Family as a source of support under stress: Benefits of greater breadth of family inclusion

Family has profound meaning and represents the most important ingroup for most people, yet, we know very little about how lay perceptions of family affect well-being. In the current work, we examined how lay theories about breadth of family inclusion (i.e., including a broader variety of entities in one’s definition of family) were related to family experiences and to well-being. In Study 1, we found that lay theories about family as including a wider variety of entities (i.e., greater breadth of inclusion) predicted more positive family evaluations, more positive qualities, and greater family importance. In Study 2, we found that greater breadth of family inclusion was associated with greater resilience in the face of stress. Finally, in Study 3 we used an experimental manipulation of breadth of family inclusion, establishing that broader views of family produced greater social needs fulfillment. Implications for the role of ingroup memberships and identities in promoting well-being are discussed.     

Transdiagnostic group CBT for anxiety disorders: the unified protocol in mental health services

Comorbidity among the anxiety disorders is common and may negatively impact treatment outcome. Potentially, transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatments (CBT) deal more effectively with comorbidity than standard CBT. The present study tested the effectiveness of The Unified Protocol (UP) applied to Mental Health Services. Pre-post-treatment effects were examined for psychiatric outpatients with anxiety disorders receiving UP treatment in groups. Forty-seven patients (mean-age = 34.1 (SD = 9.92), 77% females) with a principal diagnosis of anxiety were included. We found significant and clinically meaningful changes in the primary outcomes Clinical Global Impression Severity Scale (CGI-S; d = 1.36), Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HARS; d = .71), and WHO-5 Well-being Index (WHO-5; d = .54). Also, comorbid depressive symptoms and levels of positive and negative affect changed significantly after treatment. Patients with high levels of comorbidity profited as much as patients with less comorbidity; however, these patients had higher scores after treatment due to higher symptom burden at onset. Patients with comorbid depression profited more from treatment than patients without comorbid depression. The treatment effects found in the present study correspond to treatment effects of other TCBT studies, other UP group studies, and effectiveness studies on standard CBT for outpatients. The results indicate that the UP can be successfully applied to a MHS group setting, demonstrating positive effects on anxiety and depressive symptoms for even highly comorbid cases.     

An investigation of the role of some person and situation variables in multiple cue probability learning

Making decisions using judgements of multiple non-deterministic indicators is an important task, both in everyday and professional life. Learning of such decision making has often been studied as the mapping of stimuli (cues) to an environmental variable (criterion); however, little attention has been paid to the effects of situation-by-person interactions on this learning. Accordingly, we manipulated cue and feedback presentation mode (graphic or numeric) and task difficulty, and measured individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC). We predicted that graphic presentation, fewer cues, and elevated WMC would facilitate learning, and that person and task characteristics would interact such that presentation mode compatible with the decision maker's cognitive capability (enhanced visual or verbal WMC) would assist learning, particularly for more difficult tasks. We found our predicted main effects, but no significant interactions, except that those with greater WMC benefited to a larger extent with graphic than with numeric presentation, regardless of which type of working memory was enhanced or number of cues. Our findings suggest that the conclusions of past research based predominantly on tasks using numeric presentation need to be reevaluated and cast light on how working memory helps us learn multiple cue–criterion relationships, with implications for dual-process theories of cognition.     

组织心理学研究的情境化及多层次理论

由于组织具有明确的目标和特定的任务, 组织心理与一般情境中人的心理有所区别。由于组织情境下的心理与行为受到个体、群体、组织甚至社会几个层次上的多种因素的影响, 组织心理研究者所建立理论要揭示这些情境变量与所研究的现象之间的联系。本文首先介绍了近年来组织研究中的情境化趋势, 举例说明情境化对于理论发展的贡献。随后, 本文阐述了组织心理学研究中的理论层次问题, 强调界定构念和理论层次的必要性, 并说明界定理论层次背后的逻辑。文章以群体层次的研究为例, 说明形成群体层次构念的方法以及测量群体层次构念时需要注意的问题。鉴于组织中个体层次的因变量会受到个体和更高层次变量的共同影响, 文章在最后部分介绍了组织心理学研究中的多层次理论。本文以近年来发表的组织心理学研究报告为例, 说明研究的情境化以及建立多层次理论的方法。     

The patient's private construction of meaning and canons of science: Freud's case studies noch einmal1

Starting from Freud's classical case studies, the author highlights the tension between the psychoanalytical starting point in the subject's own meaning construction and the claims of the professional expert to objectivity, privileged knowledge and interpretative precedence. Psychoanalytic investigation of subjective phenomena came into existence parallel with Freud's magnifi cent project to furnish ‘a psychology that shall be a natural science’. The privileged knowledge of the specialist was substituted by the explicit intention to listen to the individual's own stories and private explanatory constructions. In order to investigate the territory of the unconscious, Freud had to develop various strategies for uncovering and correcting errors, and for testing clinically anchored hypotheses. However, Freud regularly failed to follow his own intentions. The thesis the author presents here is that departures from the explicit ambition to follow the subject's own meaning construction, and departures from the scientifi c attitude, easy to trace in Freud's case studies, accompany each other. These departures have had far‐reaching consequences for the present status of the psychoanalytic knowledge.     

Modal Platonism: an Easy Way to Avoid Ontological Commitment to Abstract Entities

Modal Platonism utilizes “weak” logical possibility, such that it is logically possible there are abstract entities, and logically possible there are none. Modal Platonism also utilizes a non-indexical actuality operator. Modal Platonism is the EASY WAY, neither reductionist nor eliminativist, but embracing the Platonistic language of abstract entities while eliminating ontological commitment to them. STATEMENT OF MODAL PLATONISM. Any consistent statement B ontologically committed to abstract entities may be replaced by an empirically equivalent modalization, MOD(B), not so ontologically committed. This equivalence is provable using Modal/Actuality Logic S5@. Let MAX be a strong set theory with individuals. Then the following Schematic Bombshell Result (SBR) can be shown: MAX logically yields [T is true if and only if MOD(T) is true], for scientific theories T. The proof utilizes Stephen Neale’s clever model-theoretic interpretation of Quantified Lewis S5, which I extend to S5@.     

上博简《仲弓》疏证

上海博物馆藏战国楚竹书第三册《仲弓》,是一篇久佚的先秦儒家文献,它对于我们认识孔子的政治理论和了解《论语》成书的一些情况,都有比较重要的价值。本文对于《仲弓》篇的28支简的简序进行了重新编排,并且分段进行了疏证研究,探讨了孔子政治思想中的若干重要内容。     

《周易》与接受美学

<周易>作为众经之首,对中国文化和中国人的思维定势产生过强烈的影响.在<周易>影响下形成的玄学论文艺观,则是基于表现宇宙原理的理论.这种宇宙原理在玄学论中一般都称之为"道"."道沿圣以垂文,圣因文而明道",由此形成宇宙、作者、作品三者关系;而文章必须通过读者大众的阅读,才会对社会起作用,这就强调了读者中心.后来,西方兴起的接受美学,也强调读者中心,正与中国的玄学论文艺观不谋而合.