Misserfolge in der station?ren Therapie von Patienten mit Pers?nlichkeitsst?rungen

While psychotherapy has proven its efficacy and effectiveness in the treatment of personality disorders (PD) there is a lack of studies on treatment failure, i.e. non-response or deterioration of psychopathology. In a naturalistic approach the failed treatment of1,239 inpatients with PD was studied by means of direct and indirect assessment of change from patient and therapist perspectives. For indirect assessment the global severity index of the symptom checklist SCL-90-R (self-report by patients) and the impairment severity score (judgement by therapists) were used. Depending on the method between 11% and 31% of inpatients did not show any relevant improvement in symptoms but concordance between the methods was poor (Cohen’s kappa between 0.10 and 0.30). Patients with treatment failure did not differ from those with successful treatment with respect to sociodemographic and clinical features. The findings are discussed with respect to methodological limitations but also reflect possible clinical and therapeutic implications as well as future research approaches.     

Proactive Customer Service Performance: Relationships With Individual,Task, and Leadership Variables

Despite the increasing interest in specific forms of proactive employee behavior in domains such as career development and organizational change, little research has investigated proactive behavior in the realm of customer service. Based on a review of the literatures on proactive behavior, customer service, and job performance, this study investigated relationships between a relevant set of individual and situational predictor variables and proactive customer service performance (i.e., individual service employees' self-started, long-term-oriented, and persistent service behavior that goes beyond explicitly prescribed requirements). Field survey data from 186 supervisor-subordinate dyads working in a large financial services organization demonstrated that proactive service performance, as rated by supervisors, was factorially distinct from prescribed task performance. Multiple regression analysis revealed that proactive service performance was significantly and positively associated with employee ratings of trait personal initiative, affective organizational commitment, task complexity, and participative leadership. The task and leadership variables explained incremental variance in proactive service performance beyond the individual predictors.     

The why and how of goal pursuits: Effects of global autonomous motivation and perceived control on emotional well-being

This study examined the effects of global autonomous motivation and global perceived control on young adults’ adaptive goal striving and emotional well-being. We reasoned that autonomously motivated participants who also perceive high levels of control would make accelerated progress with the pursuit of their most important goal and experience associated increases in emotional well-being. By contrast, we predicted that these benefits of autonomous motivation would be reduced among participants who perceive low levels of control. A 6-month longitudinal study of 125 college students was conducted, and self-reported global autonomous motivation, global perceived control, progress towards the most important goal, and emotional well-being were assessed. Regression analyses showed that the combination of high baseline levels of global autonomous motivation and global perceived control was associated with accelerated goal progress after 6 months, which mediated 6-month increases in emotional well-being. These benefits were not apparent among autonomously motivated participants who perceived low levels of control. The study’s findings suggest that global autonomous motivation and perceived control may need to work together to foster adaptive goal striving and emotional well-being.     

Motivated information processing, social tuning, and group creativity

The extent to which groups are creative has wide implications for their overall performance, including the quality of their problem solutions, judgments, and decisions. To further understanding of group creativity, we integrate the motivated information processing in groups model (De Dreu, Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg, 2008) with work on epistemic social tuning (Lunn, Sinclair, Whitchurch, & Glenn, 2007). Three propositions were advanced: (a) Groups produce more ideas when members have high rather than low epistemic motivation, especially when members also have a prosocial rather than pro-self motivation; (b) these ideas are more original, appropriate, or feasible when a group norm favors originality, appropriateness, or feasibility; and (c) originality is valued more in individualistic cultures (e.g., the Netherlands), whereas appropriateness is valued more in collectivist cultures (e.g., Korea). Four studies involving 3-person groups generating ideas supported these propositions: Epistemic motivation (mild vs. intense time pressure; presence vs. absence of process accountability) stimulated production and originality, especially when prosocial rather than pro-self motives were present and participants were Dutch or originality norms were experimentally primed. When appropriateness norms were primed or participants were Korean, epistemic motivation stimulated production and appropriateness, especially when prosocial rather than pro-self motives were present. We discuss implications for research on group processes and for work on culture and creativity.     

