Reaction to trauma: a cognitive processing model.

We integrated existing cognitive processing models of posttrauma reactions into a longitudinal model. Data were obtained after a multiple shooting in a city office block. The subject group comprised 158 office workers who were in the building at the time of the shootings. The methodology of this research was a repeated measures survey, with data collection at 4, 8, and 14 months posttrauma. Measures included the Impact of Events Scale (IES) and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised. A path analysis was performed with the IES as an indication of cognitive processing. Intrusion and avoidance were shown to mediate between exposure to trauma and symptom development. Intrusion was also found to be negatively related to subsequent symptom levels. The findings provide provisional support for a cognitive processing model.     

Hypnosis, reporting bias, and suggested negative hallucinations.

We examined the role of reporting bias in hypnotic negative hallucinations by using a paradigm in which reporting bias was assessed independently of perceptual change. In Experiment 1, highly hypnotizable subjects reported significant loudness reductions when tested for hypnotic deafness. Later, however, these subjects biased their reported loudness reductions in the absence of perceptual change, and their reporting bias scores were almost as large as their hypnotic deafness reports. Subjects also biased their ratings of strategy use. In Experiment 2, ratings of blindness given in response to a hypnotic negative visual hallucination suggestion were significantly correlated with reporting bias scores obtained in this paradigm. Although hypnotic blindness and hypnotic deafness correlated significantly, the partial correlation between these variables was nonsignificant when reporting bias scores were statistically controlled. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Object relations and regression in groups.

This article uses a psychoanalytic ego-psychological framework to examine the regression experienced by an individual group member and the defenses mobilized to counter it, focusing in particular on the defensive functions of constituting leadership somewhere in the group. The leader, regarded as an internal object in the member's object world, is hypothesized to be a combination of projected and personified part-objects and at the same time an integrating whole object. Various phenomena of group life are discussed from this viewpoint, notably the lability of the relationship with the leader, the externalization of various endopsychic regulations, and the conditions supporting the defensive utility of the leader for the group member. The foundation for the emergence of social roles and consensual perception of the group and its leadership becomes apparent. A strictly intrapsychic view is maintained throughout.     

Longitudinal relationships among pain, sleep problems, and depression in rheumatoid arthritis.

This research evaluated the relationship between pain and sleep problems, and the role of pain and sleep problems in depression, in a sample of 242 patients who had been diagnosed with definite or classical rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Patients completed the Pain scale of the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and self-reports of sleep disturbance at two data waves over a 2-year interval. Cross-sectional multiple regression analysis revealed that the sleep problems variable was independently associated with depression at Time 1. Longitudinal multiple regression analyses demonstrated that prior pain predicted subsequent adverse changes in sleep problems, whereas sleep problems did not affect pain over time, and prior pain and the interaction of high pain and high sleep problems were independently associated with depression from Time 1 to Time 2. These data suggest that pain may exacerbate sleeping difficulty in RA patients, and that both factors may contribute to depression over time.     

Illness, Family Theory, and Family Therapy: I.Conceptual Issues

This article examines and clarifies controversies about the concept of illness in the field of family therapy. We contend that illness, as traditionally understood in all cultures, is a relational, transactional concept that is highly congruent with core principles of present-day family theories. Family therapists need not buy into a biotechnical, reductionistic reframing of illness as disease. Rather, it is more appropriate to conceptualize and work with illness as a narrative placed in a biopsychosocial context. Such a narrative includes how shared responsibility for coping and for finding solutions can take place, without becoming involved in disputes about causal models.     

Procedural Justice and Culture

The past fifteen years have seen the development of a considerable research literature on the social psychology of procedural justice (see Lind & Tyler, 1988, for a review). Procedural justice research reveals some serious shortcomings in the exchange theories that have traditionally dominated Western analyses of the social psychology of groups, and in so doing, the procedural justice literature has important ramifications for cross-cultural psychology. Results from a number of studies conducted in the United States and Western Europe show that individualistic, self-interest based models of human behaviour are insufficient to explain procedural justice phenomena. Instead, procedural justice effects frequently reveal strong group-oriented concerns and motivations even in cultural contexts generally thought to be characterized by individualistic orientations. The research literature also shows that if a group's procedures are judged to be fair, people are more likely to show group-oriented behaviour and to hold more favourable attitudes toward the group and its leaders. These findings have led to the development of a theory of justice judgments—the Lind and Tyler group-value theory—which is based on group norms and relations rather than on social exchange theory. We describe a general model of social behaviour that integrates group- and individually-oriented behaviour, and we discuss the implications of the model for social and cross-cultural psychology.     

The Protestant Work Ethic and Just World Beliefs in Great Britain and India

This study examined Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) and Just World Beliefs (JWB) in Great Britain and India. Secondary school children, university students and adults completed seven PWE questionnaires and the JWB questionnaire. A three-way (sex × occupational status × nationality) ANOVA showed highly significant main effects, particularly for nationality, but few significant interactions. Generally females more than males, Indians more than Britons, and schoolchildren more than adults endorse the PWE and JWB. Possible experimental artifacts and moderator variables are considered along with the possibility that genuine cultural differences were found. These results are discussed in terms of the relevant literature on cross-cultural studies of the PWE and BJW.