The Viability of an Abbreviated Version of the Holtzman Inkblot Technique With Older Adults

Multiple regression analyses of Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT; Holtzman, Thorpe, Swartz, & Herron, 1961) factor scores were conducted to empirically determine the viability of a short form of the HIT with older adults. Although R ² values were acceptable, the contribution of individual cards to total factor scores was dubious at best. These data suggest that the development of a short form of the HIT for use with older adults is premature and requires more systematic research to justify its viability.     

The Relation Between Appraised Mismatch and the Duration of Negative Emotions: Evidence for Universality

Emotions are processes that unfold over time. As a consequence, a better understanding of emotions can be reached only when their time‐related characteristics can be assessed and interpreted adequately. A central aspect in this regard is the duration of emotional experience. Previous studies have shown that an emotional experience can last anywhere from a couple of seconds up to several hours or longer. In this article, we examine to what extent specific appraisals of the eliciting event may account for variability in emotion duration and to what degree appraisal–duration relations are universal or culture specific. Participants in 37 countries were asked to recollect emotional episodes of fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame and guilt. Subsequently, they were asked to report the duration of these episodes and to answer a number of questions regarding their appraisal of the emotion‐eliciting event. Multi‐level analyses revealed that negative emotions last especially long when the eliciting event and its consequences are perceived to be incongruent with the individual's goals, values and self‐ideal, creating a mismatch. These relations are largely universal, although evidence for some limited variability across countries is found as well. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Improved Insight into and Prediction of Network Dynamics by Combining VAR and Dimension Reduction

To understand within-person psychological processes, one may fit VAR(1) models (or continuous-time variants thereof) to multivariate time series and display the VAR(1) coefficients as a network. This approach has two major problems. First, the contemporaneous correlations between the variables will frequently be substantial, yielding multicollinearity issues. In addition, the shared effects of the variables are not included in the network. Consequently, VAR(1) networks can be hard to interpret. Second, crossvalidation results show that the highly parametrized VAR(1) model is prone to overfitting. In this article, we compare the pros and cons of two potential solutions to both problems. The first is to impose a lasso penalty on the VAR(1) coefficients, setting some of them to zero. The second, which has not yet been pursued in psychological network analysis, uses principal component VAR(1) (termed PC-VAR(1)). In this approach, the variables are first reduced to a few principal components, which are rotated toward simple structure; then VAR(1) analysis (or a continuous-time analog) is applied to the rotated components. Reanalyzing the data of a single participant of the COGITO study, we show that PC-VAR(1) has the better predictive performance and that networks based on PC-VAR(1) clearly represent both the lagged and the contemporaneous variable relations.     

The Psychology of Gender Differences in Religion: A Review of Empirical Research

This paper presents, discusses and evaluates empirical studies concerned with gender differences in religion. Within the psychology of religion two main groups of theories have been advanced to account for gender differences in religiosity. The first group of theories concentrates on social or contextual influences which shape different responses to religion among men and women. This group may be divided into two categories: gender role socialisation theories and structural location theories. The second group of theories concentrates on personal or individual psychological characteristics which differentiate between men and women. This group may be divided into three categories: depth psychology theories, personality theories and gender orientation theories. It is concluded that gender orientation theories provide the most fruitful source for further research.     

A CHRISTIAN NATURALISM: DEVELOPING THE THINKING OF GORDON KAUFMAN

This essay develops a theological naturalism using Gordon Kaufman's nonpersonal idea of God as serendipitous creativity in contrast to the personal metaphorical theology of Sallie McFague. It then develops a Christian theological naturalism by using Kaufman's idea of historical trajectories, specifically Jesus trajectory₁ and Jesus trajectory₂. The first is the trajectory in the early Christian church assuming a personal God in the framework of Greek philosophy that results in the Trinity. The second is the naturalistic‐humanistic trajectory of creativity (God) that evolves from nonpersonal interactions in the universe and life to creativity in persons and is manifested in Jesus as love. This is elaborated further with Dean Keith Simonton's Darwinian understanding of genius and Marcus Borg's analysis of Jesus as Jewish mystic, teacher of alternative wisdom, and nonviolent resister to the domination system of the Roman Empire. What makes Jesus a religious genius is his exemplifying unconditional, universal love—a new mode of creativity (God) that has evolved from nonhuman to a human form.     

Market and Customer Analysis for Sales Management

Abstract

The application of market and customer analysis to selling is discussed in this article. Four instruments were devised and used with three companies in order to improve the performance of their salespeople. While the needs of salespeople vary according to the company and the industry, these instruments can form the basis for organizing the activities of salespeople.     

Validation of a new multidimensional health locus of control scale (form c) in asthma research

Abstract

This study developed and validated an Asthma Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (AMHLC) scale using 186 asthmatics aged 13 to 55 years recruited from 46 pharmacies in the Hunter Valley, Australia. The construct validity and internal consistency of the scale were demonstrated using principal components factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha respectively. Although correlations were modest, findings indicate that asthmatics with higher “Powerful Others” locus of control perceived they had a better quality of doctor-patient relationship; the opposite was found for those with higher “Chance” scores. Powerful Others orientation was also associated with expectations and valuation of services doctors' provide. Knowledge of asthma was not related in the expected direction with the new scale, nor were clinical indices of asthma severity. Younger asthmatics had higher Chance scores while older asthmatics tended toward higher Powerful Others orientation. Overall, the AMHLC instrument achieved suitable measurement properties to allow further investigation of health care behavior in people with asthma.     

Why and how we should care about the General Data Protection Regulation

Abstract

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the new European Union-wide (EU) law on data protection, which is a great step towards more comprehensive and more far-reaching protection of individuals' personal data. In this editorial, we describe why and how we – as researchers within the field of health psychology – should care about the GDPR. In the first part, we explain when the GDPR is applicable, who is accountable for data protection, and what is covered by the notions of personal data and processing. In the second part, we explain aspects of the GDPR that are relevant for researchers within the field of health psychology (e.g., obtaining informed consent, data minimisation, and open science). We focus on questions that researchers may ask themselves in their daily practice. Compliance with the GDPR requires adopting research practices (e.g., data minimisation and anonymization procedures) that are not yet commonly used, but serve the fundamental right to protection of personal data of study participants.     

Children's use of addition to solve two‐digit subtraction problems

Subtraction problems of the type M ? S = ? can be solved with various mental calculation strategies. We investigated fourth‐ to sixth‐graders' use of the subtraction by addition strategy, first by fitting regression models to the reaction times of 32 two‐digit subtractions. These models represented three different strategy use patterns: the use of direct subtraction, subtraction by addition, and switching between the two strategies based on the magnitude of the subtrahend. Additionally, we compared performance on problems presented in two presentation formats, i.e., a subtraction format (81 ? 37 = .) and an addition format (37 + . = 81). Both methods converged to the conclusion that children of all three grades switched between direct subtraction and subtraction by addition based on the combination of two features of the subtrahend: If the subtrahend was smaller than the difference, direct subtraction was the dominant strategy; if the subtrahend was larger than the difference, subtraction by addition was mainly used. However, this performance pattern was only observed when the numerical distance between subtrahend and difference was large. These findings indicate that theoretical models of children's strategy choices in subtraction should include the nature of the subtrahend as an important factor in strategy selection.