Inpatient Group Psychotherapy: Practical Considerations and Special Problems

A comparison is made between group-analytic and group focal conflict theory in terms of the conceptualization of the group as a whole; the emergence of group-level phenomena from the interaction of individuals; the associative flow as the material for therapy; facilitative and nonfacilitative group conditions; the therapist's aims on behalf of the persons in the group and perceived routes toward therapeutic gain; general factors contributing to therapeutic gain; specific factors contributing to therapeutic gain; and the therapist's role. Differences in terminology are examined to determine whether and how they reflect differences in substance. Many similarities and some differences in emphasis can be shown to exist. Both approaches generate respect for the power and potential of the group to support significant reexperiencing, with attendant opportunities for personal benefit and change.     

Neural dynamics of object-based multifocal visual spatial attention and priming: object cueing, useful-field-of-view, and crowding

How are spatial and object attention coordinated to achieve rapid object learning and recognition during eye movement search? How do prefrontal priming and parietal spatial mechanisms interact to determine the reaction time costs of intra-object attention shifts, inter-object attention shifts, and shifts between visible objects and covertly cued locations? What factors underlie individual differences in the timing and frequency of such attentional shifts? How do transient and sustained spatial attentional mechanisms work and interact? How can volition, mediated via the basal ganglia, influence the span of spatial attention? A neural model is developed of how spatial attention in the where cortical stream coordinates view-invariant object category learning in the what cortical stream under free viewing conditions. The model simulates psychological data about the dynamics of covert attention priming and switching requiring multifocal attention without eye movements. The model predicts how “attentional shrouds” are formed when surface representations in cortical area V4 resonate with spatial attention in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and prefrontal cortex (PFC), while shrouds compete among themselves for dominance. Winning shrouds support invariant object category learning, and active surface-shroud resonances support conscious surface perception and recognition. Attentive competition between multiple objects and cues simulates reaction-time data from the two-object cueing paradigm. The relative strength of sustained surface-driven and fast-transient motion-driven spatial attention controls individual differences in reaction time for invalid cues. Competition between surface-driven attentional shrouds controls individual differences in detection rate of peripheral targets in useful-field-of-view tasks. The model proposes how the strength of competition can be mediated, though learning or momentary changes in volition, by the basal ganglia. A new explanation of crowding shows how the cortical magnification factor, among other variables, can cause multiple object surfaces to share a single surface-shroud resonance, thereby preventing recognition of the individual objects.     

The function of the therapist's affect in therapeutic conflict in groups

Group psychotherapy theory and technique are presented with the goals of helping group practitioners working with difficult clients: 1) develop a treatment plan; 2) create a therapeutic alliance; 3) foster a responsive group climate; and 4) utilize the therapist's countertransferential reactions in dealing with therapeutic conflict. Historical modifications of the analyst's role in the development of group psychotherapy are noted. Emphasis is give to the recognition of therapist-client identifications in order to separate feelings induced in the therapist from countertransferential reactions, to enable the practitioner to respond appropriately to the affective and inspirational substratum of therapeutic groups.     

Behavioural Consistency Within the Prisoner's Dilemma Game: The Role of Personality and Situation

Mixed‐motive games represent situations that confront people with a conflict between cooperative and non‐cooperative alternatives. Despite this common basis, recent research has shown that the consistency of people's choices across different mixed‐motive games is rather low. The present research examined behavioural consistency within the same mixed‐motive game, by presenting participants with a series of one‐shot Prisoner's Dilemma Games. Across this set of games, payoffs were manipulated in order to intensify or weaken the conflict between self and the other party while maintaining the game's underlying structure. Our findings indicate that significant differences in choice behaviour are observed as a function of both situational (i.e. manipulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game's payoff structure) and personality differences (i.e. individual differences in personality and motivational traits). Moreover, our included situational variables and personality features did not interact with each other and were about equally impactful in shaping cooperation. Crucially, however, despite the significant behavioural differences across game variants, considerable consistency in choices was found as well, which suggests that the game's motivational basis reliably impacts choice behaviour in spite of situational and personality variations. We discuss implications for theorizing on mixed‐motive situations and elaborate on the question how cooperation can be promoted. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Ethical decision making in family therapy

