Some Costs of American Corporate Capitalism: A Psychological Exploration of Value and Goal Conflicts

Evolutionary psychology has been proposed as a metatheoretical framework for psychology. We argue that evolutionary psychology should be expanded if it is to offer new insights regarding the major issues in psychology. Evolutionary developmental biology can provide valuable new insights into issues such as the domain-specificity of the human mind, the nature–nurture debate, stages in development, and the origin of individual differences. Evolutionary developmental biology provides evidence for the hypotheses that domain-general and domain-specific abilities co-occur, that nature and nurture interact in a dynamic and nonadditive way, that stages occur in development, and that individual differences are the result of pleiotropic effects during development.     

Projective identification as a communication its grammar in borderline psychotic children

This paper distinguishes between the grammar of wishes in neurotic patients and the grammar of imperative needs in borderline patients. The treatment of a borderline psychotic boy 30 years ago was uninformed by subsequent developments in technique arising from the theory of projective identification as a communication rather than as an attack or a defense. Issues that need addressing in borderline patients, especially those who are children, include (a) developmental delay, (b) the distinction between defenses and overcomings in the paranoid position, (c) rectification fantasies of vengeance, and (d) rectification fantasies of justice and other moral imperatives.     

Individual differences in nostalgia proneness: The integrating role of the need to belong

Who is the nostalgia-prone person? The ‘sociality view’ sees an individual who frequently recalls meaningful memories rich in social content. The ‘maladaptation view’ sees an emotionally unstable, neurotic individual. In four studies, we integrated these contrasting views. We hypothesized that the link between neuroticism and nostalgia proneness arises because (a) neuroticism is associated with the need to belong and (b) the need to belong triggers nostalgia, with its abundant social content. Consistent with this hypothesis, Studies 1–2 found that the correlation between neuroticism and nostalgia proneness was eliminated when controlling for the need to belong. The need to belong predicted increased nostalgia proneness, above and beyond neuroticism. Specifically, Study 2 revealed that a deficit-reduction (rather than growth) belongingness orientation predicted increased nostalgia proneness. When the role of this deficit-reduction belongingness orientation was controlled, the positive correlation between neuroticism and nostalgia disappeared. Studies 3–4 showed that experimental inductions of a belongingness deficit augmented nostalgia, providing support for its compensatory role.     

Retrieval-induced forgetting after trauma: A study with victims of sexual assault

The Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) paradigm is used to study how the repeated retrieval practice of particular memories impairs the retrieval of related memory traces. A study is reported where this automatic form of forgetting was investigated in a group of sexual-assault victims and a control group. Using a recognition-cued RIF task, the present study examined RIF with neutral, positive, negative and trauma-specific stimuli. Response time data showed that irrespective of previous trauma exposure, a RIF effect was observed for neutral material, but not for emotional material. No differences in RIF between the trauma group and the control group were found. Inconsistencies with previous literature and the implications for emotional memory are discussed.     

Behavioral Skills Training With Teachers: Booster Training for Improved Maintenance

Behavioral skills training (BST) has been employed within many different populations for the reduction of problem behaviors and acquisition of new skills; however, these changes have not always maintained over time. This study evaluated the effects of a booster training for re-establishing the classroom management proficiencies that teachers had acquired previously, but had declined over a 12-month period. The single-subject experimental results showed the booster training to be effective in re-establishing teacher performance of skills as measured by both analogue role-play and in situ postassessments within the classroom. These findings suggest that a booster training utilizing BST may be an important strategy for maintaining skill performance over time.     

Combating the mental health stigma with nostalgia

We report research implicating nostalgia as an intrapersonal means of warding off the stigmatization of persons with mental illness. We hypothesized and found that nostalgia about an encounter with a person with mental illness improves attitudes toward the mentally ill. In Experiment 1, undergraduates who recalled an encounter with a mentally ill person while focusing on central (vs. peripheral) features of the nostalgia prototype reported a more positive outgroup attitude. This beneficial effect of nostalgia was mediated by greater inclusion of the outgroup in the self (IOGS). In Experiment 2, undergraduates who recalled a nostalgic (vs. ordinary) interaction with a mentally ill person subsequently showed a more positive outgroup attitude. Results supported a serial mediation model whereby nostalgia increased social connectedness, which predicted greater IOGS and outgroup trust. IOGS and outgroup trust, in turn, predicted more positive outgroup attitudes. We ruled out alternative explanations for the results (i.e., mood, perceived positivity, and typicality of the recalled outgroup member). The findings speak to the intricate psychological processes underlying the prejudice‐reduction function of nostalgia and their interventional potential. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book reviews

Arvind Sharma, The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedānra: A Comparative Study in Religion and Reason. University Park, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995, viii+232 pp., £29.50, $32.50. ISBN 0 271 01032 0.

