Can we be (and stay) friends? Remaining friends after dissolution of a romantic relationship

Although many individuals report being friends with their ex-romantic partners (Wilmot, Carbaugh, & Baxter, 1985), the literature regarding post-romantic friendships is very limited. We investigated whether satisfaction in the dissolved romantic relationship could predict post-romantic friendships and friendship maintenance. We found that the more satisfied individuals were during the dissolved romance, the more likely they were to remain friends and the more likely they were to engage in friendship maintenance behaviors. We also found that friendship maintenance fully mediated the association between past romantic satisfaction and current friendship satisfaction.     

Knowing what we can do: actions,intentions, and the construction of phenomenal experience

How do questions concerning consciousness and phenomenal experience relate to, or interface with, questions concerning plans, knowledge and intentions? At least in the case of visual experience the relation, we shall argue, is tight. Visual perceptual experience, we shall argue, is fixed by an agent’s direct unmediated knowledge concerning her poise (or apparent poise) over a currently enabled action space. An action space, in this specific sense, is to be understood not as a fine-grained matrix of possibilities for bodily movement, but as a matrix of possibilities for pursuing and accomplishing one’s intentional actions, goals and projects. If this is correct, the links between planning, intention and perceptual experience are tight, while (contrary to some recent accounts invoking the notion of ‘sensorimotor expectations’) the links between embodied activity and perceptual experience, though real, are indirect. What matters is not bodily activity itself, but our practical knowledge (which need not be verbalized or in any way explicit) of our own possibilities for action. Such knowledge, selected, shaped and filtered by the grid of plans, goals, and intentions, plays, we argue, a constitutive role in explaining the content and character of visual perceptual experience.     

Deriving an empirical structure of personality pathology for DSM-5

The DSM-IV model of personality disorders is composed of trait sets arranged into 10 theoretically distinct, polythetically assessed categories, with little regard for how the traits comprising these disorders are interrelated and structured. Research since the publication of DSM-III has shown that this model is untenable. The question is not whether this model needs revision; rather, the question is how to move from the existing DSM-IV framework to a model better connected with data. Empirically-based models of personality trait variation provide a starting point for DSM-5, and ongoing research will be used to delineate further the empirical structure of personality traits in the pathological range. The ultimate goal is to frame future DSMs in a way that is maximally useful for clinicians as well as researchers. It is also critical to understand that the DSM-5 is intended to be a living document that will facilitate novel inquiry and clinical applications, as opposed to a document designed to promote and perpetuate a fixed set of constructs. Thus, we view a proposed trait system as a first step on a path to a well-validated, clinically-useful structure.     

What Applied Social Psychology Theories Might Contribute to Community Bushfire Safety Research After Victoria's “Black Saturday”

From 1900 to 2008, bushfires in Australia claimed 552 lives. Partly in response to disastrous fires in 1967 and 1983, a national community bushfire safety policy emerged, summarised as “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early.” On 7 February 2009, “Black Saturday,” Victoria experienced Australia's worst‐ever day of bushfires: 173 people died as a result and more than 2,000 homes were destroyed. Three investigations in the aftermath of the fires indicated significant shortcomings in the effectiveness of current approaches to community bushfire safety generally. We examine whether application of social psychological theories from the fields of health promotion and injury prevention might play a role in improving community bushfire safety. We review four theoretical approaches: the theory of planned behaviour, the extended protection motivation theory, the extended parallel process model, and the terror management health model. We conclude that there is good evidence supporting the general utility of each of these theories as predictive of health‐promoting behaviour. Furthermore, there are sound reasons to conclude that they hold promise for addressing important problematic issues in community bushfire safety practice.     

Group Identification under Conditions of Threat: College Students' Attachment to Country, Family, Ethnicity, Religion, and University Before and After September 11, 2001

Three classes of introductory psychology students at the University of Pennsylvania completed a survey including several measures of group identification on 20 March 2001, 15 September 2001, and 24 March 2003. Importance of country and university were rated higher four days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks than six months before or 18 months after. Scores on a 9-item scale of identification with country were higher immediately after 9/11 than at the other two assessments. Four theories (group dynamics, CORFing, TMT, SIT) are considered; none predicts the whole pattern of results observed. Discussion highlights group dynamics theory for understanding the increase in identification with country and introduces the possibility that the increase in identification with university might have been a response to experiencing 9/11 as loss of control. Discussion also highlights the value of assessing level of identification with multiple identity groups in order to see the complexity of identity dynamics.     

A Cognitive Therapy Approach to Increasing Father Involvement by Changing Restrictive Masculine Schemas

Cognitive therapists may be able to help fathers increase their involvement with their children by identifying and changing restrictive masculine schemas that interfere with men's parenting roles. In this paper, we (a) discuss the development of restrictive masculine schemas, (b) explain how these schemas may affect men's involvement in fathering roles, (c) offer a cognitive therapy approach for enhancing father involvement, and (d) illustrate the approach with a case example.