In family therapy, effective clinical decisions promote the welfare and interests of the family and its individual members. However, the needs of the family and its individual members are often in conflict. Resolving this conflict is an ethical as well as a therapeutic dilemma. Kitchener has developed a model of ethical decision making that we have found useful in teaching students and supervisees how to resolve conflicts between the family's needs and the needs of its members. The purpose of this article is to discuss this model and show how it can be applied to clinical decision making.     

Precipitation anxiety

Therapy with autistic and psychotic children led the author to introduce the concept of precipitation anxiety. Freud's first theory of the instincts was expressed in the dynamics of conflict, but his subsequent development of life and death instincts is better understood in terms of a gradient of energy between two extremities of the same axis. Object relations result from a caesura (Bion) which creates a gradient of psychic energy experienced initially as a precipice which, if left unregulated, generates intolerable anxiety. Satisfactory emotional encounters with the mind of the object bring about the necessary adjustments to the slope of the gradient. Autistic mechanisms may block off precipitation anxiety, but they also prevent mental growth. Both the dynamics of conflict and the dynamics of the gradient are vital for psychic development, but the very existence of the former is contingent on successful negotiation of the energy gradient (working through). After illustrating his thesis with clinical material drawn from a group therapeutic setting, the author discusses points of convergence and divergence with two other fundamental notions: the aesthetic conflict (Meltzer) and premature psychic birth (Tustin). The proposed model furthers our understanding of the therapeutic process and stresses the importance of the containing object in the transference situation.     

Theory of the invisible group applied to individual and group-as-a-whole interpretations

The theory of the Invisible Group explains the dynamics of groups in terms of four separate systems, hierarchically and isomorphically related, which enable the therapist to view group from four different perspectives and to interpret four different dimensions of group process. Person and member interpretations apply to aspects of the individual system; group-role and group-as-a-whole interpretations apply to aspects of the group system. Clinical examples illustrate how the psychotherapist can modify the dynamics of the group at the individual or at the group-as-a-whole level by modifying interpretations.     

The stability of individual differences in behavior across experimental conflict situations

Four experimental conflict situations having theoretical implications have been reported upon with some frequency. The purpose of this study was to compare individual differences on a common measure, response latency, in order to determine the stability of behavior across these four conflict situations using a comparable latency measure. The results of this study do indicate that behavior in experimental conflict studies shows a stability of performance by individual subjects. There are also group mean differences between the four procedures that reflect situational contribution to conflict behavior.     

A mathematical theory of instruction: Instructor/learner interaction and instruction pacing

In this paper, a mathematical theory of instruction applicable in the educational environment is developed from concepts of psychological learning theory. Within the framework of optimization and control theory, the dynamics of the interaction between instructor and learner are modelled, and the trade-off between instruction cost and learner achievement is formulated so that optimal instruction inputs can be determined. One important aspect of the classroom environment that is characterized by the theory is the interaction between an instructor and a group of learners with various learning abilities.A basic dynamic model that relates learner achievement and instruction cost is developed from learning theory concepts. This model, which applies to the individual learner situation, is analyzed in detail to determine instruction intensity inputs that match the learner's characteristics in order to maximize an objective that measures both achievement and cost.This basic model is used as a building block to describe how individual learner achievement depends on instruction pacing. To determine optimal instruction pacing the concept of gain, which is essentially learner achievement per unit time, is introduced. In this extended model, instruction pacing is intimately related with the concept of learner aptitude. This relationship leads immediately to the consideration of instruction pacing for a group of learners with various aptitudes and thus optimal instruction pacing is determined for nonhomogenous groups.Throughout the development of the theory, hypothetical examples are presented to demonstrate many of the implications of the theory. One of the contributions of the theory is the definition of the concepts of learner aptitude and instruction pacing within a framework that structures the empirical investigation of these concepts by means of experimental research.     

