Associations of positive orientation with health and psychosocial adaptation: A review of findings and perspectives

Earlier findings have shown that positive evaluations about oneself, life, and future are related to each other and can be traced to a common latent dimension originally named positive orientation and then positivity. Further findings have led to the development of an eight‐item scale that allows a direct measurement of positivity. A review is presented of the major findings that point to positivity as a basic self‐evaluative disposition and that attest to its relevant impact across domains of functioning. Finally, possible avenues for promoting positivity and to allow individuals to fully benefit from it are discussed.     

Perceived political self‐efficacy: Theory,assessment, and applications

Political efficacy is addressed within the framework of social cognitive theory and a new measure to assess perceived political self‐efficacy is presented. Three studies document the validity of the new scale of measurement. The first study (N = 1673) examined the psychometric properties of the scale in accordance with classical test theory. This led to the identification of a unidimensional factor structure, including perceived political self‐efficacy in promoting one's own political opinion, in sustaining the political programs of the party to which one belongs, and in monitoring one's own political representatives' commitment. The second study (N = 632) further confirmed the internal and construct validity of the scale; criterion validity was also investigated using several indicators of political interest and participation. The third study (N = 1176) showed that politicians holding offices have higher levels of perceived political self‐efficacy than partisans and voters, further corroborating the criterion validity of the scale. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motor abstraction: a neuroscientific account of how action goals and intentions are mapped and understood

Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience shed light on the existence of a common neural mechanism that could account for action and intention to understand abilities in humans and non-human primates. Empirical evidence on the neural underpinnings of action goals and on their ontogeny and phylogeny is introduced and discussed. It is proposed that the properties of the mirror neuron system and the functional mechanism describing them, embodied simulation, enabled pre-linguistic forms of action and intention understanding. Basic aspects of social cognition appear to be primarily based on the motor cognition that underpins one’s own capacity to act, here defined as motor abstraction. On the basis of this new account of the motor system, it is proposed that intersubjectivity is the best conceived of as intercorporeity.

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Instigating and measuring interpersonal aggression and hostility: A methodological contribution

Two experiments were conducted, employing a 2 × 2 factorial design, to assess both 1)a relatively controlled procedure for instigating aggressive inclinations and 2) a way of measuring interpersonal aggression that is much more subtle than most of the laboratory procedures now being used. In both of these experiments half of the subjects were provoked by exposing them to a self-esteem-threatening evaluation ostensibly from a peer. After this “treatment,” in experiment 1 all of the subjects had an opportunity to deliver electric shocks to the supposed other student, much as in many of the laboratory experiments in this area, and then rate that student. Shock intensity was not significantly correlated with the unfavorableness of these latter ratings, as if the subjects had reacted in different ways to the shocks they had delivered. In experiment 2, after the instigating treatment the subjects were allowed to withhold rewards from the other person whenever he made correct guesses on a supposed “ESP task.” In this procedure the behavioral hostility (withholding rewards) was positively correlated with the unfavorableness of the subsequent questionnaire ratings, apparently because the subjects were not fully aware of having expressed hostility.     

Stimulus-driven attentional capture: An empirical comparison of display-size and distance methods

Four experiments examined attentional capture by colour as assessed by two different investigative methods. Subjects performed a visual search task for a vertical-target line embedded among tilted-distractor lines, presented inside 4, 8, or 12 coloured discs. Interestingly, when the colour singleton was task irrelevant, and data were analysed by means of the display-size method combined with the zero-slope criterion, no evidence for attentional capture by colour was found. However, when data were analysed by means of the distance method, which consists of monitoring the spatial relationship between the target and the singleton, results showed that the target was found faster and/or more accurately when it was inside the singleton than when it was in a nonsingleton location. This provided evidence for a stimulus-driven attentional capture. In addition, the application of signal detection methodology showed that attentional capture, as revealed by the distance method, resulted from a perceptual modulation at the singleton location, rather than from a criterion shift. We conclude that, at least with the kind of stimuli used here, the display-size method combined with the zero-slope criterion is less than ideal for investigating how static discontinuities can affect the automatic deployment of visual attention.     

Assessing personality change in psychotherapy with the SWAP-200: a case study

Many studies document the efficacy of psychotherapy for acute syndromes such as depression, but less is known about personality change in patients treated for personality pathology. The Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP-200; Westen & Shedler, 1999a, 1999b) is an assessment tool that measures a broad spectrum of personality constructs and is designed to bridge the gap between the clinical and empirical traditions in personality assessment. In this article, we demonstrate the use of the SWAP-200 as a measure of change in a case study of a patient diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. We collected assessment data at the start of treatment and after 2 years of psychotherapy. The findings illustrate the personality processes targeted in intensive psychotherapy for borderline personality.     

Once upon a time…: Using fairy tales as a form of vicarious contact to prevent stigma-based bullying among schoolchildren

We conducted a vicarious contact intervention with the aim of promoting bystanders' intentions to react to stigma-based bullying among schoolchildren. Participants were Italian primary schoolchildren (N = 117 first to third graders); the outgroup was represented by foreign children. Vicarious contact was operationalized with story reading, creating fairy tales on stigma-based bullying where minority characters were bullied by majority characters. Once a week for 3 weeks, participants were read fairy tales in small groups by an experimenter and engaged in reinforcing activities. Results revealed that the intervention increased intergroup empathy (but not intergroup perspective-taking) and anti-bullying peer norms and fostered contact intentions. The intervention also had indirect effects via intergroup empathy on helping and contact intentions and on bystanders' reactions to stigma based-bullying. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, also in terms of the relevance of the present results for school policy. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .