Connecting the dots between fantasy and reality: The social psychology of our engagement with fictional narrative and its functional value

This essay provides an overview of research and theory on narrative and its important, functional role in human experience, including the ways people use media to interrogate their own beliefs and feelings, and derive social meaning. Thought‐provoking film, television, and books can help us make meaning of our lives and grow in ways that are important for our successful social functioning. Research reviewed here demonstrates that exposure to fiction can increase empathy and social skills and reduce prejudice. Our connection to characters and stories has been studied in various ways as extensions of the self into another, while at the same time bringing the other into the self. Bringing together disparate perspectives, we propose that connecting to story worlds involves a process of “dual empathy”—simultaneously engaging in intense personal processing while also “feeling through” characters, both of which produce benefits. Because the value of entertainment narratives may not always be well understood, we explain how those experiences can be personal, social, and can serve important adaptive functions.     

Effects of negative incentive shifts in food reward on rats' consumption of concurrent ethanol solutions

Frustration stress, typically operationalized as the unexpected loss of reinforcement, has been shown to engender substance use. Abrupt reductions in reinforcer magnitude likely also function as frustration stressors. These negative incentive shifts were previously shown to produce tap‐ and sweetened‐water drinking in rats. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether these shifts in food reward would occasion oral ethanol self‐administration. Nine male Long‐Evans rats operated on a two‐component multiple fixed‐ratio schedule with signaled components producing either a large (4 pellets) or small (1pellet) reinforcer. Components were pseudorandomly arranged to present 4 transitions between past and upcoming reinforcer magnitudes: small‐to‐large, small‐to‐small, large‐to‐large, and large‐to‐small (negative incentive shift). Experiment 1 investigated the effects of negative incentive shifts on consumption of concurrent, freely available 10% sucrose, 10% sucrose plus 10% ethanol, and following sucrose fading, 10% ethanol. Experiment 2 entailed continuation of schedule contingencies with a dose manipulation of 4 ethanol concentrations (0, 5, 10, and 20%) to assess dose‐dependent differences in transition‐type control and consumption. A lever‐press extinction condition was then conducted with 10% ethanol availability. In this novel model of frustration stress, negative incentive shifts prompted ethanol self‐administration at each dose investigated, whereas the other transitions did not.     

A portable defense of the Procreation Asymmetry

Abstract

The Procreation Asymmetry holds that we have strong moral reasons not to create miserable people for their own sakes, but no moral reasons to create happy people for their own sakes. To defend this conjunction against an argument that it leads to inconsistency, I show how recognizing ‘creation’ as a temporally extended process allows us to revise the conjuncts in a way that preserves their intuitive force. This defense of the Procreation Asymmetry is preferable to others because it does not require us to take on controversial metaphysical or metaethical commitments – in other words, it has the theoretical virtue of portability.     

Borderline personality disorder in an intermediate psychological therapies service

The intermediate psychological therapies service is provided for individuals referred with common mental health problems within the primary care psychological therapies service, but whose difficulties are longstanding and/or complex. The prevalence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in intermediate psychological therapy services has not been researched to-date. The current study aimed to measure the prevalence of BPD amongst patients attending intermediate psychological therapies (n?=?63). The prevalence of BPD was established by identifying the number of patients who met DSM-IV criteria. BPD prevalence amongst patients attending an intermediate psychological therapy service was 37%. The high proportion of patients presenting with BPD indicates the potential need for staff training and supervision in how to manage such high levels of need at this service level. This is the first study to report prevalence rates of BPD specifically in an intermediate care psychological therapy service.     

Career decision status as a predictor of resignation behavior five years later

This paper extends earlier research exploring the relationship between career decision status and work outcomes by examining resignation behavior in a group of new graduates five years after initial appointment. On appointment various measures were collected including career decision status variables. Earlier research identified a significant relationship between a number of important work outcomes and career decision status. In the current study two variables–career decidedness and career choice importance–predicted resignation behavior. Those people who on appointment scored higher on career decidedness or lower on career choice importance were significantly more likely to stay in the organization than others. The implications of this finding for individuals and organizations are discussed.     

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for Primary School Teachers

Stress within the teaching profession has a negative impact on the health and well-being of individual teachers and on retention and recruitment for the profession as a whole. There is increasing literature to suggest that Mindfulness is a useful intervention to address a variety of psychological problems, and that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a particularly helpful intervention for stress. We investigated the effects of teaching a MBSR course to primary school teachers to reduce stress. The MBSR course was taught to a group of primary school teachers and evaluated to establish its effects on levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, as well as movement towards a stated goal and changes in awareness. The results showed improvement for most participants for anxiety, depression, and stress, some of which were statistically significant. There were also significant improvements on two of the four dimensions of a mindfulness skills inventory. These results suggest that this approach could be a potentially cost-effective method to combat teacher stress and burnout.