Automatic affective-motivational regulation processes underlying supportive dyadic coping: the role of increased implicit positive attitudes toward communal goals in response to a stressed relationship partner

Background and objectives: We examined the implicit affective mechanisms underlying provision of support in intimate dyads. Specifically, we hypothesized that in individuals with high relationship satisfaction, the perception that one’s partner is stressed leads to increased implicit positive attitudes toward communal goals. In turn, this change in implicit attitudes facilitates supportive behavior.

Design and methods: In two studies, we induced partner stress by instructing participants to either recall a situation where their partner was highly stressed (Study 1; N?=?47 university students) or imagine a specific stressful event (excessive workload; Study 2; N?=?85 university students). Subsequently, implicit attitudes toward communal goals were assessed with an Implicit Association Test.

Results: In both studies, we found that among participants with high relationship satisfaction partner stress increases preferences for communal goals. In addition, implicit preferences for communal goals predicted stronger inclinations to engage in supportive dyadic coping (Study 2).

Conclusions: The current findings provide important insights into the implicit cognitive-affective mechanics of dyadic coping. Moreover, they can explain how people manage to avoid experiencing motivational conflicts between partner-oriented and self-oriented goals in situations characterized by high partner stress.     

Socially oriented achievement goals of Chinese university students in Singapore: structure and relationships with achievement motives, goals and affective outcomes

Contemporary literature on culture, self, and motivations (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) suggests that in collectivistic cultures, individual achievement is interdependent of one's social others. We proposed that this cultural characteristic could be exemplified in the achievement goal orientation and tested the notion with university students in a collectivistic community-Singapore. A socially oriented achievement goal construct was developed by taking into consideration the significant social others in the students' lives. A measuring instrument was established with a sample of Singaporean Chinese university students (N = 196; 144 females and 52 males); its relationships to achievement motives, goals, and consequences were examined. Although the socially oriented achievement goal items were originally constructed from four categories of social others, confirmatory factor analysis suggested a unifactor structure. Results showed that the socially oriented goal was related positively with students' performance goal, mastery goal, and competitive motive; it bore no relationship to mastery motive, work ethic, and interest in learning; and it predicted negatively future engagement. After the effects of mastery and performance goals were controlled for, the socially oriented goal did not predict test anxiety.     

Academic achievement in the Chinese context: the role of goals, strategies, and effort

Previous studies have suggested that Western constructs of academic motivation may operate in different ways in Asian contexts due to differences in the cultural environment. In the present study, the integrative effects of achievement goals, strategy orientations, and effort expenditure on achievement outcomes were examined among 1950 seventh-grade Chinese students in Hong Kong. Participants completed separate questionnaires for mathematics and English. Results for the two subjects were largely similar. There were significant positive relationships between mastery and performance goals, between cooperative and competitive orientations, as well as between understanding and memorizing strategies. Regression analyses further revealed that goals and strategies were highly predictive of effort expenditure, but only goals and effort significantly predicted achievement outcome, with strategies being barely significant. The need to further investigate how Chinese students reconcile the apparently antithetical orientations in learning as well as the effective strategies contributing to their learning is indicated.     

The analytic situation as a dynamic field. 1969

This paper discusses the consequences of the importance that recent ³ papers assign to the countertransference. When the latter acquires a theoretical and technical value equal to that of the transference, the analytic situation is configured as a dynamic bi‐personal field, and the phenomena occurring in it need to be formulated in bi‐personal terms. First, the field of the analytic situation is described, in its spatial, temporal and functional structure, and its triangular character (the present–absent third party in the bi‐personal field) is underlined. Then, the ambiguity of this field is emphasized, with special weight given to its bodily aspect (the bodily experiences of the analyst and the patient being particularly revealing of the unconscious situation in the field). The different dynamic structures or lines of orientation of the field are examined: the analytic contract, the configuration of the manifest material, the unconscious configuration – the unconscious bi‐personal phantasy manifesting itself in an interpretable point of urgency – that produces the structure of the field and its modifications. The authors describe the characteristics of this unconscious couple phantasy: its mobility and lack of definition, the importance of the phenomena of projective and introjective identification in its structuring. The authors go on to study the functioning of this field, which oscillates between mobilisation and stagnation, integration and splitting. Special reference is made to the concept of the split off unconscious ‘bastion’ as an extremely important technical problem. The analyst’s work is described as allowing oneself to be partially involved in the transference–countertransference micro‐neurosis or micro‐psychosis, and interpretation as a means of simultaneous recovery of parts of the analyst and the patient involved in the field. Finally, the authors describe the bi‐personal aspect of the act of insight that we experience in the analytic process.     

