Cognitive Mediators of Treatment for Social Anxiety Disorder: Comparing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Objective

To assess the relationship between session-by-session mediators and treatment outcomes in traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for social anxiety disorder.

Method

Session-by-session changes in negative cognitions (a theorized mediator of CBT) and experiential avoidance (a theorized mediator of ACT) were assessed in 50 adult outpatients randomized to CBT (n = 25) or ACT (n = 25) for DSM-IV social anxiety disorder.

Results

Multilevel modeling analyses revealed significant nonlinear decreases in the proposed mediators in both treatments, with ACT showing steeper decline than CBT at the beginning of treatment and CBT showing steeper decline than ACT at the end of treatment. Curvature (or the nonlinear effect) of experiential avoidance during treatment significantly mediated posttreatment social anxiety symptoms and anhedonic depression in ACT, but not in CBT, with steeper decline of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire at the beginning of treatment predicting fewer symptoms in ACT only. Curvature of negative cognitions during both treatments predicted outcome, with steeper decline of negative cognitions at the beginning of treatment predicting lower posttreatment social anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Conclusions

Rate of change in negative cognitions at the beginning of treatment is an important predictor of change across both ACT and CBT, whereas rate of change in experiential avoidance at the beginning of treatment is a mechanism specific to ACT.     

The Complexity of Quest in Emerging Adults’ Religiosity,Well‐Being,and Identity

The construct of quest as measured by the Quest Scale raises complexities that this study addressed with online surveys measuring religiosity, ego identity, and well‐being of graduates from two Christian colleges. Intrinsic questers (those above the scale midpoint in intrinsic and quest scores but below the extrinsic midpoint) made up over half of those high in intrinsic religiosity and did not differ in Christian orthodoxy, religious identity, religious coping, or well‐being from the pure intrinsics (those high in intrinsic religiosity). Indiscriminately pro‐religious questing individuals (those high in intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity and quest) were less religious and showed poorer coping than intrinsic questers. Quest appears to be a reasonable measure of religious orientation, improving prediction of Christian orthodoxy, religious identity, and religious coping, and was more highly correlated with ego identity exploration than with stress. In association with intrinsic religiosity quest does not appear to indicate weak religiosity or poor well‐being. Instead, intrinsic questers may pursue a distinctive developmental trajectory, a path of existential searching by which emerging adults manage the demands of contemporary culture while maintaining a mature faith.     

Outcome producing potential influences twelve-month-olds’ interpretation of a novel action as goal-directed

Learning about a novel, goal-directed action is a complex process. It requires identifying the outcome of the action and linking the action to its outcome for later use in new situations to predict the action or to anticipate its outcome. We investigated the hypothesis that linking a novel action to a salient change in the environment is critical for infants to assign a goal to the novel action. We report a study in which we show that 12-month-old infants, who were provided with prior experience with a novel action accompanied with a salient visible outcome in one context, can interpret the same action as goal-directed even in the absence of the outcome in another context. Our control condition shows that prior experience with the action, but without the salient effect, does not lead to goal-directed interpretation of the novel action. We also found that, for the case of 9-month-olds infants, prior experience with the outcome producing potential of the novel action does not facilitate a goal-directed interpretation of the action. However, this failure was possibly due to difficulties with generalizing the learnt association to another context rather than with linking the action to its outcome.     

The dark side of consecutive high performance goals: Linking goal setting,depletion, and unethical behavior

Over 40 years of research on the effects of goal setting has demonstrated that high goals can increase performance by motivating people, directing their attention to a target, and increasing their persistence (Locke & Latham, 2002). However, recent research has introduced a dark side of goal setting by linking high performance goals to unethical behavior (e.g., Schweitzer, Ordóñez, & Douma, 2004). In this paper, we integrate self-regulatory resource theories with behavioral ethics research exploring the dark side of goal setting to suggest that the very mechanisms through which goals are theorized to increase performance can lead to unethical behavior by depleting self-regulatory resources across consecutive goal periods. Results of a laboratory experiment utilizing high, low, increasing, decreasing, and “do your best” goal structures across multiple rounds provide evidence that depletion mediates the relationship between goal structures and unethical behavior, and that this effect is moderated by the number of consecutive goals assigned.     

