When Suspicious Minds Go Political: Distrusting and Justifying the System at the Same Time

Drawing on the sensitivity to mean intentions model, we hypothesized that sensitivity to injustice from a victim's perspective (victim sensitivity) is negatively related to the acceptance of political reforms due to an inclination to attribute ulterior motives to policy makers. In Study 1 with a Canadian sample, initial evidence for this mediational model was obtained, as victim sensitivity uniquely predicted distrust of policy makers through general trait suspiciousness. In Study 2, victim‐sensitive Austrians and Germans ascribed sinister motives to initiators of an economic reform when contextual cues of initiators' untrustworthiness were given. This situational suspiciousness led them to subsequently oppose this particular reform, and it even generalized to the whole economic system by reducing economic‐system justification. However, in both studies, mutually suppressive tendencies toward both opposing and justifying the system occurred. This suggests that victim‐sensitive individuals may be torn between distrusting and endorsing the system because it can not only victimize but also promote a sense of security from victimization by conferring order.     

Temporal context, preference, and resistance to change

According to behavioral momentum theory, preference and relative resistance to change in concurrent-chains schedules are correlated and reflect the relative conditioned value of discriminative stimuli. In the present study, we explore the generality of this relation by manipulating the temporal context within a concurrent-chains procedure through changes in the duration of the initial links. Consistent with previous findings, preference for a richer terminal link was less extreme with longer initial links across three experiments with pigeons. In Experiment 1, relative resistance to change and preference were related inversely when responding was disrupted with response-independent food presentations during initial links, replicating a previous finding with rats. However, more food was presented with longer initial links, confounding the disrupter and initial-link duration. In Experiment 2, presession feeding was used instead and eliminated the negative relation between relative resistance to change and preference, but relative resistance to change was not sensitive to relative terminal-link reinforcement rates. In Experiment 3, with more extreme relative terminal-link reinforcement rates, increasing initial-link duration similarly decreased preference and relative resistance to change for the richer terminal link. Thus, when conditions of disruption are equal and assessed under the appropriate reinforcement conditions, changes in temporal context impact relative resistance to change and preference similarly.     

Inside and outside the window: some fundamental elements in the theory of psychoanalytic technique

The underlying concern of this paper is that psychoanalysis as practised today is in danger of losing its specificity and so losing its way. The author suggests this is possible for three reasons: the problem analysts face in responding to the strong emotional demands the great majority of patients necessarily place on them, the unintended consequences of the apparent success of 'here and now technique' and the absence of good clinical theory. The paper mainly discusses the author's ideas about some core elements of the clinical theory that all psychoanalysts must use when they are working and proposes (at the risk of being facile) some relatively simple heuristics related to them which are meant to be helpful. Recalling Kurt Lewin's maxim that 'there is nothing so practical as a good theory', he will suggest that continuous reflection on how one is using theory in daily practice is highly practical, if the theory is good enough. Theory in fact is a necessary 'third' in psychoanalytic practice which, if kept in sufficient working order close enough to clinical experience, provides an ongoing and very necessary check on our sense of reality. But, of course, as a third it can, like reality itself, be the focus of both love and hate with equally problematic consequences. The paper starts with a clinical example of a difficult but apparently successful analysis reaching its end, which will be used throughout the paper to illustrate and elaborate the theoretical ideas set out.     

Behavioral momentum theory: equations and applications

Behavioral momentum theory provides a quantitative account of how reinforcers experienced within a discriminative stimulus context govern the persistence of behavior that occurs in that context. The theory suggests that all reinforcers obtained in the presence of a discriminative stimulus increase resistance to change, regardless of whether those reinforcers are contingent on the target behavior, are noncontingent, or are even contingent on an alternative behavior. In this paper, we describe the equations that constitute the theory and address their application to issues of particular importance in applied settings. The theory provides a framework within which to consider the effects of interventions such as extinction, noncontingent reinforcement, differential reinforcement of alternative behavior, and other phenomena (e.g., resurgence). Finally, the theory predicts some counterintuitive and potentially counterproductive effects of alternative reinforcement, and can serve as an integrative guide for intervention when its terms are identified with the relevant conditions of applied settings.     

