Shedding Light on the Relationship Between Personal Standards and Psychopathology: The Case for Contingent Self-Worth

Previous research has revealed some puzzling inconsistencies in the relationship of Personal Standards (PS) to measures of psychopathology. This study was designed to explore the hypothesis that setting high Personal Standards will relate to psychopathology only when meeting these standards is a necessary condition for a sense of self-worth. We generated items that reflected a sense of conditional self-worth based on the meeting of Personal Standards and named this measure the Contingent Self-Worth Scale (CSWS). Factor analysis of the CSWS and the PS subscale of the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale yielded three types of Personal Standards: Pure Personal Standards," Success-Based Self-Worth," and Activity-Based Self-Worth." Two of the original PS items did not load on the Pure Personal Standards scale. Correlational analyses revealed that Pure Personal Standards was related to measures of adaptive outcome whereas both measures of Contingent Self-Worth were related to more maladaptive functioning, although with some small differences. We call for further research to explore the relationship of PS to the construct of perfectionism.     

Operationalizing the "vulnerability" and "stress" components of the hopelessness theory of depression: a multi-wave longitudinal study

The current study tested of the diathesis-stress component of the hopelessness theory (HT) using (1) a "weakest link" approach towards operationalizing vulnerability (e.g., an individual is as vulnerable to depression as his/her most depressogenic inferential style-DIS) and (2) an idiographic approach towards operationalizing high levels of stress. The procedure involved an initial assessment during which participants completed measures assessing DISs and depressive symptoms. The procedure also involved a series of eight follow-up assessments, occurring every 6 weeks, during which depressive symptoms and hassles were assessed. Hypotheses were tested in two samples of adults (i.e., adults diagnosed with a current MDE and adults diagnosed with a past MDE at Time 1). In line with hypotheses, in both samples, depressogenic weakest links were associated with greater elevations in depressive symptoms following elevations in hassles. At the same time, equally strong support was obtained for the HT when stress was operationalized from a nomothetic perspective and when vulnerability was operationalized as a DIS about causes (but not consequences or self).     

The utility of psychological testing in assessing emotional damages in personal injury litigation

Psychological testing and assessment instruments frequently play a small but important role when psychologists assist the courts as emotional damage experts in personal injury matters. However, examiners frequently, if sometimes inadvertently, mislead the court with test interpretations that are based on clinical rather than forensic populations and that fail to appreciate the lack of robustness of clinical measures in this forensic context. Whereas published computerized interpretations repeatedly remind experts that personality test results should only be used as a method to generate hypotheses about the examinee that are to be subjected to further investigation and consideration, experts all too often inform the courts of test interpretations as if the test results were measures of clinical constructs rather than plaintiffs' self-reports of symptoms.     

Handedness in a virtual haptic environment: Assessments from kinematic behavior and modeling

This study evaluated hand asymmetries in performance of a dexterous, controlled task under haptic feedback. Participants punctured a virtual membrane with a pushing or pulling movement, using the left or right hand. For pulling movements, the dominant (right) hand exhibited faster average stopping latency and shorter skidding distance. When the kinematic data were fit to a three-phase model previously applied to this task (Klatzky et al., 2013), the right hand exhibited faster force decay attributable to biomechanical factors. Analyses of the aggregated performance measures and model parameters showed that the left and right hands are associated with two different distributions, supporting handedness effects. Furthermore, while the majority of participants expressed right-hand dominance, which was consistent with their self-reported hand preferences, others showed partial or no dominance. This approach could potentially be extended to quantify and differentiate individuals with difficulties in manual behavior due to abnormal motor control (e.g., dyspraxia), progressive deterioration (e.g., Parkinson's syndrome) or improvement (neural regrowth after transplant).     

