Desperation and other affective states in suicidal patients

Data collected from 26 therapists who were treating patients when they died by suicide were used to identify intense affective states in such patients preceding the suicide. Eleven therapists provided comparable data on 26 patients they had treated who were seriously depressed but not suicidal. Although the two groups had similar numbers diagnosed with MDD, the suicide patients showed a significantly higher total number of intense affects in addition to depression. The acute affective state most associated with a suicide crisis was desperation. Hopelessness, rage, abandonment, self-hatred, and anxiety were also significantly more frequently evidenced in the suicide patients.     

Determination of precipitating events in the suicide of psychiatric patients

Data from therapists who were treating patients when they killed themselves were used to provide information about precipitating events that was missing from accounts obtained from suicide victims' relatives and friends. Among 26 patient suicides studied, the therapists identified a precipitating event in 25 cases; in 19 of these, supporting evidence linked the identified event to the suicide. A schema was developed that identifies nine types of evidence provided by therapists in determining that an event precipitated the suicide. Use of the schema is likely to improve accurate identification of events that precipitate patient suicides, and distinguish them from unrelated coterminous events or suicide risk factors.     

Mood and the reliance on the ease of retrieval heuristic

Four studies investigate the relationship between individuals' mood and their reliance on the ease retrieval heuristic. Happy participants were consistently more likely to rely on the ease of retrieval heuristic, whereas sad participants were more likely to rely on the activated content. Additional analyses indicate that this pattern is not due to a differential recall (Experiment 2) and that happy participants ceased to rely on the ease of retrieval when the diagnosticity of this information was called into question (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 shows that reliance on the ease of retrieval heuristic resulted in faster judgments than reliance on content, with the former but not the latter being a function of the amount of activated information.     

Morphophonological influences on the construction of subject-verb agreement

In three experiments, we investigated whether the production of subject-verb number agreement is affected by the phonological realization of grammatical information. Speakers repeated and completed German or Dutch noun phrases along the lines of The position against the demonstrations. We varied the number of the subject noun (position) and the local noun (demonstrations), as well as the number ambiguity of the subject noun's determiner and the case ambiguity of the local noun phrase. Sentence completions more often contained a verb of the wrong number if the subject and the local nouns mismatched in number than if they matched. Experiments 1 and 2, in German, showed a stronger number mismatch effect if the local noun phrase was ambiguous between the nominative and the accusative cases. Experiment 3, in Dutch, showed a stronger mismatch effect if the subject noun's determiner was ambiguous in number. We conclude that morphophonological factors affect the implementation of agreement during grammatical encoding.     

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome: autobiographical memory predicts the course of depressive affect after nCPAP therapy

Although nCPAP therapy has proven to be efficient at removing symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), recovery from depression frequently remains unsatisfactory. Other studies have shown that recall of autobiographical memories (AM) is a psychological vulnerability marker for depression, and also have shown its predictive power for the course of depression. It is therefore hypothesized that AM also predict the course of depressive affect in OSAS patients. Fifty-four consecutively admitted OSAS patients received standard nCPAP therapy. Specificity of AM assessed at the beginning of treatment was used as a predictor in a regression analysis, and the extent of recovery from depression over a follow-up period of between six to nine weeks served as the criterion variable. The results supported the hypothesis that patients who were able to recall more specific AM in response to positively valenced cue words showed a more substantial recovery from depression. This has important treatment implications.     

In Search of Gender Recency: Evidence from the Production of Pronouns

This study investigated whether retrieval of a noun's grammatical gender benefits from having retrieved that information recently. In response to picture stimuli, participants produced gender-marked pronouns under various priming conditions. The primes differed in that they either necessitated retrieval of grammatical gender (indefinite noun phrase/pronoun) or did not (noun); when they required gender retrieval, they varied in whether they involved access to the same morpheme (pronoun) or a different morpheme (indefinite noun phrase). Relative to an unprimed condition, faster responses were obtained in each condition. Pronoun primes facilitated pronoun naming more than the other prime types, but no difference was observed between noun primes and indefinite noun phrase primes. Thus, although the experiment was sensitive to priming processes, there was no evidence for morpheme-independent gender priming.     

Authoritarianism and PoliticalSocialization in the Context of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

This study explored the hypothesis that authoritarianism is negatively associated with peace supportiveness. A sample of 197 Jewish/Israeli university students responded to a questionnaire that included items on attitudes toward the Middle East peace process as well as a personality measure. The results confirmed the hypothesis: Individuals who were less supportive of the peace process were more authoritarian conformists than were supporters of the process. A significant association between religiosity and attitudes toward the peace process was also found; the split between peace supporters and non-supporters corresponded roughly, though not exactly, to the split between religious and non-religious. The pro-peace individual is generally non-religious, less authoritarian conformist, and less aggressive. Hence, the social cognitions studied—beliefs about the peace process—may be group beliefs. Certain characteristics of the groups in question, such as socialization practices and social structure, may account for the personality features that covaried with the beliefs. The data showing that peace attitudes, religiosity, and certain personality traits form one entity might thus be marshalled in discussing the identity issue and applied to other scenes in contemporary conflicts.     

Locus of Control for Consumer Outcomes: Predicting Consumer Behavior1

In order to predict which persons approach the task of shopping strategically, we constructed a measure of locus of control focused specifically on consumer behaviors and outcomes. Psychometric evaluations of the 14-item Consumer Locus of Control scale indicated that it was a reliable instrument whose characteristics were replicated in two separate samples. The scale was used to predict shopping behavior ranging from impulsive to strategic. The measure of consumer locus of control was significantly related to consumer behavior, whereas measures of economic and generalized locus of control proved to be unrelated to shopping effort, planning, and product knowledge. The more internal their consumer control beliefs, the more likely were subjects to be planful and purposive in the act of shopping.