Measurement of Social Freedom: The Starkweather Social Conformity Test Revised (SSCT-R)

Freedom to conform or not to conform to peer choices is one of the traits of a child with high creative potential. The Starkweather Social Conformity Test-Revised is described and compared to the original test. The Starkweather Social Conformity Test-Revised is useful for determining conformity, nonconformity, and freedom of young children when they are given the opportunity to make a book based on their personal preferences or on the preferences of pictures chosen for their friends. The test is individually administered; it may be given to a child who is involved in a group or to a child in a therapeutic setting.     

Family Functioning and Mental Illness: A Comparison of Psychiatric and Nonclinical Families

The primary objective of the present investigation was to examine adaptive functioning in the families of patients with a wide range of psychiatric disorders. Seven dimensions of family functioning, as measured by the Family Assessment Device (FAD), were compared across families of patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (n = 61 ), bipolar disorder (n = 60 ), major depression (n = 111 ), anxiety disorder (n = 15 ), eating disorder (n = 26 ), substance abuse disorder (n = 48 ), and adjustment disorder (n = 46 ). Families in each psychiatric group were also compared to a control group of nonclinical families (N = 353 ). Results indicated that regardless of specific diagnosis, having a family member in an acute phase of a psychiatric illness was a risk factor for poor family functioning compared to the functioning of control families. However, with few exceptions, the type of the patient's psychiatric illness did not predict significant differences in family functioning. Thus, having a family member with a psychiatric illness is a general stressor for families, and family interventions should be considered for most patients who require a psychiatric hospitalization for either the onset of, or an acute exacerbation of, any psychiatric disorder.     

The Development of a Clinical Rating Scale the McMaster Model of Family Functioning

This article describes the development and validation of the McMaster Clinical Rating Scale (MCRS). The MCRS is a 7-item scale designed to be completed by a trained rater after completion of an in-depth interview of the family. We present data from four new studies and review previously published articles concerning the reliability, validity, and clinical utility of the MCRS. Adequate interrater reliability and rater stability were obtained. The MCRS was found to correlate significantly with the self-report Family Assessment Device and to discriminate between families in different phases of a depressive disorder.     

EXPERIENCE-BASED AND SITUATIONAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: STUDIES OF VALIDITY

This research compared the validity of two different types of structured interview questions (i.e., experience-based and situational) under tightly controlled conditions. The experience-based interview questions required that 108 study participants relate how they had handled situations in the past requiring skills and abilities necessary for effective performance on the job. Situational questions, administered to another group of 108 study participants, provided interviewees with hypothetical job-relevant situations and asked them how they would respond if they were confronted with these problems. The experience-based interview questions yielded higher levels of validity than the situational questions. Additional analyses showed that the interview added incrementally to the prediction of performance beyond the variance accounted for by a cognitive ability test. There were small differences in subgroup performance (White, Black, Hispanic, male, and female) on the experience-based interview, though it was equally valid for all subgroups.     

Social flexibility and anxious attachment

Social flexibility was predicted to correlate with anxious/ambivalent attachment among individuals reminded of attachment-related uncertainties. In the experiment reported here, subjects wrote about positive versus negative relationship events and then responded to a series of interpersonal conflict situations. Correlations between their responses and previously obtained attachment style scores provide supportive evidence for the predictions. The results suggest that anxious/ambivalent attachment may limit social flexibility by interfering with information processing in complex social situations. Results are discussed in terms of models of test anxiety.     

Love and expansion of the self: The state of the model

The self-expansion model of love developed out of a confluence of research on attraction and arousal, Eastern psychology, motivation theory, and the social psychology of personal relationships. The model treats love (the desire for a relationship with a particular other) as arising from a desire to expand the self by including that other in the self, as well as by associating expansion with that particular other. First, the model is described, including its function as a source of heuristically important metaphors for common human experiences of love and its unique focus in relation to other approaches to love. The remainder of the article examines its application, including supporting research, to predictors of falling in love, motivations for unrequited love, consequences of falling in love, love as including each other in each other's self, and how love changes (and how it can be maintained) in long-term relationships. The conclusion examines current trends in which the model serves as both a very general integration of useful perspectives and as a set of precise mini-theories.