Some brief considerations on the relationship between theory and practice

The present crisis in models of training and in psychoanalytical education in general can be linked to the gulf that has come to be created between analytical theory and clinical practice. The paper(1) examines the historical facts that have led to this split and suggests the need to return to the models of Freud and Jung. Both these fathers of depth psychology stressed the dangers inherent in the dogmatic use of theory and both insisted that theory must always spring from and be able to account for clinical practice rather than vice versa, as is so often the case today. The paper also looks at how theory should be taught in our analytical institutes in order to ensure that what we transmit to our candidates is not knowledge in the form of dogma but rather a way of proceeding that will enable them to think creatively about their clinical practice and thus produce new knowledge, essential if depth psychology is to remain relevant to our post-modern culture.     

The role of implicit motivation in hot and cold goal pursuit: Effects on goal progress, goal rumination, and emotional well-being

Two cross-sectional studies examined the role of implicit motivational needs in the association between personal goal pursuits and depressive symptoms and affect. Replicating and extending on findings reported by Brunstein et al. [Brunstein, J. C., Schultheiss, O. C., & Grässmann, R. (1998). Personal goals and emotional well-being: The moderating role of motive dispositions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(2), 494–508], both studies provided evidence that goal progress significantly accounted for variations in depressive symptoms and happiness only in individuals with high levels of implicit motivation, but not in individuals low in implicit motivation. Moreover, in the absence of a strong sense of goal commitment, high levels of implicit motivation were associated with high goal progress in both studies and low levels of goal rumination in Study 2. These findings are interpreted within a dual-systems framework of motivation that distinguishes an implicit, intuitive, and hedonically driven from an explicit, effortful-analytical, and non-hedonic mode of goal pursuit.     

中学生内在生活目标与主观幸福感的关系:基本心理需求的中介作用

为探究中学生内在生活目标、基本心理需求与主观幸福感的关系,采用内在生活目标量表、基本心理需求量表和主观幸福感量表对885名中学生进行问卷调查.结果表明:(1)男生的基本心理需求得分显著高于女生,独生子女的基本心理需求得分、主观幸福感得分显著高于非独生子女;(2)中学生内在生活目标、基本心理需求及主观幸福感两两均呈显著正...     

决策与决策执行的关系——一种行动理性的观点

本文以分析决策与执行的关系为出发点,对人类理性的本质进行了讨论。指出决策研究中存在的“理性分析范式”偏面地把认知分析当作人类理性的本质,忽视了行动的作用,提出了人类理性是“行动理性”的思想。行动既是一种分析方法,是人们深化对客观世界的认识,理解决策问题的独特手段,也是人们创造外界环境、实现决策目标的有效途径。由此提出,决策研究,尤其是组织决策研究,应该重视“行动分析范式”。     

文化常模和目标调节模型:两种幸福感文化观

随着世界经济的发展,人们物资生活水平的提高,如何提高生活质量这一问题引起了越来越多的关注。20世纪60年代后期,主观幸福感(SWB)的研究逐步在全世界范围内形成热潮。近年来,幸福感属性中的文化差异引起了跨文化研究者的极大兴趣。文章通过比较SWB跨文化研究中新近出现的两个理论模型——文化常模模型和目标调节模型,探讨了文化在SWB产生过程中的作用,并在此基础上分析了情绪性幸福感和生活意义之间的关系。