Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Process Research: A quick ride through what you should know about process (research)

This paper gives an overview of psychoanalytic process research, which brings to light the complexity of psychotherapy sessions. This complexity is so rich that many instruments intended to make the process measurable failed in the past because they initially used a strategy of complexity reduction. This method however did not help to further our understanding of the complexity involved. Three former presidents of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (Stiles, Hill, Elliot 2015) decided to solve the following equivalence paradox: many therapies work successfully though they all follow different theories, produce a heterogeneity of processes and often enough a misfit between what theories maintain to be a good process and their realization in the treatment room. As theories are often compared to maps, a driver would wonder which route to take. But therapists‐as‐drivers go undaunted ‐ and nevertheless achieve their goals together with their patients. Norcross and Wampold (2018) found that good therapists invent new therapies with every new patient. They hypothesize that it is because of conversation. This is in accord with the 3 former presidents’ proposal to return to detailed single case analyses including the micro‐analytic power of conversation analysis of which a few insights are outlined in this article.     

Trait-Emotional Intelligence and the Tendency to Emotionally Manipulate Others Among Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissists

This study builds on previous findings regarding emotional intelligence among narcissists by considering the maladaptive aspects of emotional manipulation and distinguishing between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Trait-emotional intelligence and emotional manipulation capabilities of grandiose narcissists, vulnerable narcissists, and non-narcissists were compared. A convenience sample of 584 undergraduates from the University of Florence (Italy) with a mean age of 22.61 (SD?=?2.19) was recruited. A two-way ANOVA showed that vulnerable narcissists scored significantly lower than grandiose narcissists and non-narcissists in all the Bar-On EI dimensions, while grandiose narcissists scored higher than non-narcissists in Intrapersonal intelligence and the General Mood Bar-On scales. The two-way ANOVA also showed that both grandiose and vulnerable narcissists are prone to emotionally manipulate others in order to reach their aims.     

Improving organizational newcomers’ creative job performance through creative process engagement: The moderating role of a synergy diversity climate

Despite the mounting research demonstrating that employee seniority positively relates to creative job performance, we predict that a synergy diversity climate eliminates the employee seniority–creative job performance relationship by unleashing the creative potential of organizational newcomers. Drawing upon the integration-and-learning perspective for managing diversity, Study 1 finds that a synergy diversity climate moderates the relationship between employee seniority and supervisor-rated creative job performance lending support to our hypothesis. Study 2 provides an extension by showing how creative process engagement mediates this moderating effect on self-rated creative performance. Finally, Study 3 replicates and extends Study 2 by demonstrating the mediating role of creative process engagement but utilizing supervisor-rated creative job performance, while again showing synergy diversity climate to be an important boundary condition. In sum, we find that synergy diversity climate, as opposed to fairness and discrimination diversity climate, interacts with employee seniority by facilitating greater creative process engagement for newcomers subsequently impacting creative job performance. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for how the individual-level creative job performance effects may represent a microfoundation to creative team dynamics that confer a sustainable competitive advantage.     

Agreeable mothers: How they manage adverse circumstances and difficult children

Relations between two contextual challenges (low household income, difficult child temperament), maternal agreeableness and three aspects of parenting (harshness, sensitivity, stimulation) were examined when children were 6 months, 54 months old and 5th grade. Mothers with higher incomes and more education were more sensitive and provided more stimulation to their children. They also were less harsh. Mothers high in agreeableness were more likely to demonstrate sensitivity and provide stimulation; and they were less likely to manifest harshness. Maternal agreeableness moderated the effects of low income on parental behavior with significant interaction effects observed in 9 of the 12 models tested. When rearing a difficult child, mother’s high in agreeableness showed more supportive behavior in 3 of the 12 models tested.     

