UNDERSTANDING THE POW EXPERIENCE: STRESS RESEARCH AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 1955 U.S. ARMED FORCES CODE OF CONDUCT

Facing accusations about weak military discipline following the supposedly poor behavior of American soldiers held captive during the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower instituted a Code of Conduct for the Armed Services in 1955. In response, military leaders hired numerous social and behavioral scientists to investigate the nature of the prisoner‐of‐war (POW) experience. These researchers not only challenged official government accounts of POW activities but opened up a new field of study—stress research. They also changed military training policy, which soon focused more on stress inoculation training, and, in so doing, helped lead the shift in psychology away from behaviorism to ego and cognitive psychology. In this sense, my article ties shifts within the social and behavioral sciences in the 1950s to the military history of the early Cold War, a connection generally missing from most accounts of this period.     

Psychoneuroimmunology: A bio‐psycho‐social approach to health and disease

Since the early 1980s, the interdisciplinary field of psychoneuroimmunology has explored the complex bi‐directional interactions between brain, behavior, and the immune system. Taken together, this research has expanded the limits of the questions we can ask about the organism by challenging the biomedical paradigm of the immune system as predominantly “autonomous”. Psychoneuroimmunology has played a key role in establishing a biological basis for the ancient idea that the mind can play a role in health and disease. This article describes the development of psychoneuroimmunology and reviews a number of key findings concerning psychological phenomena of potential relevance to understanding brain‐behavior‐immune interactions, including learning, emotions, stress, and the role of sensory processes.     

Modern Family Interventions

In this modern era, the family, and each member therein, is subjected to new socio-environmental pressures. This article advocates that family interventions must be consonant with the modern era, considers the critical components of contemporary mental health services, and offers ten guidelines for the family therapist's adoption and adaptation of clinical practices that will be appropriate for the modern era.     

Self-Presentational Issues in Competition and Sport

This paper critically reviews self-presentational behavior, cognition, and affect in competition and sport. It is subdivided into three main sections. The first section focuses on self-handicapping behavior, describing what it is and why it occurs. Self-handicapping research is reviewed followed by suggestions for future study. In section two, cognitions related to stereotypes about individuals who play certain sports are discussed. The third and final section examines demographic, environmental, and physical self-perception correlates of social physique anxiety as well as the tenability of Leary's (1992) Leary, M. R. 1992. Self-presentation processes in exercise and sport. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 14: 339–351. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] conceptualization of competitive anxiety.     

ROY SCHAFER: A NARRATIVE

The author provides a brief overview of the papers given at the Schafer Symposium in October 2012 by the following six presenters: Henry Schwartz, Richard Fritsch, Rosemary Balsam, Lucy LaFarge, Michael Feldman, and Jay Greenberg. He also highlights some important ongoing themes in Schafer's writing, including theory—about which Schafer takes a unique position—history, and ideas from other disciplines. Schafer prefers continuing explorations over arriving at conclusions, the author notes, and believes that students should remain faithful to their mentors' thinking—until it is time for them to move beyond it.     

Everyday emotion word and personal pronoun use reflects dyadic adjustment among couples coping with breast cancer

Dyadic adjustment is integral for couples facing breast cancer; therefore, it is important to identify its everyday indicators. A total of 52 couples coping with breast cancer wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) for one weekend and completed the Dyadic Adjustment Scale to investigate how dyadic adjustment manifests in noncancer‐related word use. Multilevel models revealed that partners', rather than one's own, positive emotion words positively related to dyadic adjustment. Conversely, spouses' negative emotion words and patients' anger words were negatively related to dyadic adjustment. Furthermore, focus on spouses rather than patients (spouses “I” and patients “you”) positively related to dyadic adjustment. Results revealed that dyadic adjustment can be reflected in couples' everyday word use, serving as an objective indicator of marital quality.