The altruistic personality: in what contexts is it apparent?

Hypotheses concerning the specific contexts in which an altruistic personality might be most apparent were investigated. College students completed questionnaires tapping components of an altruistic personality, emotionality, and social desirability. At a 2nd session, the emotional evocativeness and ease of escape from the helping situation were experimentally manipulated. Ss were exposed to a distressed woman, completed state sympathy and personal distress indexes, and were given an opportunity to assist the woman. High scorers on dispositional altruism were expected to assist most when escape was easy, particularly when the distress cues were obvious. Altruistic and emotionally reactive persons were also expected to help most in a psychologically "weak" environment. Both predictions were supported. The relations between helping and the other predictors were also examined.     

Personality and socialization correlates of vicarious emotional responding

The relations of personality and family characteristics to adults' negative vicarious emotional responses to sympathy and distress films were examined. Ss reported more sympathy and less personal distress and exhibited less skin conductance as well as heart rate deceleration when viewing a sympathy-evoking film. Dispositional emotional intensity and fantasy empathy were associated with greater self-reported emotional responding and higher skin conductance. Dispositional perspective taking and personal distress were positively and negatively correlated, respectively, with reported vicarious responding to the sympathy film when Ss were administered instructions to imagine the emotions of those in the films. Family cohesiveness was associated with reported sympathy and sadness in reaction to the sympathy film, whereas the expression of negative subordinate and positive emotional states in the home of origin was associated with women's reported responsivity.     

Contingency,arbitrariness, and the basis of moral equality

Hardly anyone denies that (nearly) all human beings have equal moral status and therefore should be considered and treated as equals. Yet, if humans possess the property that confers moral status upon them to an unequal degree, how come they should be considered and treated as equals? It has been argued that this is because the variations in the degree to which the status-conferring property is held above a relevant threshold are contingencies that do not generate differences in degrees of moral status. Call this the contingency argument for the basis of moral equality. In this paper, I reject the contingency argument. Instead, I develop an attitude-based account of the basis of moral equality: according to this account, the basis of moral equality lies in a fitting, basic, and independent moral attitude which is owed to human beings qua moral status-holders, and provides a coherent and plausible explanation for why the variations above the threshold for moral status do not matter.     

Exploring mechanisms that affect retrograde memory for public events in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: A longitudinal update

Here, we examined mechanisms that affect retrograde memory in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI) as a function of longitudinal clinical outcome. 8 a-MCI who converted to Alzheimer's dementia (AD) during the subsequent 3-year follow-up (converter a-MCI) and 10 a-MCI who remained clinically stable during the same period (stable a-MCI) were compared at the baseline evaluation (i.e., when they were diagnosed as a-MCI) using a remote memory questionnaire for public events that allows disentangling the differential contribution of storage and retrieval mechanisms to performance accuracy. Results suggest that deficits in remote memory are primarily explained by impaired retrieval abilities in stable a-MCI and by impaired storage in converter-to-AD a-MCI. This distinction between retrograde amnesia due to defective trace utilisation in stable a-MCI and trace storage in converter a-MCI is consistent with the temporal unfolding of declining anterograde memory over the course of disease progression to AD.     

Social cognition and real-life functioning in patient samples with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome with or without psychosis,compared to a large sample of patients with schizophrenia only and healthy controls

Patients with the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (DS) show an increased risk of developing a psychotic illness lifetime. 22q11.2DS may represent a reliable model for studying the neurobiological underpinnings of schizophrenia. The study of social inference abilities in a genetic condition at high risk for psychosis, like 22q11.2DS, may shed light on the relationships between neurocognitive processes and patients' daily general functioning. The study sample consisted of 1736 participants, divided into four groups: 22q11.2DS patients with diagnosis of psychotic disorder (DEL SCZ, N = 20); 22q11.2DS subjects with no diagnosis of psychosis (DEL, N = 43); patients diagnosed with schizophrenia without 22q11.2DS (SCZ, N = 893); and healthy controls (HC, N = 780). Social cognition was assessed through The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) and general functioning through the Specific Levels of Functioning (SLoF) scale. We analysed data through regression analysis. The SCZ and DEL groups had similar levels of global functioning; they both had significantly lower SLoF Total scores than HC (p < .001); the DEL SCZ group showed significantly lower scores compared to the other groups (SCZ, p = .004; DEL, p = .003; HC, p < .001). A significant deficit in social cognition was observed in the three clinical groups. In the DEL SCZ and SCZ groups, TASIT scores significantly predicted global functioning (p < .05). Our findings of social cognition deficit in psychosis-prone patients point to the possible future adoption of rehabilitation programmes, like Social Skills Training and Cognitive Remediation, during premorbid stages of psychosis.     

