Comparison of two self-report instruments for assessing binge eating in bariatric surgery candidates

This study compared two self-report methods for assessing binge eating in severely obese bariatric surgery candidates. Participants were 249 gastric bypass candidates who completed the Questionnaire on Eating and Weight Patterns-Revised (QEWP-R) and the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q) prior to surgery. Participants were classified by binge eating status (i.e., no or recurrent binge eating) with each of the measures. The degree of agreement was examined, as well as the relationship between binge eating and measures of convergent validity. The two measures identified a similar number of patients with recurrent binge eating (i.e., at least 1 binge/week); however, overlap was modest (kappa=.26). Agreement on twice weekly binge eating was poor (kappa=.05). The QEWP-R and EDE-Q both identified clinically meaningful groups of binge eaters. The EDE-Q appeared to differentiate between non/infrequent bingers and recurrent bingers better than the QEWP-R, based on measures of convergent validity. In addition, the EDE-Q demonstrated an advantage because it identified binge eaters with elevated weight and shape overconcern. Using the self-report measures concurrently did not improve identification of binge eating in this study. More work is needed to determine the construct validity and clinical utility of these measures with gastric bypass patients.     

Hypnotherapy and cognitive behaviour therapy of acute stress disorder: a 3-year follow-up

The long-term benefits of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for trauma survivors with acute stress disorder were investigated by assessing patients 3 years after treatment. Civilian trauma survivors (n=87) were randomly allocated to six sessions of CBT, CBT combined with hypnosis, or supportive counselling (SC), 69 completed treatment, and 53 were assessed 2 years post-treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale. In terms of treatment completers, 2 CBT patients (10%), 4 CBT/hypnosis patients (22%), and 10 SC patients (63%) met PTSD criteria at 2-years follow-up. Intent-to-treat analyses indicated that 12 CBT patients (36%), 14 CBT/hypnosis patients (46%), and 16 SC patients (67%) met PTSD criteria at 2-year follow-up. Patients who received CBT and CBT/hypnosis reported less re-experiencing and less avoidance symptoms than patients who received SC. These findings point to the long-term benefits of early provision of CBT in the initial month after trauma.     

Max Eitingon and a Question of Politics

Max Eitingon is thought not to have left behind original theoretical work, despite the fact that he wrote some 40 articles and a dozen psychoanalytic congress reports. He has been almost forgotten over the years, even though he occupied an important political place in the history of the psychoanalytic movement. In recent times, he has again become a subject of attention. In this article the author takes a look at Eitingon as an activist who was intensely involved in the social and political struggles of his time. He represents the political aspect of psychoanalysis on two counts: first, within the psychoanalytic movement, where he had a particular role in the institutionalizing of psychoanalysis, and, second, in relating it to wider social and political ends.     

Reduced electrodermal activity in psychopathy-prone adolescents

This study tests the hypothesis that psychopathy-prone adolescents show reduced anticipatory skin conductance responding. Electrodermal activity was recorded while participants anticipated and responded to a 105 dB signaled or unsignaled white-noise burst. Using an extreme groups design, the authors used Child Psychopathy Scale (D. R. Lynam, 1997) scores from a community sample of 335 male adolescents (age 16) to form control (n = 65) and psychopathy-prone (n = 65) groups. Significantly more psychopathy-prone participants were nonresponders in the signaled anticipatory (p = .014), signaled responsivity (p = .037), and unsignaled responsivity (p = .003) conditions compared with controls. Anticipatory hyporesponsivity of psychopathy-prone adolescents similar to the electrodermal hyporesponsivity found in psychopathic adults suggests that this autonomic impairment is present by adolescence and may predispose individuals to adult psychopathy.     

Understanding supervisor-targeted aggression: a within-person, between-jobs design

The authors investigated predictors of supervisor-targeted workplace aggression among 105 "moonlighters" (employed adults who work 2 jobs, each with a different supervisor), as a way of examining the relative role played by within-subject situational differences and between-subjects individual differences. Individual difference variables (self-esteem, history of aggression) explained a similar level of variance in aggression across both jobs, whereas situational factors (interactional injustice, abusive supervision) were job specific and explained proportionally more variance than did individual differences.     

