Trauma-Related Negative Cognitions Mediate the Relationship Between Avoidant Personality Beliefs and Impeded Response to Psychotherapy for PTSD

There is strong research evidence for the association of personality pathology and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as trauma-related negative cognitions (TRNC) and PTSD symptoms. However, the relationship between personality pathology and TRNC in the context of PTSD is mostly unknown. In the present study, we aimed to examine whether avoidant and borderline personality beliefs (PB, indicator of personality pathology) could predict therapy outcome in PTSD, and whether the relationship between PB and therapy outcome could be mediated by TRNC. Sixty patients with PTSD were assessed for PB, TRNC and PTSD symptoms at baseline, and for PTSD symptoms at the termination of Prolonged Exposure Therapy. Baseline avoidant PB predicted significant variance in PTSD symptoms at termination over and above baseline PTSD symptoms (16% reduction in treatment effect per SD on avoidant PB). Moreover, TRNC at baseline fully mediated the relationships between baseline avoidant PB and PTSD symptoms at termination. This is the first study to show that avoidant PB predicts treatment response in PTSD, and that patients with avoidant beliefs are more vulnerable to have TRNC, which are associated with impeded therapy response. Our results highlight the importance of targeting both dysfunctional PB and TRNC in PTSD interventions.     

Information Distortion and Voting Choices: The Origins and Effects of Factual Beliefs in Initiative Elections

To account for voter decision making in initiative elections, we integrate theory and research on public opinion, misinformation, and motivated reasoning. Heuristic and motivated reasoning literatures suggest that voters' preexisting values interact with political sophistication such that politically knowledgeable voters develop systematically distorted empirical beliefs relevant to the initiatives on their ballots. These beliefs, in turn, can predict voting preferences even after controlling for underlying values, regardless of one's political sophistication. These hypotheses were tested using a 2003 voter survey conducted prior to a statewide initiative election that repealed a workplace safety regulation. Results showed that only those voters knowledgeable of key endorsements had initiative-specific beliefs that lined up with their underlying antiregulation values. Also, voters' empirical beliefs had an effect on initiative support even after controlling for prior values, and political sophistication did not moderate this effect.     

Identifying Salient Beliefs About Leisure Activities: Frequency of Elicitation Versus Response Latency1

Sets of 16 beliefs about the consequences of each of 6 leisure activities were selected in a pilot study by means of free elicitation. The beliefs varied in salience (salient vs. nonsalient), valence (positive vs. negative), and type (instrumental vs. effective). In the main study, 69 college students expressed their agreements with each belief, evaluated the consequences involved in the beliefs, and rated each leisure activity on 4 evaluative scales as a standard measure of attitude. The latencies of these responses were used to assess accessibilities of beliefs and attitudes in an effort to quantify degree of salience. Accessibility of beliefs was found to increase significantly with frequency of elicitation in the pilot study (salience) and with the judged favorability of the consequences. Salience was further found to be related to degree and extremity of agreement. Accessibility was also found to moderate the correlation between beliefs and attitudes posited in the expectancy-value model of attitude. The correlation between a given belief and the direct attitude measure increased with the belief's accessibility, and the correlation between a measure of attitude based on the set of salient beliefs and the standard attitude measures increased with the accessibility of the attitude. Implications for the identification and measurement of perceived benefits and costs of leisure are discussed.     

The Cognitive Emotions and Emotional Cognitions

Studies in Philosophy and Education - Israel Scheffler's "In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions" (1977, 1991) extends earlier analyses of the role of emotions in rational undertakings....     

Cognitions associated with anxiety and depression

The aim of the study was to examine whether cognitions associated with depression were different from those associated with anxiety. Sixty-four students and clerical staff completed the Beck Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Cognitions Questionnaire. Those respondents whose depression scores were above the median were found to have significantly greater scores on one dimension of distortion (i.e. generalisation across situations) than respondents whose depression scores were below the median. There was also a general tendency for depression to be related to levels of overall cognitive distortion. The respondents whose trait anxiety scores were above the median did not show a significantly greater degree of overall cognitive distortion or generalisation across situations than those respondents whose anxiety scores were below the median.     

Mobility,Cognitions, and panic

Responses to the Mobility Inventory for Agoraphobia and the Cognitions Questionnaire were compared from samples of agoraphobics, social phobics, senior citizens, students, and students' relatives. The data illustrate the occurrence of avoidant behavior and panic in groups other than agoraphobics. The Mobility Inventory was shown to have good discriminative power, but the Cognitions Questionnaire failed to discriminate between agoraphobics and social phobics. The relationship of panic to mobility and cognitions is considered.     

