Confidence in own and others' knowledge

A person's confidence judgement of a statement reflects his/her degree of belief in the correctness of that statement. Deficient ability to assess the correctness of statements (or beliefs) can have serious consequences in many situations. This study compares the realism (calibration) of subjects' confidence ratings in two situations ( n = 64). The first situation was when the subjects confidence rated their own answers to general knowledge questions. The second was when the subjects gave confidence ratings of another person's answers to general knowledge questions. The results show that subjects were more poorly calibrated and were more overconfident in the second situation, i.e. when they gave confidence ratings of answers given by another person, compared with when they rated their own answers. The data further indicates that the results can not be explained in terms of the amount of cognitive processes invested when making the confidence judgements. For example, the subjects rated the other person's answers to questions they had answered themselves, and to questions they had not seen before. No differences in confidence or in calibration and other measures of judgmental realism were found between these two categories of questions. Nor did instructions to imagine the thought process of the other person improve any of these measures. The subjects disagreed with the other person's answer on 23% of all occasions. Significantly poorer calibration was shown where subjects disagreed with the other person than where they agreed. Contents of a social nature attended to by the subjects may have affected the results. The results, when related to previous research in the area, give rise to the question of how the social situation can be arranged to achieve the best calibration.     

WHEN POLITICS PAYS: FACTORS INFLUENCING MANAGERIAL COMPENSATION DECISIONS

Pay allocation decisions of 123 industrial uniform industry managers were investigated. Results showed that the managers awarded higher pay raises to a subordinate when they were dependent on the subordinate's expertise. Political connections led to a higher raise for the subordinate only when the subordinate made a dependency threat.     

On the relation between justification of solution method and correctness of solution in statistical problem solving

The relation between the justification of a choice of solution method and the correctness of that choice in statistical problem solving was investigated. In the first of two studies 16 subjects were asked to think aloud while solving two statistical problems. The results showed that an incorrect choice of solution method was more common when subjects did not justify their choice of solution as compared to when they justified their choice with domain-specific knowledge. Study 2 employed an experimental design. A group of 20 subjects were instructed to provide a justification for each choice of solution method, while another group of 20 subjects received no such instructions. The results showed no difference between the groups with respect to number of correct choices of solution method. A qualitative analysis of the justifications in the instructed group showed that the justifications for incorrect solution methods were more often incorrect than subjects' justifications for correct solution methods. The results in Study 2 suggested that the association found between incorrect choice of solution method and lack of justification in Study 1 was not in the first place due to a strategical deficiency on the part of the subjects but due to a lack of domain-specific knowledge.     

Confusions in Psychological Skills Training

A critical examination of the idea of psychological skills training is undertaken. Questions are raised concerning the conceptual validity and generalizability of programs that attempt to train psychological skills us a means of “giving psychology away.” Although the critique presented is primarily conceptual, specific references and illustrations are drawn from recent research and theorizing in applied psychology, as well as from published literature in counseling and psychological education.     

Permeability and Demarcation in the Psychoanalytic Process Functions of the Contact‐Barrier1

Introjection, identifi cation and projection are concepts that designate processes in which something is being put into or taken out of something else. These processes presuppose the overcoming of some form of separation between two entities. The permeability or impermeability of a fi ctive boundary between the representations of subject and object set the emotional tone of their coexistence. There are moments of complete diffusion, in which subject and object can no longer be differentiated, and moments of autistic enclosure in which the individual can no longer be reached at all. Permeability and demarcation result from the processing of stimuli carried out by the ‘contact‐barrier’, as an ego function. Stimuli of internal, libidinal or aggressive origin, as well as ‘im‐pressions’ of external origin, are classifi ed and processed with the aid of various kinds of factors arising from coagulated object‐relational experiences. Whereas for Freud the contact‐barrier regulates the quantity of energy and founds a topographical structure, Bion understands the contact‐barrier as a psychic function that simultaneously regulates boundary demarcation and making contact. In the psychoanalytic process, the contact‐barrier created by patient and analyst regulates the events in the transference and countertransference. An awareness of the struggle for contact and demarcation at the dynamic boundary representations that are constantly being recreated by both partners in the analytic process may be helpful in our clinical work. The author presents an examination of the ways in which patient and analyst make contact and demarcate the boundaries, which provides a better understanding of the dynamics of transference processes. He demonstrates this in relation to clinical material.     

ON THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYTIC FIELD THEORY,PART 2

Advances in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Field Theory: Concept and Further Development. Edited by S. Montana Katz, Roosevelt Cassorla, and Giuseppe Civitarese. London/New York: Routledge, 2017. 212 pp.