The impact of psychological distance on integrative internal dialogs

Negotiators more distanced from the negotiated goal more often exhibit integrative behavior, which maximizes both their individual and joint outcomes. Based on the assumption of an analogy between interpersonal negotiations and internal dialogs simulating social relationships, an experiment was carried out. It aimed to verify if psychological distance (proximal vs. distant perspective on the situation enacted in an internal dialog) affects the processes of integration and confrontation and, consequently, increases the frequency of integrative dialogs. Data from 115 participants (56 women) were analyzed. An increase in psychological distance was found to reduce the intensity of the confrontation process and to cause an increase in the number of integrative internal dialogs.     

Testing a model of codependency for college students in Taiwan based on Bowen's concept of differentiation

The purpose of this study was to test a model of codependency based on Bowen's concept of differentiation for college students in Taiwan. The relations between family‐of‐origin dysfunction, differentiation of self, codependency traits and related symptoms including low self‐esteem, relationship distress and psychological adjustment problems were examined. Data were collected from 567 college students from 2 large, urban universities in northern Taiwan. Results indicated a significantly negative relationship between levels of codependency and self‐differentiation and that self‐differentiation partially mediated the relationship between family‐of‐origin dysfunction and codependency. The implications of these findings for counselling Taiwanese college students who experience codependency traits and related symptoms as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Self‐Stigma,Mental Health Literacy,and Health Outcomes in Integrated Care

The authors describe research on the self‐stigma of mental illness and help seeking, mental health literacy, and health outcomes in an integrated care medical center. Results revealed that self‐stigma of mental illness and self‐stigma of seeking help had an inverse relationship with mental health literacy. No statistically significant relationships were found between health outcomes, either type of self‐stigma, and mental health literacy. The authors discuss these and other findings and offer research and counseling implications.     

Influence of Social Perception and Social Monitoring on Structural Priming

Although structural priming has been considered to be an independent cognitive process, recent evidence suggests that structural priming is modulated by sociocognitive factors such as social perception; speakers are more likely to mimic the sentence structure of a socially desirable interlocutor than the structure of a less desirable interlocutor. This study aims to further address the role of sociocognitive factors in language use by investigating how individual differences in social perception and tendency to align with others (i.e., social monitoring) modulate same‐verb structural priming. In particular, we investigate how likely students are to repeat a sentence structure of a teacher depending on their perception of the teacher and their social monitoring tendency. Our results demonstrate that students’ tendency to imitate a sentence structure of the teacher is positively influenced by their perception of the teacher but negatively by social monitoring. We suggest that the effects may be accounted for in terms of their influence on attention and memory encoding.     

Who knows what's good to eat? Infants fail to match the food preferences of antisocial others

Humans gather most of their knowledge about the world, including objectively true facts and specific cultural norms, by observing and being taught by others. Some individuals are worthy teachers and objects of imitation, having knowledge of cultural practices and positive intentions to inform. Others are better ignored because they are ignorant, because they mean us harm, or simply because we do not wish to be “like them.” This study examines whether 16-month-olds are sensitive to the pro- or antisocial behavior of a source that demonstrates preference for two novel foods. Infants took the emotional reactions displayed by novel and previously prosocial sources, but not antisocial sources, into account when deciding what to eat. These results suggest that others’ social behavior influences infants’ likelihood to match their preferences, illustrating the influence of social evaluation on social learning.     

Asset Legitimacy and Distributive Justice in the Dictator Game: An Experimental Analysis

Distributive justice seems to guide behavior in reward allocation tasks in which subjects in a group jointly produce an endowment that is then allocated by a member of the group. It has been shown that allocators aim to preserve the proportionality between inputs (e.g., effort) and outputs (e.g., monetary rewards) of those in the group, even when this comes at a cost to themselves. We experimentally investigated whether justice considerations of this kind play a role in a double‐blind dictator game when the assets to be allocated are generated exclusively through the effort of the decision maker. The experiment shows that distributive justice is an important source of motivation in highly demanding social environments in which reputational concerns and reciprocity are absent. This finding has been corroborated by an independent validity check and may have important implications for previous experimental findings and for the economics of charity. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of White Noise on Off-Task Behavior and Sleep for Elementary-Age Students with ADHD

