Positive psychology and war: an oxymoron

The author was deeply disturbed by the January 2011 issue of the American Psychologist, which engendered a series of emotions in the author: first dismay, then anger, and finally a sense of shame about the current state of the profession. This was ostensibly an exposition of "positive psychology" principles and how they are to be applied in a colossal experiment designed to support our military in their fight against the ideology of jihadist Islam. The author found it hard to see what was positive in the presentation. Not one of the authors in this special issue discussed applying positive psychology principles to the reduction of conflict between nations, to the prevention of war, or to the promotion of peace. How about a positive psychology that questions the wisdom of leaders who tell us that the use of force is unavoidable, and seeks instead to help them find alternative, peaceful solutions? A true positive psychology should be primarily addressed to eradicating the disease of war, not to supporting those who fight it.     

“Telling tales”: Using narrative in career guidance

In this article the authors argue for the importance of narrative-based approaches in career guidance work in an uncertain, unpredictable world. This requires a paradigmatic shift in thinking that can be too difficult, at present, for some practitioners. The article reports on the first phase of a collaborative project with a group of practitioners – working in guidance in schools and with young people in public access points – to develop and evaluate narrative methods. Our analysis highlights the usefulness of the approach, but also reveals tensions derived from the working cultures of career guidance practitioners.     

Integrating conceptual knowledge within and across representational modalities

Research suggests that concepts are distributed across brain regions specialized for processing information from different sensorimotor modalities. Multimodal semantic models fall into one of two broad classes differentiated by the assumed hierarchy of convergence zones over which information is integrated. In shallow models, communication within- and between-modality is accomplished using either direct connectivity, or a central semantic hub. In deep models, modalities are connected via cascading integration sites with successively wider receptive fields. Four experiments provide the first direct behavioral tests of these models using speeded tasks involving feature inference and concept activation. Shallow models predict no within-modal versus cross-modal difference in either task, whereas deep models predict a within-modal advantage for feature inference, but a cross-modal advantage for concept activation. Experiments 1 and 2 used relatedness judgments to tap participants’ knowledge of relations for within- and cross-modal feature pairs. Experiments 3 and 4 used a dual-feature verification task. The pattern of decision latencies across Experiments 1–4 is consistent with a deep integration hierarchy.     

Interteaching: the impact of lectures on student performance

Several studies suggest that interteaching improves student learning more than traditional lectures, but few have examined which components of interteaching contribute to its efficacy. We examined whether the lecture component of interteaching affected students' exam grades and cumulative point totals in a research methods course. Although students who received lectures had consistently higher exam scores than students who did not, the differences were statistically significant on only 2 of 5 exams. Students who received lectures, however, earned significantly more points during the semester.     

Getting it right generally,but not precisely: learning the relation between multiple inputs and outputs

In real-world situations, people are often faced with the complex task of deciding which of many potential variables are affecting their own or others’ behavior, as well as noting which specific aspects of behavior are being affected. Although it is common for professionals who encounter such conditions to claim that they acquire accurate and specific knowledge from their experience, it is unclear that such confidence is justified. Using a managerial task, we examined participants’ ability to learn how various interventions affect various aspects of their employees’ performance. The results of three experiments reveal that although participants appear to avoid prescribing an intervention that has a positive effect on a primary performance measure and a negative side effect on a secondary measure, when asked directly about the impact of the intervention, they respond by reducing their judgments of its positive impact. This was true regardless of whether participants indicated clear knowledge of its negative side effect (Experiment 3) or did not (Experiments 1 and 2). Thus, participants appear to be automatically integrating across the effects on different outcome measures.     

Common factors of change in couple therapy

Though it is clear from meta-analytic research that couple therapy works well, it is less clear how couple therapy works. Efforts to attribute change to the unique ingredients of a particular model have consistently turned up short, leading many researchers to suggest that change is due to common factors that run through different treatment approaches and settings. The purpose of this article is to provide an empirically based case for several common factors in couple therapy, and discuss clinical, training, and research implications for a common factors couple therapy paradigm. Critical distinctions between model-driven and common factors paradigms are also discussed, and a moderate common factors approach is proposed as a more useful alternative to an extreme common factors approach.     

