A new look at the schema therapy model: organization and role of early maladaptive schemas

This study reexamined the organization of Young’s 18 early maladaptive schemas and their hypothesized associations with experiences of need-thwarting parental experiences in childhood and the “vulnerable child” mode of emotional distress in adulthood. A large Danish sample (N = 1054) of 658 clinical- and 391 nonclinical adults completed measures of early maladaptive schemas, parenting styles, and the vulnerable child mode. We identified four higher-order schema domains as most appropriate in terms of interpretability and empirical indices (“Disconnection & Rejection”, “Impaired Autonomy & Performance”, “Excessive Responsibility & Standards”, and “Impaired Limits”). All four schema domains were differentially associated with conceptually relevant need-thwarting parental experiences. Apart from “Impaired Limits”, the schema domains meaningfully accounted for the association between need-thwarting parental experiences in childhood and emotional states of feeling like a “vulnerable child” in adulthood. We conclude that four domains of early maladaptive schemas are empirically and conceptually consistent with Young’s schema therapy model of personality pathology and longstanding emotional disorders. Findings warrant replication using different populations and if possible a prospective multi-method design. A scoring key for computing the four schema domains is provided.     

Experimental evaluation of a modular approach to mobilizing antitobacco influences of peers and parents

The experimental evaluation of two components of a community intervention to prevent adolescent tobacco use are described. Youth antitobacco activities (e.g., peer quizzes, sidewalk art, poster and T-shirt giveaways, etc.) and family communications activities (pamphlets to parents and student quizzes of parents) were evaluated in two time-series experiments, each of which was conducted in two experimental and one control community. Students in Grades 6 and 8 and their parents were assessed in a series of four phone surveys in the first experiment and six phone surveys in the second. Implementation of the youth antitobacco and family communications activities led to significantly greater exposure of young people to antitobacco information. They led to increases in parent and youth knowledge about tobacco use and more negative attitudes toward tobacco. In Experiment 2, youths in intervention communities had significantly lower rated intentions to smoke. The findings suggest the value of a modular approach to community interventions for influencing the social context relevant to the onset of adolescent tobacco use.     

A new look at Copernicus and Kant

Continental Philosophy Review -     

A new look at time and eternity

In his Systematic Theology, Vol. III, Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that God as eternal comprehends the different moments of time simultaneously and orders them to constitute a whole or totality. The author contends that this approach to time and eternity might solve the logical tension between the classical notion of divine sovereignty and the common sense belief in creaturely spontaneity/human freedom. For, if the existence of the events constituting a temporal sequence is primarily due to the spontaneous decisions of creatures, and if their being ordered into a totality or meaningful whole is primarily due to the superordinate activity of God, then both God and creatures play indispensable but nevertheless distinct roles in the cosmic process.     

Adolescent problem behavior: the influence of parents and peers

This paper presents evidence that the Patterson et al. (1992) model of development of antisocial behavior in children generalizes to the development of a wide array of problem behaviors during later adolescence and that youth antisocial behavior, high-risk sexual behavior, academic failure and substance use form a single problem behavior construct. Structural equation modeling methods were applied to 24-month longitudinal data from 204 adolescents and parents. The model fit the data well, accounting for 52% of the variance in adolescent problem behavior. Specifically, families experiencing high levels of conflict were more likely to have low levels of parent-child involvement. These family conditions were related to poor parental monitoring and association with deviant peers one year later. Poor parental monitoring and associations with deviant peers were strong proximal predictors of engagement in an array of problem behaviors at two-year follow-up.     

A new look at selective exposure

The relevance of the personality dimension “repression-sensitization” (D. Byrne in B. A. Maher (Ed.), Progress in experimental personality research, Vol. 1, NY: Academic Press, 1964, pp. 169–219) to selective exposure processes was investigated. Experimental repressors (who typically employ “avoidance” strategies in dealing with threatening stimuli) and experimental sensitizers (who generally “approach” threatening stimuli) were allowed to choose and keep one of two pairs of painting reproductions, each pair containing one positively and one negatively valued painting. After the decision, which experimental subjects believed terminated the experiment, subjects were allowed to inspect the alternatives ad libitum for 75 sec. Eye gaze during this period was unobtrusively videotaped. Compared to their matched controls, who were simply asked to inspect the paintings in order to decide which ones they liked best, experimental repressors inspected paintings that were consonant with their choices and avoided looking at paintings that were dissonant with their decisions. Experimental sensitizers did not manifest such postdecisional selective exposure. The implications of these results for past and future research on dissonance-produced selective exposure were discussed.     

Friendship and group identification: a new look at the role of cohesiveness in groupthink

This article proposes that research has failed to clarify the causal role of group cohesiveness in groupthink because of a failure to distinguish cohesiveness from friendship. To remedy this, a conceptual distinction, based on social identity theory, is drawn between positive regard grounded in interpersonal relations (personal attraction, friendship), and solidarity grounded in group identification (depersonalized social attraction, true group cohesiveness)—Hogg (1992). An experiment compared the roles of friendship and social attraction in groupthink. Four-person discussion groups of friends, or socially attractive or random groups of strangers, made decisions (N=472). Background conditions for groupthink were established, and a wide range of subjective and behavioural measures of friendship, identification/social attraction, and the decision-making process were taken. Analyses isolated effects associated with friendship/personal attraction, from those associated with identification/social attraction. Friendship was found to be weakly and negatively related to symptoms of groupthink, while group identification and social attraction were strongly and, with some exceptions, positively related to symptoms of groupthink. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface

The present model outlines the mechanisms underlying habitual control of responding and the ways in which habits interface with goals. Habits emerge from the gradual learning of associations between responses and the features of performance contexts that have historically covaried with them (e.g., physical settings, preceding actions). Once a habit is formed, perception of contexts triggers the associated response without a mediating goal. Nonetheless, habits interface with goals. Constraining this interface, habit associations accrue slowly and do not shift appreciably with current goal states or infrequent counterhabitual responses. Given these constraints, goals can (a) direct habits by motivating repetition that leads to habit formation and by promoting exposure to cues that trigger habits, (b) be inferred from habits, and (c) interact with habits in ways that preserve the learned habit associations. Finally, the authors outline the implications of the model for habit change, especially for the self-regulation of habit cuing.     

A prospective study of pressures from parents, peers, and the media on extreme weight change behaviors among adolescent boys and girls

The current study was designed to evaluate the role of sociocultural influences over a 16 month period on strategies to lose weight, extreme weight loss strategies, and strategies to increase muscles among adolescent boys (n=344) and girls (n=246). All participants completed measures of body dissatisfaction, body image importance, strategies to lose weight, extreme weight loss strategies, and strategies to increase muscles. Measures of perceived pressure to lose weight or increase muscles from mother, father, best male friend, best female friend and the media were also evaluated. Data were gathered on three occasions, 8 months apart. The results demonstrated that boys showed a decrease in strategies to lose weight and increase muscles over time, whereas girls showed an increase. Both boys and girls showed an increase in extreme weight loss strategies with girls demonstrating a greater increase than boys. The sociocultural influences generally were perceived by girls to relate to messages to lose weight, whereas for boys they were perceived to relate to increasing muscles. Messages from parents, particularly fathers, were strong predictors of both strategies to lose weight and increase muscles among boys, with the media and best male friend playing a limited role. For girls, the strongest influences were mothers and best female friends, with few influences from fathers or the media. The results of this study are discussed in terms of the importance of the various sociocultural influences in shaping body change strategies among young adolescent boys and girls, and the implications of these findings for intervention programs for adolescents.