Experiential Group Psychotherapy Supervision

Following a review of various traditional models of supervising group therapy, an experiential model of supervising group in a group setting is presented. The model stresses the group aspect of the supervisory process, encourages group interaction, here-and-now responses and associations, and employs concepts from both object relations and group-as-a-whole theory to understand what is taking place. The model's premise is that case material presented in a supervision group stimulates parallel material in supervisees, which is then used to elucidate what has taken place in the therapy group being presented. Excerpts from one supervisory group are used to illustrate major features of the model.     

Understanding Party Identification: A Social Identity Approach

Social identity theory holds that individuals derive their self-concept from knowledge of their membership in a group (or groups) and that they place value and emotional significance on that group membership, with resulting perceptual and attitudinal biases. Individuals favor the in-group to which they belong which they define against a relevant out-group. In this study, a partisan social identity scale was used to reinterpret perceptual features of partisanship through the lens of social identity theory. The social identity of political independents was also examined in an effort to explain the anomalous behavior and identity of partisan leaners. Social identity theory provided a viable alternative framework for understanding the common bipolarity of perceptions regarding the two major U.S. political parties. In addition, an independent social identification may, in part, explain the identity of partisan leaners.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Deborah Welch Larson, Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S. Soviet Relations During the Cold War
M. Rejai and K. Phillips, with W. L. Mason, Demythologizing an Elite: American Presidents in Empirical, Comparative, and Historical Perspective
Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid (eds.), Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe
C. N. Macrae, C. Stangor, and M. Hewstone (eds.), Stereotypes and Stereotyping
Kenneth R. Hammond, Human Judgment and Social Policy: Irreducible Uncertainty, Inevitable Error, Unavoidable Injustice
Blema S. Steinberg, Vamik D. Volkan, Normal Itzkowitz, and Andrew W. Dod, Shame and Humiliation: Presidential Decision Making on Vietnam and Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography
Hugh Gusterson, Nuclear Rites: A Weapon Laboratory at the End of the Cold War
Wolfgang Mieder, The Politics of Proverbs: From Traditional Wisdom to Proverbial Stereotypes
Diana C. Mutz, Paul M. Sniderman, and Richard A. Brody, Political Persuasion and Attitude Change
Daniel Bar-Tal and Ervin Staub (eds.), Patriotism in the Lives of Individuals and Nations
Robert S. Robins and Jerrold M. Post, Political Paranoia, the Psychopolitics of Hatred
Bernard Weiner, Judgments of Responsibility: A Foundation for a Theory of Social Conduct
Avner Falk, A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews
Barbara Rearden Farnham, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis
H. D. Forbes, John Daniel Cash Ethnic Conflict: Commerce, Culture and the Contact Hypothesis and Identity, Ideology and Conflict: The Structuration of Politics in Northern Ireland     

Equivalent models in covariance structure analysis

Defining equivalent models as those that reproduce the same set of covariance matrices, necessary and sufficient conditions are stated for the local equivalence of two expanded identified modelsM ₁ andM ₂ when fitting the more restricted modelM ₀. Assuming several regularity conditions, the rank deficiency of the Jacobian matrix, composed of derivatives of the covariance elements with respect to the union of the free parameters ofM ₁ andM ₂ (which characterizes modelM ₁₂), is a necessary and sufficient condition for the local equivalence ofM ₁ andM ₂. This condition is satisfied, in practice, when the analysis dealing with the fitting ofM ₀, predicts that the decreases in the chi-square goodness-of-fit statistic for the fitting ofM ₁ orM ₂, orM ₁₂ are all equal for any set of sample data, except on differences due to rounding errors.This research was supported by the Foundation of Social-Cultural Sciences which is subsidized by the Dutch Scientific Organization (N.W.O.) under project number 500-278-003. The author wishes to thank Anne Boomsma, Ivo Molenaar, Albert Satorra, and Tom Snijders for their stimulating and crucial comments during the research, and the Editor, Paul Bekker, Henk Broer, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.     

