Comprehensive Soldier Fitness and the future of psychology

Psychology responded to the national needs in World War I and World War II and was itself transformed. National need calls a third time: unprecedented levels of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide, and anxiety along with a need for a resilient Army capable of meeting the persistent warfare of the foreseeable future. As a large part of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, positive psychology is meeting this need with new tests, with new fitness courses, and with resilience training. These developments may transform the practice of psychology and psychology's relation to medicine and education.     

A fugue in four voices: sounding themes and variations on the reflecting team

In this account of an on-going reflecting team, a group of 4 therapists describe how they preserve multiple perspectives, yet join their voices to create coherent, meaningful reflections. This reflecting approach emphasizes developing a theme and creating variations on this theme, in a manner resembling a musical fugue. In addition, the practicalities of creating and sustaining a reflecting team in a private practice context are described.     

Perceived past, present, and future control and adjustment to stressful life events

Perceived control is a central construct in psychology and is key to understanding individual differences in poststress outcomes (Frazier, Berman, & Steward, 2001). The goals of the current studies (using 4 samples of undergraduate students, total N = 1,421) were to examine the relations between different aspects of perceived control and poststress outcomes and to differentiate perceived control over specific events from related constructs (i.e., general control beliefs, coping strategies). To accomplish these goals, we first developed a new measure of perceived past, present, and future control over stressful life events. The data supported the content validity, factor structure, internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity of the new measure. Consistent with the temporal model of control (Frazier et al., 2001), these 3 forms of control had very different relations with adjustment. Present control was consistently related to lower distress levels in cross-sectional, longitudinal, and prospective analyses. Present control also predicted outcomes beyond the effects of general control beliefs and coping strategies. Past and future control had nonsignificant or positive relations with distress, although future control was associated with better outcomes (i.e., course grades) when the stressor was controllable. Thus, our measure can be used to assess the relations between perceived past, present, and future control and outcomes across a range of stressors. Because the relations between these 3 forms of control and outcomes differ markedly, measures that combine these aspects of control hinder the understanding of the important role of perceived control in adjustment to stress.     

A Vision for the Future of Counseling: The 20/20 Principles for Unifying and Strengthening the Profession

This article describes the development of the historic Principles for Unifying and Strengthening the Profession. An outcome of the 20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling initiative, this document delineates a core set of principles that unifies and advances the counseling profession. Principles for Unifying and Strengthening the Profession has been endorsed by 29 major counseling organizations.     

Test of a Factor Mixture-Based Taxonic-Dimensional Model of Anxiety Sensitivity and Panic Attack Vulnerability among University and Clinical Samples in Mexico City

The aim of the present study was to evaluate a factor mixture-based taxonic-dimensional model of anxiety sensitivity (AS) (Bernstein et al. Behavior Therapy 41:515-521, 2010), as measured by the ASI-3 (Taylor et al. Psychological Assessment 19:176-188, 2007), in regard to panic attacks, anxiety symptoms, and behavioral impairment among a university sample (N = 150, n _females  = 107, M _age = 21.3 years, SD = 4.3) and a clinical sample (N = 150, n _females  = 102, M _age = 39.0 years, SD = 12.0) from Mexico City, Mexico. Findings demonstrated cross-national support for the conceptual and operational utility of the AS taxonic-dimensional hypothesis (Bernstein et al. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 20:1-22, 2007b). Specifically, (1) the FMM-based AS taxon class base rate was significantly greater among the clinical relative to the university sample; (2) risk for panic attacks was significantly greater among the AS taxon class relative to the AS normative class; and (3) continuous individual differences in AS physical and psychological concerns, within the AS taxon class, were associated with level of risk for panic attacks, as well as panic attack severity and anxiety symptom levels. Similar AS taxonic-dimensional effects were observed in relation to degree of behavioral impairment across domains of functioning. The study results are discussed with respect to their implications for better understanding the nature of AS-related cognitive vulnerability for panic and related anxiety psychopathology.     

Driving without awareness: The effects of practice and automaticity on attention and driving

This research examined the development of proceduralised “driving without awareness” in a driving simulator by paying participants to drive a simulated road regularly over 12 weeks of testing. This longitudinal research paradigm is a significant departure from previous studies which have examined drivers in a conscious attentional mode using short experimental sessions or cross-sectional designs comparing expert and novice performance. During each session, participants took two “trips” on the simulated road; sometimes travelling on a “to and from” journey on one half of the road, sometimes traversing the entire road in one direction. A range of measures, including driving performance, vehicle detection, perceptual speed regulation, and hazard reactions were collected. The results showed the development of driving patterns and changes in object detection performance indicative of proceduralised driving. Speed and lane position variability quickly decreased with practice, as did participants’ subjective experiences of driving difficulty. Performance on an embedded detection task appeared to become a proceduralised part of the driving task, becoming highly efficient in later stages of the experiment. The changes in attentional focus and driving performance over time provide new light on previous research findings and allow us to critically re-examine several established models of driver behaviour.     

What Makes Politicians “Religious”? How Identity Congruence Shapes Religious Evaluations

How do Americans evaluate politicians’ religiosity? We theorize extra-religious “identity congruence,” the perceived correspondence between others’ group identities and our own, will powerfully shape evaluations. We test this expectation using data from two large, nationally representative surveys that ask Americans to rate the religiosity of prominent politicians. Consistent with our theory, the strongest predictors of how Americans rate politicians’ religiosity are their congruence on party identification and ideological identity as well as expected alignments with racial identity and Christian nationalism. Respondents’ religious characteristics are relatively weak predictors. And these trends hold regardless of Americans’ knowledge of leaders’ professed religious identity. Patterns are consistent with our theory even when we split samples by party. When we compare ratings between politicians who are widely regarded as irreligious to those who are regarded as conventionally religious, partisan congruence and racial identity largely mitigate the religious advantage of the latter. Racial identity also moderates congruence on key factors. Finally, identity congruence on party, ideology, and Christian nationalism follows expected patterns even among secular Americans for whom “religious” less intuitively implies “my group.” In a time of growing identity-alignment along partisan, ideological, racial, and religious lines, extra-religious “identity congruence” powerfully shapes how Americans evaluate politicians’ religiosity.     

Impressions of World of Warcraft players’ personalities based on their usernames: Interobserver consensus but no accuracy

Millions of people interact in the context of massively-multi-player-online-role-play-games (MMORPGs). Here we address whether MMORPG usernames convey accurate information about users’ personalities. Impressions based on email addresses show some accuracy but MMORPG’s are different because they provide little accountability, with little expectation that users will ever meet in person. We assessed consensus and accuracy in impressions based on 1357 (153 females) World of Warcraft users. Ratings of the usernames in terms of the Big Five dimensions yielded strong consensus (mean ICC = .46) but low accuracy (mean r = .01). Lens-model analysis suggest that features of the usernames have little validity, but observers used them anyway. Discussion focuses on why results might differ from those based on email addresses.