Self-awareness, self-evaluation, and creativity

The present research examined when self-evaluation influences creativity. Based on objective self-awareness theory, the authors predicted that feeling able to improve would buffer against the detrimental effects of self-evaluation on creativity. Two experiments manipulated self-evaluation (varying self-awareness, Study 1; providing objective performance standards, Study 2) and perceived ability to improve potential failure on the creativity task. Self-evaluation reduced creativity (generating remote associates, finding unusual uses for a knife) in both experiments, but only when people did not expect to improve. When people felt able to improve, self-evaluation did not affect creativity. Connections between self-motives, creativity, and defensiveness are discussed.     

Personality functioning in patients with a progressive course of multiple sclerosis

This study intended to describe general personality functioning in patients with a progressive course of multiple sclerosis. 55 consecutive rehabilitation inpatients with progressive course of multiple sclerosis were assessed with a multimethod test battery: the Expanded Disability Status Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, and the Rorschach Test administered and scored with Comprehensive System. The control group comprised 55 healthy participants with similar sociodemographic characteristics. Specific differences were found for both cognitive and affective aspects, as the patients with progressive course of multiple sclerosis had less positive self-image, less effective mediation processing, and an affective approach to reality. Present data illustrated the usefulness of examining patients with a progressive course of multiple sclerosis to identify abilities and difficulties in cognitive and affective patterns, and support better adaptation to relationships and the environment.     

Racial Microaggressions,Whiteness, and Feminist Therapy

Over the last decade, several authors have described the role of racial microaggressions in the lives of historically marginalized populations. However, the exact mechanisms in which racial microaggressions manifest in psychotherapy remain an area in need of further exploration. Drawing from research and scholarship on Feminist therapy and microaggressions, we use a case vignette of a 40-year-old African-American woman in treatment for depression with a White female therapist to demonstrate how microaggressions may unwittingly occur in a clinician–client dyad. We underscore the challenges that White therapists may encounter and provide suggestions and recommendations for culturally responsive therapy.     

Effects of mood on memory: Experimental tests of a mood-state-dependent retrieval hypothesis and of a mood-congruity hypothesis

Summary In the present experiment a mood-state-dependent retrieval hypothesis and a mood-congruity hypothesis are tested. The first hypothesis states that recall is higher when mood at test matches mood at input than when it does not match. The second hypothesis states that people learn more about events that match their mood state. Both hypotheses are consistent with the network model of mood and memory proposed by Bower and his colleagues. Our study was conducted to test the cited hypotheses with normal subjects (instead of highly hypnotizable subjects as in the studies by Bower et al.) and with a comparatively mild mood-induction technique. Another aim was to test different predictions from the two hypotheses.We experimentally varied mood (happy vs. sad), both at learning and at recall by using the Velten technique. Additionally, the emotional content (pleasant vs. neutral vs. unpleasant) of the text to be learned was manipulated.The empirical evidence with some restrictions favored the mood-state-dependent hypothesis and disagreed with the mood-congruity hypothesis. Possible explanations for the failure to obtain a mood-congruity effect are offered, and the results are discussed with reference to a network model of mood and memory.     

The effects of stimulus sequence on event related potentials: A comparison of visual and auditory sequences

The effect of stimulus sequence on the waveform of the scalp-recorded event-related potential (ERP) was studied in the auditory and visual modalities. The results indicate that the sequential effects are qualitatively similar in the two modalities; however, an interaction appeared between the modalities and the stimulus effects. The degree of sequential effect was a function of whether or not the stimulus eliciting the ERP was the counted (target) event. This finding is discussed in terms of an expectancy model, and the interaction is attributed to variations in short-term memory for past events as a function of the level of processing required for each.     

The child's conceptions about means of production and their owners

Investigated the child's social ideas, namely notions about production means (factory, public transportation, farmland) and family influence on notion acquisition. 120 children of jive age groups (4 to 13 years) were clinically interviewed (sensu Piaget). Children's parents, workers and housewives of an Italian industrial centre, answered to questionnaires inquiring background information on parents and child and appraisal of child's level of understanding. Interview answers were classified on ten level sequences concerning father's job, home ownership, function and ownership of production means and produce. Correlational analyses and separate ANOVAs [5(age) × 2(sex) × 3(production mean)] in three subject areas (owner of production mean, of produce, and produce use) of interview answers reveal that children's ideas about different production means develop with differing rhythms through the same level sequences, which are clearly related to the general characterstics of intelligence described by Piaget. Questionnaires show that parents tend to furnish their children with the degree of information concerning jobs appropriate to the level of development at which the parents believe their children to be.     

Revising the history of Cold War research ethics

President Clinton's charge to the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments included the identification of ethical and legal standards for evaluating government-sponsored radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War. In this paper, we review the traditional account of the history of American research ethics, and then highlight and explain the significance of a number of the Committee's historical findings as they relate to this account. These findings include both the national defense establishment's struggles with legal and insurance issues concerning human experiments, and the medical profession's perspective on human experimentation in the years following the Nuremberg Medical Trials. We conclude that the Committee's work both enriches the traditional view of the history of research ethics and opens important new areas for study.