Personality traits and cognitive styles as risk factors for serious suicide attempts among young people.

The contribution of a series of measures of personality and/or cognitive style to serious suicide attempt risk in young people was examined in a case-control study. Individuals making suicide attempts had elevated odds of hopelessness, neuroticism, introversion, low self-esteem, impulsiveness, and external locus of control. When allowance was made for intercorrelations between these measures, hopelessness, neuroticism, and external locus of control remained significant risk factors for serious suicide attempt; self-esteem, extraversion, and impulsiveness were not significantly associated with suicide attempt risk. Nonsignificant findings were explained by the presence of substantial correlations between these measures and measures of hopelessness, neuroticism, and external locus of control.     

Resist This

The concept of resistance has fallen out of favor, particularly in relational psychoanalysis. We’ve associated “resistance” with traditional analytic models—with the idea that therapeutic action lies in overcoming a patient’s defensiveness via interpretation. I invite resistance back into relational thinking by relocating the concept dyadically—in the realm of enactment—and by considering the potential presence of individual resistance within a relational paradigm.     

Pain,emotion, and the situational specificity of catastrophising

Two studies were designed to explore the cross-situational nature of catastrophising and the emotions associated with pain and catastrophising. The crosssituational consistency of catastrophising in response to a finger-pressure procedure and during an episode of headache pain was examined in the first study. The second study examined differences between catastrophisers and noncatastrophisers with respect to state and trait measures of positive and negative emotions. Results of study one indicated that almost half of the subjects remained consistent in their classification as catastrophiser or noncatastrophiser in both pain situations. The majority of subjects that switched classification changed from being classified as catastrophisers during the headache experience to noncatastrophisers during the finger-pressure procedure. Results of the second study indicated that catastrophisers experienced significantly greater fear, sadness, anger, hostility, guilt, disgust, and shame during the finger-pressure procedure as compared to noncatastrophisers. Unexpectedly, catastrophisers were not a homogeneous group in regard to the pattern of negative emotions reported. Catastrophisers with headaches experienced greater sadness in response to finger-pressure pain than catastrophisers without headaches. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Learning of object-object associations by monkeys

Monkeys were trained in tasks where stimulus objects were presented in pairs, one object of a pair concealing the other, and the monkeys had to displace the top object followed by the bottom object in order to obtain a food reward. In two experiments it was demonstrated that under these conditions the animals formed object-object associations such that the top object recalled in memory the bottom object that had previously been found underneath it. The monkeys were able to discriminate in recall between bottom objects that were identical in secondary reinforcing value and differed only in colour.     

POLITICS: Automated ideological reasoning

POLITICS is a system of computer programs which simulates humans in comprehending and responding to world events from a given political or ideological perspective. The primary theoretical motivations were: (1) the implemention of a functional system which applies the knowledge structures of Schank and Abelson (1977) to the domain of simulating political belief systems; (2) the development of a tentative theory of intentional goal conflicts and counterplanning. Secondary goals of the POLITICS project include developing a representation for belief systems, investigating cognitive processes such as goal-directed inferencing, and the integration of several types of knowledge representations into a functional system.     

Theistic Ethics and the Euthyphro Dilemma

It is widely believed that the Divine Command Theory is untenable due to the Euthyphro Dilemma. This article first examines the Platonic dialogue of that name, and shows that Socrates's reasoning is faulty. Second, the dilemma in the form in which many contemporary philosophers accept it is examined in detail, and this reasoning is also shown to be deficient. This is not to say, however, that the Divine Command Theory is true—merely that one popular argument for rejecting it is unsound. Finally some brief thoughts are presented concerning where the real problems lie for the theory.