Gratitude,Psychopathology and Subjective Well-Being: Results from a 7.5-Month Prospective General Population Study

Gratitude is considered an important source of human strength in achieving and maintaining good mental health. Although complete mental health encompasses the absence of psychopathology and the presence of subjective well-being, no studies to date have examined relations between gratitude and both mental health dimensions together. Moreover, most studies focused on specific samples with a restricted demographic range. Our study, therefore, examined (a) demographic variability in the grateful trait, and (b) prospective associations between gratitude and both dimensions of mental health: psychopathology and subjective well-being. Using a four wave prospective survey design in a large (N = 706) sample of Dutch adults (M age = 44, SD age = 14, Range = 18–80), we measured gratitude with the SGRAT, symptoms of psychopathology with the SCL-90, and subjective well-being with the PANAS and SWLS. Gratitude was significantly associated with age, gender, education level, and employment status. Multilevel time-lagged regression analyses showed that the grateful trait did not predict symptoms of psychopathology, but was a significant albeit weak predictor of subjective well-being, when adjusting for the effects of demographic factors, and prior levels of subjective well-being and psychopathology. Our findings indicate that the grateful trait is associated with demographic factors, and shows complex connections with the presence of well-being and absence of psychopathology. These dynamics should be taken into consideration when studying the role of gratitude in mental health, and developing, applying, and evaluating gratitude interventions with the aim of enhancing subjective well-being and/or reducing psychopathology.     

Psychobiography and the Psychology of Religion: A Tribute to the Work of Donald Capps

This article examines Donald Capps’s work on the psychology of major religious figures and the social forces that informed their psychic lives, spiritual worldviews, and teachings. Drawing on four texts that were published between 2000 and 2014, the essay explores Capps’s views on the importance of psychobiography to the study of religion and the specific contributions his thinking has made to a greater understanding of the historical Jesus. The article considers Capps’s analysis of Jesus’s illegitimacy and his role as healer within the society in which he lived and preached. Building on Capps’s work, the article also expands on feminist and postcolonial theories that offer insight into the psychosocial development of religious figures whose teachings and beliefs emerged out of their individual life circumstances and the larger socio-political culture in which they lived.     

Validity of the German Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI‐G) in an Australian sample

Test anxiety (TA) is a prevalent issue among students that can result in deleterious consequences, such as underachievement. However, a contemporary measure that has been validated for use with Australian students seems to be lacking. This study, therefore, investigated the suitability of the German Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI‐G) for use with Australian university students. While the original TAI‐G contains 30 items and was designed to measure four factors (worry, emotionality, interference, and lack of confidence), differing factorial models have been supported in the literature using either the original or a shortened 17‐item version of the measure. These differing TAI‐G models were tested and compared in the current study via confirmatory factor analysis using 224 Australian university students. As expected, results supported the superior fit of the 17‐item four‐factor model. Additionally, the convergent validity of the measure was supported since measures of self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and general anxiety were all found to correlate significantly with the TAI‐G in the hypothesised directions. Finally, the finding that all of the TAI‐G subscales had acceptably high reliabilities led to the conclusion that the 17‐item TAI‐G is a valid and reliable measure of TA in an Australian university population.     

Application of The APA Practice Guidelines on Suicide to Clinical Practice

This article presents charts from The American Psychiatric Association Practice Guideline for the Assessment and Treatment of Patients with Suicidal Behaviors, part of the Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders Compendium, and a summary of the assessment information in a format that can be used in routine clinical practice. Four steps in the assessment process are presented: the use of a thorough psychiatric examination to obtain information about the patient's current presentation, history, diagnosis, and to recognize suicide risk factors therein; the necessity of asking very specific questions about suicidal ideation, intent, plans, and attempts; the process of making an estimation of the patient's level of suicide risk is explained; and the use of modifiable risk and protective factors as the basis for treatment planning is demonstrated. Case reports are used to clarify use of each step in this process.     