A Cross-Validation of the Anger Cognitions Scale-Revised: Cognitions and Anger in an Italian Adolescent Sample

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - The Angry Cognitions Scale (ACS; Martin and Dahlen in J Ration Emot Cogn Behav Therapy 25(3): 155–173, 2007) is a comprehensive...     

Cognitions, metacognitions, and chronic pain

Purpose: Although the content of thoughts has received a considerable amount of attention in pain research, the importance of thought processes (metacognitions) has received less attention. Method: One hundred twenty-nine individuals with muscular dystrophy and chronic pain completed measures assessing metacognitions and frequency of both catastrophizing and pain control beliefs. Results: Greater use of reappraisal and distraction metacognitions were associated with more perceived control over pain, whereas greater use of worry and punishment metacognitions were associated with more catastrophizing. Conclusions/Implications: The current findings indicate that metacognitions are associated with both pain control beliefs and catastrophizing and therefore may play an important role in the development or maintenance of pain-related cognitive content thought to influence patient functioning. Research is needed to determine whether treatments that encourage changes in both metacognitions and cognitive content are more effective than treatments that focus on cognitive content alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

主动性攻击和反应性攻击的遗传基础研究述评

根据攻击行为的意图可以将攻击分为主动性攻击和反应性攻击。近年来, 研究者对遗传和环境在主动性攻击和反应性攻击发展中的作用进行了探讨, 并获得了两类攻击具有不同遗传和环境基础的重要发现。既有研究主要采用定量行为遗传学研究的范式考察两类攻击的遗传基础, 未来研究应从确定与两类攻击相关的候选基因、遗传基因与环境的交互作用机制、遗传基因作用于两类攻击的神经生物机制等方面展开。     

Irrational Cognitions and the Fear of Flying

In order to test the hypothesis that the fear of flying is associated with irrational evaluative beliefs, as postulated by Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy for anxiety disorders, 15 fearful flyers and 7 non-fearful flyers participated in the Articulated Thoughts during Simulated Situations procedure. Six experimental scenes depicting some basic fears associated with the fear of flying and six supposedly non-anxiety provoking flight-related control scenes were used. The fear of flying group displayed significantly more irrational thoughts and significantly higher subjective ratings of anxiety on all experimental and five control scenes compared to the non-fearful flyers. Their negative cognitions were predominantly characterized by awfulizing and low frustration tolerance. The results are interpreted as offering support for the cognitive view that anxiety, and the fear of flying, are associated with negative cognitions characterized by a preoccupation with danger and with an overestimation of the seriousness of the perceived threat (awfulizing) and an underestimation of coping abilities (low frustration tolerance).     

Cognitions supportive of violence and violent behavior

The role of cognitions supportive of violence is acknowledged in many theories of violent behavior. Despite this, relatively little attention has been paid in research to the cognitions that contribute to violence at an individual level. The aim here was to conduct a systematic review of studies examining the impact of violence-related cognitions on non-sexual violence. Five studies were identified and these studies reported the use of five measures of violence-related cognition, namely, the EXPAGG, a Life Map, the ‘My Life’ checklist, the Provictim Scale, and the Maudsley Violence Questionnaire. The studies indicated that scales of instrumental aggression were positively related to self-reported violence in both prison and non-offender samples. Beliefs supportive of violence were also positively related to violence. This suggests that viewing aggression as means to achieve positive outcome is a risk factor for violence. By contrast, scores on an expressive aggression scale were inversely related to violence indicting that loss of control and guilt about behavior are protective factors against violence. Also, pro-victim attitudes were inversely related to violence. These scales tap the self-conscious moral emotions and recognition of these emotions may be important in violence inhibition. There is clearly a need to extend the identification of cognitions supportive of violence. This would aid research into individual-level violence and contribute to the development of effective interventions to reduce violence.     

Retrospective and Prospective Cognitions in Anxiety and Depression

A study is reported that examined memory for past experiences and anticipation of future experiences within panic disorder patients (N = 17), depressed patients (N = 16), and controls (N = 17). Anticipation and recall of positive and negative experiences were examined by administering an adapted verbal fluency paradigm. Participants were asked to generate future and past, positive and negative experiences in response to various time-frame cues. Anxiety was associated with generating more negative experiences but not fewer positive experiences; depression was associated with generating fewer positive experiences but not more negative experiences. The patterns for recall of past experiences and anticipation of future experiences were very similar.     

