Coping, locus of control, social support, and combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder: a prospective study

We examined the relations between coping, locus of control, and social support and combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The sample consisted of 262 Israeli soldiers who suffered a combat stress reaction episode during the 1982 Lebanon war and were followed 2 and 3 years after their participation in combat. Cross-sectional analyses revealed significant relations between locus of control, coping, and social support and PTSD at the two points of assessment. Changes in PTSD from Time 1 to Time 2 were also associated with changes in coping. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of the findings.     

Denial and Confirmatory Search: Paradoxical Consequences of Medical Diagnosis1

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of medical diagnostic-test results on illness appraisal and the recall of symptoms and behavior. Subjects were tested for a fictitious enzyme deficiency and were told either that the test result was positive (deficiency present) or that it was negative (deficiency absent). In addition, some of the subjects were told the test was accurate 95% of the time and others were told it was accurate 75% of the time. As predicted, subjects judged the enzyme deficiency as less serious and more prevalent when presented with positive test results. Subjects with positive test results also recalled more behaviors that had been labeled as risk factors. Although positive test subjects tended to report more deficiency-related symptoms, diagnosis did not affect the free recall of general symptoms. In addition, information concerning the reliability of the diagnostic test had no effect on judgments or recall but did affect information seeking. Subjects with positive test results were less likely to request a definitive follow-up test when their results were unreliable. The results are interpreted as evidence for independent confirmatory search and denial processes following medical diagnosis.     

Disarmament Decisions as Social Dilemmas1

The individual deciding on a nuclear weapons production policy is faced with a dilemma in which a choice must be made to support one of several conflicting defense policies. In order to investigate the social-psychological variables that are related to armament policy decision making, a telephone survey was conducted in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. Adult subjects (N= 110) responded to questions concerned with cognitive, attitudinal, and emotional responses to nuclear arms. Participants were also asked to choose a weapons production policy for the United States under conditions of continued and decreased Soviet nuclear arms production. Results indicated that respondents decisions about nuclear weapons production were related to their support for deterrence, the availability of their nuclear-related images, their emotional response to nuclear war, their attributions of responsibility for the prevention of nuclear war, and their political party affiliation. Distinctions between antinuclear decision-makers and pronuclear decision-makers are discussed.     

On the Integration of Nomothetic and Idiographic Research Methods in the Study of Personal Meaning

ABSTRACT This study presents the technique of self-investigation as a research tool for the study of personal meaning from the perspective of the general and the particular After reviewing the nomothesis-idiography debate, I argue that personality psychology can benefit from a combination of nomothetic and idiographic research methodologies This creates a need for new theoretical frameworks that incorporate both nomo-concepts, enabling the study of people in general and idio-concepts, enabling the psychologist to understand the particular world of the individual Allport's term “value” is reformulated as the idio-concept “valuation,” which refers to personal meaning in an individual's history The term “affect,” as a central component in the process of valuation, is treated as a nomo-concept The relation between the two concepts is demonstrated by studying specific concerns in the history of an individual as recurrent expressions of general winner and loser experiences     

The effects of contextual information and gender on the prediction of hypnotic susceptibility

Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) obtained empirical support for the hypothesis that significant correlations between questionnaire measures of absorption and hypnotic susceptibility are an artifact of subjects' beliefs about their own hypnotizability. We tested this hypothesis in a two-session experiment. During Session 1, subjects completed questionnaire measures of absorption, mystical experience, daydreaming frequency, and paranormal beliefs. During Session 2, subjects were tested for hypnotic susceptibility. Subjects were also exposed to one of three information manipulations: They were told about hypnotic testing either before or after filling out the questionnaires or were not told about hypnotic testing. The information manipulation moderated the prediction of susceptibility by the questionnaire measures for women, but not for men. For women, scores on the absorption questionnaire predicted susceptibility only when subjects were informed about hypnotic testing. In the told-after condition, this effect generalized to all of the remaining questionnaire measures. For men, none of the questionnaires was a reliable predictor of susceptibility.     

