Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for personality disorders: a critical review of randomized controlled trials

The research evidence for Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) in the treatment of personality disorders (PD) was examined through consideration of studies utilizing randomized controlled designs. An extensive literature search revealed eight published Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) of moderate study quality. A critical review of this literature is offered to provide an evidence-based guidance for clinicians and implications for treatments are discussed. Preliminary conclusions suggest STPP may be considered an efficacious empirically-supported treatment option for a range of PDs, producing significant and medium to long-term improvements for a large percentage of patients. Further research is recommended to allow comparisons with alternative evidence-based approaches.     

Exposure as a treatment for social phobia: Some instructive difficulties

The main rules guiding the application of exposure to the treatment of simple phobias and agoraphobia are described, together with the four principal difficulties that came to attention when these rules were applied to the treatment of social phobia. These difficulties were: (i) specifying graduated and repeatable tasks; (ii) prolonging exposure; (iii) securing adequate engagement during exposure; and (iv) dealing with the cognitive aspects of social phobia. Solutions to these difficulties are described and illustrated from case material collected during the treatment of 45 socially-phobic out-patients. The discussion considers the implications of these solutions both for the treatment of other conditions and for understanding the processes involved in exposure.     

Mastery approach and performance approach: the differential prediction of organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance,beyond HEXACO personality

Goal orientation has become one of the most studied motivational constructs in the psychology literature. However, in organizational contexts, the research focus to date has largely centered on the relationship between goal orientation and task performance—neglecting the valuable contribution of non-task work behaviors, such as workplace deviance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) to organization functioning. In this paper, we addressed this gap in the literature by investigating the differential prediction of performance approach and mastery approach goal orientation on workplace deviance and OCB, beyond personality correlates. We hypothesize that performance approach orientation is positively associated with workplace deviance and mastery approach orientation is positively associated with OCB. A sample of employed participants (n = 114) provided self-reports of goal orientation, workplace deviance, OCB and personality. Additionally, participants nominated a well-acquainted peer to provide peer-reports of their personalities. When controlling for personality, performance approach orientation positively predicted workplace deviance whereas mastery approach orientation positively predicted organizational citizenship behavior. This study is the first to our knowledge to explore the relationships between goal orientation and non-task work behaviors and to show that goal orientation adds to the understanding of workplace deviance and OCB, beyond personality. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Believe in yourself: Manipulating beliefs about memory causes checking

One of the most common compulsions in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is repeated checking. Although individuals often report that they check to become more certain, checking has been shown to have the opposite effect – increased checking causes increased uncertainty. However, checking may also be thought of as beginning because of memory uncertainty. Beliefs about responsibility, over-estimation of threat, intolerance of uncertainty, perfectionism, and importance of and control of thoughts are already known to affect different aspects of OCD symptomatology. Beliefs about memory, however, are not currently considered to influence compulsive behaviour. In the current study, beliefs about memory were manipulated to test whether or not they affected urges to check. Ninety-one undergraduate participants received (positive or negative) false feedback about their performance on aspects of a standardized memory test, and then completed two additional memory tasks. Their urges to check following these tasks were assessed. Consistent with our hypotheses, individuals in the low memory confidence condition had greater urges to check following the memory tasks than those in the high memory confidence condition, demonstrating that manipulations of beliefs about memory can influence checking. Results and implications are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioural models of and treatments for OCD.     

The impact of psychological distress on absence from work

The aims of this study were to examine the impact of psychological distress on absence from work; to compare psychological distress and job satisfaction as predictors of absence; and to compare the relative effects of 2 components of psychological distress, depression and anxiety, on absence. Organizational records of absence over a 3-year period were obtained for 323 health service staff in the United Kingdom, who also completed self-report measures of psychological distress and job satisfaction at the beginning of the study and 2 years later. Psychological distress, particularly depression, was found to predict absence, with higher levels of distress predicting a greater number of days and number of times absent. Job satisfaction and psychological distress independently predicted levels of absence. The psychological distress-absence relationship was not moderated by demographic variables.     

Superordinate goals and intergroup behaviour: The effect of role ambiguity and status on intergroup attitudes and task performance

An experiment examined the effects of role ambiguity and relative group status in an intergroup situation where a superordinate goal was salient. One-hundred-and-fifty-six subjects in groups of three undertook a cooperative task under conditions where the groups' roles were clearly Different, Similar, or not allocated (Control). In addition, the groups' perceived competence at the task was either equally High, equally Low, or unequal. Financial rewards were contingent on successful completion of the joint task. Two contrasting hypotheses were derived from Social Identity Theory: one (H1) predicted most favourable intergroup attitudes in the Control condition where lack of any clear differentiation in group roles might facilitate a superordinate identifcation. In contrast, (H2) predicted least favourable attitudes in this condition on the grounds that groups lacked a distinctive identity. Support for the second hypothesis was found since friendliness towards the outgroup decreased with increasing role ambiguity. The status variable also had consistent effects. As predicted, mutual evaluations tended to reflect the consensually agreed status differences: least bias being shown towards high status outgroups, most by high status ingroups. Task performance was also affected by role ambiguity. Judges' ratings of the group products were found to be more favourable as role ambiguity increased, in contrast to the friendliness data. The implications of these findings for Social Identity Theory, the Contact Hypothesis, and theories of group performance are discussed.     

A comparison of semantic. acoustic and visual criteria for matching of word pairs

Ss judged the some pairs of words “same” or “different” under semantic, acoustic and visualcriteria. RTs were compared for each criterion, and the effects of different kinds of confusabittty, such as acoustic similarity in the semantic matching task, or semantic similarity in the acoustic matching task, were also studied.     

Language comprehension in old age

Three experiments examined the effects of aging on comprehension of spoken language. Integrative and constructive aspects of comprehension showed much more marked age-related deficits than registration of surface meaning. Experiment 1 showed that old subjects had difficulty in making inferences based on presented facts. Experiment 2 revealed a similar deficit in old people's ability to detect anomalies in newly presented information by reference to prior everyday knowledge. And Experiment 3, which tested story recall, showed that old subjects were less well able to extract and retain gist information than younger subjects. These difficulties are interpreted as reflecting a limitation in processing capacity such that the demands of concurrently registering surface meaning and simultaneously carrying out integrative and constructive processes exceed capacity in old age.     

Inferential reasoning in old age

Two experiments examined the effects of aging on the kind of inferential reasoning required in comprehending discourse. In Experiment 1 old subjects made more errors than young subjects in solving logical problems framed in everyday language. Unlike the young subjects they had more difficulty when the problems were spoken than when they were written. Experiment 2 revealed that old subjects are inefficient at extracting implicit information during reading; they fail to generate bridging inferences to supply missing information, so that comprehension is restricted to explicitly stated information. The results show that verbal reasoning ability is impaired in old age and that this affects language comprehension in both listening and reading although the deficit is more marked in listening.