Perception of objects oriented downward from a vertical position

In the present work we investigated people’s perceptions of orientation for surfaces that are conceived of as being sloped downward from vertical against a vertical reference frame. In the three conditions of Experiment 1, participants either (1) placed a ladder against a wall at what they thought was the most stable position, and then estimated its orientation; (2) gave a verbal (conceptual) estimate of what the most stable position of a ladder leaned against a wall would be; or (3) drew a line representing the most stable position of a ladder to be placed against a wall, and then gave a verbal estimate of the ladder’s orientation. Ladder placement was shallower than the most stable position, as were the verbal estimations of both the positioned and drawn orientations and the verbal (conceptual) estimates of the most stable position for a ladder to be leaned against a wall, relative to the actual orientations. In Experiment 2, participants verbally estimated various ladder orientations. The estimates were again shallower than the actual orientations. For orientations between 60° and 90°, the estimates showed a scale compression effect from horizontal. This perceived exaggeration of the orientation of an object typically oriented down from vertical is similar to the perceived exaggeration of the orientation of hills and ramps, typically thought of as oriented up from horizontal. This may point to a generic perceived exaggeration of slant whose direction depends on the conceptual or actual reference frame being used.     

Ethical Issues in Accounting and Economics Experimental Research: Inducing Strategic Misrepresentation

Forensic psychologists face a variety of ethical issues in conducting evaluations. One such issue is attorney presence during a forensic evaluation. In forensic evaluations, it is necessary to use standardized procedures while also attending to the rights of the individuals being assessed. This article examines the neuropsychological literature on extraneous influences in evaluations including effects of attorney presence. Then the article discusses the limited knowledge about attorney presence during forensic evaluations, addresses attorney motivations for being present during an evaluation, and considers attorney presence in the context of ethical mandates. Finally, suggestions are offered for forensic clinicians confronted with attorneys who wish to be present during assessments.     

Children's Defensive Responses and Emotional Upset Following a Disaster: A Projective Assessment

Projective stories were used to assess the defense mechanisms of 27 preadolescent boys who were victims of a lightning strike in which one boy died. Denial, projection, and identification, in combination, were found to be inversely related to clinical upset, as was the age and sex-appropriate individual defense of projection. in addition, low-defensive boys' self-reports of fears agreed more often with their parents' reports of sleep and somatic disturbances than did high-defensive boys' self-reports. The findings provide support for the validity of the Defense Mechanism Manual (Cramer, 1982) and raise the issue of defense mechanisms as moderator variables in self-report questionnaires.     

Extending Autonomy for Health Care Preferences in Late Life

Mechanisms for extending autonomy in financial and health care decisions (e.g., advanced directives) are being utilized more frequently. This study examined the hierarchy of documents completed, the characteristics of people completing these documents, the choice of surrogate decision-maker for health care decisions, and with whom health care decisions were being discussed in a sample of 661 persons 65 years of age and older. Comparison between people with and without documents in place suggested that cognitive impairment, level of education, and age were related to preparation of documents. Women were typically chosen as surrogate decision-makers, except in a sample of unmarried men. Surprisingly, participants reported discussing preferences for health care decisions with someone other than their preferred surrogate. There appears to be a need to promote discussion of health care preferences between care-receivers and preferred surrogates.     

Defensiveness and Defense Mechanisms

This introduction to the Journal of Personality's special issue on the topic of defense mechanisms raises the question of why defenses have been largely overlooked in personality research. Although defenses were originally discussed in the context of psychopathology, for the past 60 years psychodynamically oriented psychologists have understood that defenses play an important part in normal psychological development. Recently, psychologists outside the field of personality have incorporated the ideas of unconscious mental processes and of defenses into their research programs. In this issue, personality researchers discuss their ideas about defense mechanisms, organized around three topical areas: current conceptualizations of defense, the measurement of defense mechanisms, and the integration of defense mechanisms into personality research. The issue concludes with a commentary on these articles and provides suggestions for future work.     

Threat to Gender Representation: Identity and Identification

To investigate the effect of a threat to gender identity on the use of defense mechanisms, college students were given false feedback regarding their sex-role identity. Male and female students who were given gender-contrary feedback showed a marked increase in the use of the defense of identification, as compared to students who were given gender-consistent feedback. Further, both affect change and the use of identification was a function of the degree of discrepancy between feedback condition and conscious gender identity.     

On browne's solution for oblique procrustes rotation

Browne [1967] has given a method of solving the problem (originally stated by Mosier, [1939]) of finding a least squares fit to a specified factor structure. The problem is one of minimizing the sum of squared residuals of —FT with Diag (T'T)=I. Browne's solution involves the eigenvectors and values ofF'F and leads to an iterative solution.This paper gives a form of the solution which does not involve solution of an eigenvalue problem but does require an iteration similar to Browne's. It suggests the possible existence of a singularity, and a simple modification of Browne's computational procedure is proposed which deals with this case. A better starting value for the iteration is also proposed for which convergence is guaranteed using the ordinary Newton iteration.Part of this work was presented at the April 1969 meetings of the Psychometric Society. The anthor is indebted to Dr. Ledyard Tucker for some helpful discussions. This work was supported in part by a PHS Research Grant No. MH-10006 from the National Institute of Mental Health, and Grant No. GM-12868 from the Institute of General Medical Sciences, Public Health Service.     

Defense Mechanism Card Pull in TAT Stories

This study investigates the question of whether different Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943 Murray, H. (1943). Thematic Apperception Test manual. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]) cards are likely to prompt stories that are characterized by different defense mechanisms. This condition is known as card pull and refers to the probability that different TAT cards elicit different personality scores for the same variable. If so, the assessment of defense use would be importantly influenced by the TAT cards used in an assessment. TAT stories from 3 different community samples were examined (Ns = 91, 98, 121), using a statistical method developed by Stein et al (2014 Stein, M. B., Slavin-Mulford, J., Siefert, C. J., Sinclair, S. J., Renna, M., Malone, J., … Blais, M. A. (2014). SCORS–G stimulus characteristics of select Thematic Apperception Test cards. Journal of Personality Assessment, 96, 339–349.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The results indicated that different TAT cards pull for different defenses, as assessed by the Defense Mechanism Manual (DMM: Cramer, 1991b Cramer, P. (1991b). The development of defense mechanisms: Theory, research and assessment. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). However, the nature of card pull was not always consistent across samples. These dissimilarities could be due to group differences, or to the presence of different TAT cards used in the test battery, indicating that card pull is importantly determined by context.