Affect and sensation seeking

The notion that affective responses differentiate high from low sensation-seekers was investigated. Male subjects with extremely high (N=13) or low (N=13) scores on Form V of the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) were presented with tones of 60, 80, and 100 dB in successive blocks of 10 tones each. Although measures of arousal (verbal self-reports and physiological measures of the orienting response) did not differentiate between high and low sensation-seekers, a self-report measure of pleasure did: Whereas reported pleasure of the low sensation-seekers began high and declined as tones became successively louder, the reported pleasure of the high sensation-seekers remained more constant across the blocks of tones.The research on which this paper was based was supported by Grant MT-4511 from the Medical Research Council of Canada to Robert Hare.     

Citation Analysis Mapping of Journals in Applied and Clinical Psychology

This paper uses a method of citation analysis to establish the importance ranking and relative location of 23 major journals in the field of applied and clinical psychology and related disciplines. The asymmetric citations are modelled as being the product of the cited journals "importance," the citing journal's "receptivity,"and the "similarity" between the two journals. A maximum likelihood loglinear fit to this model is obtained. Multidimensional scaling of the derived similarities matrix provides an interpretable map of the journals' relative configuration. The changes in relative importance of the journals are reported for the years 1981 to 1988, together with maps of the journals for the periods 1981 to 1984 and 1985 to 1988. The results show a central core of general psychology journals, surrounded by three major groupings of applied psychology journals.     

Exercise Stage of Change and Self-Efficacy in Primary Care: Implications for Intervention

Multiple chronic diseases are caused or complicated by a sedentary lifestyle. Thus, an important and challenging application of psychology in clinical settings is changing the behavior of sedentary primary care patients. This study focused on exercise stage of change and self-efficacy in a sample of adult family practice patients recruited while waiting for their scheduled physician appointment. Regarding exercise stage of change, 15% of respondents were in the Precontemplation stage, 26% in the Contemplation stage, 50% in the Preparation stage, 7% in the Action stage, and 13% in the Maintenance stage. Mean self-efficacy scores for exercise were significantly higher among respondents in the Action and Maintenance stages of change. These cross-sectional data are consistent with the hypothesis that movement through the exercise stages of change could be encouraged by clinical interventions that increase exercise self-efficacy. The identification of multiple personal opportunities for increasing exercise self-efficacy may be clinically useful in this context. Recommendations for psychologists in primary care settings in their work with physicians are offered.     

Hope‐Focused and Forgiveness‐Based Group Interventions to Promote Marital Enrichment

The authors report a clinical trial (N = 43 couples) that compares a hope‐focused marital enrichment (E. L. Worthington et al., 1997) with empathy‐centered forgiveness‐based marital enrichment (M. E. McCullough, 1997; E. L. Worthington, 1998a) and a wait‐list control. Treatment group couples improved relative to the wait‐list control group in observational measures of communication. Hope‐focused marital enrichment produced clinically relevant changes in marital communication, increasing the ratio by 3 to 5 positive to negative interaction ratio units. Hope‐focused marital enrichment is discussed in comparison with previous research, which was conducted with couples meeting conjointly. The forgiveness‐based marital enrichment psychoeducational group is one of the 1st studies of forgiveness interventions in couples research.     

Retributive justice, restorative justice, and forgiveness: An experimental psychophysiology analysis

This experiment assessed the emotional self-reports and physiology of justice outcomes and forgiveness responses to a common crime, using a three Justice (retributive, restorative, no justice) × 2 Forgiveness (forgiveness, none) repeated-measures design. Participants (27 males, 29 females) imagined their residence was burglarized, followed by six counterbalanced justice-forgiveness outcomes. Imagery of justice—especially restorative—and forgiveness each reduced unforgiving motivations and negative emotion (anger, fear), and increased prosocial and positive emotion (empathy, gratitude). Imagery of granting forgiveness (versus not) was associated with less heart rate reactivity and better recovery; less negative emotion expression at the brow (corrugator EMG); and less aroused expression at the eye (lower orbicularis oculi EMG when justice was absent). When forgiveness was not imagined, justice-physiology effects emerged: signs of cardiovascular stress (rate pressure products) were lower for retributive versus no justice; and sympathetic nervous system responding (skin conductance) was calmer for restorative versus retributive justice.     

Intrinsic Finks, Masks, and Mimics

I argue for the existence of intrinsic Finks, Masks, and Mimics, and argue that these undermine certain recent attempts to revive simple conditional analyses of dispositions. I present some examples of intrinsic Finks, Masks, and Mimics, and argue that the example of an intrinsic fink I present has certain advantages over the examples of intrinsic finks recently suggested by Randolph Clarke. I conclude that the existence of such Finks, Masks, and Mimics, undermine a recent attempt by Sungho Choi to distinguish dispositional properties from categorical properties.

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