Cross-validating the Berlin Affective Word List

We introduce the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) in order to provide researchers with a German database containing both emotional valence and imageability ratings for more than 2,200 German words. The BAWL was cross-validated using a forced choice valence decision task in which two distinct valence categories (negative or positive) had to be assigned to a highly controlled selection of 360 words according to varying emotional content (negative, neutral, or positive). The reaction time (RT) results corroborated the valence categories: Words that had been rated as “neutral” in the norms yielded maximum RTs. The BAWL is intended to help researchers create stimulus materials for a wide range of experiments dealing with the emotional processing of words.     

The Role of Concurrent Feedback in Learning to Walk Through Sliding Doors

Concurrent feedback is defined as information about performance given to participants during the execution of an action. This article investigates whether concurrent feedback is beneficial or detrimental to the learning of an ecologically relevant task. Eighteen participants were asked to walk through a virtual corridor and they practiced over 1110 trials to adjust their walking speed so as to pass through sliding doors that opened and closed at a frequency of 1 Hz. Concurrent feedback informed them about the possible need to accelerate or decelerate. Performance of participants who received concurrent feedback on 66% of the practice trials (on average) did not differ significantly from performance of participants who did not receive concurrent feedback. Furthermore, participants of both of these groups significantly outperformed participants who received concurrent feedback on all practice trials. These results are discussed in relation to the perceptual-motor mechanisms that underlie the control of the action. Also discussed are implications for future research, including the use of self-controlled feedback and the use of multisensory training programs.     

Direct Learning

The theory of direct perception holds that perception is specific to properties of ambient energy arrays. This article explores a similar approach to perceptual and perceptual-motor learning: Change due to learning is portrayed as specific to properties of ambient energy arrays. This type of learning is labeled direct learning. It is argued that a theory of direct learning explains a wide range of phenomena in ecologically relevant and informationally rich situations as well as in simpler experimental situations. Previous experimental results are reanalyzed and reinterpreted from the perspective of direct learning. To achieve this, the notion of information space is introduced. In information spaces, points represent ambient energy variables, paths represent change due to learning, and vector fields represent information that guides learning. These concepts also allow the theory of direct learning to be connected to and to take advantage of the theory of ordinary differential equations.     

Understanding alexithymia in female adolescents: The role of attachment style

Adults with alexithymia retrospectively report emotional difficulties with caregivers during childhood. However, the association between attachment style and alexithymic traits may be evident at an earlier stage than adulthood, i.e. during adolescence. Sixty school-based healthy females aged 9–18 years (mean 14.08, SD 2.71 years) participated in an Attachment Style Interview (ASI) and completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Greater levels of alexithymia were exhibited by both anxious and avoidant insecurely attached groups compared to securely attached participants. Fear of separation (characteristic of anxious attachment style) predicted both overall alexithymia scores and the specific alexithymic trait of ‘difficulty identifying feelings’ (DIF). Constraints on closeness (an avoidant attachment attitude) predicted ‘difficulty describing feelings’ (DDF). Low felt attachment to primary caregiver was a predictor of ‘externally oriented thinking’ (EOT). These findings indicate that features of anxious and avoidant insecure attachment styles are differentially related to the separate facets of alexithymia in female adolescents. Specifically, the findings concerning fear of separation may reflect the adolescent struggle for autonomy and the resulting effects on the affect regulation system. Our results also suggest that the normative differentiation of the emotional and cognitive aspects of alexithymia may occur on a developmental trajectory.     

The biasing effect of personality on self-estimates of cognitive abilities in males and females

In addition to exploring the relationship between psychometric and self-estimated measures of Crystallized Knowledge (Gc) and Visual Processing (Gv), this study investigated whether personality significantly moderated these relationships, thereby influencing the accuracy of the self-estimates. Adult participants (N = 165) completed the Big Five Inventory and self-estimated their levels of Gc and Gv. They were subsequently administered the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery II, a group test of cognitive ability. Significant and positive relationships between psychometric Gc and Gv and their respective self-estimates were found. Additionally, investigation of the moderating effects of personality for each gender separately using standard multiple regressions found that females high in Extraversion and males low in Conscientiousness were more prone to overestimating their Gv ability, while males high in Openness provided more accurate estimates of their Gv than those low in Openness. Elucidating the personality traits that distort self-perceptions of intellectual functioning has significant implications for the identification of individuals at risk of harboring inaccurate expectations, leading to the potential for interventions aimed at ameliorating associated deleterious consequences.