An Index of Progress Towards the MDG1 in Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa

In this article we present a new proposal for measuring progress towards Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, applied to a group of countries particularly affected by poverty in the context of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. Our index is novel in that it has been constructed taking into account a larger number of variables defined in the UN Millennium Declaration which are generally considered to determine countries’ levels of underdevelopment. As technique applied to the data, provided by the UN, we used the P₂ distance of Pena method and applied it to the year 2007; the last year for which data are available. This index incorporates variables that permit a ranking of the countries of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa in terms of those partial indicators. To sum up, the objective is to produce a global indicator of fulfilment of the MDG1.     

Emotional responses to a negative emotion induction procedure in Borderline Personality Disorder

The aim of this study was to determine if patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) present higher emotional response than healthy controls in a laboratory setting. Fifty participants (35 patients with BPD and 15 healthy controls) underwent a negative emotion induction procedure (presentation of standardized unpleasant images). Subjective emotional responses were assessed by means of self-reported questionnaires while biological reactivity during the procedure was measured through levels of salivary cortisol (sCORT) and alphaamylase (sAA). Patients with BPD exhibited significant lower cortisol levels and higher sAA levels compared to controls. Self-reported emotional reactivity did not give rise to differences between groups but participants with BPD did present higher levels of negative emotional intensity at baseline and during the entire procedure. The findings do not give support to the emotional hyperreactivity hypothesis in BPD. However, BPD patients presented heightened negative mood intensity at baseline, which should be considered a hallmark of the disorder. Further studies using more BPD-specific emotion inductions are needed to confirm the trends observed in this study.     

The influence of word shading and word length on eye movements during reading

In three experiments rats were given short or long preexposure (4 or 10 sessions) to two compound flavours, AX and BX, according to an intermixed or a blocked schedule. Following preexposure, aversion conditioning trials were given with AX as the conditioned stimulus (CS). In Experiments 1 and 2, retardation and summation tests were then carried out to assess the inhibitory properties of B (an Espinet procedure). In Experiment 3, test trials evaluated generalization from AX to BX (the standard perceptual learning procedure). The results showed that B performed as an inhibitor of the unconditioned stimulus (US; an Espinet effect) only after long intermixed preexposure, whereas a reliable perceptual learning effect was observed both after short and after long preeexposure. The observation that B had no detectable inhibitory properties after short preexposure casts doubt on the suggestion that inhibitory learning is responsible for perceptual learning after brief exposure to AX and BX.     

Towards a better use of psychoanalytic concepts: A model illustrated using the concept of enactment

It is well known that there is a lack of consensus about how to decide between competing and sometimes mutually contradictory theories, and how to integrate divergent concepts and theories. In view of this situation the IPA Project Committee on Conceptual Integration developed a method that allows comparison between different versions of concepts, their underlying theories and basic assumptions. Only when placed in a frame of reference can similarities and differences be seen in a methodically comprehensible and reproducible way. We used “enactment” to study the problems of comparing concepts systematically. Almost all psychoanalytic schools have developed a conceptualization of it. We made a sort of provisional canon of relevant papers we have chosen from the different schools. The five steps of our method for analyzing the concept of enactment will be presented. The first step is the history of the concept; the second the phenomenology; the third a methodological analysis of the construction of the concept. In order to compare different conceptualizations we must know the main dimensions of the meaning space of the concept, this is the fourth step. Finally, in step five we discuss if and to what extent an integration of the different versions of enactment is possible.     

