Practical and transcendent wisdom: Their nature and some longitudinal findings

A self-report Adjective Check List (ACL) Practical Wisdom Scale (PWS) and external ratings of Transcendent Wisdom (TWR), based on subjects' examples of personally important wisdom, were used to study the personality correlates and life implications of two types of wisdom among participants in their 50s in a longitudinal study of women. High scorers on both the PWS and the TWR were cognitively complex, perceptive, insightful, and healthily self-directed. Only the PWS was associated with social initiative and leadership, empathy, and generativity. Only the TWR correlated with openness to experience, intuition, and creativity. ACL data from young adulthood were used to show that both the women and their spouses increased on the PWS from early to mature adulthood. For women, we demonstrated how occupation (psychotherapy) and traumatic life events (divorce) contributed to these agerelated gains.     

Writers and critics: Two types of vocational consciousness in the art system

Vocational interests, personality, work environment, and background of authors and critics, male and female, in children's literature are examined in terms of Holland's theory of vocational types, supplemented with concepts of an art system and styles of consciousness. On SVIB indicator scales, both authors and critics score as artistic types with “consistent” profiles, but authors are more “differentiated.” Critics have stronger social interests and less aversion to conventional activities, appropriate to their position as gate-keepers in the art system. In work style there are again common features, but authors describe themselves as having “alternative” states of consciousness, where critics emphasize their social roles and rationality. Both groups have peaks on Achievement via Independence (CPI), but the critics are more socially ascendant, efficient, and conventional. Most critics have full-time employment under institutional auspices; most writers do not. Difference in occupations of fathers of authors and critics are consistent with interest patterns of the subjects. Several personality and background findings, including interactions between sex and field, are interpreted as supporting the usefulness of supplementing Holland's theory.     

A study of visual temporal size contrast

Stimuli exposed successively with an interpolated larger or smaller stimulus (IS) are subject to size-contrast effects to a highly significant degree. While stimuli nearer IS are, in general, more affected than stimuli farther away, there is some indication of paradoxical distance effect (PDE): Stimuli somewhat farther from IS are more affected than those nearest IS. Intermediate IS has a splitting effect in that stimuli above are judged larger, and those below are judged smaller, thus verifying the results with IS below and above the series stimuli. The relation of these results to figural aftereffects is stressed.     

Diary reports on emotional experiences in the onset of a psychosocial transition: becoming drug‐free

The process of becoming drug free is viewed as a psychosocial transition in the life of drug addicts. A specific form of treatment of heroin addiction within residential communities is based on the importance of interpersonal relationships for change. Well‐being of 65 drug addicts during the first 2 weeks in a residential community is explored using a time‐sampling diary which was completed four times a day. The influence of subjects' history, situational context, and motive activation on well‐being and emotions is investigated. Results show that well‐being and emotions differ mainly according to subjects' history, but not — at least at the beginning of treatment within the community — according to situations. This is interpreted as a ‘state of shock’ in the new environment and highlights the necessity for special individual care for subjects with a long drug career. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.