Expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior

We proposed that expressing gratitude would increase positive perception of a relationship partner, thereby increasing comfort in expressing relationship concerns, which is a form of relationship maintenance. Study 1 (n = 159) showed a relationship between naturally occurring expressions of gratitude and comfort in voicing relationship concerns. Study 2 (n = 178) provided longitudinal evidence for direction of effects because Time 1 gratitude expression predicted Time 2 comfort in voicing relationship concerns, controlling for baseline comfort in voicing relationship concerns. Study 3 (n = 225) showed that expressing gratitude to a friend did increase voicing relationship concerns, compared with positive thought and neutral control conditions. In Study 4 (n = 74), we explored the mechanism through a longitudinal, experimental design and found that participants assigned to express gratitude reported higher comfort voicing concerns and more positive perception of partner than did control participants. Moreover, positive perception of partner mediated the relationship between condition and comfort in voicing relationship concerns.     

On the origin and preservation of cumulative record in its struggle for life as a favored term

This paper offers a case study of the origins, emergence, and evolution of the term cumulative record as the name for the means by which B. F. Skinner brought his behavior under the control of his subject matter. Our methods included on-line searches, reviews of Skinner's publications, and journal codings and counts. The results reveal that the term is not originally attributable to Skinner, but emerged earlier in ordinary language and in another discipline--education. It was not even original to Skinner in print in his own science. Still, the term was once original to him, which we address with additional analyses of his having originated and advanced it. We conclude with a discussion the constraints of our methods, suggestions for future research, and the variable appreciation of technology and terminology in science studies.     

Forgivingness, vengeful rumination, and affective traits

Trait forgivingness is the disposition to forgive interpersonal transgressions over time and across situations. We define forgiveness as the replacement of negative unforgiving emotions with positive, other-oriented emotions. Rumination has been suggested as a mediator between forgivingness and emotional outcomes; however, we suggest that different content of rumination leads to different outcomes after transgressions. In four studies of 179, 233, 80, and 66 undergraduate students, trait forgivingness was negatively correlated with trait anger, hostility, neuroticism, fear, and vengeful rumination and was positively correlated with agreeableness, extraversion, and trait empathy. The disposition to ruminate vengefully mediated the relationship between trait forgivingness and (1) anger-related traits and (2) both revenge motivations and state anger following a specific recent transgression, but it did not mediate between forgivingness and (1) fearfulness and (2) avoidance motivations following a specific transgression. Self-hate statements, a proxy for depressive rumination, mediated the relationship between forgivingness and both depression and fearfulness but not the relationship between forgivingness and trait anger. Future research should distinguish the contents of mental rumination following interpersonal transgressions.     

Limbic system dysfunction and inventoried psychopathology among incarcerated pedophiles

This study explored relationships between “highly probable” neuropathology in the limbic system (as gauged by clinically elevated scores on the Limbic System Check-list-33, or LSCL-33, a screening index for limbic system dysfunction developed by medical researchers at Harvard and Dartmouth) and inventoried psychopathology (as gauged through scores on the MMPI) among a group of adjudicated pedophiles incarcerated for treatment in a specialized prison for criminal sexual psychopaths in a mid-Atlantic state. Principal findings: Only 33 percent of this sample of incarcerated pedophiles exhibits scores on the LSCL-33 at a level high enough to warrant a medical conclusion of “probable” limbic system dysfunction. When scores on the MMPI are grouped according to critical values for clinically relevant scores on the LSCL-33, significant F ratios in one-way analyses of variance are observed on L, F, K, Hs, D, Hy, Pa, Pt, Sc, and Ma. Mean T scores for “probable” dysfunctionals simultaneously reach elevations at or above the threshold of clinical significance for Pd, Pa, and Sc. On that basis, the categorization psychopathic paranoid schizophrenia readily applies to limbic system dysfunctional child sexual abusers studied in this inquiry, but not to their nondysfunctional counterparts. But significant F ratios are observed neither for the age of the victim(s) in the instant offense(s), for the number of prior arrests for sex offenses, for the number of prior arrests for any and all felony offenses, including sex offenses, nor for the offender's current age. However, a stepwise multiple regression between gross number of prior arrests for any and all offenses (including sex offenses) as the most robust of the indices of past criminal activity and both LSCL-33 and MMPI scores across all offenders represented in this inquiry (i.e., the limbic system dysfunctional, the nondysfunctional, and a mid-range group) proceeds to four steps, achieving a multiple R of .575 and encompassing Pd, Mf, Pa, and LSCL-33 scores as the most efficient interactive post-dictive set. Stepwise multiple regression analyses of past arrest record computed independently for limbic system dysfunctionals and nondysfunctionals progresses among dysfunctionals to seven steps, achieving a multiple R of .867 and encompassing Pd, Hy, Ma, Mf, Si, Pa, and Sc scores as the most efficient interactive post-dictive set; and among nondysfunctionals, to six steps, achieving a multiple R of .797 and encompassing Mf, D, Pt, Hy, Pa, and over-controlled hostility scores as the most efficient interactive post-dictive set. The latter results are interpreted as suggesting that neuropathology and psychopathology interact with and potentiate each other in post-dicting criminal behavior among the pedophiles studied in this inquiry. This study was supported in part by the Fund for Correctional and Forensic Psychology, Rutgers University Foundation. The investigators express deep appreciation to Charles Albino for assis-tance in data collection.     

