Subjective power and emotions in everyday interpersonal interactions: Counterparts' constrictive posture as moderator

Power is one of the vital components embedded within interpersonal interactions, but few studies have studied it in everyday life context. This experience sampling study examined the associations of subjective power with emotional well-being and investigated the moderating effects of counterpart' postures in the associations. Our results demonstrated that individuals reported higher positive emotions and lower negative emotions when they perceived higher subjective power. Their positive emotions were positively correlated with counterparts' expansive postures while negative emotions were positively correlated with counterparts' constrictive postures. The subjective power-negative emotion associations were stronger when counterparts displayed higher level of constrictive posture. Our findings provide an evidence base for a comprehensive understanding on the role of subjective power and perception of counterparts' power-related posture in dyadic communications in emotional well-being.     

父母行为控制、心理控制与高中生消极社会适应的关系：人际自立和校园排斥的序列中介作用

基于自我决定理论和人与环境互动理论,研究考察了父母行为控制、心理控制与高中生消极社会适应的关系,以及人际自立与校园排斥的中介效应。采用父母控制问卷、青少年人际自立量表、青少年校园排斥问卷、消极社会适应问卷对辽宁省3所中学的1209名高中生进行施测。结果发现:(1)父母行为控制对高中生消极社会适应无明显预测作用,心理控制对消极社会适应具有正向预测作用;(2)人际自立和校园排斥在父母控制与消极社会适应之间发挥中介作用。具体而言,父母行为控制只能通过人际自立的单独作用以及人际自立与校园排斥的序列中介作用预测高中生消极社会适应;父母心理控制既能直接预测消极社会适应,还能分别通过人际自立和校园排斥的单独作用,以及人际自立与校园排斥的序列中介作用预测高中生消极社会适应。研究最终梳理出一条“父母教养→人格发展→人际反馈→适应结果”的理论作用机制。     

Intentionality as a constituting condition for the own self--and other selves

Introspectively, the awareness of actions includes the awareness of the intentions accompanying them. Therefore, the awareness of self-generated actions might be expected to differ from the awareness of other-generated actions to the extent that access to one's own and to other's intentions differs. However, we recently showed that the perceived onset times of self- vs. other-generated actions are similar, yet both are different from comparable events that are conceived as being generated by a machine. This similarity raises two interesting possibilities. First we could infer the intentions of others from their actions. Second and more radically, we could equally infer our own intentions from the actions we perform rather than sense them. We present two new experiments which investigate the role of action effects in the awareness of self- and other-generated actions by means of measuring the estimated onset time. The results show that the presence of action effects is necessary for the similarity of awareness of self- and other-generated actions.     

The attraction of social power: The influence of construing power as opportunity versus responsibility

Social power can be construed as opportunity (focusing on the possibility of one's own goal achievement resulting from the control over others' outcomes) or as responsibility (focusing on the implications of one's own actions resulting from the control over others' outcomes). Four experiments tested the impact of different construals of social power on the attraction of power. Due to the salience of the possibility for goal achievement, power construed as opportunity was expected to be more attractive than power construed as responsibility. This effect was predicted to be particularly pronounced among individuals with a strong promotion orientation, because of their focus on gains and achievements. Results supported these predictions and indicate that future research should take different construals of power into account.     

Wenn Psychotherapie schadet …

Background

The examination of the negative and harmful effects of psychotherapy has recently moved into the focus of psychotherapy research. The investigation described in the following article specifically analyzes for the first time the contents of complaints by psychotherapy patients and presents a practical category system for classification of the negative effects of psychotherapeutic treatment.

Samples and method

A total of 67 cases of complaints submitted to the Ethics Association (reg. co). Ethics in Psychotherapy during the time period from 18.02.2008 to 27.12.2010 were analyzed with respect to the content in the sense of an inductive categorization and quantitative evaluation.

Results

From the available patient complaints a reliable category system could be elucidated. The violation of therapeutic base variables and violations of sexual limitations were the most common cause of complaints against male therapists whereas for female therapists accusations of violation of medical confidentiality and documentation duty were significantly higher.

