Characteristics of the Group Process in Long-Term Psychodynamic Group Psychotherapy for Patients with Psychosis

This study aimed to investigate the development of the group process through group climate parameter dynamics during long-term psychodynamic group psychotherapy for 30 outpatients with psychosis. The group process in four groups was monitored using MacKenzie’s Group Climate Questionnaire-Short Form (GCQ-S) that was completed by the therapist after each session over the two-year period. The trends of engagement, avoidance and conflict parameters differed between groups, and no clear indicators of the development phases were found. The results suggested that these groups remained in the first developmental phase during the observation period, and highlighted the characteristics of resistance and difficulties in establishing social relations in patients with psychosis.     

Power and choice: their dynamic interplay in quenching the thirst for personal control

Power and choice represent two fundamental forces that govern human behavior. Scholars have largely treated power as an interpersonal construct involving control over other individuals, whereas choice has largely been treated as an intrapersonal construct that concerns the ability to select a preferred course of action. Although these constructs have historically been studied separately, we propose that they share a common foundation--that both are rooted in an individual's sense of personal control. Because of this common underlying basis, we hypothesized that power and choice are substitutable; that is, we predicted that the absence of one would increase the desire for the other, which, when acquired, would serve to satisfy the broader need for control. We also predicted that choice and power would exhibit a threshold effect, such that once one source of control had been provided (e.g., power), the addition of the other (e.g., choice) would yield diminishing returns. Six experiments provide evidence supporting these predictions.     

Development and Validation of an Explicit Aggressive Beliefs and Attitudes Scale

This work outlines the development and validation of a new self-report measure that assesses explicit aggressive beliefs and attitudes within the normal adult population (using 7 samples, total N = 3,533). These explicit aggressive beliefs and attitudes are expected to reflect aggressive biases including hostile attribution, potency, retribution, victimization by powerful others, derogation of target, and social discounting. The resulting scale is reliable with a hierarchical 6-factor structure, and displays convergent and discriminant validity. Criterion-related validity studies indicate incremental effects over socially desirable response bias, related implicit and explicit aggression measures, and is predictive of self-reported and other-reported aggression-related behaviors.