How borderline personality characteristics affect adolescents’ life satisfaction: The role of rejection sensitivity and social relations

The present study investigated the association between Borderline Personality characteristics (BP characteristics) and life satisfaction in a sample of 111 girls and 144 boys between the ages of 15 and 19 years. Mediation and moderation effects of rejection sensitivity and adolescents’ social relations with their parents and friends on this association were analyzed. Analyses revealed that more BP characteristics in both boys and girls, and more conflict with parents for girls predicted lower satisfaction with life. Furthermore, conflict with parents mediated and rejection sensitivity moderated the association between BP characteristics and life satisfaction, but again only for girls. Implications of these findings suggest the importance of family conflict management and a gender-specific approach in adolescents with BP characteristics.     

A Preliminary Study of Activation,Stress, and Self-Management of Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental disabilities are high users of services, yet very little is known about how parents of these children interact with the health care system. Further, compared to parents of children with other developmental disabilities, parents of children with ASD experience more stress and dissatisfaction with services. Current efforts for improving services point to a need for understanding caregivers’ perceptions of their own health-care related beliefs and actions. Activation is a construct that measures the belief, knowledge, action, and persistence of managing one’s health care needs. The objective of this preliminary study was to evaluate the activation of parents of children with ASD using an adapted parent activation measure (PAM) for children with developmental disabilities called the PAM-DD. Data were collected from parents who received treatment as usual from a community-based outpatient treatment planning service for children with ASD. PAM-DD scores were compared with parent ratings of stress, self-management, and service satisfaction. Results indicated that increased activation correlated positively with parent report of satisfaction and ability to self-manage child issues such as eating, sleeping, and behavior and correlated negatively with parenting stress. The study of activation shows promise as a feature of quality of care for parents of children with developmental disabilities.     

Social‐cognitive mediators of the relation of environmental and emotion regulation factors to children's aggression

Tested a theoretical model in which social cognitions about aggression partially mediated the relation of environmental and emotion regulation factors to children's aggressive behavior. An ethnically diverse sample of 778 children (57% girls) in grades 4–6 from both urban and suburban schools participated. Measures included exposure to aggression (seeing/hearing about aggression, victimization), emotion regulation (impulsivity, anger control), social cognitions about aggression (self‐evaluation, self‐efficacy, retaliation approval, aggressive fantasizing, caring about consequences), and aggressive behavior. Results supported the hypothesis that social cognitions mediate the relations of exposure to aggression and anger control to aggressive behavior. Also, social cognitions about direct and indirect aggression differentially predicted the respective behaviors with which they are associated. That is, social cognitions about direct aggression were mediators of direct aggressive behavior, whereas social cognitions about indirect aggression were mediators of indirect aggressive behavior. Finally, gender moderated the relations among the variables such that for girls, retaliation approval beliefs were a strong mediator, whereas for boys, self‐evaluation was more important. Aggr. Behav. 30:389–408, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Hypothesis testing for coefficient alpha: An SEM approach

We show how to test hypotheses for coefficient alpha in three different situations: (1) hypothesis tests of whether coefficient alpha equals a prespecified value, (2) hypothesis tests involving two statistically independent sample alphas as may arise when testing the equality of coefficient alpha across groups, and (3) hypothesis tests involving two statistically dependent sample alphas as may arise when testing the equality of alpha across time or when testing the equality of alpha for two test scores within the same sample. We illustrate how these hypotheses may be tested in a structural equation-modeling framework under the assumption of normally distributed responses and also under asymptotically distribution free assumptions. The formulas for the hypothesis tests and computer code are given for four different applied examples. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Relationship of Mental Health and Illness in Substance Abuse Patients

This study examined the latent structure of a number of measures of mental health (MH) and mental illness (MI) in substance use disorder outpatients to determine whether they represent two independent dimensions, as Keyes (2005) found in a community sample. Seven aspects of MI assessed were assessed - optimism, personal meaning, spirituality/religiosity, social support, positive mood, hope, and vitality. MI was assessed with two measures of negative psychological moods/states, a measure of antisociality, and the Addiction Severity Index's recent psychiatric and family-social problem scores. Correlational and exploratory factor analyses revealed that MH and MI appear to reflect two independent, but correlated, constructs. However, optimism and social support had relatively high loadings on both factors. Antisociality and the family-social problem score failed to load significantly on the MI factor. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the existence of two obliquely related, negatively correlated dimensions. Study findings, although generally supporting the independence of MH and MI, suggest that the specific answers to this question may be influenced by the constructs and assessments used to measure them.     

Judging a book by its cover: the unconscious influence of pupil size on consumer choice

Past research suggests that men perceive women with large pupils as especially attractive. We employed an innovative methodology to examine whether this effect influences consumer decision-making. A popular psychology book was published with two slightly different front covers. Both covers contained the same photograph of a woman; however, the woman's pupils on one cover were digitally enlarged. Readers indicated whether they were male or female, and whether they possessed the cover with small or large pupils. A significantly greater percentage of men than women had chosen the cover with the large pupils. None of the participants who attempted to guess the nature of the experiment was correct, suggesting that the influence exerted by pupil size was unconscious. These findings provide further support for the notion that people's judgments are unconsciously swayed by pupil size, and demonstrate that this effect operates in a real world setting.     

Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Co-occurring Depression and Chronic Pain

Up to 37% of individuals experience chronic pain during their lifetimes. Approximately one-fourth of primary care patients with chronic pain also meet criteria for major depression. Many of these individuals fail to receive psychotherapy or other treatment for their depression; moreover when they do, physical pain is often not addressed directly. Women, socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals, African Americans and Latinos all report higher rates of pain and depression compared to other groups. This article describes a version of Interpersonal Psychotherapy tailored for patients with comorbid depression and chronic pain, Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depression and Pain (IPT-P). While IPT-P potentially could be delivered to many different patient populations in a range of clinical settings, this article focuses on its delivery within primary care settings for socioeconomically disadvantaged women. Adaptations include a brief 8-session protocol that incorporates strategies for anticipating barriers to psychotherapy, accepting patients' conceptualization of their difficulties, encouraging patients to consider the impact of their pain on their roles and relationships, emphasizing self-care, incorporating pain management techniques, and flexible scheduling. In addition, IPT-P is designed as an adjunct to usual medical pain treatment, and seeks to engage non-treatment seeking patients in psychotherapy by focusing on accessibility and relevance of the intervention to concerns common among patients with pain. Identifying patients with comorbid depression and chronic pain and offering IPT-P as a treatment option has the potential to improve clinical outcomes for individuals with depression and chronic pain.     

The role of personality in the selection of a major: With and without vocational self-efficacy and interests

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of personality traits measured by the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; [Tellegen, 2000] and [Tellegen and Waller, 2008]) in selecting educational majors. Personality traits were examined alone, and with the combination of Holland’s hexagonal confidence domains, as measured by the general confidence themes (GCT) of the Skills Confidence Inventory (SCI; Betz, Borgen, & Harmon, 2005), and Holland’s interest domains, as measured by the general occupational themes (GOTs) of the 2005 Strong Interest Inventory (SII; Donnay, Morris, Schaubhut, & Thompson, 2005). Personality traits significantly contributed to the discrimination of nine educational major families in a sample of 368 undergraduate decided students. When the set of confidence and interest scales was added to the personality traits, the conservative jack knife hit rate was almost doubled.