What Changes in Therapy? Who Changes?

SUMMARY

A central component of therapeutic change involves facilitating the capacity to move and be moved by the other. Another way of saying this might be that change entails experiencing a greater freedom of relational movement. The question of who and what actually changes in the process of therapy is the focus of the three vignettes that follow. They highlight, among other things, the recognition and acknowledgment of mutuality as an essential force within the relational matrix and the ever-changing landscape that this creates. Each of these examples of a change process bears, as well, a particular stamp of its own, and thus speaks to the unique personality of every therapeutic dyad.     

Centrality in children's best friend networks: The role of social behaviour

Centrality is an indicator of an individual's relative importance within a social group. Predictors of centrality in best friendship networks were examined in 146 children (70 boys and 76 girls, M_age = 9.95). Children completed measures of social confidence, social desirability, friendship quality, school liking, and loneliness and nominated their best friends from within their class at two time points, 3 months apart. Multigroup path analysis revealed gender differences in the antecedents of centrality. Social confidence, social desirability, and friendship quality predicted changes in the indicators of centrality in best friend networks over time. Boys' social behaviour positively predicted changes in centrality, whereas girls' social behaviour negatively predicted changes in centrality. Together, these findings suggest that some aspects of social behaviour are influential for centrality in best friend groups.     

Success with a twinge of distress: Antecedents and consequences of outperformance-related discomfort

Although outperforming others brings intrapersonal benefits, it may also carry interpersonal costs. The term Sensitivity about being the Target of a Threatening Upward Comparison (STTUC) captures the discomfort that outperformers may feel when they perceive that their success upsets an outperformed person. This paper reviews 20+ years of research on STTUC. It begins by defining STTUC and its three essential criteria. It then delineates situation and person variables that explain variability in STTUC. It follows by describing outperformers' varied reactions to STTUC and then explains the potential social function of STTUC.     

Extraverts categorize their daily experiences by specific social relationships

How an event is categorized may reflect the constructs that are cognitively accessible to a person. The present study examined whether extraverts categorized their daily experiences by general sociality (social versus nonsocial), specific relationships, valence, and academics/leisure. After reporting events during a one-month diary study, participants sorted their events into meaningful groupings. Extraverts tended to categorize their events by sociality and more specifically by the nature of their relationships with others. No other effects were found. Thus, what may be salient to extraverts is not just the time they spend socializing, but whom they are socializing with. This finding suggests the need to move beyond affiliation to study more specific social motives that extraverts may pursue.     

All's well that ends well? A test of the peak-end rule in couples’ conflict discussions

Despite its importance for well-being, surprisingly little is known about what determines how couples feel after a conflict. Using the peak-end rule, we examined whether partners’ post-conflict affect was mainly predicted by their most aversive or pleasant emotional experience (peaks) during the conflict, or by the emotional tone at the end of the interaction. One hundred and one couples engaged in a conflict interaction and afterwards evaluated their momentary affect during the interaction. Post-conflict affect (in terms of positive and negative feelings, and perceived partner responsiveness) was assessed immediately after the conflict, after a subsequent positive discussion, and upon returning to daily life (here, rumination about the relationship was assessed as well). Our results showed that the negative and positive peaks, but not the end emotion, predicted immediate and partly extended post-conflict affect in individuals. This finding has clinical implications for the mediation of couple conflict.     

Aerobic fitness moderates girls' affective and working memory responses to social exclusion

Because self-regulation skills are in development through adolescence, social exclusion can pose significant challenges to the well-being of young people. Thus, an understanding of factors that may ease the self-regulation demands of social exclusion is particularly important. One such factor is aerobic fitness. Using a quasi-experimental within-subject design in a sample of girls (N = 47, 10.4 ± 1.2 years), we examined whether affective and working memory changes following social exclusion differ by level of aerobic fitness. Overall, findings suggest that more aerobically fit girls may better regulate the demands of social exclusion than less aerobically fit girls. Specifically, girls with higher aerobic fitness evidenced smaller decreases in pleasant affect and larger increases in working memory performance following social exclusion than girls with lower aerobic fitness. This research extends understanding of how aerobic fitness may benefit well-being in young people.     

Social influences on cognitive processing in enacted social support: effects on receivers’ cognitive appraisals,emotion, and affiliation

Background and objectives. Social support is linked with psychological health, but its mechanisms are unclear. We examined supporters’ influence on recipients’ cognitive processing as a mechanism of effects of support on outcomes associated with depression.

Design/methods. 2?×?2 between-subjects experiment. 147 participants (1) experienced a negative event (false feedback); (2) received social support modeling one of two contrasting cognitive processing modes (abstract/evaluative or concrete/experiential); (3) generated explanations for the event, later coded for processing mode and internal/external causal attribution; and (4) reported on emotion, perceptions of self and future, and social affiliation. To examine relational effects, half of participants were led to perceive the supporter as similar to themselves via a shared birthday manipulation.

Results. Support condition influenced participants’ processing mode and causal attributions as predicted. Abstract/evaluative support led to more positive emotion and self-perceptions, and less pessimistic expectancies for the future than concrete/experiential support. Perceived similarity moderated effects on beliefs about an upcoming social interaction, magnifying positive affiliation outcomes of abstract/evaluative versus concrete/experiential support.

Conclusions. Processing modes that are generally maladaptive at the intrapersonal level may be adaptive (and vice versa) when they are interpersonally influenced, and perceived similarity may facilitate interpersonal effects of processing mode on affiliation.     

Towards a social-cognitive theory of multiple psychological contracts

ABSTRACT

Psychological contracts are typically conceptualized as an employee’s perceived terms of exchange with an employer. However, more and more researchers recognize that defining psychological contracts in such a unitary manner does not adequately reflect the complex nature of modern organizations and work. Most individuals likely maintain numerous work-related exchange relationships that are not necessarily confined within the boundaries of a single organization nor characterized by a traditional employment relationship. Contributing to this emerging body of research, we draw on social exchange and social cognition theories to begin developing a theory of multiple psychological contracts. Towards this end, we generate a series of propositions predicting that the relative likelihood of an individual holding a psychological contract with a particular individual, group, or organization as a counterparty is contingent upon degrees of perceived dependence, accountability and trust. We further predict the dynamic nature of the contents (relational, transactional, balanced or ideological) of these contracts and how it may evolve over time. As a whole, these propositions help explain how an individual’s attitudes and behaviours differ across psychological contracts and the exchange relationships they govern. This work provides an introductory foundation on which a more comprehensive body of future research can be built.