"THEISTIC PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY": A THEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC CRITIQUE

I take the APA publication A Spiritual Strategy for Counseling and Psychotherapy (Richards and Bergin 2005), along with a devoted issue of Journal of Psychology and Theology (Nelson and Slife 2006), as a paradigmatic example of a trend. Other instances include the uncritical use of "Eastern" philosophy in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, almost normative appeal to the "Sacred" within the psychology of spirituality, talk of "God in the brain" within neurological research, the neologism entheogen referring to psychedelic drugs, and calls for new specializations such as neurotheology and theobiology. In response to the legitimate ethical requirements of respect and openness regarding clients' religious worldviews, the trend is to make God an essential component in psychological theory. The argument is that God is active in the universe and especially in human affairs to such an extent that any accurate account of strictly psychological matters, not just a comprehensive, interdisciplinary purview that could include a distinct theological dimension, must include God as an explanatory factor. Less nuanced than standard theological thought about divine intervention—including a range of opinions from supernaturalism, to occasionalism, to providential and deistic naturalism—this trend would blur the epistemological differences between religion and science by appeal to claimed knowledge sources such as inspiration and revelation and thus undermine the achievements of evidence-based science and establish particularistic religious beliefs as standard explanatory accounts. The concern to include a spiritual, in contrast to a religious or theist, dimension in psychological theory is welcome; but elaborated approaches, such as my own and those of Roberto Assagioli, Viktor Frankl, and Ken Wilber, open to varied theological applications, already exist.     

Behaving as expected: Public information and fairness norms

What is considered to be fair depends on context‐dependent expectations. Using a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, we demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation—that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulate such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and find that behavior varies accordingly. Proposers and Responders show a remarkable degree of agreement in their beliefs about which choices are considered fair. We discuss how these results fit into a theory of social norms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public good provision in inter‐team conflicts: Effects of asymmetry and profit‐sharing rule

A fundamental problem in organizations is designing mechanisms for eliciting voluntary contributions from individual members of a team who are entrapped in a social dilemma. To solve the problem, we utilize a game‐theoretical framework that embeds the traditional within‐team social dilemma in a between‐team competition for an exogenously determined prize. In equilibrium, such competition enhances the incentive to contribute, thereby reducing free‐riding. Extending existing literature, we focus on asymmetric competitions between teams of unequal size, and competitions between more than two teams. Comparing two protocols for sharing the prize—egalitarian and proportional profit‐sharing rules—we find that (i) free‐riding diminishes and (ii) team members contribute more toward their team's effort when they belong to the larger team and when the profit‐sharing rule is proportional. (iii) Additionally, under the egalitarian profit‐sharing rule team members contribute more than predicted by the equilibrium solution. We discuss implications of our findings for eliciting contributions in competitive environments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting academic success with the Big 5 rated from different points of view: Self‐rated,other rated and faked

Self‐ratings of personality predict academic success above general intelligence. The present study replicated these findings and investigated the increment of other‐ratings or intentionally distorted self‐ratings. Participants (N = 145) had to compile a personality questionnaire twice. First they were given neutral instructions. The second time they were asked to imagine a specific applicant setting. Furthermore, two peers rated each participant. Additionally, verbal, numerical and figural reasoning scores were obtained. Grades on a statistics exam obtained 2 months later served as the criterion. Results replicated prior findings and showed incremental validity for self‐ and other‐rated personality, which was stable after controlling for intelligence. Faking had no impact on the domain‐score level, but results on the facet‐score level were less encouraging. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

采用跨学科概念图推进中学生跨学科学业成就

为了检验跨学科概念图在跨学科知识整合中的作用,设计了跨学科概念图干预计划,以180名中学生为被试,采用实验组与控制组对比实验方法,探讨了跨学科概念图对跨学科学业成就的影响。结果表明:(1)跨学科概念图干预计划显著提高了实验组被试的跨学科学业成绩;(2)对于不同成就者而言,干预计划显著提高了中低成就者的跨学科学业成绩,而对高成就者跨学科学业成绩的影响不显著。这意味着跨学科概念图作为跨学科知识整合领域的智力适应工具能够有效提高学习者的跨学科学业成就,但是其对不同层次学习者跨学科学业成就的影响具有适应性差异。     

同象数别义理:《太玄》与孟京易学

易学史上对《太玄》与孟京易学关系的探究,受到两个有争议问题的影响:一是《易纬.稽览图》和孟京《易》的先后关系,一是《太玄》源于孟京《易》还是源于《易纬》。本文以《太玄》为基点,在尝试解决"争议"的基础上,具体探究《太玄》象数构建如何取于孟、京卦气说,其义理阐释又如何别于孟、京灾异说。     

从自我决定论看动机访谈法疗效机理

动机访谈法是以病人为中心、促使病人自己改变问题行为的咨询技术和方法。该文从自我决定论角度,解释了动机访谈法取得疗效的机理:动机访谈法起到满足病人基本心理需要(胜任感、归属感、自主性),推动病人产生自主动机的作用,促使病人提高适应性行为的质量和稳定性,提高心理健康水平,从而取得心理治疗效果。     

Subjective discriminability of invisibility: A framework for distinguishing perceptual and attentional failures of awareness

Conscious visual perception can fail in many circumstances. However, little is known about the causes and processes leading to failures of visual awareness. In this study, we introduce a new signal detection measure termed subjective discriminability of invisibility (SDI) that allows one to distinguish between subjective blindness due to reduction of sensory signals or to lack of attentional access to sensory signals. The SDI is computed based upon subjective confidence in reporting the absence of a target (i.e., miss and correct rejection trials). Using this new measure, we found that target misses were subjectively indistinguishable from physical absence when contrast reduction, backward masking and flash suppression were used, whereas confidence was appropriately modulated when dual task, attentional blink and spatial uncertainty methods were employed. These results show that failure of visual perception can be identified as either a result of perceptual or attentional blindness depending on the circumstances under which visual awareness was impaired.     

Exploring the superadditive effects of scent and pictures on verbal recall: An extension of dual coding theory

This research extends the dual coding theory of memory retrieval (Paivio 1969, 2007) beyond its traditional focus on verbal and pictorial information to olfactory information. We manipulate the presence or absence of olfactory and pictorial stimuli at the time of encoding (study 1) or retrieval (study 2) and measure the impact on verbal recall. After a time delay, scent enhances recall of verbal information, and scent-based retrieval cues potentiate the facilitative effect of pictures on recall. These results cannot be attributed merely to increased elaboration at the time of exposure.     

PASS理论语境中的认知过程(英文)

计划-注意-同时性加工-继时性加工,这些基本PASS概念的提出,是为了给传统上将智力作为一个笼统构念的做法提供某种替代的选择。在这一新的理论途径中,我将一般能力分解为对主要认知过程的研究,其中每个认知过程均有其行为、认知和神经心理成分,而且重要的是,每个认知过程均有相应的一组评估测量任务。PASS模型,这一理论框架能够充分包容体现于教育和组织行为中的广泛一系列认知功能。