件推理规则的不同的前后件概率组合对推理结论的认可度会有影响"这一观点,也支持邱江等得出的"不同的条件概率对推理者进行推理时对结论认可度的高低会有影响"的论断.前者可称之为"前后件概率的高概率结论效应",后者可称之为"条件概率的高概率结论效应".     

Preference,Expectations, and Attributional Bias: Two Field Studies1

Two quasi-experiments were conducted to test the relationship among a perceiver's preference, expectations, and causal attributions for an event, when the outcome of the event ran for and counter to expectation and preference. Following the 1976 Superbowl, fans of Dallas and Pittsburgh and fans with no preference were asked to attribute causality for a series of game events, counterbalanced for (un)favorability for each team. Following the 1976 Presidential election, fans of Carter and Ford were asked to attribute causality for the election outcome and estimate its repeatability and mutability. Both studies revealed that fans exhibit a biased attributional pattern, offering more credit to their own side for their successes than to the opponents for their successes. Furthermore, fans see their side's successes as replicable and their side's failures as nonreplicable. The implications of the data patterns for real world manifestations of attributional bias are discussed.     

Psychiatry in the labyrinth: Deconstructing deviancy

Abstract

Deviancy is a key concept in psychiatry and other therapeutic disciplines, because it dramatizes the way in which they depend on the establishment of norms, in order to justify their theory and practice. The writings of Derrida as well as Goethe provide a different view: that “deviation” from a “norm” can be fundamentally important to the well‐being of the norm. Thus deviancy can be viewed not as something to be “corrected” but rather as a creative possibility to be encouraged and shaped in productive ways. As a case of “deviancy” we have selected the writings of John Perceval, whose Narrative provides a critique of the mental‐health establishment of his day, particularly the asylum, and offers an alternative to 19th‐century views of “lunacy.” We see his “schizophrenic” commentary on his “psychosis” and its treatment as analogous to the deconstructive, “schizophrenic” discourse of postmodernity which is similarly critical of the reigning, modernist psychiatric order.     

Bias in the Reporting of Family History: Implications for Clinical Care

Family history of cancer is critical for identifying and managing patients at risk for cancer. However, the quality of family history data is dependent on the accuracy of patient self reporting. Therefore, the validity of family history reporting is crucial to the quality of clinical care. A retrospective review of family history data collected at a community hospital between 2005 and 2009 was performed in 43,257 women presenting for screening mammography. Reported numbers of breast, colon, prostate, lung, and ovarian cancer were compared in maternal relatives vs. paternal relatives and in first vs. second degree relatives. Significant reporting differences were found between maternal and paternal family history of cancer, in addition to degree of relative. The number of paternal family histories of cancer was significantly lower than that of maternal family histories of cancer. Similarly, the percentage of grandparents' family histories of cancer was significantly lower than the percentage of parents' family histories of cancer. This trend was found in all cancers except prostate cancer. Self-reported family history in the community setting is often influenced by both bloodline of the cancer history and the degree of relative affected. This is evident by the underreporting of paternal family histories of cancer, and also, though to a lesser extent, by degree. These discrepancies in reporting family history of cancer imply we need to take more care in collecting accurate family histories and also in the clinical management of individuals in relation to hereditary risk.     

Positivity: The Dispositional Basis of Happiness

The present study examined in a stringent developmental model whether positivity, conceptualized as a pervasive mode of appraising, viewing, and perceiving life from a positive stance, predicts chronic positive affectivity across time or vice versa. Participants [263 participants (47 % males)], aged 15.5 at the beginning of the study and 23.5 at the end, reported on measures of positivity and dispositional positive affect four times. Longitudinal findings corroborated the posited paths of relations, with positivity significantly predicting positive affectivity across time rather than vice versa.