Some Like It Mild and Not Too Wet: The Influence of Weather on Subjective Well-Being

More and more economists and politicians are advocating the use of comprehensive measures of well-being, on top of the usual national accounting measures, to assess the welfare of populations. Researchers using subjective well-being data should be aware of the potential biasing effects of the weather on their estimates. In this paper, the responsiveness of well-being to climate and transitory weather conditions is investigated by analyzing subjective well-being data collected in the Princeton Affect and Time Survey. General satisfaction questions about life in general, life at home, health and one’s job, as well as questions concerning feelings intensities during specific episodes are studied. Women are much more responsive than men to the weather, and life satisfaction decreases with the amount of rain on the day of the interview. Low temperatures increase happiness and reduce tiredness and stress, raising net affect, and high temperatures reduce happiness, consistent with the fact that the survey was conducted in the summer. Methods to reduce the possible biases are suggested in the conclusion.     

Validation of a Community Collective Efficacy Scale in an African Context

The aim of this study was to validate a community collective efficacy scale in an African context. An abridged version of the Community Collective Efficacy Scale was validated in a cross-sectional survey design. Participants (N = 1050) from urban (n = 451) and rural (n = 599) areas completed the CCES and other measures of self-efficacy and psychological well-being. Results indicated a Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.72 and satisfactory inter-item correlations ranging between 0.17 and 0.25. Significant correlations between the CCES and other measures of self-efficacy and psychological well-being indicated good criterion-related validity. Construct validity was supported by confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis yielded one factor that relates to a sense of “we-ness”. The CCES thus has good reliability and validity in an African context.     

Serial Projective Drawings in a Patient with a Malignant Brain Tumor

A series of human figure drawings is presented illustrating a patient's reaction to the knowledge and the effects of his malignant brain tumor. The drawings reveal a subjective state concealed clinically by the patient's effort and obscured in the Rorschach by stereotypy and coarctation. The skill of the graphic portrayals is a deviation from the growing body of material which demonstrates drawing dyspraxia with parietal lobe lesions. The hypothesis is offered that the diagonal placement of a figure is a projection of the loss of equilibrium rather than an impairment in drawing perspective as it has been considered heretofore. This case is part of a larger on-going study in the use of projective techniques with brain damaged patients.     

Toward a Unified Framework for the Study of Between-Person and Within-Person Structures: Building a Bridge Between Two Research Paradigms

The vast majority of empirical research in the behavioral sciences is based on the analysis of between-person variation. In contrast, much of applied psychology is concerned with the analysis of variation within individuals. Furthermore, the mechanisms specified by psychological theories generally operate within, rather than across, individuals. This disconnect between research practice, applied demands, and psychological theories constitutes a major threat to the conceptual integrity of the field. Following groundbreaking earlier work, we propose a conceptual framework that distinguishes within-person (WP) and between-person (BP) sources of variation in psychological constructs. By simultaneously considering both sources of variation, it is shown how to identify possible reasons for nonequivalence of BP and WP structures as well as establishing areas of convergence. For this purpose, we first introduce the concept of conditional equivalence as a way to study partial structural equivalence of BP and WP structures in the presence of unconditional nonequivalence. Second, we demonstrate the construction of likelihood planes to explore the causes of structural nonequivalence. Third, we examine 4 common causes for unconditional nonequivalence—autoregression, subgroup differences, linear trends, and cyclic trends—and demonstrate how to account for them. Fourth, we provide an empirical example on BP and WP differences in attentiveness.     

Sweet Pea Summer

For a number of years, the author, now 64, has studied the mythological theme of the mother and daughter mysteries. An earlier memoir in Psychological Perspectives, entitled “Pictures of My Mother” (2010), explored a strained and often painful relationship. In that essay, the author uncovered a previously unfelt love for the “colorful, constrained, complicated, and courageous” woman her mother was. The generative process of writing “Pictures of My Mother” opened a new understanding. In this article the author receives a fresh visitation from Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. The goddess penetrates beneath images of illness and old age and travels into an earlier time. The author was five, and her mother, at the age of 44, was still vital and alive. The mother, a gifted gardener, taught her daughter how to grow sweet peas. The flowers blossom as an expression of the bond between mother and daughter.     

The Carnales

Once, and only once, I had to fight for my life. The experience catapulted me to an edge of my being that I am glad to have found but don't want to visit too often–an edge others may seek by climbing a glacier, trekking in Nepal, or fasting for a week to induce visions. I am not a thrill-seeker, but a lazy quester content to make do with the ample shocks life has brought me unsought.     

Allegations of sexual abuse in Satanic rituals

H. L. Seneviratne. The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, xvi+358 pp., $49 (hardback) ISBN 0 226 74865 0, $22 (paperback) ISBN 0 226 74866 9.

Michael W. Myers. Brahman: A Comparative Theology. Richmond, Curzon, 2001, xiii+268 pp., £45 ISBN 0 7007 1257 7.

Todd T. Lewis, in collaboration with Subarna Man Tuladhar and Labh Ratna Tuladhar. Popular Buddhist Texts from Nepal: Narratives and Rituals of Newar Buddhism. Foreword by Gregory Schopen. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2000, xviii+236 pp., $59.50 (hardback) ISBN 0 7914 4611 5, $19.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 7914 4612 3.

Walter Burkett. Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001, xiv+110 pp., $28.00, £18.00 ISBN 0 226 08085 4.

Text by Massoud Fourouzandeh and Alain Brunet. Photos by Abbas Tahvildar. Baptists of Iran. Les baptistes d'Iran. Tehran, Key Press, 2001, 173 pp. (with 5 pages in Farsi), n.p. ISBN 964 90645 5 9.     

ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE SCANDINAVIAN PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETIES

This article discusses some basic problems of the theory of science connected with understanding the psychoanalytic process. The epistemology of psychoanalysis is seen in relation to the specific status of time, space and causality. It is argued that in psychic life, time and space cannot be a priori categories in the Kantian sense because they are constituted in psychic development and in the dynamics of the psyche and can be abolished in psychopathological conditions as well as in the unconscious. Psychic causality is discussed in relation to Freud's concepts of Nachträglichkeit and overdetermination and remarks are made on the necessity to consider the complex nature of psychic causality when doing research.