Test publishers' perspective on "an updated meta-analysis": comment on Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau (2012)

Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau's (2012) meta-analysis of pre-employment integrity test results confirmed that such tests are meaningfully related to counterproductive work behavior. The article also offered some cautionary conclusions, which appear to stem from the limited scope of the authors' focus and the specific research procedures used. Issues discussed in this commentary include the following: (a) test publishers' provision of studies for meta-analytic consideration; (b) errors and questions in the coding of statistics from past studies; (c) debatable corrections for unreliable criterion measures; (d) exclusion of laboratory, contrasted-groups, unit-level, and time-series studies of counterproductive behavior; (e) under-emphasis on the prediction of counterproductive workplace behaviors compared with job performance, training outcomes, and turnover; (f) overlooking the industry practice of deploying integrity scales with other valid predictors of employee outcomes; (g) implication that integrity test publishers produce biased research results; (h) incomplete presentation of integrity tests' resistance to faking; and (i) omission of data indicating applicants' favorable response to integrity tests, the tests' lack of adverse impact, and the positive business impact of integrity testing. This commentary, therefore, offers an alternate perspective, addresses omissions and apparent inaccuracies, and urges a return to the use of diverse methodologies to evaluate the validity of integrity tests and other psychometric instruments.     

Joint Trajectories of Symptoms of Disruptive Behavior Problems and Depressive Symptoms During Early Adolescence and Adjustment Problems During Emerging Adulthood

The joint, longitudinal trajectories of symptoms of disruptive behavior problems and of depression were examined in a community sample drawn from neighborhoods with elevated rates of delinquency. Growth mixture modeling was applied to a 6?year transition period from childhood to adolescence, age 10 to 16?years, to identify latent classes of trajectories for each symptom type. Several classes emerged for the two types of symptoms, namely a group of youth with high levels of disruptive behavior, a group with increasing levels, and a group with low levels, as well as a group with increasing levels of depression, a group with high levels, a group with decreasing levels, and a group with low levels. Within each symptom type, membership in either the high or in the increasing classes was related to a variety of problematic outcomes during emerging adulthood. The co-occurrence of the disruptive behavior and depression classes was then evaluated using parallel process analysis. Youth exhibiting high depressive symptoms were at increased risk for disruptive behavior problems, and youth with increasing disruptive behavior problems were at risk for depressive symptoms. However, only a very small number of youth had both a high depression trajectory and a high disruptive behavior trajectory. Implications of the findings for the design of prevention and treatment programs are discussed.     

Caught in a bad romance: perfectionism, conflict, and depression in romantic relationships

According to the social disconnection model, perfectionistic concerns (i.e., harsh self-scrutiny, extreme concern over mistakes and others' evaluations, and excessive reactions to perceived failures) confer vulnerability to depressive symptoms indirectly through interpersonal problems. This study tested the social disconnection model in 226 heterosexual romantic dyads using a mixed longitudinal and experience sampling design. Perfectionistic concerns were measured using three partner-specific self-report questionnaires. Conflict was measured as a dyadic variable, incorporating reports from both partners. Depressive symptoms were measured using a self-report questionnaire. Perfectionistic concerns and depressive symptoms were measured at Day 1 and Day 28. Aggregated dyadic conflict was measured with daily online questionnaires from Days 2 to 15. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. There were four primary findings: (a) Dyadic conflict mediated the link between perfectionistic concerns and depressive symptoms, even when controlling for baseline depressive symptoms; (b) depressive symptoms were both an antecedent and a consequence of dyadic conflict; (c) perfectionistic concerns incrementally predicted dyadic conflict and depressive symptoms beyond neuroticism (i.e., a tendency to experience negative emotions) and other-oriented perfectionism (i.e., rigidly demanding perfection from one's partner); and (d) the relationships among variables did not differ based on gender. As the most rigorous test of the social disconnection model to date, this study provides strong support for this emerging model. Results also clarify the characterological and the interpersonal context within which depressive symptoms are likely to occur.     

Concurrent validity of an online version of the Timeline Followback assessment

The Timeline Followback (TLFB) interview has been used extensively in the assessment of alcohol and other substance use. While this methodology has been validated in multiple formats for multiple behaviors, to date no systematic comparisons have been conducted between the traditional interview format and online versions. The present research employed a randomized within-subjects design to compare interview versus online-based TLFB assessments of alcohol and marijuana use among 102 college students. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either the online version first or the in-person interview format first. Participants subsequently completed the second format within 3 days. While we expected few overall differences between formats, we hypothesized that differences might emerge to the extent that participants are more comfortable and willing to answer honestly in an online format, which provides a degree of anonymity. Results were consistent with expectations in suggesting relatively few differences between the online version and the in-person version. Participants did report feeling more comfortable in completing the online version. Moreover, greater discomfort during the in-person assessment was associated with reporting more past-month marijuana use on the online assessment, but reported discomfort did not moderate differences between formats in reported alcohol consumption. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).