Treatment outcome in personality disorder: The effect of social,psychological and behavioural variables

The study followed-up 245 patients referred to the Henderson Hospital (194 admitted for treatment and 51 not admitted) and for whom information had been collected on their social background and certain psychological variables allowing a classification and typology of personality disorder to be worked out. The study indicates that the therapeutic community treatment is effective with selected individuals showing the antisocial behaviour associated with such disorder. In particular this treatment is of benefit to the offenders with only one conviction and who are able to persevere with treatment for a period of 6 months for treatment to be maximally effective. The variation of psychological types within the broad category of personality disorder was demonstrated and this has a bearing on the outcome of treatment, the extrapunitive neurotic being of poorest prognosis with or without treatment. Yet even in this group, therapeutic community treatment can be effective.     

Memory deficits before and after temporal lobectomy: Effect of laterality and age of onset

Laterality and age of onset effects on semantic and figural memory were evaluated in 30 right-handed, left speech dominant (amobarbital test) patients with epilepsy before and after temporal lobectomy. There were no effects of focus on WAIS-R IQ scores. Early onset (less than or equal to 5 years) was associated with lower IQ and memory (WMS). Left Temporal (LT) patients showed worse semantic than figural memory preoperatively. Unexpectedly, early onset LT had marked postoperative decline of figural memory, whereas late onset LT patients showed the previously reported worsening of semantic memory. Right Temporal (RT) lobectomy patients, in contrast, improved in both semantic and figural memory regardless of age of onset. A "crowding effect" was suggested by the decline in figural memory following surgery in the early onset LT patients who remained stable or improved in semantic memory. Results indicate the need to incorporate age of onset of seizures into laterality models of memory function following unilateral temporal-hippocampal resection.     

Family predictors of antisocial behavior in adolescence

The goal of the present study was to examine the combined and unique ability of different aspects of family functioning to predict involvement in antisocial behavior in a large nonclinical (community) sample of adolescents. Distinction was made between global (e.g., family socioeconomic status), distal (dispositional characteristics of parents), contextual (family characteristics), and proximal (parent-child interaction) factors that operate within families. Results show that proximal factors were significant predictors of antisocial behavior, independent of their shared variance with other factors. Consistent with the hypothesized mediational model, the effects of distal and contextual factors appear to be mostly indirect: after their association with proximal factors was taken into account, these factors were no longer significantly related to antisocial behavior. The implications of these findings for planning of developmentally appropriate interventions for adolescents and their families are discussed.     

Mind Attribution to Gods and Christians in the Chinese Cultural Context

Drawing on the distinction in mind perception between agency and experience, this research examined whether and how culture-based religion affects mind attribution to gods and Christians in a religious priming paradigm. When attributing mind to gods in Study 1, participants in the religious priming condition attributed more agency to gods than those in the neutral condition. When attributing mind to human religious targets in Study 2, religious participants in the religious priming condition attributed more experience to a Christian target than those in the neutral condition, while atheist participants in the religious priming condition attributed less experience to a Christian target than those in the neutral condition. In addition, religious participants in the religious priming condition attributed more experience to an atheist target than those in the neutral condition. Taken together, mind attribution to religious targets varied on agency and experience, and showed its own cultural features in China.     

Reaping the benefits of cultural diversity: Classroom cultural diversity climate and students’ intercultural competence

Culturally diverse schools may constitute natural arenas for training crucial intercultural skills. We hypothesized that a classroom cultural diversity climate fostering contact and cooperation and multiculturalism, but not a climate fostering color-evasion, would be positively related to adolescents’ intercultural competence. Adolescents in North Rhine-Westphalia (N = 631, M_age = 13.69 years, 49% of immigrant background) and Berlin (N = 1,335, M_age = 14.69 years, 52% of immigrant background) in Germany reported their perceptions of the classroom cultural diversity climate and completed quantitative and qualitative measures assessing their intercultural competence. Multilevel structural equation models indicate that contact and cooperation, multiculturalism, and, surprisingly, also color-evasion (as in emphasizing a common humanity), were positively related to the intercultural competence of immigrant and non-immigrant background students. We conclude that all three aspects of the classroom climate are uniquely related to aspects of adolescents’ intercultural competence and that none of them may be sufficient on their own.     

Understanding allies’ participation in social change: A multiple perspectives approach

The introduction to the EJSP special issue brings together recent literature on allyship. We present and discuss different definitions of allyship and highlight a multiple perspectives approach to understanding the predictors and consequences of allyship. This approach suggests that engagement in allyship can be driven by egalitarian and non-egalitarian motivations and that the behaviours identified as allyship can have different meanings, causes and consequences depending on whether researchers take into account the allies’ perspective or the disadvantaged groups’ perspective. We use this approach as an organizing principle to identify themes that emerge in the papers included in this special issue. We start with four papers that consider the perspective of the advantaged group, followed by two papers that consider the perspective of the disadvantaged group. Finally, we introduce two theoretical papers that examine the relations between disadvantaged groups and allies, and we set out directions for future research.     

Confidence in memory and other cognitive processes in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Previous studies have implicated beliefs about one's memory (i.e., meta-memory), in maintaining the symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), particularly with respect to checking rituals. However, most research has focused on task- or situation-specific perceptions about memory performance. Expanding on this research, we undertook two studies with analogue and clinical cohorts to examine the relationship between general ‘trait’ beliefs about memory and related processes and OCD symptoms. Trait meta-memory as measured in the current study was conceptualised as a multi-dimensional construct encompassing a range of beliefs about memory and related processes including confidence in one's general memory abilities, decision-making abilities, concentration and attention, as well as perfectionistic standards regarding one's memory. Meta-memory factors were associated with OCD symptoms, predicting OCD symptoms over-and-above mood and other OCD-relevant cognitions. Meta-memory factors were found to be particularly relevant to checking symptoms. Implications for theory and research are discussed.     

Toward mindful social comparison: When subjective and objective selves are mutually exclusive

Although mindless evaluations typically accompany social comparisons, they are not necessary, and may be costly. We describe how mindlessness enters the social comparison process at two points. First, during the social comparison both self and other are mindlessly de-contextualized, through (1) biased selection of relevant behaviors, (2) biased selection of criteria along which behaviors are compared, (3) lack of knowledge of intent behind behavior, (4) lack of knowledge about representativeness of behavior, (5) lack of knowledge about typicality of future behavior as moderated by learning, (6) improper understanding of the meaning of behavior, and (7) lack of knowledge about motivations generating the comparisons. Second, the affective results of the social comparison are often mindlessly generalized to the global self, while the breadth and complexity of the network of attributes that constitute to the ‘self’ is ignored. Global-self-evaluative social comparisons forfeit the potential of gaining accurate and usable information about personal attributes.