One-person and two-person conceptions of attachment and their implications for psychoanalytic thought

There has been increasing interest among analysts in the possibilities of enriching psychoanalytic thought through fuller incorporation of attachment theory and research. This paper offers a clinical illustration of the ways in which attention to an attachment perspective can lead to novel and useful ways of addressing the patient’s issues. It also presents a number of cautions that it is necessary to be alert to if attachment thinking is to achieve its full potential in advancing psychoanalytic thought and practice. Conceptions of attachment and approaches to its study and clinical use actually vary quite substantially. Some are more one-person, static, and categorical. Others are more two-person, dynamic, and focused on the process whereby attachment patterns develop and are maintained over time. This paper explores the distinction between these two versions of attachment theory and research with two aims in mind – first, to refine our understanding of the potential role that attachment thinking can play in advancing the psychoanalytic paradigm; second, to utilize the insights achieved through examining the attachment paradigm to consider some broader issues in the construction of psychoanalytic theory more generally and its relational variant in particular.     

The Body in Religion: The Spatial Mapping of Valence in Tibetan Practitioners of Bön

According to the Body‐Specificity Hypothesis (BSH), people implicitly associate positive ideas with the side of space on which they are able to act more fluently with their dominant hand. Though this hypothesis has been rigorously tested across a variety of populations and tasks, the studies thus far have only been conducted in linguistic and cultural communities which favor the right over the left. Here, we tested the effect of handedness on implicit space‐valence mappings in Tibetan practitioners of Bön who show a strong religious preference for the left, in comparison to an English group. Results showed that Bön right‐handers tended to implicitly associate positive valence more strongly with their dominant side of space despite strong explicit associations between the left and goodness in their religion. This pattern of results found in Bön participants was indistinguishable from that found in English speakers. The findings of the present study support the BSH, demonstrating that space‐valence mappings in people's minds are shaped by their bodily experience, which appears to be independent of space‐valence mappings enshrined in cultural conventions.     

The Creativity Matrix: Spotlights and Blind Spots in Our Understanding of the Phenomenon

In this paper, we organize past and present theories and models of creativity by using a new conceptual framework—the creativity matrix—with the aim of highlighting the dimensions of creativity we know a lot about and those we tend to either ignore or find difficult to study. This matrix is formed by bringing together a developmental model of creativity (the 4 C's) and a structural one (the 5 A's). We start by briefly describing these two conceptual frameworks, and then, we proceed to exploring the matrix itself by describing how the 5 A's are dynamically organized at each “level” of the 4 C's. Importantly, our overview of the matrix is informed by existing models and concepts that address one of more of the C's and the A's. This gives us a unique opportunity to take stock of what has been studied so far and, toward the end, consider new avenues for the development of theory and research agendas within creativity studies.     

Employee–supervisor political skill congruence and work outcomes: The mediating role of leader–member exchange quality

This study aims to investigate the effect of employee–supervisor political skill congruence on the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX), which in turn influences employees' job satisfaction and turnover intention. For this purpose, two survey studies were conducted. The first study examined the relationship between employee–supervisor political skill congruence and LMX using multi-source data collected from 287 employee–supervisor dyads. The second study examined the indirect effect of congruence in political skill on work outcomes through LMX by using time-lagged multi-source data collected from 142 employee–supervisor dyads. The findings indicate that compared with incongruence, congruence in political skill is associated with higher employee-rated LMX. Moreover, among dyads with congruent political skills, congruence at high levels of political skill is associated with higher employee-rated LMX compared with congruence at low levels of political skill. Moreover, in case of incongruency, low employee–high supervisor political skill combination was related to higher supervisor-rated LMX compared with high employee–low supervisor political skill combination. Lastly, employee–supervisor political skill congruency indirectly influences job satisfaction and turnover intention through employee-rated LMX. This research significantly contributes to the political skill literature by examining potential consequences of employee–supervisor congruence in political skill in the workplace.     