Irritability and parenting practices as mediational variables between temperament and affective,anxiety, and oppositional defiant problems

Irritability and parenting are potential targets for transdiagnostic studies to identify the common and core dysfunctional characteristics underlying several diagnostic pictures with the goal of addressing these issues in treatment. Our objective was to investigate the different paths from temperament to child psychopathology (affective, anxiety, and oppositional problems) through irritability and parenting using a prospective design from ages 3 to 7. A sample of 614 3-year-old preschoolers was followed at ages 4, 6, and 7. Parents answered questionnaires about temperament (age 3), irritability (age 4), parenting practices (age 6), and psychopathology (age 7). Statistical analyses were carried out through structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the mediation effect of irritability and parenting practices from temperament (negative affectivity and effortful control) through to affective, anxious, and oppositional problems. The proposed model fit the data well. SEM showed (a) an indirect effect from temperament to affective problems, via irritability and positive parenting; (b) a direct effect from negative affectivity to anxiety, plus an indirect effect from both temperament dimensions, via irritability and autonomy parenting practices; and (c) an indirect effect from temperament to oppositional problems, via irritability and punitive parenting. Irritability and parenting are transdiagnostic mediational variables that should be focused on in intervention programs for affective, anxiety, and oppositional problems.     

Talking emotions: vowel selection in fictional names depends on the emotional valence of the to-be-named faces and objects

One prestudy based on a corpus analysis and four experiments in which participants had to invent novel names for persons or objects (N?=?336 participants in total) investigated how the valence of a face or an object affects the phonological characteristics of the respective novel name. Based on the articulatory feedback hypothesis, we predicted that /i:/ is included more frequently in fictional names for faces or objects with a positive valence than for those with a negative valence. For /o:/, the pattern should reverse. An analysis of the Berlin Affective Word List – Reloaded (BAWL-R) yielded a higher number of occurrences of /o:/ in German words with negative valence than in words with positive valence; with /i:/ the situation is less clear. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants named persons showing a positive or a negative facial expression. Names for smiling persons included more /i:/s and fewer /o:/s than names for persons with a negative facial expression. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants heard a Swahili narration and invented pseudo-Swahili names for objects with positive, neutral, or negative valence. Names for positive objects included more /i:/s than names for neutral or negative objects, and names for negative objects included more /o:/s than names for neutral or positive objects. These finding indicate a stable vowel-emotion link.     

Cognitive reappraisal attenuates the association between depressive symptoms and emotional response to stress during adolescence

Depression is associated with increased emotional response to stress. This is especially the case during the developmental period of adolescence. Cognitive reappraisal is an effective emotion regulation strategy that has been shown to reduce the impact of emotional response on psychopathology. However, less is known about whether cognitive reappraisal impacts the relationship between depressive symptoms and emotional responses, and whether its effects are specific to emotional reactivity or emotional recovery. The current study examined whether cognitive reappraisal moderated the relationship between depressive symptoms and trait or state measures of emotional reactivity and recovery. A community sample of 127 adolescents (M-age?=?15.28; 49% female, 47% Caucasian), at an age of risk for depression, completed self-report measures of trait emotional responding and depressive symptoms. In addition, they completed an in vivo social stress task and were assessed on state emotional reactivity and recovery from the stressor. Findings suggested that cognitive reappraisal was associated with an attenuated impact of depressive symptoms on trait and state emotional recovery. These results provide evidence that cognitive reappraisal may be an effective strategy for improving some aspects of emotional responding in relation to depressive symptoms among adolescents.     

Hope as a Mediator of Bullying Involvement and Emotional Difficulties in Children

This study investigated hope as a mediator between children’s bullying involvement and emotional difficulties in a sample of 1,060 school‐age children (Grades 3–6). Results from structural equation modeling suggested that victimization leads to emotional difficulties both directly and indirectly through hope. Perpetration was indirectly associated with emotional difficulties. Findings highlight the role of children’s cognitive‐motivational process for emotional well‐being in response to bullying involvement. Implications for counseling interventions are discussed.     

A standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips

Film clips are widely used in emotion research due to their relatively high ecological validity. Although researchers have established various film clip sets for different cultures, the few that exist related to Chinese culture do not adequately address positive emotions. The main purposes of the present study were to establish a standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips that could elicit more categories of reported positive emotions compared to the existing databases and to expand the available film clips that can be used as neutral materials. Two experiments were conducted to construct the database. In experiment 1, 111 film clips were selected from more than one thousand Chinese movies for preliminary screening. After 315 participants viewed and evaluated these film clips, 39 excerpts were selected for further validation. In experiment 2, 147 participants watched and rated these 39 film clips, as well as another 8 excerpts chosen from the existing databases, to compare their validity. Eventually, 22 film excerpts that successfully evoked three positive emotions (joy, amusement, and tenderness), four negative emotions (moral disgust, anger, fear, and sadness), and neutrality formed the standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips.