Intelligence and maturity: meta-analytic evidence for the incremental and discriminant validity of Loevinger's measure of ego development

This review examined whether Loevinger's measure of personality (ego) development is equivalent to the measurement of intelligence. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 52 correlations between ego level scores and intelligence test scores (retrieved from 42 studies involving 5,648 participants). The weighted average correlation between ego level and intelligence ranged from.20 to.34, depending on the intellectual ability assessed (e.g., verbal intelligence). Adjusting for measurement unreliability increased these values only minimally. The authors also reviewed 16 studies that examined the association between ego level and various criterion variables (e.g., aggressive behavior) after statistically controlling for the effects of intelligence. Ninety-four percent of the tests revealed significant relations between ego level and criterion variables after controlling for intelligence, indicating that ego development and intelligence are not interchangeable constructs. These findings do not support recent speculations concerning the limited value of stage models of maturity, social development, and moral reasoning.     

Black identity in biracial black/white people: a comparison of Jacqueline who refuses to be exclusively black and Adolphus who wishes he were

Two biracial college freshmen, both of whom identify as Black, were chosen from a larger sample of participants in a qualitative study of biracial identity development to exemplify the differences in the paths that 2 biracial individuals could take to achieve racial identity resolution. Through the case study method, the authors describe the course and progression of racial identity development (RID) in these 2 individuals and discuss some key themes in their lives that have contributed to the development of their RID. The purposes are fourfold: to describe nonclinical subjective experiences of being biracial in the United States, to explore the differences in the paths that 2 biracial individuals can take to achieve what looks superficially like similar Black racial identity resolution, to demonstrate how identifying as Black can have different meanings and consequences for 2 biracial people, and to contribute to the differentiation of Black RID from biracial Black/White RID. The authors raise questions about the generalizability of monoracial Black and ethnic identity theories to biracial individuals.     

To coerce and be coerced

Coercion is a way of forcibly influencing others. While one's core conflicts may contribute to an experience of being coerced in any interaction, specific situations or circumstances commonly encountered in clinical practice set the stage for analyst or patient to feel forced or manipulated. The interaction that develops in these instances is conceptualized as a coercive enactment. Conditions that increase the susceptibility to coercing and being coerced may develop at any stage in the psychoanalytic process. Supervision and conversion from psychotherapy to psychoanalysis are examined as situations that predispose to coercion. Silences and other difficulties in maintaining the analytic frame, as well as crises in the life of the analyst, may also lead to coercive enactments. Pertinent literature is reviewed and illustrative clinical cases are presented.     

Stimulus control and compounding with ambient odor as a discriminative stimulus on a free-operant baseline

Previous experiments have demonstrated that the simultaneous presentation of independently established discriminative stimuli can control rates of operant responding substantially higher than the rates occasioned by the individual stimuli. This "additive summation" phenomenon has been shown with a variety of different reinforcers (e.g., food, water, shock avoidance, cocaine, and heroin). Discriminative stimuli previously used in such studies have been limited to the visual and auditory sensory modalities. The present experiment sought to (1) establish stimulus control on a free-operant baseline with an ambient olfactory discriminative stimulus, (2) compare olfactory control to that produced with an auditory discriminative stimulus, and (3) determine whether compounding independently established olfactory and auditory discriminative stimuli produces additive summation. Rats lever pressed for food on a variable-interval schedule in the presence of either a tone or an odor, with comparable control developed to each stimulus. In the absence of these stimuli responding was not reinforced. During stimulus compounding tests, the tone-plus-odor compound occasioned more than double the responses occasioned by either the tone or odor presented individually. Thus, the current study (1) established stimulus control with an ambient olfactory discriminative stimulus in a traditional free-operant setting and (2) extended the generality of stimulus-compounding effects by demonstrating additive summation when olfactory and auditory discriminative stimuli were presented simultaneously.     

In search of durable positive psychology interventions: Predictors and consequences of long-term positive behavior change

A number of positive psychology interventions have successfully helped people learn skills for improving mood and building personal resources (e.g., psychological resilience and social support). However, little is known about whether intervention activities remain effective in the long term, or whether new resources are maintained after the intervention ends. We address these issues in a 15-month follow-up survey of participants from a loving-kindness meditation intervention. Many participants continued to practice meditation, and they reported more positive emotions (PEs) than those who had stopped meditating or had never meditated. All participants maintained gains in resources made during the initial intervention, whether or not they continued meditating. Continuing meditators did not differ on resources at baseline, but they did show more PE and a more rapid PE response to the intervention. Overall, our results suggest that positive psychology interventions are not just efficacious but of significant value in participants' real lives.     

Are rods and cones of dyslexics anomalous?

Grosser and Spafford (in this journal, 1989) have advanced an hypothesis and presented measurements which they believe support the idea of an excess of cones in the peripheral retinae of dyslexics. This note points out that their hypothesis is based on the erroneous assumption that normals have no peripheral cones. Further, their data can be explained by at least two alternative, though uninteresting, methodological hypotheses, that uncontrolled eye movements or experimenter suggestion (or both) could have produced their results. Finally, the requisite methods for assessing color vision, and the cones, were not met in the study.