The good,the bad and the effective: a meta-analytic examination of selling orientation and customer orientation on sales performance

The concept of customer orientation (CO) is a focal construct in marketing and sales literature. Saxe and Weitz introduced CO to contrast the traditional high-pressure approach to sales (selling orientation). This study synthesizes empirical evidence from 1982 to 2013 to provide insight into the antecedents and consequences of both CO and selling orientation (SO). A conceptual meta-analytic model based on research into interpersonal motive models is proposed and tested using effect sizes from 126,790 salesperson survey responses to advance theory development on our understanding of how SO and CO behaviours affect organizations. Findings show that adaptive selling mediates the impact of both SO and CO which has important practical implications for hiring and training salespeople. Furthermore, this study shows that goal orientations are antecedents of SO and CO and that the impact of SO on job performance varies by customer type.     

Candidate Evaluations Through the Lens of Adaptive Followership Psychology: How and Why Voters Prefer Leaders Based on Character Traits

An extensive literature in political science shows how citizens' evaluations of politicians—as well as their electoral behavior—are affected by trait impressions of these politicians. However, deeper, interdisciplinary theory building that seeks to address when and for whom specific trait impressions come to guide candidate evaluations remains absent. In this article, I outline the theory of adaptive followership that seeks to address this shortcoming. Grounded in evolutionary psychology, I argue that leadership evolved as a solution to problems of intragroup coordination in ancestral small-scale societies. In order to understand the traits that drive followers' and voters' evaluations of leaders and politicians, one should therefore focus on problems related to group coordination and ask how these problems might regulate followers' prioritizations of various traits in leaders. On this basis, I outline an analytical framework consisting of three predictions that simultaneously formulate how (1) contexts and (2) individual differences of relevance to a given group-coordination problem regulate trait preferences, and (3) how such preferences differ between leaders and nonleaders (i.e., other social categories). The analytical framework is applied for structuring two reviews (including new empirical studies) of the ways through which intergroup conflict and disease threat, respectively, affect followers' trait preferences in leaders. Finally, directions and suggestions for future research on trait-based candidates and leader evaluations are discussed.     

信任对创造力的影响:激发、抑制以及倒U假设

信任和创造力都是心理学的重要研究对象。近年来,心理学、教育学以及管理学的研究者主要在团体情景中,围绕信任如何影响创造力的问题展开了一系列的理论和实证研究。从总体上看,当前学术界存在信任对创造力影响的激发、抑制和倒U三种假设。激发假设代表信任对创造力存在普遍的积极促进作用;抑制假设则意味信任对创造力存在消极抑制作用;而倒U假设表明信任在冲突等其它变量的影响下可能对创造力产生"甜点效应"。3种假设各有其理论基础和实证支持,但也都存在一些问题。未来该领域研究还应沿着妥善选择测量方法,厘清信任对创造力的影响,深化信任对创造力影响的机制问题等研究角度进一步拓展和深入。     

‘The Battle of Westminster’: developing the social identity model of crowd behaviour in order to explain the initiation and development of collective conflict

This paper aims to extend the social identity approach to crowd behaviour (Reicher, 1984, 1987) in order to understand how crowd events, and crowd conflict in particular, develop over time. The analysis derives from a detailed account of a violent confrontation between students and police during a demonstration held in November 1988—the so-called ‘Battle of Westminster’. It focuses on how students came to be involved in the conflict, how the conflict spread and upon the psychological consequences of involvement. This analysis is used to develop general hypotheses concerning the initiation and development of collective conflict. It is concluded that, while the social identity model is of use in understanding these phenomena, it is necessary to recognize how social categories are constructed and reconstructed in the dynamics of intergroup interaction.     