Niels C. Nielsen Jr (ed.), Christianity After Communism: Social, Political and Cultural Struggle in Russia. Boulder, Westview Press, 1994, ix+171 pp., £37.00, $49.95. ISBN 0 8133 2365 7.

Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volume 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, xi+744 pp., £45.00, $49.95. ISBN 0 521 43405 X.

Christopher Herbert, Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991, 312 pp., $48 (hardback) ISBN 0 1226 32738 8, $16.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 226 32738 6.

Clifford Geertz, After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1995, 198 pp., $27.50. ISBN 0 674 00871 5.

William Hamilton, A Quest for the Post-Historical Jesus. New York, Continuum, 1994, 304 pp., $27.50. ISBN 0 8264 0641 6.

Valerie J. Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics, and Saints in Modern Egypt. University of South Carolina Press, 1995, 377 pp.+ notes and index. ISBN 1 57003 055 3.

Margaret H. Case (ed.), Heinrich Zimmer: Coming Into His Own. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994, vi+ 148 pp., $24.95. ISBN 0 691 03337 4.

Tessa J. Bartholomeusz, Women Under the Bō Tree: Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka. (Cambridge Studies in Religious Traditions 5.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, xx+284 pp., £37.50, $59.95. ISBN 0 521 46129 4.

Philip C. Almond, Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, xiii+ 218 pp., £35. ISBN 0 521 45371 2.

George W. Stocking, Jr., After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888–1951. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, London, Athlone Press, 1996, xx+441 pp., $40. ISBN 0 485 30072 9.

P. F. Kornicki and I. J. McMullen (eds), Religion in Japan: Arrows to Heaven and Earth. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, xxv+315 pp., £40. ISBN 0 521 55028 9.

Michael Angold, Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni 1081–1261. 605 pp., $89.95 (cloth). ISBN 0521 26432 4.

David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996, ix+301 pp., $29.95, £23.95. ISBN 0 691 03375 7.     

Distinctive Preferences Toward Risk in the Substantive Domain of Sociality*

As with standard models of rationality, theorists generally treat prospect theory's demonstration of risk aversion in gains but risk tolerance in losses as domain‐general. Yet evolutionary psychology suggests that natural selection has designed a domain specific cognitive architecture—with systems specialized for some substantive domains but not others. Here we address risky choices through that lens asking whether humans' risk responses dispose them to enter social relationships even when doing so is counter to normative rationality and regardless of whether the “enter” versus “not enter” choice is framed as between gains and losses. Laboratory findings in five sites across three countries provide a positive answer to both possibilities. Participants could enter or not enter inherently risky social relationships. They were more willing to enter such relationships than rational choice models would predict and were equally so willing regardless of whether equivalent alternatives were framed as gains and as losses. With the “social context” extracted in otherwise identical games, participants' risk responses were consistent with prospect theory. The present findings suggest the possibility of adaptations designed to facilitate sociality—despite its risks and how those risks are framed.     

Engagement with meditation as a positive health trajectory: Divergent narratives of progress in male meditators

Objective: Studying personal narratives can generate understanding of how people experience physical and mental illness. However, few studies have explored narratives of engagement in health positive behaviours, with none focusing on men specifically. Thus, we sought to examine men’s experiences of their efforts to engage in and maintain healthy behaviours, focusing on meditation as an example of such behaviour.

Design: We recruited 30 male meditators, using principles of maximum variation sampling, and conducted two in-depth interviews with each, separated by a year. Main outcome measures: We sought to elicit men’s narratives of their experiences of trying to maintain a meditation practice.

Results: We identified an overall theme of a ‘positive health trajectory,’ in particular, making ‘progress’ through meditation. Under this were six main accounts. Only two articulated a ‘positive’ message about progress: Climbing a hierarchy of practitioners, and progress catalysed in other areas of life. The other four reflected the difficulties around progress: Progress being undermined by illness; disappointment with progress; progress ‘forgotten’ (superseded by other concerns); and progress re-conceptualised due to other priorities.

Conclusion: Men’s narratives reveal the way they experience and construct their engagement with meditation – as an example of health behaviour – in terms of progress.     

Transpersonal Psychology: Defining the Past,Divining the Future

Retrospective analysis of definitions published over some 35 years suggests the major subject areas of the field can be summed up in three themes: beyond-ego psychology, integrative/holistic psychology, and psychology of transformation. Theme frequency analysis reveals that early emphasis on alternative states of consciousness has moderated into a broader approach to human transcendence, wholeness, and transformation. This expanded definition of transpersonal psychology suggests the field has much in common with integral psychology. As a comprehensive, historically based content summary, this tripartite definition contributes a small but vital piece to the foundation of a transpersonal vision that is spreading across the globe. While transpersonal psychology still needs to embody the inclusiveness and diversity that it represents, its vision is one of great relevance to the contemporary human condition.