Trust, Dependency, and Control in the Contemporary Organization

Trust is an essential element in productive and effective intraorganizational communication and interaction. The present study examined several consequences of trust in terms of influence strategies used and the frequency with which people interact with each other. The study also examined the extent to which the technology of work affects management's dependency on their employees. It was found that distrust of subordinates by managers (n = 275) was associated with the use of strong tactics of influence, little dependency on employees, and the use of personal-related characteristics to explain distrust. It was also found that distrust of managers by subordinates (n = 267) was associated with the use of strong methods of influence, less interaction, less attempts to influence, and the use of personal-related characteristics to explain lack of trust. These findings have clear implications for understanding the relation among worker trust, dependency, and social influence. The data suggest that both employees and employers could benefit from considering the importance of a trusting relationship in the workplace.     

“I Was Really, Really, Really Mad!” Children's Use of Evaluative Devices in Narratives About Emotional Events

Children (ages 3, 5, and 8 years, mostly White and middle-class) were asked to tell personal experience narratives about a time when they had been happy, surprised, and mad. Their explicit emotion labels as well as their use of linguistic forms of evaluation to convey emotion were assessed. Five-year-old boys were the most likely to explicitly label anger, while gender and age differences in explicit emotion labels were absent for the other two emotions. However, children used many more linguistic devices for providing evaluation than explicit emotion labels in their narratives. They also provided more with age, and they used more evaluative devices when talking about anger-arousing events than about happy or surprising events. The few gender differences suggested that 3-year-old girls may acquire earlier mastery of evaluative devices than do boys, especially references to emotional states.     

The Effects of a List of Food Items on Motivations to Eat in Dieters and Nondieters

A major health problem in our society is obesity, which is frequently caused by overeating or eating inappropriate foods. It has been suggested that the prevalences of food and food-related cues contribute to overeating and that dieters are particularly sensitive to food stimuli. In the present study, the influence of dieting was examined in a representative sample of college students who were exposed to a list of written food cues or who served as controls. The list of food cues increased motivation to eat in nondieting subjects, but did not appear to influence the appetites of dieters. It may be that dieters are more resistant to the effects of more subtle food cues, even when many cues are presented sequentially.     

More accurate size contrast judgments in the Ebbinghaus Illusion by a remote culture

The Ebbinghaus (Titchener) illusion was examined in a remote culture (Himba) with no words for geometric shapes. The illusion was experienced less strongly by Himba compared with English participants, leading to more accurate size contrast judgments in the Himba. The study included two conditions of inducing stimuli. The illusion was weaker when the inducing stimuli were dissimilar (diamonds) to the target (circle) compared with when they were similar (circles). However, the illusion was weakened to the same extent in both cultures. It is argued that the more accurate size judgments of the Himba derive from their tendency to prioritize the analysis of local details in visual processing of multiple objects, and not from their impoverished naming.     

Parent–child talk and children's memory for stressful events

The relationship between parents' styles of talking about past events with their children and children's recall of stressful events was explored. In this investigation, 2‐ to 5‐year‐old children's recall of injuries requiring hospital emergency room treatment was assessed within a few days of the injury and again 2 years later, along with the way their parents reminisced with them about the event. Correlational analyses showed that age and parental reminiscing style were consistently related to child memory; regression analyses showed that although age was most important, parents who were more elaborative had children who recalled more during their initial interview about the harder‐to‐remember hospital event. Thus, an elaborative parental style may help children's recall of even highly salient and stressful events. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The contribution of the thumb to reaching movements

Transport of the hand towards an object and the formation of grasp are logically separable components of reaching. It has been suggested that, although the two components must be temporally co-ordinated, their spatial parameters are under the control of independent visuo-motor channels. A case study of reaching by a proficient user of a manually-operated artificial hand is presented. A pattern of natural hand usage was observed in which the index finger rather than the thumb was responsible for reduction of grasp aperture as the hand approached an object. The same pattern of usage was also observed in the artificial hand even though the mechanics of that hand make it no easier to move the finger than the thumb. This suggests that the relative stability of the thumb in the natural hand is determined, not simply by anatomy, but by a role in guiding the transport component of reaching. At least part of the spatial aspect of grasp formation is closely related to the transport component of reaching and this is evidence against theories postulating two independent visuo-motor channels controlling the spatial parameters of grasp and transport.     

Life within death: Towards a metapsychology of catastrophic psychic trauma

In this paper the author offers a phenomenology and a metapsychology for the effects on the mind of catastrophic psychic trauma, defined as the reaction of the psyche to an utterly external event, which the person is helpless to resist, and against which there is no possible defense. The author affirms that the experience of 'infinite affliction' produces a radical break in being which disarticulates the psyche and causes a headlong descent to the most primitive levels of psychic functioning. When there is a complete surrender to the process of disarticulation, it continues until it extinguishes even the most basic level of mental activity, contact with sensation, producing psychic and then psychogenic death. The author then offers a phenomenological and metapsychological analysis of how the process of disarticulation is stopped so that the state of survival is assured, affirming that, faced with this situation of utter emergency, the survival urge instantly mobilizes the organism in furious activity to preserve life and regenerates psychic activity by sensing the ongoing existence of the psychesoma. Then anguish precipitates on to the body and is sensed as psychophysical pain, which diverts conscious attention from the infinite destruction of utter affliction which is thus encapsulated so that, as an experience, it is no longer present to the mind. This assures survival, but it leaves the psyche in a state of non-integration and begins the unending battle for mastery over the deadly inner object which ceaselessly threatens to become present. This constitutes the precariousness of the state of survival.     

Childhood remembered: Reports of both unique and repeated events

To explore the significance of repeated memories for individuals' personal histories, we compared the characteristics of young adults' unique and repeated memories of childhood experiences. Memory type (unique vs. repeated) was a within-participant variable. In Experiment 1, college-age participants generated as many early memories as possible in 4 minutes; in Experiment 2, another sample provided complete reports of five early memories in each condition. In both experiments, participants rated the vividness, biographical importance and personal meaning of each memory and labelled the accompanying emotion. Unique memories were more vivid than repeated memories as well as more likely to include negative emotion, regardless of the method of reporting. Most importantly, college students rated their memories for unique and repeated events as equivalently infused with personal meaning. Analysis of the content of the memories reported in Experiment 2 established that unique and repeated memories did not differ in word count or percentages of perceptual terms or words indicating positive affect, although unique memories contained a greater percentage of negative affect. Additional analyses of content provided evidence for differences in the functions served by unique and repeated memories. The results have implications for the study of autobiographical memory and for identifying over-general memories.     

A review of the concurrent-chains arrangement to assess intervention choice: 2018–2023

The purpose of this review is to summarize recent literature on the use of concurrent-chains arrangements in the assessment of preference for interventions (or intervention components) in the applied literature. The types of interventions and participants are described briefly, and procedural variations, ethical considerations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

The Fear of Turning into Dust: Notes on a Group for Sexually Abused Women

For 10 years, I have been responsible for a group for adults who were sexually abused during childhood. In this brief paper, I will analyze one aspect of the particular kind of identification that exists between a child and an abusing adult, using Bion's concept of valency and Kaes' theories of unconscious alliances and pacts, in an attempt to further qualify Ferenczi's concept of identification with the aggressor. I will then show how the group encourages the process of disidentification with the aggressor.