Conflict of experience: A categorization model for studying verbal interaction

In order to describe communication between people, some new concepts are introduced. These are derived from a model using 'conflict of experience' as its main theoretical reference. Such conflict presumably occurs when different interpretations of "the same" reality confronts each other. How such a conflict is handled is seen as depending upon factors in the situation, and on motive states of the person. A dialogue from Ibsen's play "John Gabriel Borkman" is analyzed in terms of the model in order to demonstrate its possible fruitfulness for describing and understanding verbal interaction. Psychotherapeutic concepts are discussed in relation to the theoretical points of veiw presented.     

The role of attachment‐related individual differences in goal adoption for serial arguments

This study investigated the relations between attachment‐related individual differences and the adoption of interpersonal goals for conflict in romantic relationships. Additionally, it used the truth and bias model to examine how biased and accurate people are in judging their partner's endorsement of conflict goals, as well as how attachment‐related individual differences moderate this bias and accuracy. Ninety‐four romantic couples completed a measure of attachment‐related individual differences and self ‐ and informant reports of interpersonal conflict goals. Results revealed that individuals endorsed conflict goals consistent with their attachment orientations. Furthermore, they displayed biases when estimating their partner's goals, with some of these biases relating to attachment orientations. These results suggest that attachment‐related individual differences may partially guide conflict‐related goals and partner perceptions.     

Bridging the Distance Between Us: How Initial Responses to Sales Team Conflict Help Shape Core Selling Team Outcomes

Intra-team conflict within core selling teams can shape team outcomes. Using congruency theory, we propose how conflict responses impact the relational distance between individuals in a core selling team, creating positive/negative team outcomes. Our framework suggests managers may improve team outcomes by monitoring sales team members' responses to conflict, encouraging internal cognitive voice behaviors, and intervening in teams not using internal cognitive voice behaviors when relational or process conflict exists. Our model helps explain the paradox in which an individual who is part of a “winning” team (one achieving its team goals) may still choose to exit the team.     

中国情境下团队伦理决策的过程机制及影响因素

尽管绝大多数商业伦理决策都是由团队而非个人所做出的,但目前对团队伦理决策的研究还很少,尤其缺乏基于理论的深入研究。在前人研究的基础上,借鉴个体伦理决策和团队决策方面的研究成果,结合中国文化强调反省、中庸、威权领导等特点,我们对团队伦理决策的过程机制及影响因素的作用模式展开理论驱动的深入研究。具体来讲,将综合利用多种方法来进行两个方面的4项子研究。在团队伦理决策的过程机制方面,拟开展团队伦理决策的过程机制模型构建研究,然后聚焦于团队伦理决策和个体伦理决策的核心区别,展开基于社会决策图式理论的团队伦理决策观点整合机制研究;在团队伦理决策的影响因素作用模式方面,拟从成员和领导两个方面来进行:基于信息加工和团队冲突的成员多样性对团队伦理决策的影响机制研究,基于信息取样模型的领导特征对团队伦理决策的影响机制研究。     

Integrating behavioral-motive and experiential-requirement perspectives on psychological needs: a two process model

Psychological need theories offer much explanatory potential for behavioral scientists, but there is considerable disagreement and confusion about what needs are and how they work. A 2-process model of psychological needs is outlined, viewing needs as evolved functional systems that provide both (a) innate psychosocial motives that tend to impel adaptive behavior and (b) innate experiential requirements that when met reinforce adaptive behavior and promote mental health. The literature is reviewed to find support for 8 hypotheses derived from this model: that certain basic psychosocial motives are present at birth; that successful enactment of these motives supports the functioning and wellness of all humans; that individual differences in these motives develop in childhood; that these strong motive dispositions tend to produce the satisfying experiences they seek; that motive dispositions do not moderate the effect of motive-corresponding need satisfaction on well-being but do moderate the effect of assigned goal-type on rated self-concordance for those goals; that need dissatisfaction and need satisfaction correspond to the separable behavioral-motive and experiential-reward aspects of needs; and that motives and needs can become decoupled when chronic dissatisfaction of particular requirements warps or depresses the corresponding motives, such that the adaptive process fails in its function. Implications for self-determination theory and motive disposition theory are considered.