Affective facilitation and inhibition of cultural influences on reasoning

Research in South Korea and the United States examined how affective states facilitate or inhibit culturally dominant styles of reasoning. According to the affect-as-information hypothesis, affective cues of mood influence judgements by serving as embodied information about the value of accessible inclinations and cognitions. Extending this line of research to culture, we hypothesised that positive affect should promote (and negative affect should inhibit) culturally normative reasoning. The results of two studies of causal reasoning supported this hypothesis. Positive and negative affect functioned like “go” and “stop” signals, respectively, for culturally typical reasoning styles. Thus, in happy (compared to sad) moods, Koreans engaged in more holistic reasoning, whereas Americans engaged in more analytic reasoning.     

Father Involvement in Parent Training for Oppositional Child Behavior

Outcome literature (1981 to 1988) on behavioral parent training interventions for nonhandicapped children with oppositional behavior is reviewed to assess the extent and effects of father involvement in parent training. Thirteen studies were found that included some father involvement. Weaknesses of these studies include a failure to observe and measure changed in father-child interactions, a lack of emphasis on the impact of the marital relationship, a lack of attention to similarities in parental child management strategies, and a lack of assessment of paternal characteristics. Further research to assess the effects of including fathers on parent training outcomes can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these interventions.     

The Role of Government and Lobbying in the Creation of a Health Profession: The Legal Foundations of Counseling

The state and federal governments, along with private industry, play an important role in the development of a health profession. State governments establish training standards through licensure laws, and state programs dictate employment and payment opportunities. The federal government unifies a profession through recognition in national health care programs. Private industry provides public access through private health insurance. The counseling profession has spent decades opening these federal, state, and private programs to become an established health profession.     

Fragments of a Case of Psychosis: From Institutional Sheltering to Psychoanalytical Experience

This article describes a psychoanalytical experience that took place in an institution for mental health, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There, an art workshop was created in an attempt to welcome and shelter psychotic patients. This work space later proportioned a ''setting'' for the practice of psychoanalysis with psychotic patients. In the clinical case, herein examined, the author dedicates special attention to the relation that exists between certain psychotic aspects and the process described by Jacques Lacan as: the ''foreclosure of the name of the father''.     

Dynamic Regulation Responding to an External Stimulus: A Differential Equation Model

This study examines the dynamic regulation process responding to an external stimulus. The damped oscillator model has been used to describe this process. However, the model does not allow a nonzero steady state, even though the oscillations may continue and do not necessarily damp toward zero. This study introduces the driven damped oscillator model which has an additional parameter to identify different patterns of the steady state. Three methods, generalized local linear approximation, continuous time structural equation modeling, and analytic solutions of differential equations are provided to estimate model parameters. A simulation study indicates that parameters in the driven damped oscillator model are well recovered. The model is then illustrated using a data set on the daily reports of sales after a sale promotion. Potential applications and possible expansions of this model are also discussed.     

Violence as Worship: Religious Wars in the Age of Globalization,by Hans G. Kippenberg,trans. Brian McNeil,Stanford University Press: Stanford,CA, 2011, viii + 286 pp. ISBN 978 0 8047 68726, US$70 (cloth); ISBN 978 0 8047 6873 3, US$21.95 (paperback)

The author argues in this paper that the ‘state effects’ generated by religious movements – even those operating at the margins of societies – require us to consider anew the impact of religious movements on state formation. In Sri Lanka, for instance, evangelicals are a minority. Yet their practice of proselytizing to new audiences was considered ‘unethical,’ generating opposition that was directed not only at them, but also at ruling elites for failing to stem what was seen as an intrusion of incompatible ‘Western’ ideals. Instead of considering how such Christian movements seek to ‘take over’ the functions of the ‘state’ as has been the experience in the United States and parts of Latin America, the author illustrates in this article why it makes more theoretical sense to ask how their activities impinge upon the conceptual frameworks through which the ‘state’ is imagined.     

A pre-suicide state in an adolescent female 1

Abstract

During a pre-suicide state, the enactment of a suicide fantasy is the motive force. The nature and function of a suicide fantasy is explored in this paper in the context of the impact of puberty on the female body image and against the background of the pre-Oedipal and Oedipal father's relationship with his daughter. Case material from the analysis of an adolescent girl is presented to illustrate the crucial role of the father, in the transference, prior to a suicide attempt.

La force motrice qui sous-tend l'état pré-suicidaire est la mise en acte d'un fantasme suicidaire. Cet article explore la nature et la fonction du fantasme suicidaire dans le contexte de l'impact, chez une adolescente, de la puberté sur son image du corps avec, en toile de fond, la relation que le père, pré?dipien et ?dipien, entretient avec sa fille. Un matériel clinique extrait de l'analyse d'une adolescente est présentée afin d'illustrer le rôle crucial du père au sein du transfert avant la tentative de suicide.