Degrading situations,affiliation and social dependency

Research is reported which shows that degrading situations (e.g. a failure on a test) increase affiliative propensity. Four studies demonstrated that this affiliative tendency of degraded subjects is independent of the potential partner's performance and independent of his/her characteristics. The partners appeared to be equally attractive whether or not they witnessed subject's failure, and whether they were individuals or a group. On the other hand, the affiliative desires of praised subjects seem to be oriented rather towards those who benefit from a similar situation. The motivation underlying affiliative behaviour is discussed with regard to social psychological literature. It is suggested that degraded subjects' affiliative behaviour arises from a search for support and that a socially degrading situation places the subject in a state of emotional dependency which is expressed by a non-directional affiliative tendency and vulnerability to social influence. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effectiveness of an attachment-based intervention for the assessment of parenting capacities in maltreating families: A randomized controlled trial

Even though Parenting Capacity Assessments (PCAs) are essential for child protection services to support placement decisions for maltreating families, presently no evidence-based PCA protocols are available. In this randomized controlled trial, we tested the quality of an attachment-based PCA protocol based on Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD). We recruited 56 parent-child dyads (M_age children = 3.48 years) in Dutch family residential clinics that conduct PCAs to support placement decisions. After pretest, families were randomized to receive the Regular Assessment Procedure (RAP) (n = 28), or an additional assessment based on VIPP-SD (n = 28). An immediate post-test and a 10-month follow-up were conducted. Multilevel models showed that therapists felt equally confident about their recommendations regarding child placement for both groups and that they equally often modified their initial placement recommendations. Moreover, children in the VIPP-SD group did not show fewer behavior problems and did not experience recurring child maltreatment less often than children in the RAP group. Thus, we found no evidence that PCAs incorporating the VIPP-SD protocol outperformed PCAs as usual. We discuss possible explanations why in the current study VIPP-SD did not seem to add to the quality of the RAP.     

Change process in systemic therapy: A qualitative investigation

This study addresses the process of therapeutic change in individuals who received systemic therapy. This study is an exploratory qualitative study based on the client's perceptions and therapeutic experiences. The sample included 10 clients who had completed their therapy with systemic therapists. The method used for the collection of the data was semi‐structured interviews (Change Interview; Elliott, Slatick, & Urman, 2001). The interviews were analysed using grounded theory analysis. The results showed that both specific and common factors in therapy function in a co‐occurring mode, hence suggesting a synergy effect between common factors and specific techniques or therapist factors in psychotherapy. The core category ‘experience of therapeutic change, within the secure frame of therapy, is a process of deconstructing and reconstructing the house you live in: Yourself’ emerged based on self‐exploration and self‐discovery and is then discussed in a theoretical constructivist framework. Implications for research on the issue of the process of therapeutic change are discussed.     

Spatial representation of pitch height: the SMARC effect

Through the preferential pairing of response positions to pitch, here we show that the internal representation of pitch height is spatial in nature and affects performance, especially in musically trained participants, when response alternatives are either vertically or horizontally aligned. The finding that our cognitive system maps pitch height onto an internal representation of space, which in turn affects motor performance even when this perceptual attribute is irrelevant to the task, extends previous studies on auditory perception and suggests an interesting analogy between music perception and mathematical cognition. Both the basic elements of mathematical cognition (i.e. numbers) and the basic elements of musical cognition (i.e. pitches), appear to be mapped onto a mental spatial representation in a way that affects motor performance.