When depression breeds contempt: reassurance seeking, self-esteem, and rejection of depressed college students by their roommates.

To test Coyne's (1976b) theory of depression, students' levels of depressive symptoms, reassurance seeking, and self-esteem were assessed at Time 1, and their same-gender roommates' appraisals of them were assessed 5 weeks later. Mildly depressed students engaged in the type of reassurance seeking described by Coyne. Among men, but not women, mildly depressed students were rejected if they strongly sought reassurance and had low self-esteem but not if they did not seek reassurance or had high self-esteem. Although induction of depressed symptoms in roommates did occur, this contagion effect did not account for the depression-rejection relationship. The prediction that unsupportive, intolerant, or unempathic others would be particularly likely to respond with rejection to reassurance-seeking depressed students with low self-esteem received partial support. Implications for future work on the interpersonal aspects of depression are discussed.     

Brief group psychotherapy for the spousally bereaved: a controlled study.

A consecutive sample of mid- and late-life bereaved spouses were randomly assigned to treatment and no-treatment groups. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) that brief group psychotherapy during the early stages of loss would facilitate adjustment assessed by measures of mental health, positive psychological states, social role, and mourning; and (2) that positive effects would be maximized for subjects who were more distressed psychologically. Although group participants, compared with untreated controls, did over 1 year show modest improvement on role functioning and positive psychological states, overall the study failed to find substantial support for the two major hypotheses. Both experimental and control groups showed improvement over the year, particularly on measures of mental health and mourning. Differential benefit was not observed for the high-risk group.     

Forms of memory failure in schizophrenia.

Effortful and automatic memory task performances were examined in 36 schizophrenic patients and 18 normal control Ss. Tasks included free recall, recognition, and frequency estimation. Patients demonstrated impairment in recall, in recognition, in semantic encoding, and in frequency estimation. Deficits were observed across tasks despite differences in attentional demands. The results suggest a basic compromise of memory function, which is consistent with recent neuroimaging evidence of structural or physiological abnormalities in frontal and temporal lobe structures in schizophrenia.     

Predictors and consequences of childhood depressive symptoms: a 5-year longitudinal study.

A 5-year longitudinal study investigated the interrelationships among children's experiences of depressive symptoms, negative life events, explanatory style, and helplessness behaviors in social and achievement situations. The results revealed that early in childhood, negative events, but not explanatory style, predicted depressive symptoms; later in childhood, a pessimistic explanatory style emerged as a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, alone and in conjunction with negative events. When children suffered periods of depression, their explanatory styles not only deteriorated but remained pessimistic even after their depression subsided, presumably putting them at risk for future episodes of depression. Some children seem repeatedly prone to depressive symptoms over periods of at least 2 years. Depressed children consistently showed helpless behaviors in social and achievement settings.     

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.     

Thinking through uncertainty: nonconsequential reasoning and choice.

When thinking under uncertainty, people often do not consider appropriately each of the relevant branches of a decision tree, as required by consequentialism. As a result they sometimes violate Savage's sure-thing principle. In the Prisoner's Dilemma game, for example, many subjects compete when they know that the opponent has competed and when they know that the opponent has cooperated, but cooperate when they do not know the opponent's response. Newcomb's Problem and Wason's selection task are also interpreted as manifestations of nonconsequential decision making and reasoning. The causes and implications of such behavior, and the notion of quasi-magical thinking, are discussed.     

Inaccurate reporting and inappropriate variables: a reply to Vecchio's (1990) examination of cognitive resource theory.

In an article in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Vecchio (1990) purported to test cognitive resource theory (Fiedler, 1986; Fiedler & Garcia, 1987). We present evidence that Vecchio's article seriously misrepresented previous work on cognitive resource theory and also contained several flaws in methodology that call into question his conclusions regarding the validity of cognitive resource theory.     

The Effect of Contextual Factors on Individuals' Job Performance

The intent of this study is to apply a cross-level design to examine the influence of contextual factors upon individuals' performance. The results support the hypothesis that peer group characteristics predict individual performance beyond individual characteristics. The implications for using a cross-level approach to study the effects of contextual variables on individual-level phenomena are discussed.     

Stability/Instability of Cognitive Strategies Across Tasks Determine Whether Stress Will Affect Judgmental Processes'

Previous research indicates that individuals employ various cognitive heuristics and decision modes in making decisions and judgmental tasks that do not follow an expected value model. It further indicates that several cognitive faculties are affected by stress. The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to examine whether individual differences exist in the use of cognitive heuristics and risk-assessment decision modes; second, to examine whether stress would affect the use of these cognitive strategies. Three versions of a questionnaire measuring the representativeness and availability heuristics, and risk-seeking and risk-aversion decision modes were administered to three different groups of subjects. Consistent individual differences were only observed in the subscales measuring risk-seeking and risk-aversion modes, but not in the use of the heuristics. In a different group of subjects, exposure to noise and task overload stress increased the use of the representativeness heuristic, but did not alter the use of risk-seeking and risk-aversion decision modes. These results indicate that the existence of individual differences in cognitive strategies may determine, in part, whether stress will modify judgmental processes.