Neue Felder in der Operationalisierten Psychodynamischen Diagnostik

After the operationalized psychodynamic diagnostics (OPD) system became well established in clinical as well as research contexts, especially in German speaking countries, the OPD task force now focuses on issues, such as modules and new manuals which are related to various clinical contexts. In this article new modules and manuals are presented and discussed in summarized form: the modules for addiction disorders and for forensic patients, the new OPD-2 manual for children and adolescents, an OPD-based manual for formulating initial assessment reports for insurance companies as well as a conceptualization for an operationalized psychodynamic therapy (OPT).     

Performing a secondary executive task with affective stimuli interferes with decision making under risk conditions

Previous studies demonstrated that executive functions are crucial for advantageous decision making under risk and that therefore decision making is disrupted when working memory capacity is demanded while working on a decision task. While some studies also showed that emotions can affect decision making under risk, it is unclear how affective processing and executive functions predict decision-making performance in interaction. The current experimental study used a between-subjects design to examine whether affective pictures (positive and negative pictures compared to neutral pictures), included in a parallel executive task (working memory 2-back task), have an impact on decision making under risk as assessed by the Game of Dice Task (GDT). Moreover, the performance GDT plus 2-back task was compared to the performance in the GDT without any additional task (GDT solely). The results show that the performance in the GDT differed between groups (positive, negative, neutral, and GDT solely). The groups with affective pictures, especially those with positive pictures in the 2-back task, showed more disadvantageous decisions in the GDT than the groups with neutral pictures and the group performing the GDT without any additional task. However, executive functions moderated the effect of the affective pictures. Regardless of affective influence, subjects with good executive functions performed advantageously in the GDT. These findings support the assumption that executive functions and emotional processing interact in predicting decision making under risk.     

Looking up versus looking down: attractiveness‐based organizational biases are moderated by social comparison direction

Organizational decision‐making research demonstrates an abundance of positive biases directed toward attractive individuals. However, recent research suggests that these favorable consequences of attractiveness do not hold when the person being evaluated is of the same sex as the evaluator. In the current study, participants evaluated prospective job candidates and indicated their desire to interact socially with the candidate. Results indicated positive responses toward attractive other‐sex targets but not toward attractive same‐sex targets. This pattern was moderated by participants' social comparison orientation: People who tended to engage in downward (rather than upward) social comparison displayed stronger reactions to attractive comparison targets. They indicated less desire to interact socially with attractive same‐sex job candidates than those who tend to engage in upward social comparison.     

Typologies of Helicopter Parenting in American and Chinese Young-Adults’ Game and Social Media Addictive Behaviors

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Helicopter parenting has emerged as a prevalent phenomenon in families with adult children. Due to its developmentally inappropriate nature, helicopter...     

Masking misfit in confirmatory factor analysis by increasing unique variances: a cautionary note on the usefulness of cutoff values of fit indices

Fit indices are widely used in order to test the model fit for structural equation models. In a highly influential study, Hu and Bentler (1999) showed that certain cutoff values for these indices could be derived, which, over time, has led to the reification of these suggested thresholds as "golden rules" for establishing the fit or other aspects of structural equation models. The current study shows how differences in unique variances influence the value of the global chi-square model test and the most commonly used fit indices: Root-mean-square error of approximation, standardized root-mean-square residual, and the comparative fit index. Using data simulation, the authors illustrate how the value of the chi-square test, the root-mean-square error of approximation, and the standardized root-mean-square residual are decreased when unique variances are increased although model misspecification is present. For a broader understanding of the phenomenon, the authors used different sample sizes, number of observed variables per factor, and types of misspecification. A theoretical explanation is provided, and implications for the application of structural equation modeling are discussed.     

An adaptive-learning approach to affect regulation: strategic influences on evaluative priming

An adaptive cognition approach to evaluative priming is not compatible with the view that the entire process is automatically determined by prime stimulus valence alone. In addition to the evaluative congruity of individual prime-target pairs, an adaptive regulation function should be sensitive to the base rates of positive and negative stimuli as well as to the perceived contingency between prime and target valence. The present study was particularly concerned with pseudocontingent inferences that offer a proxy for the assessment of contingencies from degraded or incomplete stimulus input. As expected, response latencies were shorter for the more prevalent target valence and for evaluatively congruent trials. However, crucially, the congruity effect was eliminated and overridden by pseudocontingencies inferred from the stimulus environment. These strategic inferences were further enhanced when the task called for the evaluation of both prime stimuli and target stimuli.     

Determinants of hand attractiveness--a study involving digitally manipulated stimuli

Although attractiveness of the human hand is of significance in the social and mating context, thus far it has attracted little scientific interest. In this study, young women and men were presented with pairs of digitally manipulated images of opposite-sex hands and asked to indicate the hand perceived to be the more attractive in each pair. The hands within a pair differed from one another by a single feature: shape averageness, femininity, finger length, second-to-fourth-digit ratio, or skin smoothness. All these features, with the exception of the digit ratio, were shown to increase hand attractiveness in each sex in both dorsal and ventral views. Skin smoothness was preferred more strongly in female than in male hands. Women also tended to prefer medium degrees of shape femininity and skin smoothness in male hands compared to both high and low levels. Adaptive and non-adaptive (related to perceptual bias) mechanisms underlying these preferences are discussed.     

Dissoziation

Dissociation and dissociative disorders represent a heterogenous phenomenology of symptoms which are understood as a result of the disintegration of certain usually integrated functions of the psyche. Despite an ongoing debate among scientists about its causation the assumption of a trauma-related etiology is carried forward both in clinical and scientific contexts. Therapists often believe dissociation to constitute an infirm basis for psychotherapeutic treatments. Contrarily, research suggests several kinds of therapeutic interventions and combinations thereof in particular, to be effective in relieving patients even of complex dissociation if certain requirements are met. This review summarizes the historical and conceptual implications as well as recent developments in the concept, diagnosis and therapy of dissociation.     

Interactions between constituent single symmetries in multiple symmetry

As a rule, the discriminability of multiple symmetries from random patterns increases with the number of symmetry axes, but this number does not seem to be the only determinant. In particular, multiple symmetries with orthogonal axes seem better discriminable than multiple symmetries with nonorthogonal axes. In six experiments on imperfect two-fold symmetry, we investigated whether this is due to extra structure in the form of so-called correlation rectangles, which arise only in the case of orthogonal axes, or to the relative orientation of the axes as such. The results suggest that correlation rectangles are not perceptually relevant and that the percept of a multiple symmetry results from an orientation-dependent interaction between the constituent single symmetries. The results can be accounted for by a model involving the analysis of symmetry at all orientations, smoothing (averaging over neighboring orientations), and extraction of peaks.