Positivity: The Dispositional Basis of Happiness

The present study examined in a stringent developmental model whether positivity, conceptualized as a pervasive mode of appraising, viewing, and perceiving life from a positive stance, predicts chronic positive affectivity across time or vice versa. Participants [263 participants (47 % males)], aged 15.5 at the beginning of the study and 23.5 at the end, reported on measures of positivity and dispositional positive affect four times. Longitudinal findings corroborated the posited paths of relations, with positivity significantly predicting positive affectivity across time rather than vice versa.     

A Meta-model of Access Control in a Fibred Security Language

The issue of representing access control requirements continues to demand significant attention. The focus of researchers has traditionally been on developing particular access control models and policy specification languages for particular applications. However, this approach has resulted in an unnecessary surfeit of models and languages. In contrast, we describe a general access control model and a logic-based specification language from which both existing and novel access control models may be derived as particular cases and from which several approaches can be developed for domain-specific applications. We will argue that our general framework has a number of specific attractions and an implication of our work is to encourage a methodological shift from a study of the particulars of access control to its generalities.     

Fibred Security Language

We study access control policies based on the says operator by introducing a logical framework called Fibred Security Language (FSL) which is able to deal with features like joint responsibility between sets of principals and to identify them by means of first-order formulas. FSL is based on a multimodal logic methodology. We first discuss the main contributions from the expressiveness point of view, we give semantics for the language both for classical and intuitionistic fragment), we then prove that in order to express well-known properties like ‘speaks-for’ or ‘hand-off’, defined in terms of says, we do not need second-order logic (unlike previous approaches) but a decidable fragment of first-order logic suffices. We propose a model-driven study of the says axiomatization by constraining the Kripke models in order to respect desirable security properties, we study how existing access control logics can be translated into FSL and we give completeness for the logic.     

Dynamische Komplexität in der Therapeut-Klient-Interaktion

The importance of client-therapist-relationship in psychotherapy has often been stressed. On the one hand, the quality of this relationship has proved to be an important predictor of therapy outcome, on the other hand the relationship itself is realized as a complex dynamic pattern of interpersonal interaction. It seems appropriate to investigate this dynamics by a microprocess analysis with high resolution. Interactive plans (idiographic self-presentation unities) of client and therapist were coded by a sampling frequency of 10 seconds. The coding system of plan activation follows the idea of synchronous musical score notation of different orchestra instruments. It allows for the representation of contextualized interactive behaviors. The context is introduced by the consideration of synchronous and diachronous plan-activation patterns of the interaction partners. The observed dynamic patterns are fulfilling the prerequisites of usual definitions of “chaos”: irregularity of the process, restricted prediction horizon, and still some global order of the dynamic process. Based on nominal data (on-off-patterns), a method for the identification of order within irregular patterns of plan activations is presented. The frequency distributions of plans realize the shape of 1/f^α-noise, indicating features of self-organized criticality within the dynamic system of client-therapist-interaction.     

Neuroimaging studies in eating disorders

The understanding of the eating disorders (EDs) anorexia (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) has undergone remarkable advancements in the past decade. Most studies that have been done in AN show brain gray and white matter volume loss during the ill state that, at least in part, remit with recovery. Similar patterns occur for brain phospholipids assessed using magnet resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Imaging studies have been used to provide functional information regarding serotonin neuroreceptor dynamics, regional cerebral blood flow, or cerebral glucose metabolism. Such studies have implicated cingulate, frontal, temporal, and parietal regions in AN. Investigators have found that challenges such as food and body image distortions may activate some of these regions, raising the possibility that such studies may shed light on puzzling AN symptoms, such as body image distortions or extremes of appetitive behaviors. Emerging data suggest these disturbances persist after recovery from AN, suggesting the possibility that these are traits that may create a vulnerability to develop an ED. While fewer studies have been done in BN or binge eating disorder, there may be disturbances of serotonin metabolism in similar brain regions. Taken together, these findings give promise for future investigations with the hope of delineating brain pathways that contribute to the etiology of EDs     

The historiography of psychology in Italy

The article outlines the studies conducted in Italy on the history of psychology since the 1970s, with particular attention to those elaborated in the 1990s. Reference is made to the institutions, authors, congresses, and other initiatives that in the course of 3 decades have promoted the growth of the history of psychology, and a review is presented of the principal research themes undertaken by scholars. An attempt has been made to identify the principal historiographic tendencies and to illustrate the passage from a sort of "positivistic" historiography to an orientation that could be considered multifactorial or one of complexity, attentive to both the internal and the external components of the scientific enterprise, although with a propensity for the history of ideas.     

The Budapest meeting 2005 intensified networking on ethics of science

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6-9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science.     

Dispositional bases of self-serving positive evaluations

Positive orientation (POS) is the name given to the latent dimension common to self-esteem, optimism and life satisfaction. Earlier findings attest to the trait-like nature of POS and to its unique contribution to well-adjustment across domains of functioning. The present study investigates the extent to which POS accounts for individuals’ tendency to distort their self-assessment in a positive direction. Taking a class of students (N = 190) at the beginning of their academic year, POS predicted the individuals’ tendency to perform academically better-than-average (BTA) peers. POS accounted for BTA beyond what is merely due to self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism.