RECONSIDERING RESEARCH ON DIVORCE, FAMILY LIFE CYCLE, AND THE MEANING OF FAMILY

This article analyzes functionalist and normative assumptions about marriage, divorce, family, and gender in developmental models of family life cycle. An interdisciplinary review of the literature in family development, family sociology, and family therapy reveals how a deficit comparison model implicitly informs the discourse in the study of single-parent families, women who are alone, and the adjustment of women and children to divorce. A feminist critique of family life cycle as the prevailing conceptual model in family development and therapy is presented, and postmodern definitions that deconstruct the concept of family are discussed. Future perspectives for research on family life and form are considered in terms of new action theory that considers divorce as a mode of resistance and change for women and families.     

Rorschach Responses and Aggressive Characteristics of MMPI F>16 Scorers

Psychiatric patients with MMPI F>16 scores (E group) were matched with patients having similar diagnosis but F scores of 3-12 (C group) to assess personality characteristics of high F scorers. In Experiment I, E and C group Rorschachs showed no significant differences on formal scored characteristics. E group patients marked a significantly greater number of “obvious” than “subtle” MMPI items. In Experiment II, there was no significant E and C group difference in Rorschach aggressive content. Data from the hospital charts indicated that F>16 scorers had a significantly higher frequency of overt, actively directed anger and suicidal behavior plus a greater total incidence of hostile behavior across a variety of categories.     

Comparative Diagnostic Judgments from the Rorschach and the MMPI

Three experienced psychologists made diagnostic judgments from the Rorschach, the MMPI, and gave an overall diagnostic impression for 50 male and 48 female patients. Judgment on the first test viewed was given before looking at the second test. Order of viewing the tests and sex of patient were counterbalanced. The results indicated (a) the judges consistently rated the tests on a given individual as agreeing on diagnostic impression significantly more often than disagreeing; (b) interjudge agreement was low but significant for the MMPI and overall impressions, not significant for the Rorschach impressions; (c) in cases of disagreement, there was a highly significant tendency for the Rorschach to be seen as indicating more pathology than the MMPI.     

Some aspects of perceptual coding of duration in visual duration discrimination

Data are presented which indicate two major differences between duration discrimination performance and discrimination performance usually observed in other psychophysical tasks. A decrement in duration discrimination performance with increasing temporal delays between the presentation of two successive stimuli was not found, and the usual difference in level of performance between forced-choice and single-stimulus tasks was not observed. The time-order error in duration discrimination is also discussed.     

Shame,guilt, and facial emotion processing: initial evidence for a positive relationship between guilt-proneness and facial emotion recognition ability

Shame and guilt are closely related self-conscious emotions of negative affect that give rise to divergent self-regulatory and motivational behaviours. While guilt-proneness has demonstrated positive relationships with self-report measures of empathy and adaptive interpersonal functioning, shame-proneness tends to be unrelated or inversely related to empathy and is associated with interpersonal difficulties. At present, no research has examined relationships between shame and guilt-proneness with facial emotion recognition ability. Participants (N?=?363) completed measures of shame and guilt-proneness along with a facial emotion recognition task which assessed the ability to identify displays of anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust, and shame. Guilt-proneness was consistently positively associated with facial emotion recognition ability. In contrast, shame-proneness was unrelated to capacity for facial emotion recognition. Findings provide support for theory arguing that guilt and empathy operate synergistically and may also help explain the inverse relationship between guilt-proneness and propensity for aggressive behaviour.     

Visual perspective in remembering and episodic future thought

According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, remembering and episodic future thinking are supported by a common set of constructive processes. In the present study, we directly addressed this assertion in the context of third-person perspectives that arise during remembering and episodic future thought. Specifically, we examined the frequency with which participants remembered past events or imagined future events from third-person perspectives. We also examined the different viewpoints from which third-person perspective events were remembered or imagined. Although future events were somewhat more likely to be imagined from a third-person perspective, the spatial viewpoint distributions of third-person perspectives characterizing remembered and imagined events were highly similar. These results suggest that a similar constructive mechanism may be at work when people remember events from a perspective that could not have been experienced in the past and when they imagine events from a perspective that could not be experienced in the future. The findings are discussed in terms of their consistency with—and as extensions of—the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis.