The perception of false self scale for adolescents: Reliability,validity, and longitudinal relationships with depressive and anxious symptoms

A scale assessing generalized false self‐perceptions (Perceptions of False Self, POFS) was developed and tested across three studies involving a total of 331 adolescents (11–16 years). In Study 1, interviews were conducted to develop items for the scale. In Study 2, psychometric techniques were used to derive a scale composed of 16 items. Study 2 also assessed the validity of the scale: depressive symptoms were found to increase POFS across 10 weeks, whereas false self‐perceptions had a reciprocal effect on anxiety. In Study 3, the convergent validity of the POFS scale was established. Overall, the evidence suggests that the POFS scale is a reliable and valid measure of generalized false self‐perceptions.     

Susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence in adolescence following mindfulness training

Mindfulness training programmes have shown to encourage prosocial behaviours and reduce antisocial tendencies in adolescents. However, less is known about whether training affects susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. The current study investigated the effect of mindfulness training (compared with an active control) on self-reported prosocial and antisocial tendencies and susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. 465 adolescents aged 11–16 years were randomly allocated to one of two training programmes. Pre- and post-training, participants completed a social influence task. Self-reported likelihood of engaging in prosocial and antisocial behaviours did not change post-training, and regardless of training group, participants showed a higher propensity for prosocial influence than for antisocial influence. Finally, participants were less influenced by antisocial ratings following both training programmes.     

A comparison of four methods of constructing factor scores

Four least-squares methods for constructing factor scores have been described in the literature. The formal properties of these scores are developed, and they are compared in terms of four generally desirable properties of constructed factor scores. In particular, it is shown that two of the methods yield scores that are conditionally unbiassed, and univocal in the sense of Guilford and Michael, though not orthogonal, while one of the other methods yields orthogonal scores.It is shown that constructed factor scores cannot be simultaneously univocal and orthogonal, unless we choose the special basis in factor space given by Canonical Factor Analysis.The general problem of choosing between the methods is discussed, on the basis of the theoretical relations obtained.EDITOR'S NOTE: The reader will quickly discover that this article develops several of the generalizations given in the second part of the preceding article, On Factors and Factor Scores. Independent development of the same generalizations is, of course, not a new phenomenon. Because the Presidential Address automatically is accepted for publication and given space in the December issue, it was decided that the only fair thing to do was to print this article in the same issue.     

Psychological effects of sustained shipboard operations on U.S. Navy personnel

This study investigated the psychological and physical health status of 265 crew members on two U.S. Navy ships (a guided missile cruiser and a frigate on convoy escort duty for tankers under U.S. flag) during the Persian Gulf conflict at four time periods during combat-ready operations on a single day. Findings suggest that adaptation occurs to extreme stressors associated with sustained operations. Suggestions are made relative to measures that may minimize psychological and physical conditions that adversely affect performance under conditions of heavy stress. Report No. 89-18, supported by the Naval Medical Research and Development Command, Bethesda MD, Department of the Navy, under research Work Unit No. 63206N.M0096. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, nor the U.S. Government.     

Rethinking levels of abstraction in family systems theories.

This article is an attempt to improve the way we conceptualize "levels" in family systems. The first section reframes thinking about levels by identifying an array of different ways of thinking about levels. The next section suggests a parsimonious frame-work for thinking about levels of abstraction in systemic processes. The proposed framework integrates several earlier ways of conceptualizing levels, and helps eliminate some of the confusion, inconsistencies, fragmentation, and limitations of some earlier models. The new framework has three categories that are called Levels I, II, and III. The most abstract level (III) includes phenomena such as family paradigms and values. The intermediate level includes processes such as second-order change, regime, and "meta" processes such as metacommunication and meta-rules. The least abstract level refers to specific processes such as transformation processes and rules. The article concludes with an attempt to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed framework by showing how it can be used to eliminate a number of conceptual problems in earlier models, improve conceptual clarity, help generate new theoretical insights, and help deal with several controversies in the field.     

Understanding and taking stock of positive emotion disturbance

The prevailing view on positive emotions is that they correlate with and confer psychological health benefits for the individual, including improved social, physical and cognitive functioning. Yet an emerging wave of scientific work suggests that positive emotions are also related to a range of suboptimal psychological health outcomes, especially when the intensity, duration, or context do not optimize the individual's goals or meet current environmental demands. This paper provides an overview of the “other side” of positive emotion, by describing and reviewing evidence supporting the emerging field of positive emotion disturbance (PED). We review relevant emotion processes and key themes of PED and apply this framework to example emotional disorders, and discuss implications for psychological change and future research agendas.     

Constructivism and the Inescapability of Moral Choices: A Response to Raskin and Debany

In their article on ethics, Raskin and Debany (this issue Raskin, J. D., &; Debany, A. E. (this issue). The inescapability of ethics and the impossibility of “anything goes”: A constructivist model of ethical meaning making. Journal of Constructivist Psychology. (Reprinted from Ethics in action: Dialogue between knowledge and practice (pp. 13–32), by S. Cipolletta &; E. Gius (Eds.), 2012, Milan, Italy: LED) [Google Scholar]) raise a number of important issues that merit discussion and have implications for a constructivist stance on ethics, an issue that has dogged constructivist and social constructionist theory and has, in the past, been the focus of a good deal of debate. In my response to their article, I focus on two issues before going on to consider what these imply for a constructivist ethics. The first is the status of “reality”; drawing on the work of French philosophers, discursive psychology, and symbolic interactionism, I argue that the constructivist conception of reality has been widely misunderstood and will outline what I regard as a defensible construction of reality. The second issue concerns the relationship between the individual and the social world; drawing again on earlier work in microsociology, I argue that the “constructed” individual must be understood as emerging from the social realm rather than preexisting it, and I argue for personal construct psychology as a candidate for filling the subjectivity “gap” in social constructionism. Finally, I use these conceptualizations of reality and the person to argue for an ethical stance of “radical doubt” for constructivism.