Counterfeit courage: Toward a process psychology paradigm for the “Heroic rescue fantasy”

On the basis largely of interview data, this article outlines a working model for a process psychology paradigm for the heroic rescue fantasy and contrasts a prototypi-cal sequence therefore with corresponding sequences in antisocial, asocial, and prosocial risk-taking. It proposes that the heroic rescue fantasy emerges from the interplay between (a) neurologic anomaly affecting realistic assessment of costs, risks, and benefits associated with behavior of various sorts, (b) perpetuating as impulsivity expressed as persistent underestimation of costs and risks and perhaps supported by a condition of alexithymia or verbal deficit in cognitive functioning, interacting with (c) a persistent need for self-aggrandizement likely born of psychosocial developmental experiences, leading to (d) sensitization to interpersonal environments that provide role models for and positively reinforce prosocial risk-taking behavior, yielding to (e) the manipulative creation of an opportunity to behave in such fashion as to engender risk to others and to the self, and eventuating (f) in the enactment of a heroic rescue that prevents harm to others and thus elicits praise, admiration, adulation, and possibly formal reward. The conjunction between impulsivity expressing itself in the underesti-mation of costs (neurogenic or not) and need for self-aggrandizement is proposed as necessary in the heroic rescue fantasy, the manipulative creation of an opportunity to behave that engenders risk to others and to the self is proposed as the defining behavior, and a rescue that prevents harm to others is proposed as the defining crite-rion.     

Different Training Procedures Recruit Either One or Two Critical Periods for Contextual Memory Consolidation, Each of Which Requires Protein Synthesis and PKA

We have used a combined genetic and pharmacological approach to define the time course of the requirement for protein kinase A (PKA) and protein synthesis in long-term memory for contextual fear conditioning in mice. The time course of amnesia in transgenic mice that express R(AB) and have genetically reduced PKA activity in the hippocampus parallels that observed both in mice treated with inhibitors of PKA and mice treated with inhibitors of protein synthesis. This PKA- and protein synthesis-dependent memory develops between 1 hr and 3 hr after training. By injecting the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin or the PKA inhibitor Rp-cAMPs at various times after training, we find that depending on the nature of training, contextual memory has either one or two brief consolidation periods requiring synthesis of new proteins, and each of these also requires PKA. Weak training shows two time periods of sensitivity to inhibitors of protein synthesis and PKA, whereas stronger training exhibits only one. These studies underscore the parallel dependence of long-term contextual memory on protein synthesis and PKA and suggest that different training protocols may recruit a common signaling pathway in distinct ways.     

Core social motives explain responses to collective action issues

Managing collective action issues such as pandemics and climate change requires major social and behavioral change. Dominant approaches to addressing these issues center around information provision and financial incentives to shift behavior, yet, these approaches are rarely effective without integrating insights from psychological research on motivation. By accurately characterizing human motives, social scientists can identify when and why individuals engage, and facilitate behavior change and public engagement. Here, we use the core social motives model to sort social psychological theories into five fundamental social motives: to Belong, Understand, Control, self-Enhance, and Trust. We explain how each motive can improve or worsen collective action issues, and how this framework can be further developed towards a comprehensive social psychological perspective to collective action issues.     

Thomas Verner Moore and the electronic road to the unconscious: A reminiscence

A number of contemporary commentators and observers have urged a rapprochement between customary methods of psychoanalytic treatment and other modalities in order to shorten the traditional duration of “standard” psychoanalysis. In particular, adoption or adaptation of treatment modalities drawn from the repertoire of behavior therapy has been advocated. This note recalls that nearly 50 years ago the remarkable priest-psychologist-psychiatrist Thomas Verner Moore proposed in The Driving Forces of Human Nature and Their Adjustment, his capstone work, an “electronic road” to the unconscious via the psychogalvanometer as an alternate to the “royal road” of dream analysis and free association, attributing its development to von Stauffenberg, who demonstrated the technique in Munich between 1913-1915. By such reckoning, the union between psychoanalysis and the psychogalvanometer may be nearing its 85th anniversary.