More appraisal please: a commentary on Pfaff et al. (2007) "Relations between mechanisms of CNS arousal and mechanisms of stress"

This article provides a brief commentary on Pfaff et al's timely review of the relations between mechanisms of CNS arousal and mechanisms of stress. Pfaff and colleagues use the review as a platform to propose the existence of a coherent stress-arousal state. We suggest that this proposal is, on a number of grounds, flawed. In turn, we counter that the while the states of stress and arousal are related they are as entities fundamentally separate. Moreover, we propose that any productive attempt to unite the two states must acknowledge the importance of and therefore centrally include higher order integrative phenomena, such as, appraisal.     

Naturalistic Recovery From Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury: A Phenomenological Inquiry

The authors conducted a phenomenological inquiry of 12 individuals who recovered from nonsuicidal self‐injury without psychotherapeutic or medical intervention. Results indicated that participants’ naturalistic recovery emanated from their recognition of serious physical damage, corrective interpersonal influences, and movement from unhealthy to healthy surroundings. Implications of these findings for clinical practice and future research are discussed.     

Ethnography in Community Psychology: Promises and Tensions

Community psychology recognizes the need for research methods that illuminate context, culture, diversity, and process. One such method, ethnography, has crossed into multiple disciplines from anthropology, and indeed, community psychologists are becoming community ethnographers. Ethnographic work stands at the intersection of bridging universal questions with the particularities of people and groups bounded in time, geographic location, and social location. Ethnography is thus historical and deeply contextual, enabling a rich, in-depth understanding of communities that is aligned with the values and goals of community psychology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the potential of ethnography for community psychology and to encourage its use within the field as a method to capture culture and context, to document process, and to reveal how social change and action occur within and through communities. We discuss the method of ethnography, draw connections to community psychology values and goals, and identify tensions from our experiences doing ethnography. Overall, we assert that ethnography is a method that resonates with community psychology and present this paper as a resource for those interested in using this method in their research or community activism.     

The Epistemic Criterion: A Response to Michael Hand

This article is a response to Michael Hand’s critique in this issue of my response to his use of the epistemic criterion as the sole means for identifying whether or not an issue should be identified as controversial. I argue that he has misunderstood my intention in suggesting that I was seeking to replace the epistemic criterion. Rather my purpose was to challenge his over-confidence in the decisiveness of reason and to temper his use of the epistemic criterion by suggesting it needed to embrace ethical concerns.     

Less means more for pigeons but not always

When humans are asked to judge the value of a set of objects of excellent quality, they often give this set higher value than those same objects with the addition of some of lesser quality. This is an example of the affect heuristic, often referred to as the less-is-more effect. Monkeys and dogs, too, have shown this suboptimal effect. But in the present experiments, normally hungry pigeons chose optimally: a preferred food plus a less--preferred food over a more-preferred food alone. In Experiment 2, however, pigeons on a less-restricted diet showed the suboptimal less-is-more effect. Choice on control trials indicated that the effect did not result from the novelty of two food items versus one. The effect in the less-food-restricted pigeons appears to result from the devaluation of the combination of the food items by the presence of the less-preferred food item. The reversal of the effect under greater food restriction may occur because, as motivation increases, the value of the less-preferred food increases faster than the value of the more-preferred food, thus decreasing the difference in value between the two foods.     

Affiliation‐seeking among the powerless: Lacking power increases social affiliative motivation

Although it is well known that many people possess fundamental desires for both social affiliation and power, research has only begun to investigate the interplay between these two core social motives. The current research tested the hypothesis that an individual's level of power would influence that person's level of social affiliative motivation. We predicted that, compared with participants in a control condition, (1) individuals who possess power would exhibit less social affiliative motivation; and (2) individuals who lack power would display greater social affiliative motivation. Although we found little evidence to support the former prediction, we observed consistent evidence across two experiments that supported the latter. In Experiment 1, priming participants with low power (versus control) led them to display greater interest in joining a campus service aimed at fostering new friendships among students. In Experiment 2, placing participants in a position of low power (versus control) led them to seek greater proximity to a partner. Together, these results suggest that lacking power motivates people to seek social affiliation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparing two career adaptability measures for career construction theory: Relations with boundaryless mindset and protean career attitudes

We examined the constructs underlying the Career Maturity Inventory-Adaptability Form (CMI-C) and the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS). Data from 852 university students indicated that the second-order factors for both scales correlate .43, suggesting that they measure different yet related constructs. All three subscales of the CMI-C correlate most with the “concern” subscale of the CAAS rather than with the corresponding subscale. It appears that the CMI-C is a measure of particular career adaptability for choosing a career whereas the CAAS is a global measure of career adaptability for dealing with all of the tasks of vocational development across the life span. Regression analyses show that the CMI-C does not add to the prediction of boundaryless mindset and protean career attitudes over the CAAS. Relationships between the CMI-C and CAAS with entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career motivation profiles showed that the CAAS is more strongly related to boundaryless mindset and protean career attitudes, while the CMI-C appears to relate to more traditional (professional and leadership) career motivations.     

Inter‐Relationships among Different Types of Person–Environment Fit and Job Satisfaction

This paper investigates how different types of person–environment (P–E) fit work together to influence job satisfaction. One field study and a re‐analysis of Cable and DeRue's (2002) data were conducted to investigate the inter‐relationships linking different types of fit perceptions and job satisfaction. An employment relationship model describing how person–organisation values congruence (OVC), demands–abilities (D–A), and needs–supplies (N–S) fit perceptions relate to each other and job satisfaction is proposed and tested. Results support a model where N–S fit mediated the impact of both OVC and D–A fit on job satisfaction. Furthermore, OVC was related also to satisfaction both directly and indirectly, whereas D–A fit was only related to satisfaction via N?S fit.