Impasse and Resonance Across Multiple Relational Realms: Reply to Commentaries

In my response to the commentaries by Anthony Bass, Irwin Hirsch, and Margaret Crastnopol, I focus on conscious and unconscious factors that open or close potential space across relational realms, including that of analyst and patient, parent and child. I then extend these notions to the supervisory relationship. I describe how these issues affected the writing process for me, and explore the impact that writing has had on the ongoing treatment with my patient. I consider too the ways in which shame travels intersubjectively, shutting down transitional space and interfering with aliveness, authenticity, and creativity.     

Ethical Issues in Accounting and Economics Experimental Research: Inducing Strategic Misrepresentation

Forensic psychologists face a variety of ethical issues in conducting evaluations. One such issue is attorney presence during a forensic evaluation. In forensic evaluations, it is necessary to use standardized procedures while also attending to the rights of the individuals being assessed. This article examines the neuropsychological literature on extraneous influences in evaluations including effects of attorney presence. Then the article discusses the limited knowledge about attorney presence during forensic evaluations, addresses attorney motivations for being present during an evaluation, and considers attorney presence in the context of ethical mandates. Finally, suggestions are offered for forensic clinicians confronted with attorneys who wish to be present during assessments.     

Structuring Case-Based Ethics Training: How Comparing Cases and Structured Prompts Influence Training Effectiveness

This study examined how structuring case-based ethics training, either through (a) case presentation or (b) prompt questions, influences training outcomes. Results revealed an interaction between case presentation and prompt questions such that some form of structure improved effectiveness. Specifically, comparing cases led to greater sensemaking strategy use and decision-ethicality when trainees considered unstructured rather than structured prompts. When cases were presented sequentially, structuring prompts improved training effectiveness. Too much structure, however, decreased future ethical decision making, suggesting that there can be too much of a good thing when structuring case-based ethics education. Implications for designing ethics training programs are discussed.     

Threats to Moral Identity: Testing the Effects of Incentives and Consequences of One's Actions on Moral Cleansing

Individuals engage in moral cleansing, a compensatory process to reaffirm one's moral identity, when one's moral self-concept is threatened. However, too much moral cleansing can license individuals to engage in future unethical acts. This study examined the effects of incentives and consequences of one's actions on cheating behavior and moral cleansing. Results found that incentives and consequences interacted such that unethical thoughts were especially threatening, resulting in more moral cleansing, when large incentives to cheat were present and cheating explicitly harmed others. Implications are discussed in terms of ethics training, using incentives as motivators, and the depersonalized norms of science.     

The Effects of Note-Taking and Review on Sensemaking and Ethical Decision Making

The effectiveness of case-based learning in ethics education varies widely regarding how cases are presented. Case process instruction may impact case-based ethics education to promote sensemaking processes, ethical sensemaking strategy use, and ethical decision making (EDM) quality. This study examined two teaching techniques, notes and review, and participants completed note-taking and review activities examining a case-based scenario during an ethics education course. Results suggest that providing case notes in outline form improves sensemaking processes, strategy use, and EDM quality. In addition, combining processes of provided notes and passive review results in incremental, additive performance via certain ethical sensemaking strategies and EDM quality.     

The Big Five Personality Factors and Mass Politics

In this paper, we argue that a stable set of characteristics—personality—can help explain mass political opinions and behavior. By analyzing data collected from over 750 people, we examine the influence of the Five‐Factor Model of personality on ideology, partisanship, political efficacy, and two forms of political participation. After controlling for a host of demographic factors, we find that openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion help explain public opinion and political behavior. Neuroticism is the only factor that does not influence political life. We conclude by comparing these results to other findings in the field and suggest directions for future research.     

Is Change Bad? Personality Change Is Associated with Poorer Psychological Health and Greater Metabolic Syndrome in Midlife

Personality change is emerging as an important predictor of health and well‐being. Extending previous research, we examined whether two types of personality change, directional and absolute, are associated with both subjective and objective indicators of health. Utilizing the longitudinal Midlife in the United States survey (MIDUS) data, we examined whether both types of change over 10 years were associated with psychological well‐being, self‐reported global health, and the presence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) components and diagnosis. Socially undesirable personality change (e.g., becoming less conscientious and more neurotic) and absolute personality change were independently associated with worse perceived health and well‐being at Time 2. Notably, absolute personality change, regardless of the direction, was also associated with having a greater number of MetS components and a greater probability of diagnosis at Time 2. In sum, too much personality change may be bad for one's health: Socially undesirable and absolute personality change were both associated with worse psychological health and worse metabolic profiles over 10 years. These findings suggest that personality change may contribute to psychological and physical health, and provide initial insight into potential intermediate links between personality change and distal outcomes such as mortality.     

Children's Defensive Responses and Emotional Upset Following a Disaster: A Projective Assessment

Projective stories were used to assess the defense mechanisms of 27 preadolescent boys who were victims of a lightning strike in which one boy died. Denial, projection, and identification, in combination, were found to be inversely related to clinical upset, as was the age and sex-appropriate individual defense of projection. in addition, low-defensive boys' self-reports of fears agreed more often with their parents' reports of sleep and somatic disturbances than did high-defensive boys' self-reports. The findings provide support for the validity of the Defense Mechanism Manual (Cramer, 1982) and raise the issue of defense mechanisms as moderator variables in self-report questionnaires.     

Still Dazed and Confused: Midlife Marijuana Use by the Baby Boom Generation

National drug use surveys show the baby boom generation using marijuana in record numbers. We test hypotheses based on social learning, rational choice, and strain theories to explain marijuana use among adults aged 50–64 with an intersectional lens to consider racial and gender group differences. Social learning perspectives, pointing to pro-marijuana attitudes and norms acquired through culture, and rational choice approaches, in which marijuana use is perceived as a low-risk activity, are both strongly supported. Strain generated by mental and physical health problems emerges as a relevant factor for marijuana use among specific racial and gender minority groups of older adults.     

Psychopathic traits and men’s anger response to interpersonal conflict: A pilot study

Psychopathy is associated with emotional dysfunction that impedes the experience of emotions such as fear and sadness and has been purported to facilitate violent behavior. However, findings relative to the association between psychopathy and anger have not been reliably substantiated. Theorists have proposed that psychopathy predisposes one to experience greater frustration and anger, whereas other experts have suggested that there is no convincing evidence for this assertion. In the present study, we tested the relationship between psychopathy subfactors and anger subsequent to conflict or non-conflict interactions. Sixty-eight collegiate-men completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale and read vignettes depicting either a conflict or non-conflict scenario and were asked to imagine themselves in the situation. Following presentation of the vignettes, participants completed a lexical-decision-task assessing affective states. Results indicated that the psychopathy subfactors demonstrated strong differential associations, where Factor 1 showed negative and Factor 2 showed positive association with anger activation in response to interpersonal conflict. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of anger as a facilitator of violence in some psychopathic individuals.