细菌耐药性及其防控中的理性思考

细菌对抗菌药物产生耐药性是自然界的普遍规律。抗菌药物的应用和研发与细菌耐药机制的发展互为因果且相互促进,细菌对抗菌药物的耐药性已对感染性疾病的治疗构成严重威胁。理性认识细菌耐药性产生的机制,并在其防控中进行理性思考是提高感染性疾病治愈率的根本所在。     

Working through and its various models

Working through is an integral part of the psychoanalytic process, one could even say its epitome. It is therefore always present in the work of an analysis but, depending on the various phases and constraints that arise in that process, changes are brought to its form, to the issues involved in it and to its economic dimension. The author explores three forms or models of how working-through functions in relation to the dominant feature of any given analytical process. In the first of these, the issue that has to be worked over involves insight into a repressed representational complex; in the second, work has to be done on bringing into consciousness drive-related impulses or mental experiences that have until then not been able to be represented, so that the analysis itself is the first occasion on which retroactive [après-coup] processing can be initiated; and in the third, when representation and some kind of symbolization of the subjective experience and the drive-related issues that are part of it have been accomplished, the analysand then has to appropriate these subjectively and integrate them.     

Self-criticism and unconscious grandiosity: transference-countertransference dimensions

The problems posed in understanding and working through the patient's layers of self-criticism are challenging for both patient and analyst. In particular, this paper explores some countertransference phenomena related to underlying grandiosity embedded in self-criticism. For patients who are self-critical, analyzing grandiose elements may create further grounds for self-reproach or open up new modes of self-experience and freedom. The paper tries to focus on how the analyst's experience of the patient's self-criticism often shifts over the course of analytic work. It is important for the analyst to not be crippled by a fear of considering the relevance of underlying grandiosity in relation to self-reproach. Understanding this dimension of self-reproach can help elucidate why it is so durable and refractory to interpretation. The patient has a stake in holding on to this self-punishment because it perpetuates self-regulatory fantasies. These fantasies sometimes relate to the feeling that the patient will be more successful or better loved by holding on to aspects of self-reproach. Sometimes these fantasies are based in competitive or dominant strategies related to winning out or retaliating over parents or siblings.     

Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior increases resistance to extinction: clinical demonstration, animal modeling, and clinical test of one solution

Basic research with pigeons on behavioral momentum suggests that differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) can increase the resistance of target behavior to change. This finding suggests that clinical applications of DRA may inadvertently increase the persistence of target behavior even as it decreases its frequency. We conducted three coordinated experiments to test whether DRA has persistence-strengthening effects on clinically significant target behavior and then tested the effectiveness of a possible solution to this problem in both a nonhuman and clinical study. Experiment 1 compared resistance to extinction following baseline rates of reinforcement versus higher DRA rates of reinforcement in a clinical study. Resistance to extinction was substantially greater following DRA. Experiment 2 tested a rat model of a possible solution to this problem. Training an alternative response in a context without reinforcement of the target response circumvented the persistence-strengthening effects of DRA. Experiment 3 translated the rat model into a novel clinical application of DRA. Training an alternative response with DRA in a separate context resulted in lower resistance to extinction than employing DRA in the context correlated with reinforcement of target behavior. The value of coordinated bidirectional translational research is discussed.     

The effects of constant versus varied reinforcers on preference and resistance to change

Previous research has demonstrated that factors such as reinforcer frequency, amount, and delay have similar effects on resistance to change and preference. In the present study, 4 boys with autism made choices between a constant reinforcer (one that was the same food item every trial) and a varied food reinforcer (one that varied randomly between three possible food items). For all 4 boys, varied reinforcers were preferred over constant reinforcers, and they maintained higher response rates than constant reinforcers. In addition, when a distraction (a video clip) was introduced, responding maintained by varied reinforcers was more resistant to distraction than responding maintained by constant reinforcers. Thus, the present experiment extended the generality of the relation between preference and resistance to change to variation in reinforcer quality.