Happiness is an Emotion

Accounts of happiness in the philosophical literature see it as either a judgment of satisfaction with one’s life or as a balance of positive over negative feelings or emotional states. There are sound objections to both types of account, although each captures part of what happiness is. Seeing it as an emotion allows us to incorporate both features of the accounts thought to be incompatible. Emotions are analyzed as multicomponent states including judgments, feelings, physical symptoms, and behavioral dispositions. It is shown that prototypical happiness contains all these components, and each is explicated. The concept of happiness, like the concepts of other emotions, is a cluster concept. The features of such concepts are made clear. Happiness is shown to be similar to other emotions in many respects, including the phenomenon of adaptation, the “paradox of happiness,” and the existence of both paradigm and borderline instances. The account allows us to capture all that was right in earlier accounts while avoiding objections to them.     

Hash browns for breakfast,baked potatoes for dinner: Changes in food attitudes as a function of motivation and context

Two studies investigated whether participants' motivational state and the context in which attitude reports are made influence food attitudes. Specifically, these studies examined whether hunger and the time‐typicality of foods (i.e. match or mismatch between the time when a food is typically eaten and the time the attitude is reported) interact to influence reported attitudes. Study 1 suggests that hunger leads to more positive attitudes toward foods that are typically eaten at the time the attitude report is made (e.g. breakfast foods in morning) compared to foods not typically eaten at the time the attitude report is made (e.g. breakfast foods in evening). Study 2 replicates this time‐typical effect of hunger and suggests that time‐typical experience rather than general experience with foods is important for hunger induced attitude change. By demonstrating that food attitudes are influenced by motivational states and the match between when the attitude is reported and when it is typically encountered, the present studies extend previous attitude theory and research that has identified other contextual factors that influence attitude reports. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The “contact hypothesis”: Critical reflections and future directions

Research on intergroup contact has grown exponentially over the past decade. Such research has typically extolled the benefits of positive interaction between members of historically divided communities, particularly on outcomes related to prejudice reduction. Emerging work in the field, however, has qualified this optimistic picture by identifying three gaps in the existing literature. First, in everyday life, contact may be construed as a negative experience that increases rather than decreases responses such as prejudice, anxiety, and avoidance. Second, in real‐life settings, contact is often circumscribed by informal practices of (re)segregation that are easily overlooked if researchers rely primarily on examining structured contact and explicit processes using primarily laboratory and questionnaire methods. Third, positive contact may have “ironic” effects on the political attitudes and behaviors of the historically disadvantaged, undermining their recognition of social injustice and decreasing their willingness to engage in collective action to challenge the status quo. Although it is now a truism that intergroup contact can reduce intergroup prejudice, these developments emphasize the importance of maintaining a critical perspective on the “contact hypothesis” as a model for promoting social change in historically divided and unequal societies. They also lay the foundations for future developments in the field.     

Patients with bipolar disorder show a selective deficit in the episodic simulation of future events

A substantial body of evidence suggests that autobiographical recollection and simulation of future happenings activate a shared neural network. Many of the neural regions implicated in this network are affected in patients with bipolar disorder (BD), showing altered metabolic functioning and/or structural volume abnormalities. Studies of autobiographical recall in BD reveal overgeneralization, where autobiographical memory comprises primarily factual or repeated information as opposed to details specific in time and in place and definitive of re-experiencing. To date, no study has examined whether these deficits extend to future event simulation. We examined the ability of patients with BD and controls to imagine positive, negative and neutral future events using a modified version of the Autobiographical Interview (Levine, Svoboda, Hay, Winocur, & Moscovitch, 2002) that allowed for separation of episodic and non-episodic details. Patients were selectively impaired in imagining future positive, negative, and neutral episodic details; simulation of non-episodic details was equivalent across groups.     

The Future of Social‐Health Psychology: Prospects and Predictions

Social‐health psychology has made substantial contributions to health psychology and is poised to make many more in the future. Some new developments will come from empirical progress in theoretical and empirical social psychology that can elucidate the psychological mechanisms whereby social variables affect health. Others will come from technological advances, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, that will uncover mechanisms that underlie effects of stress, coping, persuasive communications, and other factors on health. Progress will also come from social psychologists’ increasing comfort with biological processes and measures, including genetics and neuroendocrine mechanisms. As such, social‐health psychology will not only continue to enrich both health psychology and social psychology, but increasingly be able to speak to intervention possibilities. Moreover, by virtue of its emphasis on psychobiological mechanisms, social‐health psychology leads the way for an expanding role of social psychology in the integrative science of the future.     