Ordinary Social Interaction and the Main Effect Between Perceived Support and Affect

Relational regulation theory hypothesizes that (a) the main effect between perceived support and mental health primarily reflects ordinary social interaction rather than conversations about stress and how to cope with it, and (b) the extent to which a provider regulates a recipient's mental health primarily reflects the recipient's personal taste (i.e., is relational), rather than the provider's objective supportiveness. In three round‐robin studies, participants rated each other on supportiveness and the quality of ordinary social interaction, as well as their own affect when interacting with each other. Samples included marines about to deploy to Afghanistan (N = 100; 150 dyads), students sharing apartments (N = 64; 96 dyads), and strangers (N = 48; 72 dyads). Perceived support and ordinary social interaction were primarily relational, and most of perceived support's main effect on positive affect was redundant with ordinary social interaction. The main effect between perceived support and affect emerged among strangers after brief text conversations, and these links were partially verified by independent observers. Findings for negative affect were less consistent with theory. Ordinary social interaction appears to be able to explain much of the main effect between perceived support and positive affect.     

Imperfection,Indecision, and Hoarding

Hoarding disorder is a new DSM-5 disorder that causes functional impairment and affects 2 to 6% of the population (Frost and Steketee 2014). The current study evaluated a multiple mediation model with 243 undergraduate women in which indecisiveness (VOCI; Thordarson et al. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42(11), 1289-1314, 2004) and decisional procrastination (DPS; Mann 1982) mediated the relationship between dimensions of perfectionism (F-MPS-B; Burgess et al. 2016a) and hoarding behavior (SI-R; Frost et al. Behaviour Research And Therapy, 42(10), 1163–1182, 2004) and excessive acquiring (CAS; Frost et al. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 8, 219–242, 2012). Multiple mediational analyses indicated a significant indirect effect for decisional procrastination, but not indecisiveness, in mediating evaluative concerns (but not striving) to SI-R Total, SI-R Clutter, SIR Excessive Acquisition, and both CAS subscales. Both mediators were significant pathways between evaluative concerns and SI-R Difficulty Discarding. These findings support a cognitive behavioral model of hoarding, suggesting that evaluative concerns produces problems in decision-making that influence acquisition, discarding, and clutter.     

Real-time generation of representations for cognitive models

Computerized models of human cognition and behavior have been used to help researchers refine their theories of cognitive processes. Two difficulties inherent in using these cognitive models are that building representations of to-be-modeled groups or individuals is (1) time-consuming and (2) prone to error when performed manually. The use of computerized tools to build representations for cognitive models could alleviate these problems. Such a set of tools has been developed and applied to the task of modeling individual aviation pilots performing flight maneuvers in real time. A study conducted with 27 pilots confirms the accuracy of the computer-generated representations.     

The Impact of Perceived Corporate Citizenship on Organizational Cynicism,OCB, and Employee Deviance

This study examines the effects of corporate citizenship at the individual employee level. Four distinct contributions beyond the existing literature are offered. First, the relationship between perceived corporate citizenship (PCC) and employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is further clarified. Second, the negative job behavior of employee deviance is considered as an outcome. Third, the attitude of organizational cynicism is positioned as a mediator of the relationships between PCC and the job related behaviors of OCB and employee deviance. Fourth, we disaggregate the PCC measure and explore its relationships with organizational cynicism, OCB and employee deviance. Findings illustrate that the four separate dimensions of PCC have differential relationships with the outcome variables.     

Reactions to AIDS and Other Illnesses: Reported Interactions in the Workplace

Previous research on the public's response to AIDS has been concerned with attitudes and knowledge in relation to the disease itself. The present study investigated American students' willingness to interact in the workplace with AIDS patients and compared this with their reactions to cancer and hepatitis patients. The effects of perceived control over the cause of the disease were also examined. Exposure to the diseases was manipulated with written scenarios. Results demonstrated that the type of illness affected a willingness to interact with individuals—AIDS patients were reacted to least positively, followed by hepatitis, and cancer patients. Perceived control over the cause of the disease did not affect reactions.