The fear of confession? High Catholic collective narcissism and low secure identification with Catholics predict increased pedophilia myth acceptance

Over the past 30 years, the Catholic Church has been rocked by a series of child sexual abuse scandals worldwide. Some of the religious officials suggested that the children are partly to blame for being sexually abused by priests. We assumed that such convictions (i.e., pedophilia myth acceptance) should be associated with a defensive commitment to one's religious group, captured by religious collective narcissism. In two studies conducted among Polish participants (Study 1, longitudinal, n = 719; Study 2, cross-sectional, n = 357), we found that pedophilia myth acceptance was positively predicted by Catholic narcissism but negatively by secure identification with Catholics. We additionally demonstrated that the effect of Catholic narcissism on pedophilia myth acceptance was mediated by a siege mentality with respect to the religious in-group. We discuss the role of different types of group commitment in predicting in-group criticism and prejudice against underaged victims of sexual abuse.     

Electing to Take Control: Political Identification and Personal Control

Engaging in the political process is one way that individuals can exert control over society in general. Yet, emerging research suggests that engaging with political groups also helps people feel more in control of the course of their own lives. The present research examined whether this is always the case, using the natural experiment afforded by political events to probe the psychological mechanisms underpinning the relationship between group identification and personal control. Two cross-sectional studies conducted immediately after the 2016 Presidential election (total N = 752) and one longitudinal study conducted immediately before and after the 2020 Presidential election (N = 743) investigated the relationship between political group identification and personal control. Together, the studies tested whether this relationship is weakened under conditions of low agency (i.e., in a group that lost the election) and low predictability (i.e., immediately following a surprise election outcome). The results suggest that the relationship between political identification and personal control is robust except in the case of low agency and low predictability. The studies contribute to understanding the processes that link group-level political factors with individual-level psychological outcomes.     

客体工作记忆的保持对时距知觉的影响

初步探讨毫秒范围内,客体信息保持对时间知觉的影响。实验一发现,知觉到的时间不受记忆负荷的影响,但当保持时间短时,低负荷的反应时低于高负荷的反应时;实验二仅要求被试完成时间知觉任务,发现知觉负荷异于记忆负荷对时间知觉的影响。结果说明,客体工作记忆保持对时间知觉的影响受到工作记忆资源的调节。     

社会身份重要性和社会认同对群体参照效应的影响

研究选取四个参照条件（国家、民族、性别、职业）,探讨个体内部的社会身份重要性、以及个体对其不同社会身份的社会认同度对群体参照效应的影响。结果表明,在个体内部,社会身份重要性越重要,相应的群体参照效应也越大,而社会认同的高低对群体参照效应的大小没有显著影响。这表明在个体的自我内部,不同的社会身份是按照重要性来排列,越重要身份越靠近个体自我概念的核心,而且这种重要性也影响着集体自我相关信息的认知加工。     

可操作性在物体表征中的作用

近10年来, 越来越多的研究表明, 对可操作物体的识别不仅依赖物体的视觉信息, 同时也依赖操作它的动作信息和知识, 即可操作性。来自行为实验、脑成像和脑损伤病人的研究都表明, 物体的可操作性在物体识别中会被激活, 并起着重要的作用。可操作性的研究不但重新解释了生物与非生物、名词与动词的分离现象, 而且对于研究物体表征, 以及视觉物体识别的神经通路有着重要的理论意义。     

多目标视觉追踪中物体属性加工的眼动研究*

采用多目标视觉追踪任务(MOT),探讨物体颜色特征对视觉追踪的影响,同时记录被试的眼动情况,探讨追踪过程中颜色特征对眼动模式的影响。结果发现,视觉追踪机制能够对物体的颜色特征进行加工,但加工程度受制于目标物与分心物之间的特征竞争关系。在物体颜色特征条件下,视觉系统采用知觉组织加工策略,以被追踪目标构成的多边形中心为注意中心。在对物体颜色特征的加工中,内源性注意与外源性注意相互影响。