Correction to: A psychophysiological investigation of mourning: There are two sides to the story

Motivation and Emotion - Mourning constitutes an important human emotion, which might cause—among other things—major depressive symptoms when lasting for too long. To date, no study...     

A psychophysiological investigation of mourning: There are two sides to the story

Motivation and Emotion - Mourning constitutes an important human emotion, which might cause—among other things—major depressive symptoms when lasting for too long. To date, no study...     

Patients’ Perceptions of Risky Developments During Psychotherapy

Research on risks and unwanted effects is largely missing in psychotherapy. Using exploratory factor analysis six dimensions of personal therapy situation were identified in a preliminary study, three of them were associated with risky developments during the psychotherapeutic process: (1) (poor) quality of therapeutic relationship, (2) burden caused by psychotherapy, and (3) dependency/isolation. Based on the finding of this study an online survey was performed to examine these three dimensions. Aside from these three factors another variable was associated with risky therapy developments: the online questionnaire also asked for premature terminations of psychotherapy as a consequence of risky conditions for the therapeutic development. Risky conditions were found to be associated with the following variables: (1) the combination of female patient–male therapist, (2) the therapeutic orientation (particularly with the psychodynamic approaches) and (3) the duration of therapy. Fewer humanistic and systemic psychotherapies were found among the high risk-prone group of patients who were at risk in at least three of the four variables which were associated with risky developments. Differences in the findings of the study regarding the four therapeutic orientations stress the importance of an extensive differential indication and a cooperative partnership between patient and therapist, in order to facilitate a positive patient participation towards the choice of therapy method and subsequent successful participation throughout the course of treatment. Further studies should also focus on female patient and male therapist psychotherapies.     

Conceptual clarity in international collaborations: A point of departure for policy-relevant research on discrimination

A workshop was conducted as part of the International Metropolis Conference held in Vienna, Austria in September 2003. The Metropolis Project is meant to facilitate research in the area of migration that can optimally inform policy. In this context, a workshop was conducted with the objective of discussing how policy-relevant research on discrimination could be conducted internationally. Four broad areas were addressed: ‘key stakeholder’ involvement, obtaining ethical and other forms of approval, international, national and local funding opportunities, and qualitative and quantitative methodology and questionnaire development. Viewpoints represented included those of non-governmental organizations, researchers, health professionals, and policy-makers/implementers. Countries represented in the discussions included Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Key conceptual differences included how best to define discrimination, societal acknowledgement of discrimination, the meaning of ‘race’, ‘racism’, ‘national’, and ‘migrant’, and perceptions of national identity.     

Visual Attention in Real-World Conversation: Gaze Patterns Are Modulated by Communication and Group Size

Gaze behavior both initiates and maintains conversations, playing a crucial role in real-world collaboration. Hitherto, most findings on social attention stem from research using pictures of faces in the laboratory, however, attention operates differently in the real world. Thus, we know little of how gaze behavior operates in naturalistic interactions. To bridge this gap, we applied mobile eye-tracking to investigate the gaze patterns present in naturalistic conversations. Specifically, we examined gaze behavior of participants in a group of two or five, either sitting together in silence, or engaging in a conversation, in which they took turns either listening or speaking to each other. Results show that participants looked more frequently towards others when the group was communicating compared to when remaining silent, and that they looked at others more frequently when listening compared to when speaking. Furthermore, being part of a dyad led to more social attention being afforded during conversation compared to the group situation, regardless of whether subjects were listening or speaking. Meanwhile, when sitting in silence subjects showed less social gazing in a dyad than in a group of five. Our results provide qualitative and quantitative insights into the patterns of visual attention during dynamic naturalistic conversations.     

Correction to: A psychophysiological investigation of mourning: There are two sides to the story

Motivation and Emotion -