Team confidence,motivated information processing,and dynamic group decision making

According to the Motivated Information Processing in Groups (MIP‐G) model, groups should perform ambiguous (non‐ambiguous) tasks better when they have high (low) epistemic motivation and concomitant tendencies to engage in systematic (heuristic) information processing and exchange. The authors tested this prediction in an experiment with four‐person groups performing a complex and dynamic decision making task. Group confidence was measured after extensive training and prior to actual group decision‐making. Task ambiguity was manipulated. Results showed that when task ambiguity was low, group confidence indeed benefits decision quality and group performance. But when task ambiguity was high, group confidence hurt decision quality and group performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual differences in ERPs during mental rotation of characters: Lateralization,and performance level

The cognitive process of imaging an object turning around is called mental rotation. Many studies have been put forward analyzing mental rotation by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during mental rotation of characters in a sample (N = 82) with a sufficient size to obtain even small effects. A bilateral ERP amplitude modulation as a function of angular displacement was observed at parietal leads without any lateralization. Sex had no effect on mental rotation of characters, neither with respect to performance nor with respect to brain potentials. When the sample was split into groups of high- and low-performers, however, the results indicated (a) in line with the idea of neural efficiency substantially larger amplitudes for low-performers; (b) that the smaller amplitudes of the high-performers involved larger parietal networks; and (c) a left-parietal disengagement of neural activity for high-performers but a right-parietal disengagement for low-performers. The latter finding became evident through an analysis of internal consistencies of ERP amplitudes across conditions and performance levels, showing that internal consistencies were reduced at all three leads in the high-performance group for the biggest rotation angle, relative the other conditions and the low-performing group.     

Health stresses and depressive symptomatology in the elderly: the importance of health engagement control strategies.

The study presents cross-sectional (N = 127) and longitudinal (n = 111) analyses examining relations between health engagement control strategies (HECSs), depressive symptoms, and health stresses in elderly individuals. HECS was measured as people's behavioral and cognitive investments toward attaining health goals. HECS was related to low levels of depressive symptoms, particularly among people experiencing acute physical symptoms. Moreover, HECS predicted reduction of depressive symptoms over time, and depressive symptomatology predicted negative change in HECS. The findings show that active investments of HECSs significantly moderate the negative affective consequences of health threats. Individuals who are characterized by low levels of HECS and high levels of depressive symptoms may be at increased risk of accelerated decline in their physical and mental health.     

Emotions as strategic information: Effects of other’s emotional expressions on fixed-pie perception, demands, and integrative behavior in negotiation

Negotiators often fail to reach integrative (”win-win”) agreements because they think that their own and other’s preferences are diametrically opposed—the so-called fixed-pie perception. We examined how verbal (Experiment 1) and nonverbal (Experiment 2) emotional expressions may reduce fixed-pie perception and promote integrative behavior. In a two-issue computer-simulated negotiation, participants negotiated with a counterpart emitting one of the following emotional response patterns: (1) anger on both issues, (2) anger on participant’s high priority issue and happiness on participant’s low-priority issue, (3) happiness on high priority issue and anger on low-priority issue, or (4) happiness on both issues. In both studies, the third pattern reduced fixed-pie perception and increased integrative behavior, whereas the second pattern amplified bias and reduced integrative behavior. Implications for how emotions shape social exchange are discussed.     

Temporalising Tableaux

As a remedy for the bad computational behaviour of first-order temporal logic (FOTL), it has recently been proposed to restrict the application of temporal operators to formulas with at most one free variable thereby obtaining so-called monodic fragments of FOTL. In this paper, we are concerned with constructing tableau algorithms for monodic fragments based on decidable fragments of first-order logic like the two-variable fragment or the guarded fragment. We present a general framework that shows how existing decision procedures for first-order fragments can be used for constructing a tableau algorithm for the corresponding monodic fragment of FOTL. Some example instantiations of the framework are presented.