Desire for a positive moral self-regard exacerbates escalation of commitment to initiatives with prosocial aims

Across three experiments, people escalated commitment more frequently to a failing prosocial initiative (i.e., an initiative that had the primary aim of improving the outcomes of others in need) than they did to a failing egoistic initiative (i.e., an initiative that had the primary aim of improving the outcomes of the decision-maker). A test of mediation (Study 1b) and a test of moderation (Study 2) each provided evidence that a desire for a positive moral self-regard underlies people’s tendency to escalate commitment more frequently to failing prosocial initiatives than to failing egoistic initiatives. We discuss the implications of these findings for the resource-allocation decisions that people and organizations face when undertaking initiatives with prosocial aims.     

Catching nonconscious goals in the act of decision making

Research has consistently found that goals triggered by environmental cues can influence decision making processes outside of conscious awareness. This lack of awareness led naturally to the presumption that decision makers could not report the activation level of nonconsciously primed goals. This paper shows that goal activation levels can be reported, so long as the report is made during the decision process on a continuous goal activation scale. These results indicate that default lack of awareness is less a limitation of the cognitive system and more a function of the method used to recover goals during a decision process.     

Predicting Behavioral Career Commitment of College Students With Attachment and Separation Relationships

This study compares the behavioral and attitudinal career commitment of college students, then examines the influences of parental attachment and separation on career commitment. Undergraduates (N = 195) from 3 academic programs were surveyed: a combined degree program that accepts students simultaneously into bachelor's and medical programs, premedical curriculum alone, and general university enrollment. Behavioral career commitment (enrollment in one of the aforementioned programs) correlated with attitudinal commitment for the combined degree and general enrollment groups. Greater attachment to father and less separation from parents were associated with lower career commitment for men. Attachment and separation did not predict career commitment for women.     

The Interactive Effects of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness on Career Commitment

In the last few decades, considerable research has focused on the effects of trait interactions on job performance, but only a few studies have examined trait interaction effects on career commitment. This study investigates the interactive effects of conscientiousness and agreeableness on career commitment and its 3 facets of career identity, career resilience, and career planning in a sample of 254 employees in North India. Results suggest a partial interaction effect of conscientiousness and agreeableness on career commitment. Trait interactions were seen as significant predictors of career resilience in the Indian context. The authors discuss implications for research, theory, and practice.     

Dual commitment profiles and job satisfaction among temporary agency workers

Temporary agency workers (TAWs) are an ever-increasing type of employees which establish a double work relationship with both the agency and the client organization. Within this context, the concept of dual commitment has received considerable attention in the last years. The present contribution integrates dual commitment line of research with the one adopting a person-centered approach to the study of commitment configurations, to investigate commitment profiles on a large sample of TAWs. According to Sinclair et al.'s framework, we aimed to identify TAWs' commitment profiles based on their levels of dual affective commitment (to the agency and to the client organization) and on their general continuance commitment and to investigate differences in job satisfaction among profiles. Latent profile analyses on 7225 TAWs revealed 5 distinct profiles, namely Dually Free Agents, Dually Involved, Dually Allied, (Unilaterally) Client Allied and (Unilaterally) Agency Invested. The Dually Involved profile, followed by the Dually Allied profile, had the highest level of job satisfaction, whereas the Dually Free Agent profile and the (Unilaterally) Agency Invested had the lowest. Furthermore, the (Unilaterally) Client Allied group had a higher level of job satisfaction as compared to the (Unilaterally) Agency Invested profile. Implications are discussed.     

Are organisational politics responsible for turnover intention in French Firefighters?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of different facets of perceived organisational politics and workplace attitudes onto turnover intention in the French Fire and Rescue service.MethodologyAn electronic survey was administered to fire department employees (n = 255) to investigate the effects of different forms of perceived organisational politics (POP) onto turnover intention, and test for mediation by affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction with structural equation modelling (Lisrel 8.80).FindingsBoth pay-and-promotion and general perceived organisational politics indirectly predicted turnover intention in French firefighters, although the total effect of pay-and-promotion politics was greater than general politics. Affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction mediated the effect of perceived organisational politics onto turnover intention.Practical implicationsPublic organisations, which have recently undergone reorganisations, should monitor perceptions of organisational politics to better understand the association with attitudes (such as affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction), as well as to predict turnover intention.Originality/valueThe study goes expands on the identification of various turnover intention's antecedents to contribute to consider understanding of its reasons, such as perceived organisational politics, where pay-and-promotion politics appears to be more salient factor than general politics. Affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction mediate the effects of POP onto turnover intention with nuanced effects. We also generated support for the order of factors in the model, where job satisfaction is a first-order predictor of turnover intention and organisational commitment second-order one. The POP Scale (Kacmar & Ferris, 1991) was validated in French.