The Effects of Interpatient and Group Influences in a General Hospital

This article discusses the leader's use of metaphor in outpatient, psychodynamic group psychotherapy. Four clinical examples are provided that illustrate how the phase of group envelopment informs the leader's use of metaphor. Therapeutic features and uses of metaphor include (1) the development of ego skills that transform passivity into activity and foster the examination of unhealthy norms; (2) the modulation and rechanneling of potentially destructive affect and the intensification of affect that is denied, minimized, or avoided; (3) the creation of a verbal play space in which shared group language evolves; (4) and the provision of various levels of concreteness and abstraction as well as differing perspectives. Abuses of metaphorical interventions are discussed.     

The Effect of Negative Incentives in Serial Learning: VII. Theory of Punishment

Eighty three-, four-, five-, and six-year-old boys and girls were presented with experimental conditions where context, transformational complexity, and verbal cue were varied, Two experimental tasks, a perceptually Concrete and an Abstract task, were included and Ss were assigned to a Verbal Cue or a Nonverbal Cue condition. All Ss responded to both the present progressive and the past tenses. Results revealed significant effects of the Age and Tense factors, and improved performance on Comprehension over Production. Younger children made fewer overall errors than older ones. Ss performed better on the present progressive than on the past tense on the perceptually Concrete task, while the reverse was true on the Abstract task. These findings demonstrate that language performance is the result of a complex interrelationship between transformational complexity and the perceptual properties of linguistic structures.     

Structural couple therapy in the treatment of inhibited sexual drive

Abstract

This paper presents a study of a structural couple therapy approach to the treatment of inhibited sexual desire (ISD). ISD is first conceptualized as a relational phenomenon that may be most effectively treated in a couple context. Structural couple therapy is advanced and applied to the treatment of a clinical sample of couples presenting with ISD. Results of the study suggest that a structural couple therapy approach to ISD is effective in reducing symptoms of the sexual disorder and in increasing couple satisfaction.     

Investigating Physiological and Self-Reported Mediators of Stereotype Lift Effects on a Motor Task

Achievement gaps between social groups may result from stereotype threat effects but also from stereotype lift effects—the performance boost caused by the awareness that an outgroup is negatively stereotyped. We examined stereotype lift and threat effects in the motor domain and investigated their mediation by task involvement and self-confidence, measured by heart rate reactivity and self-reported indices. Males and females performed a balance task about which negative stereotypes about either males or females were given. No gender information was given in a control condition. Results showed no stereotype threat but a stereotype lift effect, participants performing significantly better after negative outgroup stereotypes were explicitly linked to performance on the balance task compared to the control condition. Concerning males, this effect was mediated by higher self-confidence and task involvement. The implications of these results for understanding the gender inequalities in the motor domain are discussed.     

Trait anxiety and trait anger measured by ecological momentary assessment and their correspondence with traditional trait questionnaires

Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) of anxiety and anger/hostility were obtained every 25–30 min over two 24-h periods, separated by a median of 6 months, from 165 employees at a university in the Northeast. We used a multilevel trait-state-error structural equation model to estimate: (1) the proportion of variance in EMA anxiety and anger/hostility attributable to stable trait-like individual differences; (2) the correspondence between these trait-like components of EMA anxiety and anger/hostility and traditional questionnaire measures of each construct; and (3) the test–retest correlation between two 24-h averages obtained several months apart. After adjustment for measurement error, more than half the total variance in EMA reports of anxiety and anger/hostility is attributable to stable trait-like individual differences; however, the trait-like component of each construct is only modestly correlated with questionnaire measures of that construct. The 6-month “test–retest” correlations of latent variables representing the true 24-h EMA average anxiety and average anger are quite high (r ? 0.83). This study represents the longest follow-up period over which EMA-based estimates of traits have been examined. The results suggest that although the trait component (individual differences) of EMA momentary ratings of anxiety and anger is larger than the state component, traditional self-report questionnaires of trait anxiety and anger correspond only weakly with EMA-defined traits.     

The stress-eating paradox: Multiple daily measurements in adult males and females

Abstract

The stress-eating relationship was examined in a prospective study of 158 subjects who completed daily records of stress and eating for 84 days, yielding 16.188 person days of observation. Using both within-subjects and between-subjects analyses, individuals were much more likely to eat less than usual than to eat more than usual in response to stressful daily problems. The likelihood of eating more did not change as severity of stress increased, but the likelihood of eating less increased substantially. There were also clear gender differences. Males had a slight tendency to eat less than to eat more across all levels of stress, except at the highest level, where eating less occurred much more frequently. In females, the tendency to eat less as opposed to eating more emerged at middle levels of stress; at the highest level of stress, females were more than three times more likely to eat less than to eat more. Individual subjects were highly consistent over levels of stress in the direction of eating; 82% of the subjects were consistent in eating more or less over the majority of their stressful periods. These results show a clear effect of stress on eating, with eating less being the predominant response.     

Development of decisional balance and self-efficacy measures for adolescent sedentary behaviors

Writing about traumatic events can produce health benefits, yet emotionally non-expressive or cognitively avoidant individuals may be unwilling or unable to express their emotions. This study examined non-expression, cognitive avoidance, response to writing, and subsequent health. As part of a larger study, participants ( N = 71) with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis (RA) wrote about traumatic experiences for 20 min on three consecutive days. Alexithymia, denial, behavioral disengagement, mental disengagement, focus on/venting of emotions, avoidant thoughts, and health status were assessed at baseline, health status again 4 months after writing. Essays were coded for how personal and how emotional they were, and for narrative structure. Non-expression and cognitive avoidance were neither related to how personal or emotional essays were, nor to affective response to writing. High levels of denial or avoidant thoughts predicted less narrative structure. Avoidant thinking marginally predicted health improvements in RA patients. Results suggest that non-expression and cognitive avoidance do not interfere with writing in terms of emotional engagement, but may influence narrative use.     

Moral worry and religiosity in US and Canadian college samples

The objective of this study was to investigate the presence of worry about personal moral attitudes and behaviors in two college samples, and to check associations with religiosity, age, gender, personality traits, and geographic region. The study sample was drawn from college students in Minneapolis, Minnesota (N?=?333) and Sydney, Nova Scotia (N?=?137). Instruments consisted of moral worry and religiosity questionnaires, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Principal-components analysis was used to develop components for the worry and religiosity scales, and MANOVA for correlations between variables. Moral worry emerged as a domain distinct from worry about practical issues. Moral worry was not related to religiosity, age, gender, or Eysenck personality traits. Whereas the US sample scored higher in religiosity than the Canadian sample, the Canadian sample scored higher on moral worry. The present study supports our previous work and that of others that worry about one's moral emotions and behaviors is an important aspect of daily life. As such, consideration should be given to including some inquiry about moral worries (guilt, shame, regret, remorse, and others) in psychiatric assessments.