Developing countertransference awareness as a therapist in training: The role of containing contexts

The psychodynamic literature suggests that countertransference is an inevitable part of therapy and a significant feature of the client-therapist relationship. However, countertransference is also considered to be a ‘double-edged sword’: when it is reflected on by the therapist, it can offer valuable insights into the therapeutic relationship, but when it remains outside of awareness and therefore unmanaged it can result in the therapist unwittingly acting out in the therapeutic relationship and responding in counter-therapeutic ways. The purpose of this research was to explore the factors involved in the development of countertransference awareness in therapists and to construct a grounded theory of the process. Fifteen qualified therapists were recruited and interviewed, either face to face or via Skype, using a semi-structured interview schedule. The grounded theory constructed from the data suggests that during training participants initially experienced countertransference as threatening and overwhelming. When this experience was contained in supervision and therapy, the organisational context and by participants’ theoretical framework, they could reflect on their countertransferential responses and make sense of their experience, which then developed their self-awareness and other insights to the benefit of the therapeutic relationship. Conversely, a lack of containment in these domains resulted in participants acting out their countertransference and becoming either over or under available in the therapeutic relationship. The findings offer a useful process model on the role containing contexts play in the development of countertransference awareness for therapists in training.     

Effects of IQ on executive function measures in children with ADHD.

The present study compared children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and controls on a selected set of clinical measures of executive function (EF). A total of 92 children (51 ADHD, 41 control), ages 6-16, completed measures chosen from a larger neuropsychological battery to illustrate diverse components of the EF construct (planning, inhibitory control, response preparation, memory search). The selected measures were moderately correlated with one another, and moderately correlated with IQ. After controlling for age, sex, presence of learning disability (LD), ADHD, and IQ test version, Full Scale IQ was significantly related to four of the five selected EF measures. A second analysis showed group differences on the EF measures at different IQ levels. After covarying for age, there was a significant multivariate effect for IQ level (average, high average, superior) and a significant multivariate interaction between group (ADHD vs. control) and IQ level. Three of the five selected EF measures showed significant univariate group effects (controls performing better than ADHD) at the average IQ level; however, there were no significant group differences between children with ADHD and controls at high average or superior IQ levels. These results suggest that clinical measures of EF may differ among children with ADHD and controls at average IQ levels, but there is poorer discriminatory power for these measures among children with above average IQ.     

Alcohol expectancy multiaxial assessment: a memory network-based approach

Despite several decades of activity, alcohol expectancy research has yet to merge measurement approaches with developing memory theory. This article offers an expectancy assessment approach built on a conceptualization of expectancy as an information processing network. The authors began with multidimensional scaling models of expectancy space, which served as heuristics to suggest confirmatory factor analytic dimensional models for entry into covariance structure predictive models. It is argued that this approach permits a relatively thorough assessment of the broad range of potential expectancy dimensions in a format that is very flexible in terms of instrument length and specificity versus breadth of focus.     

Structured latent curve models for the study of change in multivariate repeated measures

This article considers a structured latent curve model for multiple repeated measures. In a structured latent curve model, a smooth nonlinear function characterizes the mean response. A first-order Taylor polynomial taken with regard to the mean function defines elements of a restricted factor matrix that may include parameters that enter nonlinearly. Similar to factor scores, random coefficients are combined with the factor matrix to produce individual latent curves that need not follow the same form as the mean curve. Here the associations between change characteristics in multiple repeated measures are studied. A factor analysis model for covariates is included as a means of relating latent covariates to the factors characterizing change in different repeated measures. An example is provided.     

The influence of alcohol expectancy priming and mood manipulation on subsequent alcohol consumption

Studies showing that verbal priming can implicitly affect alcohol consumption have been used to support cognitive models of expectancies. However, because expectancy words reflect affective states as well as drinking outcomes, mediation through an affective pathway remains theoretically plausible (i.e., such words inadvertently may affect mood, which in turn influences drinking). The primary pathway was identified (and expectancy theory was tested) by comparing memory priming (using alcohol expectancy or neutral words) with mood induction (using positive or neutral music); an unrelated experiment paradigm allowed the priming manipulation to implicitly affect drinking. Men in the alcohol priming group drank significantly more than men in each of the other conditions, and, consistent with theory, men with histories of heavier drinking drank the most when primed with alcohol expectancies, indicating that expectancies can function as automatic memory processes.