A Web-Based Contingency Management Program With Adolescent Smokers

The present study evaluated a new 30-day Web-based contingency management program for smoking abstinence with 4 daily-smoking adolescents. Participants made 3 daily video recordings of themselves giving breath carbon monoxide (CO) samples at home that were sent electronically to study personnel. Using a reversal design, participants could earn money for continued abstinence during the treatment phases (CO ≤ 5 ppm). All participants were compliant with the treatment (submitting 97.2% of samples), and all achieved prolonged abstinence from smoking.     

Self-punishment as a regulation strategy in borderline personality disorder

Studies using the Thought Control Questionnaire (TCQ; Wells & Davies, 1994) suggest that the tendency to use self-punishment (e.g., shouting at oneself) in order to control unpleasant internal experiences (e.g., cognitive and emotional) is associated with psychopathology. To evaluate the role of self-punishment in borderline personality disorder (BPD), we first examined whether TCQ scales, including Self-Punishment, were different among adults with BPD (n = 31) when compared to those with other personality disorders (OPD; n = 24), elevated symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD; n = 24), and healthy controls (n = 105). Findings indicated that Self-Punishment was elevated in the BPD group relative to other groups. Next, Self-Punishment was examined as a potential mediator in the relationship between negative affectivity and BPD symptom severity in all participants. Results indicated that Self-Punishment did not mediate this relationship, but did account for significant variance in BPD symptoms over and above negative affectivity. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

When Values and Behavior Conflict: Moral Pluralism and Intrapersonal Moral Hypocrisy

The authors review the various ways moral hypocrisy has been defined and operationalized by social psychologists, concentrating on three general types: moral duplicity, moral double standards, and moral weakness. While most approaches have treated moral hypocrisy as an interpersonal phenomenon, requiring public claims, preaching (versus practicing), or judgments of others (versus oneself), this paper also considers intrapersonal moral hypocrisy – that is, conflicts between values and behavior that may exist even in the absence of public pronouncements or judgments. Current attempts to understand and combat intrapersonal moral hypocrisy are aided by moral pluralism, the idea that there are many different moral values, which may come into conflict both between and within individuals. Examples are given to illustrate how taking into account individual differences in values can help to reduce moral hypocrisy. The authors close by considering the possibility that in a pluralistic world, reducing intrapersonal moral hypocrisy might not always be a normatively desired end goal.     

Center,Light, and Sound: The Psychological Benefits of Three Distinct Meditative Practices

Meditation has been a popular topic in counseling and psychological research in recent years. However, other meditative practices have been gaining exposure recently of which counselors may not be aware. The current article provides a brief overview of 3 meditative practices: centering prayer, jyoti meditation, and acem meditation. The purpose of this article is to provide counselors with introductions to alternative meditative practices that may be otherwise overshadowed.     

How many kinds of consciousness?

Ned Block's influential distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness has become a staple of current discussions of consciousness. It is not often noted, however, that his distinction tacitly embodies unargued theoretical assumptions that favor some theoretical treatments at the expense of others. This is equally so for his less widely discussed distinction between phenomenal consciousness and what he calls reflexive consciousness. I argue that the distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, as Block draws it, is untenable. Though mental states that have qualitative character plainly differ from those with no mental qualities, a mental state's being conscious is the same property for both kinds of mental state. For one thing, as Block describes access consciousness, that notion does not pick out any property that we intuitively count as a mental state's being conscious. But the deeper problem is that Block's notion of phenomenal consciousness, or phenomenality, is ambiguous as between two very different mental properties. The failure to distinguish these results in the begging of important theoretical questions. Once the two kinds of phenomenality have been distinguished, the way is clear to explain qualitative consciousness by appeal to a model such as the higher-order-thought hypothesis.     

Remedial Responsibility for Severe Poverty: Justice or Humanity?

Remedial responsibility is the prospective responsibility to assist those in great need. With tens of millions of people worldwide suffering from severe poverty, questions about the attribution of remedial responsibility and the nature of the relevant duties of assistance are among the most pressing of our time. This article concerns the question of whether remedial responsibility for severe poverty is a matter of justice or of humanity. I discuss three kinds of situation in which an agent owes remedial responsibility to another suffering from severe poverty. In the first, the remedially responsible agent foreseeably and avoidably caused the poverty. In the second, the poverty was caused by forces outside the control of any agent, such as natural disaster. And in the third situation, the agent who was originally attributed remedial responsibility fails to fulfil it, and so remedial responsibility for the poverty in question is acquired by a secondary bearer. According to David Miller, remedial responsibility is a matter of justice in the first two situations, but not in the third. I argue that his grounds for thinking that remedial responsibility in the second situation are in tension with his view that remedial responsibility is not a matter of justice in the third situation. This has important implications in our world in which remedial responsibilities too often go unfulfilled.     

Age‐related differences in work motivation

This paper examines age‐related differences in work motivation in two samples of 9,388 and 2,512 individuals who completed a comprehensive motivation questionnaire for selection or development purposes. In the first sample, age differences were examined by controlling for gender and investigating whether relationships between age and motivation were non‐linear. Statistically significant relationships between motivation and age were found for most motivation scales, explaining up to 12% of the variance in specific scales. The second sample was used to confirm these results and to determine whether differences on these motivation scales could be explained by additional demographic variables, which were not available in the first sample. When controlling for demographic variables, such as gender, managerial experience, and university education, the pattern of results was similar in the second data set although effects were smaller. Results generally support propositions from the literature, which suggest a shift in people's motives rather than a general decline in motivation with age: older employees were less motivated by extrinsically but more by intrinsically rewarding job features.     

The Group Psychotherapy Literature 1958

This study applies Kohut's self-psychology toward an understanding of the self-functions that membership in a religious cult group (Divine Light Mission) provides for the narcissistic personality. It is proposed that there exists a psychosocial fit between the appeal of the cult group's structure and process and the needs of the narcissistic personality. The cult group offers reparative and substitutive functions to the follower who seeks an idealized selfobject to stabilize a defective sense of self. The special relationship of the follower to the Guru bears a close resemblance to the “idealizing transference” which arises between certain narcissistic patients and their group therapist. The therapeutic use and misuse of the “idealizing transference” in group therapy is explored and suggestions are made for its appropriate clinical management.