Pigeons can discriminate locations presented in pictures

The present experiments were designed to teach pigeons to discriminate two locations represented by color photographs. Two sets of photographs were taken at two distinctive locations on a university campus. These sets represented several standpoints at each location. For the true-discrimination group, pictures from the two locations were differentially associated with reward; for the pseudodiscrimination group, half of the views from each location were arbitrarily but consistently associated with reward. The former group acquired the discrimination much more rapidly. These birds also showed good transfer to new views from the standpoints used in training and to a new standpoint at each location not used in training. In a second experiment, another group of pigeons could terminate any training trial by pecking an “advance” key. Three of 4 subjects used this option to reduce the duration of trials in which pictures from the negative location were presented. These data suggest that pigeons can integrate views shown in pictures into a “concept” of a location. The method used here may be the experimental analogue of a common, natural process by which animals learn to identify locations.     

Test theory without an answer key

A general model is presented for homogeneous, dichotomous items when the answer key is not known a priori. The model is structurally related to the two-class latent structure model with the roles of respondents and items interchanged. For very small sets of respondents, iterative maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters can be obtained by existing methods. For other situations, new estimation methods are developed and assessed with Monte Carlo data. The answer key can be accurately reconstructed with relatively small sets of respondents. The model is useful when a researcher wants to study objectively the knowledge possessed by members of a culturally coherent group that the researcher is not a member of.This research was supported by NSF Grant No. SES-8320173 to the authors. We gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions from John Boyd, Tarow Indow, and Kathy Maher as well as the editor and several anonymous referees.     

Functional measurement approach to self-estimation in multiattribute evaluation

Multiattribute analysis depends on measurement of values and weights. Unless these measures reflect the decision maker's true values and weights, the multiattribute formula may put a less-preferred alternative in first place. To avoid such disordinality requires stringent measurement conditions: First, the values and weights must be on linear (equal interval) or ratio (known zero) scales. Second, these scales must satisfy a condition of common unit across disparate attribute dimensions. Most methods of range adjustment beg both of these measurement questions. Functional measurement theory can solve both problems and so can be useful in multiattribute analysis. Past work has established the operation of a general cognitive algebra as an empirical reality. The averaging model, in particular, makes possible the definition and estimation of weights and values as distinct psychological parameters. It can also solve the problem of common unit. Cognitive algebra thus provides a grounded theoretical foundation on which to develop self-estimation methodology, in which decision makers provide direct estimates of their values and weights. The logic is straightforward. Functional measurement can analyze global judgments to obtain validated psychological scales. These scales may then be used as validational criteria for the self-estimates. Procedures to eliminate biases in the self-estimates can thus be tested and refined in well-learned multiattribute tasks, such as judgments of meals, in which global judgments are trustworthy. Once developed, such self-estimation procedures may be used with some confidence for general multiattribute analysis. A number of studies from 20-odd years of work on the theory of information integration are summarized to show good, although not unmixed promise for self-estimation.     

Effectiveness of the GOFER course in decision making for high school students

The paper describes and evaluates the GOFER course in decision making for high school students (Mann, Harmoni and Power, 1988). The course was based on principles from the conflict theory of decision making (Janis and Mann, 1977) and was designed to provide adolescents with an understanding of factors that produce good and poor decision making as well as knowledge and practice of sound decision skills. Two evaluation studies were conducted to examine effectiveness of the course. Study 1 was conducted with young adolescents (12 year olds). It found a significant difference between students trained in the course and a control group on measures of self-esteem as a decision maker, self reported decision habits and knowledge of decision strategy. Study 2 was conducted with mid-adolescents (15 year olds). It, too, found a significant difference between students who took the course and a control group on measures of self esteem as a decision maker and self-reported decision habits. It is concluded that while the evaluation study fell short of an ideal test, the GOFER course met the criteria of improving student knowledge, raising confidence in decision making and changing self reported decision habits.