Anxiety Responses and Psychological Skill Use During the Time Leading up to Competition: Theory to Practice I

This study investigated temporal responses associated with competitive anxiety in athletes with facilitative and debilitative interpretations of their anxiety symptoms. Qualitative interviews assessed the intensity, frequency, and direction of cognitive and somatic symptoms experienced during a 7-day competitive cycle and the psychological strategies used to attain/maintain a positive psychological state. Analysis indicated three distinct temporal phases within the competitive cycle during which the intensity and frequency of cognitive and somatic symptoms increased. The facilitators utilized a refined repertoire of psychological skills to internally control and re-interpret the cognitive and somatic symptoms experienced. The debilitators did not possess this refined repertoire of psychological skills and relied on external strategies to stabilize the negative symptoms experienced. The findings emphasize the dynamic properties of the stress response and provide a framework for the structure, timing, and content of psychological skills interventions for use with performers who interpret anxiety symptoms as debilitative.     

Tanya and the Adaptive Dialectic of Romantic Passion and Secure Attachment

My analytic work with Tanya illustrated one unique, heightened, individual version of a pervasive human conflict: the way in which erotic passion can be experienced as inherently conflicting with other relational bonds and broader values. In virtually every culture throughout human history, we find expressions of this tension between passionate Eros and other forms of love.

My clinical approach entails an openness to multiple analytic perspectives, including Mitchell's posthumous views in Can Love Last. In addition, I make use of a sensibility informed by evolutionary biology as a vantage point for understanding the individual struggle of patients like Tanya, as well as illuminating some of the larger issues about Eros and attachment. I suggest that romantic aspects of Eros may have evolved as part of a complex psychological system designed to deal with specifically human existential vulnerabilities and anxieties, as well as a way of challenging the inherent human tendency to over-accommodate to the subjective world of the other.     

Review Essay: Constructivism with a Human Face

Irwin Hoffman's book Ritual and Spontaneity includes, but goes well beyond, his series of seminal papers—written over the past several decades—developing a psychoanalytic, constructivist perspective. A new, existential framework depicts what Hoffman calls the “psychobiological bedrock” at the core of the human process of constructing meaning—the lifelong effort to create a livable, subjective world in face of our ever present sense of loss, suffering, and, ultimately, mortality.

This review describes Hoffman's encompassing, existential perspective and discusses how, within this framework, he uses his dialectical sensibility to frame our understanding of both parenting and analysis as “semisacred” activities. The “dialectic of ritual and spontaneity”—the vital clash between disciplined adherence to the analytic frame and personally expressive deviations from it—represents the creative tension between the “magical” dimension of analytic authority and the healing influence of a genuinely expressive human relationship. Hoffman's perspective on the self-interested, “dark side” of the analytic relationship is compared with Winnicott's views on the vital, therapeutic role of “hate” and the paradoxical process by which the patient comes to “use” the analyst.

Unlike most postmodernist “constructivists,” Hoffman openly reveals his underlying belief in certain “transcultural, transhistorical universals”—his “psychobiological bedrock.” In acknowledging these “essentials” (assumptions about human nature) that in some form are integral, yet often hidden, elements of any system of thought, Hoffman saves his own dialectical constructivism from falling into dichotomous (constructivist vs. essentialist) thinking.     

Boundary Issues in Academia: Student Perceptions of Faculty—Student Boundary Crossings

Boundary crossings in academia are rarely addressed by university policy despite the risk of problematic or unethical faculty—student interactions. This study contributes to an understanding of undergraduate college student perceptions of appropriateness of faculty—student nonsexual interactions by investigating the influence of gender and ethnicity on student judgments of the appropriateness of numerous hypothetical interactions. Overall, students deemed the majority of interactions as inappropriate. Female students judged a number of interactions as more inappropriate than did male students, and with a few exceptions, Mexican American and Anglo American students were similar in their ratings of the appropriateness of faculty—student interactions. These findings suggest that universities need to be proactive in establishing guidelines concerning faculty-student boundary crossings.     

Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Cheating: The Influence of Direct Knowledge and Attitudes on Academic Dishonesty

What effect does witnessing other students cheat have on one's own cheating behavior? What roles do moral attitudes and neutralizing attitudes (justifications for behavior) play when deciding to cheat? The present research proposes a model of academic dishonesty which takes into account each of these variables. Findings from experimental (vignette) and survey methods determined that seeing others cheat increases cheating behavior by causing students to judge the behavior less morally reprehensible, not by making rationalization easier. Witnessing cheating also has unique effects, controlling for other variables.     

A Cerebral Hyperventilation Index for Electroencephalography

This study was an attempt to determine the effect of drive on probability learning. Each of two groups of Ss was divided into high- and low-drive groups on the basis of MAS scores. Each S was given 200 trials on a probability learning task, with 70 per cent reinforcement on one side and 30 per cent reinforcement on the other. At the .05 level, there was no difference between groups in probability choices, and neither group differed from the objective probability scores. The results are discussed in terms of the number of trials involved, the introduction of emotional arousal, and Hullian theory. On the basis of a comparison with the results of previous studies, it was suggested that investigators be cautious in generalizing probability learning results from one species to another.     

No evidence of racial discrimination in criminal justice processing: Results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health

One of the most consistent findings in the criminological literature is that African American males are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at rates that far exceed those of any other racial or ethnic group. This racial disparity is frequently interpreted as evidence that the criminal justice system is racist and biased against African American males. Much of the existing literature purportedly supporting this interpretation, however, fails to estimate properly specified statistical models that control for a range of individual-level factors. The current study was designed to address this shortcoming by analyzing a sample of African American and White males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Analysis of these data revealed that African American males are significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated when compared to White males. This racial disparity, however, was completely accounted for after including covariates for self-reported lifetime violence and IQ. Implications of this study are discussed and avenues for future research are offered.     

If Empowerment Is the Goal...: Affirmative Action and social Interaction

The goal of affirmative action policies is to empower formerly disenfranchised groups. But what if the procedures used to implement these policies activate a set of social psychological processes that prevent the occurrence of productive social interactions between target-group and non-target-group members? With that question in mind, a conceptual model is developed which focuses on the potential effects of affirmative action procedures on social interactions between members of policy target and nontarget groups. To conceptualize these potential effects of procedures, the concept of a policy schema is introduced. Special attention is paid to the conditions under which beliefs about procedures contained in policy schemas will influence patterns of interactions between target-group and non-target-group members. With that as background, a call is made for more complete analyses of the social psychology of affirmative action.