Problem Anger in Psychotherapy: An Emotion-Focused Perspective on Hate, Rage, and Rejecting Anger

This paper explores applies emotion-focused theory, for the first time, to the emotions of hate, rage, and destructive anger. The general case formulation proposed in this paper is that these emotions are always an elaboration of secondary anger. The body of the paper describes three clinical case formulations. First, problem anger is described in terms of an individual’s self-criticism. Second, we present a form of secondary anger, in which hostility and rage are reactive feelings to avoid more vulnerable (primary) experiences. An unfortunate example of this is has been described as a common underlying process in domestic violence. A alternate manifestation of secondary anger results from the deterioration of what may have initially been adaptive anger; thus, excessive arousal and the loss of meaning or focus that one’s anger embodied also leads to rage or destructive anger. Finally, the experience and expression of hate is described as a primary maladaptive and/or instrumental anger. This appears in-session particularly among those with certain personality disorders. The paper highlights implications for research and practice.     

Inhibitory Control and Moral Emotions: Relations to Reparation in Early and Middle Childhood

ABSTRACT. This study examined links between inhibitory control, moral emotions (sympathy and guilt), and reparative behavior in an ethnically diverse sample of 4- and 8-year-olds (N = 162). Caregivers reported their children's reparative behavior, inhibitory control, and moral emotions through a questionnaire, and children reported their guilt feelings in response to a series of vignettes depicting moral transgressions. A hypothesized meditation model was tested with inhibitory control relating to reparative behavior through sympathy and guilt. In support of this model, results revealed that high levels of inhibitory control were associated with high levels of reparative behavior through high levels of sympathy and guilt. However, the mediation of inhibitory control to reparation through guilt was significant for 4-year-olds only. Results are discussed in relation to the temperamental, regulatory, and affective-moral precursors of reparative behavior in early and middle childhood.     

Within-individual variability in self-concepts and personality states: Applying density distribution and situation-behavior approaches across cultures

Within-individual variability in self-concepts and everyday personality states and affects was investigated in two experience sampling studies using density distribution and situation-behavior approaches. In all seven cultures sampled, within-individual variability was substantial and self-concept and personality state variability exhibited moderate convergence. Variability in personality and affect states was moderately predicted by perceived need satisfaction in the situations. The density distribution and situation-behavior approaches were moderately convergent in identifying the most variable individuals, but the pattern of cultural differences differed in the two methods. Contrary to cultural psychology perspectives, cultural differences in within-individual variability did not consistently correspond to cultural differences in individualism–collectivism, dialecticism, or tightness.     

Construing action abstractly and perceiving consonance among goal pursuits: Implications for activity substitutability and the accessibility of activity-goal links

Findings from five experiments show that high-level action construals, due to either increase in temporal distance or to self-regulatory mindsets, facilitate consonance among subjective evaluations of separable goal pursuits. In Experiments 1 and 2, evaluations of progress toward separable goals were more strongly related among participants in abstract-mindset and future-focus conditions than in concrete-mindset and present-focus conditions. Results of Experiments 3 and 4 were consistent with the proposal that modulating the accessibility of relations between one’s goals and one’s broader aims is the mechanism by which level of action construal impacts perceived goal correspondence. Finally, results of Experiment 5 show that viewing an activity as linked to one’s goals increases the activity’s perceived substitutability. Implications for action representation and self-concept structure are discussed.     

Lay Epistemic Theory: The Motivational,Cognitive, and Social Aspects of Knowledge Formation

We review and integrate three separate research programs emanating from the theory of lay epistemics (Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Lay Epistemics and Human Knowledge: Cognitive and Motivational Bases. New York: Plenum). The need for cognitive closure is an epistemic motivation that propels knowledge formation and has widely ramifying consequences for individual, interpersonal, and group phenomena. The unimodel investigates the process of new knowledge formation from the ‘information given.’ The work on epistemic authority highlights the centrality of social source effects, including the self as a source, in human epistemic behavior. These three research programs examine facets of epistemic behavior that function interdependently to produce the knowledge that guides individual and social functioning.     

Perceived Men’s Feminization and Attitudes Toward Homosexuality: Heterosexual Men’s Reactions to the Decline of the Anti-Femininity Norm of Masculinity

Sex Roles - One of the central dimensions of traditional masculinity is men’s renunciation of the feminine (i.e., the anti-femininity norm), and men’s endorsement of this norm...