Communication,conflict, and commitment: insights on the foundations of relationship success from a national survey

The key relationship dynamics of communication, conflict, and commitment were investigated using data from a randomly sampled, nationwide phone survey of adults in married, engaged, and cohabiting relationships. Findings on communication and conflict generally replicated those of studies using more indepth or objective measurement strategies. Negative interaction between partners was negatively associated with numerous measures of relationship quality and positively correlated with divorce potential (thinking or talking about divorce). Withdrawal during conflict by either or both partners, though quite common, was associated with more negativity and less positive connection in relationships. The most frequently reported issue that couples argue about in first marriages was money, and in re-marriages it was conflict about children. Overall, how couples argue was more related to divorce potential than was what they argue about, although couples who argue most about money tended to have higher levels of negative communication and conflict than other couples. Further, while the male divorce potential was more strongly linked to levels of negative interaction, the female was more strongly linked to lower positive connection in the relationship. Consistent with the commitment literature, higher reported commitment was associated with less alternative monitoring, less feeling trapped in the relationship, and greater relationship satisfaction.     

Decisions and the evolution of memory: multiple systems, multiple functions

Memory evolved to supply useful, timely information to the organism's decision-making systems. Therefore, decision rules, multiple memory systems, and the search engines that link them should have coevolved to mesh in a coadapted, functionally interlocking way. This adaptationist perspective suggested the scope hypothesis: When a generalization is retrieved from semantic memory, episodic memories that are inconsistent with it should be retrieved in tandem to place boundary conditions on the scope of the generalization. Using a priming paradigm and a decision task involving person memory, the authors tested and confirmed this hypothesis. The results support the view that priming is an evolved adaptation. They further show that dissociations between memory systems are not--and should not be--absolute: Independence exists for some tasks but not others.     

Commentary on Meehl and Waller's (2002) path analysis and verisimilitude

P. E. Meehl and N. G. Waller's (2002) proposed method may not yield unique solutions for model parameters nor unique solutions for model lack of fit. The author argues from a naturalistic-cognitive philosophy of science that science seeks objective knowledge and that hypothesis testing is central to achieving that goal. It is also argued that P. E. Meehl and N. G. Waller's proposal blurs the distinction between hypothesis testing and explorations of the data seeking an optimal model to serve as a prospective inductive generalization. But it is noted that inductive generalizations are never unique and must be tested to eliminate those that reflect subjective aspects of the researcher's methods and points of view.     

Does optimal recall performance in the adaptive memory paradigm require the encoding context to encourage thoughts about the environment of evolutionary adaptation?

This study examined whether encoding conditions that encourage thoughts about the environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA) are necessary to produce optimal recall in the adaptive memory paradigm. Participants were asked to judge a list of words for their relevance to personal survival under two survival-based scenarios. In one condition, the EEA-relevant context was specified (i.e., you are trying to survive on the savannah/grasslands). In the other condition, no context was specified (i.e., you are simply trying to stay alive). The two tasks produced virtually identical recall despite participants in the former condition reporting significantly more EEA context-relevant thoughts (i.e., the savannah) than did participants in the latter condition (who reported virtually no EEA-related thoughts). The findings are discussed in terms of (1) survival as a target of natural selection and (2) the role of evolutionary theory in understanding memory in modern humans.     

Classifying Dating Couples: Gender as Reflected in Traits,Roles, and Resulting Behavior

A cluster analysis was conducted in an attempt to uncover a taxonomy of specific gender-related, trait-role constellations within a sample of 117 pairs of men and women involved in serious dating relationships. This taxonomy was then used in predicting the extent to which men and women reportedly gave (or failed to give) affection and respect to each other during the 2 weeks prior to the study. The cluster analysis revealed three distinct groups, which were labeled Respect-Giving Reversed (Group 1), Affectionate (Group 2), and Traditional (Group 3) Results of multivariate analyses of variance revealed that, overall, significant behavioral differences existed among the three groups. Group 1 was characterized by low reported giving of affection and respect among women. Group 2 was characterized by high reported giving of affection and respect among men and women, and Group 3 was characterized by low reported giving of affection and respect among men. Implications for the use of empirically derived taxonomies in the study of close relationships are discussed.     

Integrating the ivory tower and the treatment institution

Although the application of psychoanalysis to the clinical understanding of, and work with, psychotic and personality disordered patients has developed significantly over many years now, the presence of such an approach alongside other treatment modalities in many treatment settings can often be poor and sometimes absent. This in part reflects the complexity of developing both theoretical understanding and clinical technique in relation to these patients and in many settings a combination of interventions might well be the treatment programme of choice. In this paper, the author puts forward a view that in relation to recent developments in contemporary mental health services, specifically in the provision of care and treatment for forensic and anti-social personality disordered patients and offenders, the application of psychoanalysis might have a particularly important role to play. The experiences of staff working with patients and offenders who project their unprocessed internal anxieties and conflicts into the external environment can often be difficult and disturbing. The author argues that this dynamic needs to be understood as a representation of the patient's unmanageable internal world and, as such, careful attention has to be paid to this sometimes toxic impact on staff groups and care institutions. He argues that an application of psychoanalytic principles has a unique role in this reflective task which should be seen as a necessary and crucial part of the treatment process.     

Validating Hand Test Acting Out Ratios For Overt and Experimentally Induced Aggression

The Hand Test Acting Out Ratio (AOR) was studied with respect to written measures of hostility toward self, task, and experimenter, and was used to test for aggression caused by experimentally induced stress. Wiggin's MMPI Hostility Scale was also compared with the Hand Test AOR. It was found that while the written measure reflected the effects of the experimentally induced stress, the AOR did not; nor did the AOR scores correlate significantly with the content-derived hostility scale. It was concluded that if one wants to find if individuals are angered by frustrating situations, simply asking them is a more effective and accurate method.     

‘Things said or done long ago are recalled and remembered’: The ethics of mindfulness in early Buddhism,psychotherapy and clinical psychology

I argue that current theoretical understandings of mindfulness as an attention regulation strategy for psychological stress reduction and enhanced adaptation to society may produce de-ethicised therapeutic applications. I show how understandings of mindfulness in early Buddhism, psychotherapy and clinical psychology have changed over time. Current understandings of mindfulness as a skill or technique of bringing non-judgmental awareness (or bare attention) to present moment experience are historically recent and differ from early Buddhist understandings in at least one crucial respect: definitions of mindfulness as attentional control or metacognitive awareness lack an emphasis on deep ethical reflection. As such, we need to re-ethicise our conceptual understanding of mindfulness by remembering early Buddhist texts, where mindfulness involves the cultivation of an ethically sensitive style of remembering, which has largely been lost in contemporary definitions.