Conclusions

The results of this study allow formulation of research recommendations for extended investigation of the negative effects of psychotherapy and reveal options for the development of a targeted risk management.     

Perceptual filling-in of negative coloured afterimages

Filling-in of brightness, colour, and texture refers to the perceptual spreading of surround features onto the target area. This phenomenon has been extensively investigated in real images. Here, we study colour spreading in afterimages of disk-ring patterns, using a variety of colour combinations. We show that colour filling-in and filling-out in afterimages follow rules different from those found for real images, suggesting that the brain treats afterimages as genuine 'stimuli'.     

Self-efficacy and social support as predictors of smoking after a quit attempt

Abstract

The current study examined self-efficacy and social support as predictors of maintenance after an attempt to stop smoking. As in previous studies, self-efficacy at the end of treatment was a significant predictor of reported smoking during the follow-up period. At 3 months after treatment the prediction from self-efficacy was weaker than a prediction from the level of post-treatment smoking. However at 10 months self-efficacy was the strongest predictive variable assessed in the study. In contrast, social support for the quit attempt was not a significant predictor of maintenance at any stage. The results provided qualified support for the contention that self-efficacy can often be a more powerful predictor than previous performance attainments, especially under conditions of greater situational change.     

Moral Emotions,Awareness, and Spiritual Freedom in the Thought of Zhu Xi (1130–1200)

It is well known that the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi (1130–1200) particularly emphasizes the role of emotions in human life. This paper shows that the four ‘moral emotions’ (e.g. feelings like ‘compassion’ and ‘disdain’ as described in the Mencius) are central to Zhu's thinking, insofar as only their genuine actualization enables the individual to achieve spiritual freedom. Moreover, I discuss the crucial notions of ‘awareness’/‘perception’ (zhījué) and ‘knowledge’/‘wisdom’ (zhī), in order to reveal the complex dynamic that moral emotions are said to create in the moral agent. I also analyse two important passages from the Mencius (1A/7 and 2A/6) and examine how Zhu Xi, in his exegetical glosses, defines the conditions of virtuous agency as based on the moral emotions. Finally, I explain the reasons why Neo-Confucians like Zhu Xi have sometimes been described as Kantian thinkers avant la lettre.     

Higher levels of depression are associated with reduced global bias in visual processing

Sleep-related attentional bias is a well-documented finding in patients with primary insomnia. To address the question of whether attentional preference for sleep-related stimuli is due to sleepiness (as measured by the Stanford Sleepiness Scale; SSS) or sleeplessness (as measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; PSQI) we investigated 105 non-clinical participants with two attentional bias tasks, an emotional Stroop task and a newly introduced mixed-modality task. The emotional Stroop task revealed significant positive linear relationships between sleep-related attentional bias and both poor sleep quality and sleepiness. Additionally, we found a significant negative interaction effect between these two variables on the cognitive bias. This means that attentional bias scores are reduced when poor sleep quality is associated with high sleepiness and high sleep quality is associated with low sleepiness. We did not find any significant result in the mixed-modality task. The results suggest that sleep-related attentional bias can be elicited by both sleepiness and sleeplessness.     

There is more than obeying display rules: Service employees’ motives for emotion regulation in customer interactions

Although research has focused on how service employees regulate their emotions, few studies have explored why they do so. In this article, we first described which kinds of motives for emotion regulation exist in customer interactions. Second, we investigated how the motives are related to four emotion regulation strategies. The application of an explorative approach resulted in a list of 10 motives, which could be classified into the three motive categories: pleasure, prevention, and instrumental. Hierarchical linear modelling of 421 reported service interactions from a diary study revealed that the motive categories were differently related to the emotion regulation strategies. Motives of the instrumental category were only significantly positively related to surface acting. Motives of the pleasure category were positively related to deep acting and automatic regulation as well as negatively related to surface acting and emotional deviance. Motives of the prevention category were positively related to deep acting, surface acting, and emotional deviance as well as negatively related to automatic regulation. These results can be used by organizations not only to enhance the motivation of employees towards emotion regulation, but also towards more authentic emotional expressions.