Mots-clés: État pré-suicidaire, fantasme suicidaire, puberté et image du corps chez la fille, père pré?dipien et ?dipien, transfert, contre-transfert

Riassunto: Durante lo stato pre-suicidio, il motivo forza è la messa in atto di una fantasia di suicidio. Nell'articolo viene esplorata la natura e la funzione della fantasia di suicidio considerando l'impatto della pubertà sull'immagine del corpo femminile e sullo sfondo di una relazione pre-edipica ed edipica del padre con sua figlia. Viene presentato il materiale dall'analisi di una adolescente per illustrare il ruolo cruciale del padre, nel transfert, precedente al tentato suicidio.

Parole chiave: stato pre-suicidio, fantasia di suicidio, immagine corporale femminile e della pubertà, padre pre-edipico ed edipico, transfert, contro-transfert

Während eines prä-suiziden Zustands, ist das Ausagieren einer Suizidphantasie die motivierende Kraft. Die Eigenschaft und Funktion einer Suizidphantasie wird in diesem Artikel im Zusammenhang mit dem Einfluss der Pubertät auf das weibliche Körperbild und mit dem Hintergrund der prä-ödiplaen und ödipalen Beziehung des Vaters zu seiner Tochter exploriert. Es wird Fallmaterial aus der Analyse eines adoleszenten Mädchens vorgestellt, um die wichtige Rolle des Vaters in der Übertragung vor einem Suizidversuch zu illustrieren.

Keywords: Prä-suizider Zustand, Suizidphantasie, Pubertät und das weibliche Körperbild, prä-ödiplaer und ödipaler Vater, Übertragung, Gegenübertragung     

Trait anxiety and trait anger measured by ecological momentary assessment and their correspondence with traditional trait questionnaires

Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) of anxiety and anger/hostility were obtained every 25–30 min over two 24-h periods, separated by a median of 6 months, from 165 employees at a university in the Northeast. We used a multilevel trait-state-error structural equation model to estimate: (1) the proportion of variance in EMA anxiety and anger/hostility attributable to stable trait-like individual differences; (2) the correspondence between these trait-like components of EMA anxiety and anger/hostility and traditional questionnaire measures of each construct; and (3) the test–retest correlation between two 24-h averages obtained several months apart. After adjustment for measurement error, more than half the total variance in EMA reports of anxiety and anger/hostility is attributable to stable trait-like individual differences; however, the trait-like component of each construct is only modestly correlated with questionnaire measures of that construct. The 6-month “test–retest” correlations of latent variables representing the true 24-h EMA average anxiety and average anger are quite high (r ? 0.83). This study represents the longest follow-up period over which EMA-based estimates of traits have been examined. The results suggest that although the trait component (individual differences) of EMA momentary ratings of anxiety and anger is larger than the state component, traditional self-report questionnaires of trait anxiety and anger correspond only weakly with EMA-defined traits.     

Sick? Or slow? On the origins of intelligence as a psychological object

This paper examines the first moments of the emergence of “psychometrics” as a discipline, using a history of the Binet–Simon test (precursor to the Stanford–Binet) to engage the question of how intelligence became a “psychological object.” To begin to answer this, we used a previously-unexamined set of French texts to highlight the negotiations and collaborations that led Alfred Binet (1857–1911) to identify “mental testing” as a research area worth pursuing. This included a long-standing rivalry with Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909), who argued for decades that psychiatrists ought to be the professional arbiters of which children would be removed from the standard curriculum and referred to special education classes in asylums. In contrast, Binet sought to keep children in schools and conceived of a way for psychologists to do this. Supported by the Société libre de l'étude psychologique de l'enfant [Free society for the psychological study of the child], and by a number of collaborators and friends, he thus undertook to create a “metric” scale of intelligence—and the associated testing apparatus—to legitimize the role of psychologists in a to-that-point psychiatric domain: identifying and treating “the abnormal”. The result was a change in the earlier law requiring all healthy French children to attend school, between the ages of 6 and 13, to recognize instead that otherwise normal children sometimes need special help: they are “slow” (arriéré), but not “sick.” This conceptualization of intelligence was then carried forward, through the test's influence on Lewis Terman (1877–1956) and Lightner Witmer (1867–1956), to shape virtually all subsequent thinking about intelligence testing and its role in society.     

The Effects of Need for Cognition and Need for Affect on Partisan Evaluations

The voting behavior literature has advanced two prominent theoretical models of partisanship: the social psychological and rational models. Implicit to both stylized models is the assumption that all partisans process information similarly. Yet, growing research in psychology suggests that individuals possess different motivations when evaluating information. We propose that the applicability of the stylized models of partisanship is conditioned on individuals' need for cognition (NFC) and need for affect (NFA), with the social psychological model being most applicable to individuals who have a high NFA and the rational model most applicable to those with a high NFC. To test this proposition, we fielded a survey in which respondents who identified with the two major political parties in the United States (Democrat or Republican) were randomly assigned factual information that depicted either their party or their opposing party in a negative light. Respondents were then asked to assess the actions of that party and subsequently evaluate both political parties. We find evidence that is generally consistent with the proposition that the stylized models of partisanship are conditionally dependent on the extent to which individuals possess a need to engage in effortful thinking or a need to seek out emotions.