Linking personality to helping behaviors at work: an interactional perspective

Previous efforts to elucidate dispositional antecedents of organizational citizenship behaviors have yielded equivocal results. The current study presents and tests a theoretical argument for expecting conscientiousness to interact with interpersonal dimensions of personality in predicting helping behaviors. As hypothesized, the responses of 374 women and their supervisors reveal significant interactions between conscientiousness, on the one hand, and agreeableness, extraversion, and emotional stability, on the other, in predicting helping behaviors. Clarifying the relationship between personality and helping, these results suggest that the impact of conscientiousness in a social context depends on a positive interpersonal orientation. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

Processes Underlying Gender‐Role Flexibility: Do Androgynous Individuals Know More or Know How to Cope?

This research examined gender-role flexibility across a variety of stressful events, and tested two proposed hypotheses that explicate the processes underlying gender-role flexibility. The knowing-more hypothesis posits that androgynous individuals have a broad coping repertoire. The knowing-how hypothesis posits that androgynous individuals know how to cope according to changing situational characteristics. The coping responses of Chinese university students were assessed in both real-life (Study 1) and hypothetical (Study 2) stressful situations. Results revealed that androgynous participants, who were less depressed than others, were characterized by (a) cognitive astuteness in distinguishing among situational characteristics and (b) deployment of strategies that fit specific situational demands. Results supported the knowing-how hypothesis only.     

Effects of implicit power motivation on men's and women's implicit learning and testosterone changes after social victory or defeat

Two studies examined interactions of implicit power motivation and experimentally varied victory or defeat in a contest on implicit learning of a visuomotor sequence associated with the contest outcome and changes in testosterone and self-reported affect. In men and women, power motivation predicted enhanced learning (sequence-execution accuracy) after a victory and impaired learning after a defeat. In men, power motivation predicted testosterone increases among winners and decreases among losers, and testosterone decreases mediated the negative effect of power motivation on learning in losers. In women, power motivation predicted postcontest testosterone increases, particularly among losers. In both men and women, self-reported affective states were influenced only by contest outcome and were unrelated to participants' testosterone changes or implicit learning.     

Decreasing Psychiatric Symptoms by Increasing Choice in Services for Adults with Histories of Homelessness

Despite the increase in consumer-driven interventions for homeless and mentally ill individuals, there is little evidence that these programs enhance psychological outcomes. This study followed 197 homeless and mentally ill adults who were randomized into one of two conditions: a consumer-driven “Housing First” program or “treatment as usual” requiring psychiatric treatment and sobriety before housing. Proportion of time homeless, perceived choice, mastery, and psychiatric symptoms were measured at six time points. Results indicate a direct relationship between Housing First and decreased homelessness and increased perceived choice; the effect of choice on psychiatric symptoms was partially mediated by mastery. The strong and inverse relationship between perceived choice and psychiatric symptoms supports expansion of programs that increase consumer choice, thereby enhancing mastery and decreasing psychiatric symptoms.     

Remembrance of remembrance past

Arnold and Lindsay (2002) found that individuals more often failed to remember they had previously recalled an item if that item had been cued in a qualitatively different way on two recall occasions: the "forgot-it-all-along" (FIA) effect. Experiment 1 was designed to determine if the FIA effect arises because participants incorrectly believe they have not been previously tested for an item, or because they incorrectly believe they have failed to recall the item when previously tested. Experiment 2 measured participants' confidence in their incorrect prior-recall judgements, and Experiment 3 tested participants' ability to "recover" their previous recollection when the prior-recall context was restored. Results indicated that participants usually believed they had not previously been cued for the items they failed to remember previously recalling; they were often confident in their incorrect judgements of prior non-remembering; and re-introducing the context of prior remembering sometimes enabled them to recapture their memories of previous recall.