Disputing Irrational Beliefs Among Convicted Terrorists and Extremist Beliefs

This study investigated the most common irrational beliefs among samples of: (1) convicted terrorists and (2) extremists, all of whom were prisoners in the country of Jordan. It also investigated the effectiveness of a program of disputing irrational beliefs (DIBP) with the same populations. The subjects were assigned randomly to two groups: an experimental group (EG) that consisted of 43 prisoners who received an training program, and a control group that consisted of 48 prisoners who received no training. The irrational beliefs scale (IBS) scores were assessed for both groups before and after exposure to the DIBP. To test the hypotheses of the study, means and standard deviations of the IBS measures were submitted to a two-way analysis of covariance. The results revealed that the most common irrational belief loaded on the factors of musts, exaggerations, and perfectionism. Moreover, the results revealed significant differences between the means of the two groups on the total IBS scores at post-test, with the EG scoring lower, which indicated the effectiveness of the training program in reducing the level of IBS. The results yielded significant differences in the effect of the reason for imprisonment in favor of extremists and the interaction between the reason for prison and treatment in favor of the EG and extremists.     

Beliefs and responsibility

I am grateful to R.S. Downie and Elizabeth Telfer for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

看法与论证

本文的主导问题是:我们为自己已经具有的看法进行论证是否多余甚至虚伪?为回答这一问题,我们需要澄清关于论证的一些误解。论证并不只是为了说服别人。从根本上说,论证是把东一处西一处的道理联系起来,使我们获得整体的眼光,或日综观。尽管我们在着手论证之前已经有为之进行论证的看法,但获得了论证的看法,在上述意义上,是一种新的看法。即使我们并没有通过论证达到"共识",论证也并非徒劳,因为它可能有助于多样性之间的相互理解。     

Territorial Cognitions and Social Climate in Urban Neighborhoods

The feeling of regulatory fit is thought to arise from the right kind of goal pursuit, but some studies imply that it may be evoked even by lesser involvement in the right kind of strategies. The present experiment explored the minimum of involvement necessary to evoke regulatory fit. Participants (N = 71) first completed a regulatory focus manipulation task and were then led to believe that they would receive either rich or accurate information concerning vegetable sterols, evoking beliefs that they used eager or vigilant information search strategies. In reality, all participants received the same information. Participants in promotion focus reported more positive attitudes in the rich information condition, whereas prevention-focused participants reported more positive attitudes in the accurate information condition. The results showed that regulatory fit can be evoked through mere thought, without actual goal pursuit and even without engagement in the goal pursuit strategies.     

Perfectionism Cognitions, Rumination, and Psychological Distress

The current study examined the extent to which dimensions of perfectionism are associated with a ruminative response orientation and the experience of cognitive intrusions in response to stressful events. Our main goal was to test the hypothesis that individuals characterized by frequent automatic thoughts involving perfectionistic themes would also be characterized by a ruminative response orientation when distressed and they would report intrusive thoughts and images following the experience of a stressful event. A sample of 65 students completed several measures, including the Perfectionism Cognitions Inventory, the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Response Styles Questionnaire, the Impact of Events Scale, and indices of depression and anxiety. Correlational analyses confirmed that high scores on the Perfectionism Cognitions Inventory were correlated with a ruminative response orientation and the reported experience of intrusive thoughts and images following the experience of a stressful event. High levels of perfectionism cognitions, socially prescribed perfectionism, and rumination were also correlated with measures of depression and anxiety representingthe tripartite model. The results support the view that there is a salient cognitive aspect to perfectionism and the experience of frequent perfectionistic cognitions and related forms of rumination contribute to levels of psychological distress.     

Cognitions and depressive symptoms among ethnic minority adolescents

Cognitive models have guided effective intervention strategies in the treatment of depression. However, little is known about the cognitive model's relevance in different cultural ethnic groups in the United States. This study examines the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations among cognitive variables and depressive symptoms among African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic adolescents in the United States. Community adolescents (N = 450) ages 14-18 years (African American n = 79; Caucasian n = 273; Hispanic n = 98) provided information regarding their depressive symptoms and cognitions at two surveys, 6 months apart. Self-efficacy, cognitive errors, and hopelessness were associated with concurrent depressive symptoms at baseline. In addition, cognitive errors at baseline, controlling for baseline depressive symptoms and the occurrence of stressful events, predicted depressive symptoms at follow-up. Ethnic differences disappeared when parent education level was controlled. Our findings demonstrate support for the cognitive model of depression across ethnic groups. The importance of controlling for social class when examining ethnic differences in psychological variables is highlighted by our findings.