Abstract

Children with ADHD were administered 75?dB of continuous white noise during independent seat work in the classroom and during bedtime in their homes. Compared to baseline all three students exhibited decreases in off-task behavior. Off-task behavior returned to original baseline levels when white noise was removed and decreased again when reintroduced in classrooms. White noise also decreased bedtime sleep latency and spontaneous night wakings at home. Both sleep latencies and night wakings increased during return-to-baseline conditions. Surprisingly, when white noise was reintroduced only in the classrooms sleep improved a second time. White noise in classrooms with or without simultaneous treatment during sleep at night resulted in lower levels of off-task classroom behavior as well as less disruptive sleep. Results were independent of whether children were on ADHD medication. Children, teachers, and parents all rated white noise favorably.     

The functions of music and their relationship to music preference in India and Germany

Is the use of music in everyday life a culturally universal phenomenon? And do the functions served by music contribute to the development of music preferences regardless of the listener's cultural background? The present study explored similarities and dissimilarities in the functions of music listening and their relationship to music preferences in two countries with different cultural backgrounds: India as an example of a collectivistic society and Germany as an example of an individualistic society. Respondents were asked to what degree their favorite music serves several functions in their life. The functions were summarized in seven main groups: background entertainment, prompt for memories, diversion, emotion regulation, self‐regulation, self‐reflection, and social bonding. Results indicate a strong similarity of the functions of people's favorite music for Indian and German listeners. Among the Indians, all of the seven functions were rated as meaningful; among the Germans, this was the case for all functions except emotion regulation. However, a pronounced dissimilarity was found in the predictive power of the functions of music for the strength of music preference, which was much stronger for Germans than for Indians. In India, the functions of music most predictive for music preference were diversion, self‐reflection, and social bonding. In Germany, the most predictive functions were emotion regulation, diversion, self‐reflection, prompt for memories, and social bonding. It is concluded that potential cultural differences hardly apply to the functional use of music in everyday life, but they do so with respect to the impact of the functions on the development of music preference. The present results are consistent with the assumption that members of a collectivistic society tend to set a higher value on their social and societal integration and their connectedness to each other than do members of individualistic societies.     

Bion’s discovery of alpha function: Thinking under fire on the battlefield and in the consulting room

This paper has traced Bion’s discovery of alpha function and its subsequent elaboration. His traumatic experiences as a young tank commander in World War I (overlaid on, and intertwined with, childhood conflicts) gave him firsthand exposure to very painful emotions that tested his capacity to manage. Later, in the 1950s, after his analysis with Melanie Klein and marriage to Francesca Bion, he undertook the analysis of psychotic patients and learned how they disassembled their ability to know reality as a defense against unbearable emotional truths in their lives. This led Bion to identify an aspect of dreaming that was necessary in order for reality experience to be given personal meaning so that one may learn from experience. Simultaneous with working out this new theory of dreaming, Bion also revisited his World War I experiences that had remained undigested and all these elements coalesced into a selected fact – his discovery of alpha function. In subsequent writings, Bion explored the constituent factors of alpha function, including the container/contained relationship, the PS?D balance, reverie, tolerated doubt and other factors which I have termed the ‘Constellation for Thinking’.     

The gap that makes us desperate: Paths from language to mental health

Although past research provided some clues about the relation of language use with mental health, the mediatory functions of personality variables in this relationship have been ignored. This research examined the mediatory role of self‐concept clarity in the relationship between language use perceived by individuals and mental health indicators including anxiety, depression, and alexithymia. Based on the theoretical framework suggested by ?im?ek (2010), two studies sought to test two alternative structural equation models in data from university students in the first study (n = 250) and data from other groups in the second study (n = 331). The first model assumed that the relationship of language use with anxiety, depression, and alexithymia was mediated by self‐concept clarity. The second model tested the mediatory role of both anxiety and self‐concept clarity in this relationship. The results of the first study showed that the second model fitted better to the data than the first. Consistent with the first study, the results of the second study confirmed that the second model produced better goodness of fit statistics than the first model.