Projective identification and the therapist's use of self

This article addresses how therapists can recognize and therapeutically utilize client projective identification in therapy. Splitting and projective identification are conceptualized as occurring in sequence. Transference, countertransference, and projective identification are discussed as interrelated phenomena, which underlie the therapist's effective use of self as an instrument in therapy. A three phase intervention process, which emphasizes the importance of the timing of interventions, is introduced.     

Social Categorization and Stimulus Equivalence

Northern Irish Protestant subjects, Northern Irish Catholic subjects, and English Protestant subjects were taught a series of conditional discriminations using a matching-to-sample procedure. In the presence of Northern Irish Catholic names, subjects were trained to select three-letter nonsense syllables, and in the presence of the nonsense syllables subjects were trained to select Northern Irish Protestant symbols. Subjects were then tested to determine whether the Protestant symbols and Catholic names had become related through symmetry and transitivity. A generalization test was employed to allow for a preliminary investigation of the transfer of experimentally generated equivalence responding to untrained, socially loaded names. Preliminary findings suggest that prior social learning might interfere with equivalence responding. The relevance of these results to the theoretical interpretation of the equivalence phenomenon and to social attitude measurement in general is discussed.

     

Change schools through revolution,not evolution

The school's traditional practices are linked to current failures and to the limited prospects of future success. The major problems with current school practices are: adopting instructional programs that have never been fieldtested and revised on the basis of data; using diagnostic practices that blame the child as being the sole cause of poor performance; using testing techniques that do not imply curricular remedies; promoting children beyond their grade-level performance; failing to provide teachers with effective training and monitoring. Recommendations for changing the system to become accountable and databased include: bringing pressure from outside the system; lobbying for alternatives to public schools; promoting intervention by the board; involving parents in union negotiations; establishing committees of expert teachers to review administrative proposals and report to the board. The central feature of the plan is to fire administrators who fail to meet attainable student-achievement goals. This practice would ensure that administrators are reinforced when children succeed, a feature that is not part of current practices.     

Is the three-term contingency trial a predictor of effective instruction?

Two experiments are reported which test the effect of increased three-term contingency trials on students' correct and incorrect math responses. Experiment 1 included two junior high school students in need of special instruction in mathematics while in Experiment 2 two other students with similar instructional needs from the same classroom were studied. In the first experiment the increased rate of presentation (3 times the baseline rate) was done without regard to whether the antecedent teacher presentations to the student were presented vocally or in written form; in the second experiment, the rates of presentation were systematically rotated across written and vocal presentations. The dependent variables were rate per minute of correct and incorrect responses of students (vocal or written). The experiments used designs incorporating features of the multiple baseline (Students A and B) and reversal (Students B, C, and D). The data showed that increasing the number of three-term trials increased correct rates while incorrect rates remained relatively low. The second experiment replicated these findings with two other students and found that the treatment effect occurred independently with vocal and written antecedents when each was isolated. The results warrant further research to test whether or not rates of presentation of three-term contingency trials are predictors of effective instruction.     

What makes people happy? Decoupling the experiential-material continuum

Extant literature suggests that consumers derive more happiness from experiences (e.g., vacations) than from material possessions (e.g., furniture). However, this literature typically pits material against experiential consumption, treating them as a single bipolar construct of their relative dominance: more material or more experiential. This focus on relative dominance leaves unanswered questions regarding how different levels of material and experiential qualities each contribute to happiness. Four preregistered studies (N = 3,288), using hundreds of product categories, measured levels of material and experiential qualities using two unipolar items. These studies investigate recalled, evoked, and anticipated happiness. Results show a more nuanced view of the experiential advantage that is critical for future research and consumer theory: material and experiential qualities both have positive relationships with happiness. Further, there is no inherent trade-off between experiential and material qualities: consumers can enjoy consumption that is high on both (e.g., swimming pools and home improvements).     

Impact of Conflict on Mental Health in Northern Ireland: The Mediating Role of Intergroup Forgiveness and Collective Guilt

The aim of the present research was to investigate the mediating role of group-level forgiveness and guilt in the relationship between victimhood (the extent to which the conflict affected an individual's life), exposure to violence (the level of violence in their area of residence), and group identity on the one hand, and mild psychiatric morbidity on the other. Specifically the study focused on the psychological impact of the ethnopolitical conflict in Northern Ireland, utilizing people's identification with either the Catholic or Protestant community. Our results revealed that intergroup forgiveness mediated the relationship between both victimhood and group identification, as predictors, and mild psychiatric morbidity. Collective guilt, on the other hand, mediated the relationship between both exposure to violence and group identification, as predictors, and intergroup forgiveness. Overall this study shows that forgiveness and collective guilt can act as mediators in the relationship between impact of ethnopolitical conflict and mental health, at the group level, and thus demonstrates their centrality to the reconciliation process. Implications for intergroup reconciliation initiatives in Northern Ireland are discussed.     

Benefits of Accounts of Well-Being— For Societies and for Psychological Science

The decisions of business leaders and government officials are currently guided by economic and social indicators. It is proposed that accounts of well-being be collected on an ongoing basis to complement the existing indicators. Accounts of subjective well-being would track the societal groups where happiness, life satisfaction, engagement, and positive feelings are high versus low, would indicate the activities that people find enjoyable versus unpleasant, and would monitor changing levels of well-being over time. The accounts would serve decision-makers by making important information on well-being and ill-being available to them. They would also greatly help applied psychology by drawing more attention and interest to important outcomes that are likely to result from psychological interventions.
Les décisions des chefs d'entreprise et des responsables gouvernementaux se fondent actuellement sur des indicateurs sociaux et économiques. On propose de recueillir des données relatives au bien-être de façon continue en complément des indicateurs existants. Les mesures du bien-être subjectif détecteraient les groupes sociaux où le bonheur, la satisfaction de vivre, le sens des responsabilités et les sentiments positifs sont élevés ou bas, indiqueraient les activités que les gens trouvent agréables ou non et suivraient avec le temps les changements dans le niveau du bien-être. Ces mesures seraient utiles aux décisionnaires en mettant à leur disposition des informations importantes sur le bien-être et son contraire. Elles seraient aussi d'un grand secours pour la psychologie appliquée en accordant davantage d'attention et d'intérêt aux conséquences importantes susceptibles de résulter des interventions psychologiques.     

Affluence and Subjective Well-Being: Does Income Inequality Moderate their Associations?

Using the Gallup World Poll data, we examined whether national income inequality moderated the effects of affluence on individual subjective well-being (SWB). Multilevel analyses found that people reported higher life evaluation in years when their nation had higher GDP. Between-nation effects showed that people in wealthier nations reported greater SWB (but also more negative feelings) than those in poorer nations. Furthermore, people in unequal nations (i.e., greater income inequality) reported higher life evaluation and positive feelings than those in more equal nations. National income inequality also moderated the effects of individual-level income on SWB— income showed stronger associations with SWB in more equal nations than in nations with higher income inequality. People who earned higher incomes had higher life evaluation and positive feelings, and lower negative feelings than those who earned lower incomes, but the effects were stronger in more equal nations. These findings suggest that money matters less to the SWB of people in unequal nations than those in equal nations.