The recognition of threatening facial stimuli

Two studies examined the information that defines a threatening facial display. The first study identified those facial characteristics that distinguish between representations of threatening and nonthreatening facial displays. Masks that presented either threatening or nonthreatening facial displays were obtained from a number of non-Western cultures and scored for the presence of those facial features that discriminated between such displays in the drawings of two American samples. Threatening masks contained a significantly higher number of these characteristics across all cultures examined. The second study determined whether the information provided by the facial display might be more primary nonrepresentational visual patterns than facial features with obvious denotative meaning (e.g., diagonal lines rather than downturned eyebrows). The subjective response to sets of diagonal, angular, and curvilinear visual stimuli revealed that the nonrepresentational features of angularity and diagonality in the visual stimulus appeared to have the ability to evoke the subjective responses that convey the meaning of threat.     

Personality in adulthood: a six-year longitudinal study of self-reports and spouse ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory

Previous longitudinal studies of personality in adulthood have been limited in the range of traits examined, have chiefly made use of self-reports, and have frequently included only men. In this study, self-reports (N = 983) and spouse ratings (N = 167) were gathered on the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1985b), which measures all five of the major dimensions of normal personality. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses on data from men and women aged 21 to 96 years showed evidence of small declines in Activity, Positive Emotions, and openness to Actions that might be attributed to maturation, but none of these effects was replicated in sequential analyses. The 20 other scales examined showed no consistent pattern of maturational effects. In contrast, retest stability was quite high for all five dimensions in self-reports and for the three dimensions measured at both times in spouse ratings. Comparable levels of stability were seen for men and women and for younger and older subjects. The data support the position that personality is stable after age 30.     

The role of visual information in control of a constrained locomotor task

The nature of visually guided locomotion was examined in an experiment where subjects had to walk to targets under various conditions. Target distance was manipulated so that subjects had to (a) lengthen their paces in order to hit the target; (b) shorten their paces; (c) make no adjustments to their standard pace length at all. They did this under four visual conditions: (a) normal vision; (b) with vision restricted to a "snapshot" each time the foot that was to be placed on the target was on the ground; (c) with a snapshot each time the foot to be placed was in the swing phase; and (d) no vision after departure fro the target. The results show that the subjects succeed in reaching the target in most cases. However, the smoothness and fluidity of their movements vary significantly between conditions. Under normal vision or where visual snapshots are delivered when the pointing foot is on the ground, locomotion is smoothly regulated as the subjects approach the target. where snapshots are delivered when the pointing foot is in the swing phase, regulation becomes clumsy and ill coordinated. Where no vision is available at all during the approach, adjustments are made, but these are least coordinated of all. The results show that well-coordinated visual regulation does not require continuous visual guidance but depends on intermittent information being available at the appropriate times in the action sequence. Such timing is often more important than the total amount of information that is available for guidance.     

The development of locomotor coordination: longitudinal change and invariance

Developmental sequence, relative timing, center of gravity, and phase-plane analyses were used to study a minimum of 15 years of longitudinal, filmed data on the development of hopping in 7 children. The developmental sequences revealed common, qualitative changes in the movement of the children, although each child progressed through the changes at his/her own rate. The timing analyses showed that, in the advanced hop, the tightest limb relationships were found within the hopping leg, then between contralateral limbs of the same girdle, and then between legs and arms. Relative-timing calculations revealed (a) intralimb, timing invariances that were present in first attempts to perform the skill at age 3 and remained for 15 years across all developmental levels; (b) emergent, interlimb timings that gradually became invariant; and (c) intra- and interlimb timing showing gradual development over the 15 years. One invariant, the time between landing and deepest knee flexion, is also invariant in the walk and the run (Shapiro, Zernicke, Gregor, & Diestel, 1981). Phase plane analyses indicated that the timing of peak and zero velocities may be the coordinative constant accounting for a relative timing invariance between the two legs. Position of the body's center of gravity may explain the invariant relative time between landing and deepest knee flexion, or the explanation could lie in the "equation of constraint" regulating joint equilibrium points. The data suggest that modeling the developing hop as the evolving interaction of four vibratory systems would be promising.