Maternal self‐perceptions and reactions to infant crying among intrusive and withdrawn depressed mothers

This study compared intrusive (N =15) and withdrawn (N = 10) mothers' ratings of their own interaction styles with their infants and the behaviors of videotaped models of intrusive and withdrawn mothers. Withdrawn mothers rated themselves as less withdrawn than the model withdrawn mother. Intrusive mothers viewed themselves as more intrusive than the model intrusive mother. Both groups viewed their own infants as more outgoing than the infants of the model intrusive and withdrawn mothers. The withdrawn mothers reported feeling more distressed when they observed an infant (of an intrusive or withdrawn mother) crying, suggesting that they feel more empathy than the intrusive mothers. © 2001 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Psychological and social-structural influences on commitment to volunteering

A model is described in which commitment to volunteering is hypothesized to be the result of demographic qualities, personality, identity, values, and social relationships. The model is tested and cross-validated using data from a nationally representative sample of American adults. The results from structural equation modeling analyses suggest that the hypothetical model provides a good fit to the data. Moreover, the findings suggest that the relations of personality and demographic characteristics to hours devoted to volunteering are largely mediated by latent constructs capturing helping identity and community participation. The implications of the model and the findings for our understanding of volunteering are discussed.     

It's for your own good: benevolent sexism and women's reactions to protectively justified restrictions

Three studies examined women's reactions to ostensibly protective restrictions. In Study 1, only benevolently sexist women accepted a protectively justified (hypothetical) prohibition against driving on a long trip, but only when imposed by a husband (not a coworker). In Study 2, when women's actual romantic partners opposed their participation in a practicum counseling dangerous men, most reacted positively to a personalized protective justification ("I am concerned for your safety"), but only benevolently sexist women reacted positively when no justification was given. In Study 3, only benevolently sexist women accepted an explicitly group-based protective justification ("It is not safe for any woman") for a partner's imagined opposition to an internship that involved interviewing criminals. By fusing benevolence with dominance, protective paternalism can lead women (especially those who are high on benevolent sexism) to accept restrictions.     

Memory transfer for emotionally valenced words between identities in dissociative identity disorder

The present study aimed to determine interidentity retrieval of emotionally valenced words in dissociative identity disorder (DID). Twenty-two DID patients participated together with 25 normal controls and 25 controls instructed to simulate DID. Two wordlists A and B were constructed including neutral, positive and negative material. List A was shown to one identity, while list B was shown to another identity claiming total amnesia for the words learned by the first identity. The identity claiming amnesia was tested for intrusions from list A words into the recall of words from list B and recognition of the words learned by both identities. Test results indicated no evidence of total interidentity amnesia for emotionally valenced material in DID. It is argued that dissociative amnesia in DID may more adequately be described as a disturbance in meta-memory functioning instead of an actual retrieval inability.     

Common and distinct factors in decision making under ambiguity and risk: A psychometric study of individual differences

The relation between decision making under ambiguity and risky decision making was examined. In Studies 1 and 2, choices under ambiguity were measured for a large sample receiving an Ellsberg-type Ambiguity-Probability Tradeoff Task. Participants with extreme scores were recruited for Part 2 of each study which consisted of a risky decision making task (Study 1) or a series of decisions under ambiguity in “real life” scenarios (Study 2). Despite a time gap of up to 2 months, individual differences in scores on Part 1 predicted scores on Part 2. In Study 3 participants received in a single session several risky decision making tasks, several measures of decision making under ambiguity, and several personality scales related to uncertainty and decision making style. Taken together, the findings support the existence of a stable dispositional trait to reduce uncertainty in decision making but also task-specific differences related to gains and losses.     

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Famous Patient

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is arguably one of the greatest of American Presidents. His encounter with the polio that crippled him at an early age and its transformative impact upon him are here discussed with particular reference to his relationship with his physician, Dr. George Draper. This transformation liberated energy in Roosevelt to lead and to show empathy for others in ways that both challenged the political and social status quo in the USA as well as helped save the world from the threat of Fascism in World War II. This essay seeks to demonstrate how an investigation of the life and struggles of this famous patient is one avenue for relating the study of the humanities to medical education. An earlier version of this paper was presented as the Heberden Lecture in the History of Medicine at the New York Academy of Medicine in 2012.     

Death awareness and body–self dualism: A why and how of afterlife belief

Belief in life after death offers potential comfort in the face of inevitable death. However, afterlife belief likely requires not only an awareness of death but also body–self dualism—the perception that the self (e.g., the mind) is distinct from the physical, undeniably mortal, body. In turn, we hypothesized that mortality salience (MS) should heighten afterlife belief only when dualism is facilitated. Study 1 found that MS increased belief for people high, relative to low, in trait mind–body dualism. In Study 2, MS only increased belief when people first wrote about their thoughts and personality, which a pilot study confirmed facilitated dualistic belief, relative to thinking about the physical self. Study 3 used the brain–computer interface technology to induce a dualistic experience: MS increased belief when participants accurately “typed” without the use of their external body (i.e., no hands). Together, these findings support the position that mortality awareness and body–self dualism constitute a “why” and “how” of afterlife belief. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychology Without Psy Professionals: Exploring an Unemployed Centre Families Project as a Mental Health Resource

The activities and technologies of the psychology (Psy) disciplines, in the process of privileging professional understandings of distress, could be seen to be potentially facilitating corrosion in the capacity of the lay public to understand and ameliorate their distress. This paper draws on the experiences of people who use an Unemployed Centre Families Project in the South of England to provide an example of community mental health work that does not draw on the dominant discourses, institutions or practitioners of the Psy sciences. Through interviews with centre users, staff and volunteers, a picture emerges of a community space that provides a variety of services, projects and opportunities that have a very considerable positive impact on the mental well‐being of the centre users. This picture highlights non‐medical intersubjective processes that offer possibilities for recoveries from mental distress but that are often neglected and subordinated in the professional worlds of Psy and psychiatry. Such centres facilitate social networks and practical help, and transitions in identity can be beneficial for those experiencing mental distress. In so doing, they make prominent some of the key limitations of biomedical approaches to recovery. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.