Hypnosis, suggestion, and placebo in the reduction of experimental pain

Two experiments compared placebo and hypnotic analgesia in high and low hypnotizable subjects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that hypnotic and placebo analgesia were equally ineffective in low hypnotizables, but that hypnotic analgesia was much more effective than placebo analgesia in high hypnotizables. Experiment 2 replicated these results, but also included low and high hypnotizables who were given a nonhypnotic suggestion for analgesia. Both the low and high hypnotizables in this group reported greater suggested than placebo analgesia and as much suggested analgesia as high hypnotizable hypnotic subjects. Both experiments found substantial discrepancies between the amount of pain reduction subjects expected from the various treatments and the amount of pain reduction they actually reported following exposure to those treatments. In Experiment 2, subjects in all treatments who reduced reported pain engaged in more cognitive coping and less catastrophizing than those who did not reduce pain. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

The effects of depression on structural aspects of the recall of prose

Investigated depressed patients' memory for stories. This indicated that although normal Ss showed particularly good recall for units central to the structure of the story, this did not hold for depressed Ss. In contrast, effects of centrality were comparable in high- and low-IQ Ss and effects of imageability of story units were comparable in both depressed and normal Ss. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that depressed patients do not use structure to organize stories when encoding them. A failure to identify central aspects of material and selectively recall them is likely to be a handicap to everyday functioning.     

Reinterpreting the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator From the Perspective of the Five-Factor Model of Personality

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI; Myers & McCaulley, 1985) was evaluated from the perspectives of Jung's theory of psychological types and the five-factor model of personality as measured by self-reports and peer ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI; Costa & McCrae, 1985b). Data were provided by 267 men and 201 women ages 19 to 93. Consistent with earlier research and evaluations, there was no support for the view that the MBTI measures truly dichotomous preferences or qualitatively distinct types; instead, the instrument measures four relatively independent dimensions. The interpretation of the Judging-Perceiving index was also called into question. The data suggest that Jung's theory is either incorrect or inadequately operationalized by the MBTI and cannot provide a sound basis for interpreting it. However, correlational analyses showed that the four MBTI indices did measure aspects of four of the five major dimensions of normal personality. The five-factor model provides an alternative basis for interpreting MBTI findings within a broader, more commonly shared conceptual framework.     

Effects of daily stress on negative mood

This article examines the influence of daily stressors on mental health in a community sample. Ss were 166 married couples who completed diaries each day for 6 weeks. In pooled within-person analyses, daily stressors explained up to 20% of the variance in mood. Interpersonal conflicts were by far the most distressing events. Furthermore, when stressors occurred on a series of days, emotional habituation occurred by the second day for almost all events except interpersonal conflicts. Contrary to certain theoretical accounts, multiple stressors on the same day did not exacerbate one another's effects: rather an emotional plateau occurred. Finally on days following a stressful event, mood was better than it would have been if the stressor had not happened. These results reveal the complex emotional effects of daily stressors, and in particular they suggest that future investigations should focus primarily on interpersonal conflicts.     

The development of structural complexity in the child's concept of family: the effect of cognitive stage, sex, and intactness of family

Twenty-eight boys and 28 girls at each of the Piagetian preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational cognitive stages were given an interview focusing on their concepts of family. Half of each group were from intact families, and half were from divorced families. Interviews were scored for two structural aspects of the concept of family: conceptual level, and use of dimensions that structure the concept. The complexity of children's concepts was strongly related to cognitive stage and, to a lesser degree, to sex. Frequency of use of concept dimensions was strongly affected by general developmental level, though not specifically cognitive stage, and by intactness of family, but to a lesser degree by sex. Specific information is provided on the effect of these factors on perceptions of family composition, parental roles, and breadth of family activities.     

Ask and You Shall be Given: Request Size and Donations to a Good Cause1

In an attempt to replicate the findings reported in this Journal by Weyant and Smith (1987), members or recent donors to a Canadian civil liberties organization were asked to donate money under one of three conditions: (a) In the control condition, they were simply asked for a donation; (b) in the “smaller request” condition, they were asked to make a donation, but amounts of Canadian $30 to $100 were suggested; and (c) in the “larger request” condition, amounts of $50 to $250 were suggested. Unlike the Weyant and Smith studies, we found no difference in the proportion of respondents making a donation, but significant differences in the size of the donations made by those making donations. In our study, the most effective way of getting large donations was to ask for a large amount. It was suggested that the most likely explanations for the differences in the results of the two studies were the following: First, our target population were previous donors to the organization, whereas those in the Weyant and Smith studies were not likely to have been. Previous research suggests that those who had been donors previously are influenced, positively, by requests for a specific large donation, whereas those not previously approached are, if anything, negatively influenced. Second, our “larger request” appears to be within a plausible range for donations, whereas the larger request in the Weyant and Smith study may have been seen as being outside of the plausible range. In any case, however, we would recommend caution in drawing a conclusion about the most effective request size to encourage people to donate money to charity.     

Understanding Seat-Belt Intentions and Behavior: A Decision-Making Approach1

In an experimental study designed to investigate a decision-making model of seat-belt use, 227 employees of an agrochemical company participated in a health information program in which they watched either a videotape on seat belts or a control videotape and completed questionnaires immediately afterward and at 3 months and 1 year after exposure. In terms of total effects, the seat-belt videotape influenced beliefs, fear, and intentions assessed immediately after exposure, but had no effect on self-reported frequency of belt use at 3 months or 1 year. A full path analysis indicated some support for the decision-making model. In particular, probability difference (the perceived reduction in risk of death or serious injury due to wearing a belt) had a large influence on intentions to wear a belt and partly mediated the effect of the videotape on intentions. Reported frequency of belt use at 3 months was influenced both by post-test intentions and by initial frequency of belt use. Similarly, belt use at 1 year was affected by belt use at 3 months and by initial belt use. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of subjective probabilities and habitual factors in seat-belt use.     

Critics and dissenters: reflections on "anti-psychiatry" in the United States

During the 1970s various professionals and social activists adopted an explicitly anti-psychiatry position which was perceived by many as a new phenomenon. Hostility to psychiatry actually predates the establishment of psychiatry as a profession in 1844, and organized opposition to psychiatric practices appeared in the late nineteenth century. The deinstitutionalization of the 1970s, which was aided by development within psychiatry, had a strong anti-psychiatry component, but the novel aspect was the organization of ex-mental patients themselves. By the 1980s the decline of psychiatric power, dissension among ex-patients, and new social trends vitiated the anti-psychiatry movement.     

Conceptualizations of valence and instrumentality: A fourfold model

Within the framework of valence-instrumentality (VI) theory, a fourfold model is developed to predict the contribution which is made by one outcome of an alternative to the valence of that alternative. The proposed model uses four subjective conditional probabilities which are based on the presence and absence of an alternative, and on the occurrence and nonoccurrence of an outcome. Valence is defined as the difference between the attractiveness values of the occurrence of an alternative (or an outcome) and the nonoccurrence of an alternative (or an outcome). Also, differences between subjective probabilities replace instrumentalities. Alternative valence-instrumentality formulations are analyzed in relation to the proposed fourfold model. The proposed model can be understood as a consistent application of Vroom's model (1964, Work and motivation, New York: Wiley), while other models are judged to be relatively deficient. The fourfold model, in combination with a matrix formulation of expectancy concepts, addresses a number of criticisms of VI theory and makes possible a test of the theory within the limits of its own assumptions.