Standing Out From the Crowd: How Comparison to Prototypes Can Decrease Health-Risk Behavior in Young Adults

This research tested whether social comparison can encourage adolescents to make less risky health decisions. Two studies demonstrated that when young adults compare themselves with drinkers, they become less willing to drink if they perceive dissimilarity between themselves and those drinkers. When participants in Study 1 compared with someone who drinks regularly, their perceived similarity to prototypical drinkers was positively related to their willingness to drink. In Study 2, participants identified or contrasted themselves with prototypical drinkers; those encouraged to contrast who also felt less similar to the prototype reported less willingness to drink. These studies support the prototype/willingness model's assumption that prototypes affect willingness to drink through social comparison.     

Situated Behavior and the Place of Measurement in Psychological Theory

Measured values of human behavior may entail contradictory attributes of wave and particle by analogy with the wave/particle attributes of the electron. 1/f scaling is the wave attribute in this analogy and punctate data points are the particle attribute. One consequence of the wave/particle duality in physics was to elevate measurement to a primary place in physical theory, and one purpose of the present analogy is to likewise elevate measurement to a primary place in psychological theory. Another purpose is to emulate Robert Shaw's creative use of analogies, consistent with the brief quotation that begins this article.     

On psychoanalytic autobiography

This article considers how one might define ‘psychoanalytic autobiography’, using statements from theorists of ‘life-writing’ and extracts from autobiographers (some of them psychoanalysts), together with their own commentaries on the genre. The focus is less on content and more on the nature of the art form, with a view to noting analogies with the psychoanalytic process. These analogies are to be found, in particular, in the qualities of transference dialogue; in the art of transformative or communicative projective identification; and in the contrast between self-indulgent and constructive types of memory. Psychoanalytic autobiography is seen as a mode of remaking the self – not omnipotently but through exploratory self-analysis, frequently following the familiar pattern of loss and rediscovery. It entails a special imagined relationship with the unknown reader, and a sense of being guided by a detached observational eye equivalent to that which Bion terms the ‘third party’ in a psychoanalytic situation.     

Spanish validation of an emotion-eliciting set of films

One of the main difficulties in the study of emotion is the induction of a real emotional response by means of artificial techniques. The aim of the current study is to validate the Spanish version of a set of films with the capacity to induce emotions (PIE) under laboratory conditions and to analyze its capacity to provoke differentiated basic emotions. A sample of 127 subjects took part in the study; 57 excerpts of Spanish-dubbed films with capacity in previous studies to induce 7 emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, amusement, tenderness, and neutral emotion were used. Subjective emotional response was measured using the Self-Assessment Manikins and the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire. Films included showed a good capacity to induce positive and negative affects, high levels of emotional activation and variations in the perception of emotional control. They induced basic emotions of amusement and fear in a differentiated way. However, sadness and disgust could not be significantly differentiated from anger; or anger and tenderness from sadness. The PIE could be a useful tool for the experimental research of emotions in Spanish populations.     

Best Research from the Community Indicators Consortium 2009: Introduction to the Special Issue

This editors’ introduction provides some introductory comments for this special issue of Applied Research on Quality of Life dedicated to best research from the 2009 Community Indicators Consortium conference in Bellevue, Washington. In addition, it includes an edited version of the keynote address presented to this conference by Stephen Bezruchka of the University of Washington School of Public Health on the topic of “What indicators should be presented to Americans so we don’t die so young?”     

Berkeley on Inconceivability and Impossibility

Contrary to a popular reading of his modal epistemology, Berkeley does not hold that inconceivability entails impossibility, and he cannot therefore argue the impossibility of mind‐independent matter by appealing to facts about what we cannot conceive. Berkeley is explicit about this constraint on his metaphysical argumentation, and, I argue, does respect it in practice. Popular mythology about the ‘master argument’ notwithstanding, the only passages in which he might plausibly seem to employ the principle that inconceivability entails impossibility are those that argue for the inseparability of primary from secondary qualities. However, an alternative reading of these texts is available that is both consistent with Berkeley's express modal epistemology and credible in its own right.     

A dual-process approach to health risk decision making: The prototype willingness model

Although dual-process models in cognitive, personality, and social psychology have stimulated a large body of research about analytic and heuristic modes of decision making, these models have seldom been applied to the study of adolescent risk behaviors. In addition, the developmental course of these two kinds of information processing, and their relation to the development of self-regulation are not well understood at this time. The current paper reviews what leading dual-process models have to say about the development of analytic and heuristic decision making, and their implications for adolescent risk behavior. In addition, it reviews research on the prototype willingness model of adolescent decision making—a dual-process model designed specifically to address non-intentional, but volitional adolescent risk behavior. It also discusses the implications of dual-process models for intervention research.     

Equivalence of computerized and standard administration of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale

Two hundred seventy-nine 8- to 17-year-old children and adolescents were randomly assigned to complete paper-and-pencil or computer-administered versions of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. The equivalence of these two administration modes was assessed by evaluating the comparability of scale means, variances, reliabilities, and validities. Results indicate that, of 27 comparisons, only 1 produced a statistically significant difference. We concluded that the computerized administration of the Piers-Harris scale did not affect its psychometric properties and that paper-and-pencil and computerized modes of testing for this questionnaire may be regarded as equivalent.