A dynamic approach to psychological strength development and intervention

Many practitioners working with clients from a strengths perspective largely rely on ad hoc interventions and employ a simplistic ‘identify and use’ approach. In this article, we suggest that clients can extract greater benefits when practitioners adopt more sophisticated approaches to strengths intervention. We introduce an alternative approach that we call ‘strengths development’. This approach is distinguished by the view that strengths are not fixed traits across settings and time (the dominant, contemporary approach to personality). Instead, we adopt dynamic, within-person approaches from personality science to research, assessment, and interventions on strengths. Specifically, strengths are highly contextual phenomena that emerge in distinctive patterns alongside particular goals, interests, values, and situational factors. Strengths are potentials for excellence that can be cultivated through enhanced awareness, accessibility, and effort. Finally, we outline potential psychological risks associated with the strengths perspective that are worthy of explicit discussion with clients.     

Emotional intelligence predicts components of subjective well-being beyond personality: A two-country study using self- and informant reports

This study aimed to examine the ability of overall emotional intelligence (EI) to predict cognitive and affective components of subjective well-being. University students in Germany and Turkey responded to self-report measures of EI, Big Five personality traits, life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect. Multiple informant ratings on subjective well-being measures were obtained to further support the validity of the findings. Results indicated a positive relationship between EI and affective as well as cognitive facets of well-being, with a closer association on part of the affective aspect. The incremental validity of EI was established in that EI predicted both affect balance and life satisfaction when controlling for the Big Five. Whereas participants in Germany reported better well-being than those in Turkey, personality traits and EI explained more variance in well-being measures in Germany than in Turkey. However, the relationship between EI and well-being did not appear to be culturally bound.     

Gratitude,forgivingness, and well-being in adulthood: Tests of moderation and incremental prediction

Following recent guidelines for moral personality research, this study sought to provide insights into how moral personality traits influence well-being in adulthood. Using a large sample of Swiss adults (N?=?962), we examined the roles of gratitude and forgivingness on well-being in adulthood (assessed as positive affect, negative affect, optimism, pessimism, and satisfaction with life). Our results point to three primary findings. First, grateful and forgiving adults report greater well-being in adulthood and these effects are not moderated by age, gender, or marital status. Second, both traits uniquely predict well-being when controlling for each other, suggesting the importance of studying multiple moral personality variables. Third, these two traits largely remained significant predictors of well-being when controlling for the Big Five traits. Results are discussed with respect to their place within current directions in moral personality research as well as how they provide a foundation for future work.     

Changes in anaclitic–introjective personality dimensions,outcomes and psychoanalytic technique: a multi-case study

This study investigates changes in latent mental structures along the anaclitic and introjective dimensions in relation to outcomes in 14 cases of publicly financed psychoanalysis. The method of prototype matching was adapted for personality assessment, and multiple outcome measures were applied. For the anaclitic cases, symptom reduction was accompanied by more mature integration of anaclitic and introjective personality dimensions, while the introjective cases showed symptom reduction without such improvement. This could indicate that sustainable change in latent mental structures is more difficult to achieve in introjective than in anaclitic patients. Further research is needed to validate these preliminary results.     

Emerging as a Personality Disorder Service

Personality Disorder Services working along psychotherapeutic lines are gaining appeal with Health Care Commissioners following the publication of the NICE guidelines for Borderline & Antisocial Personality Disorders and the emerging successful application of psychoanalytically-derived approaches.

Establishing a new Personality Disorder Service is akin to constructing a ‘home’ within which the therapeutic work with patients can develop. As clinicians, we are required to question what facets are important to the development of this new home, and to further to endure the unfamiliar state of being ‘not at home’ while the identity of the service is established.

We address how this process parallels the task facing the patient as they struggle to establish their own identity. We also highlight some important tenets in the work of securing a robust identity for both the service and the patient suffering from a personality disorder.     

A systematic review of the evidence-based psychosocial risk factors for understanding of borderline personality disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious personality disorder characterized by affective instability, impulsivity and interpersonal disturbance. Currently, intensive research is being conducted concerning the aetiology of BPD, including research on neurobiological, temperamental, psychosocial and cultural risk factors. This study focuses on psychosocial risk factors while other risk factors are taken into account in the discussion of the development of BPD. To our knowledge, no systematic review of the evidence-based medicine literature concerning this theme has been made thus far. However, understanding psychosocial risk factors of BPD is important in order to develop psychotherapeutic treatment models and methods. We provide a systematic review of the literature focusing on psychosocial risk factors for BPD. Utilizing this knowledge, we discuss how these data may be used when studying the development of borderline personality disorder and the treatment of borderline personality disorder.     

UNTANGLING FALSE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING ATHEISM AND HEALTH

Abstract In the past decade, the cognitive science of religion has worked to find an evolutionary explanation for supernatural belief. The explanations are convincing, but have created the stereotype that atheism is unnatural. In a similar way studies linking religious belief and health have vilified atheism as unhealthy. But belief is too complex, health is too nuanced, and the data are too varied to draw such a generalization. Catherine Caldwell‐Harris has developed a psychological profile to understand nonbelief as an expected outcome of individual difference and therefore natural. In a similar manner I argue that we should study the relationship between belief and health through the lens of individual differences. This approach is especially promising given recent research which indicates personality fully accounts for the relationship with well‐being previously attributed to belief. This approach has the added benefit of neutralizing the conversation by understanding atheism as the healthy expression of a natural personality.     

Individual differences and informal learning in the workplace

Informal learning is important in today's dynamic and competitive business environment. However, research on informal learning is limited and largely anecdotal. Based on theory and research on training and development and positive psychology, this study examined the influence of individual differences including the Big Five personality dimensions, generalized self-efficacy, and zest on informal learning. One hundred eighty managers from an organization that owns and operates casual theme restaurants completed online measures of individual differences and informal learning approximately one year apart. The results demonstrated that each of the individual differences had a significant relationship with informal learning. However, zest was the only significant predictor of informal learning when all of the individual differences were considered together. The implications of the results for research and practice are discussed.     

Characteristics of autobiographical memories and prospective imagery across a spectrum of hypomanic personality traits

Evidence of a strong causal relationship between mental imagery and emotion has informed psychological conceptualisations of disordered positive mood states (i.e., mania). Holmes et al.'s cognitive model of bipolar disorder asserts a prominent role for intrusive and affect-laden positive imagery of the past and the future in the amplification and maintenance of positive mood and associated manic behaviours. The aims of the current study were two-fold: (1) to test aspects of this model in a non-clinical population sampled for hypomanic personality traits and (2) to examine the phenomenological characteristics of positive autobiographical memories and imagery of the future. Undergraduate students (N = 80) completed a battery of self-report questionnaires and rated their positive and negative memories and images of the future on a number of dimensions. We found significant positive correlations between hypomanic tendencies and the (1) everyday experience and use of mental imagery, (2) experience of intrusive mental imagery of future events, (3) emotional intensity and sensory detail of positive but not negative autobiographical memories. Results are discussed in the context of their theoretical and clinical implications, and directions for future research are considered.