Freedom and tyranny: Descriptions and prescriptions.

Responds to comments by A. Ahuvia, D. Resnick, J. L. Brand, and R. Solomon (see record 2002-15384-005, 2002-15384-006, 2002-15384-007, and 2002-15384-008, respectively) concerning B. Schwartz's (see record 2000-13324-008) discussion of excessive personal freedom, autonomy, self-determination, and life satisfaction and meaning. Schwartz states that the extent that psychology can develop a substantive vision of a good (healthy, productive, socially responsive and responsible) human life, psychologists should articulate it, and they should try to rally public opinion around it to encourage people to pursue it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In defense of freedom.

Comments on B. Schwartz's (see record 2000-13324-008) discussion of excessive personal freedom, autonomy, self-determination, and life satisfaction and meaning. A positive psychology, according to Schwartz, must constrain "tyranny of choice" (p. 81), and psychologists should "deemphasize freedom" because "American society has created an excess of freedom" (p. 79). R. Solomon suggests that a positive psychology for the 21st century must enhance and facilitate the creation of freedom, not undo it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

God is a libertarian?

Comments on B. Schwartz's (see record 2000-13324-008) discussion of excessive personal freedom, autonomy, self-determination, and life satisfaction and meaning. D. Resnick believes that a levels-of-analysis framework must at least be appreciated and perhaps even adopted before psychologists can progress in their quest to define the good life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life.

Reviews the book, The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life by Kenneth J. Gergen (see record 1991-97621-000). There is, perhaps, no other concept as seminal for psychology as the self. For this reason alone, Kenneth Gergen's book represents an important contribution to our understanding of this influential concept. However, Gergen's vision is so broad, his arguments so compelling, and the implications so revolutionary, that the work defies confinement exclusively within the walls of academia. In essence, Gergen is articulating his vision of a postmodern world, and he lays an invitation squarely before the reader to come and partake. The conception of the self as private and autonomous is the focus of Gergen's postmodern challenge. In his chapter, "Social Saturation and the Populated Self," Gergen postulates that technological innovation in contemporary society has made possible a rapid proliferation of relationships. This he refers to as the "process of social saturation." Gergen's book constitutes a substantive contribution to psychology's on going understanding of the self. Copious examples are provided throughout, drawing on and extending scholarly debates. Also included are anecdotes and evidences from such far ranging domains as art, film, music, literature, and architecture. These not only clarify and reinforce his arguments, but also illustrate the scope and practicality of the position he espouses. Although readers may not embrace the gestalt of Gergen's vision of a postmodern culture, they are certain to find this book to be a provocative and rewarding read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Of Potholes and Bends: A Meditation on Psychoanalysis and Motorcycle Riding.

Psychoanalysis has recently turned attention to the importance of the patient's developing a sense of the future. Yet many patients cannot envisage a rich and worthwhile future, because their attention is focused on the dangers, real or imagined. This scenario is analogous to difficulties motorcyclists have in detaching their gaze from sources of danger and developing depth of vision. The author relates some experiences he has had in being coached in motorcycle riding and demonstrates their relevance to psychoanalytic processes. It is shown that both in motorcycling and in life, it is important to keep focus of vision on one's long-term goals while being aware of dangers in peripheral vision. The development of harmonious movement is shown to be a function of a combination of maternal care and paternal guidance in life as in riding motorcycles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Repression-Sensitization and Medical Diagnosis": Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by Mark S. Schwartz, Neal E. Krupp, and Donn Byrne (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1971[Dec], 78[3], 286-291). In Table 3 the number of female repressors in the 60-69 age group, with a purely organic diagnosis, should be 16 instead of 6. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1972-09554-001.) The transsituational consistency of trait measures can be demonstrated best through the establishment of relationships between personality test responses and nontest behaviors. The repression-sensitization scale shows promise as a correlate of both psychological disturbance and physiological malfunctioning. The association between repression-sensitization scale responses and medical diagnoses was investigated in 360 medical patients representing (a) 3 age levels (20-29, 40-49, and 60-69); (b) 3 repression-sensitization levels (repressors, neutrals, and sensitizers); and (c) both sexes, with 20 patients in each group. Repressors tended to have purely organic diagnoses, whereas sensitizers received diagnoses involving psychological components (p     

Well-being in cultures of choice: A cross-cultural perspective.

Comments on B. Schwartz's (see record 2000-13324-008) discussion of excessive personal freedom, autonomy, self-determination, and life satisfaction and meaning. A. Ahuvia expands on Schwartz's discussion of the impact that modern cultures of choice have on psychological well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions in heavy and light drinkers.

Implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions were measured in 2 dimensions: positive-negative (valence) and arousal-sedation, with 2 versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. Schwartz) and related explicit measures. Heavy drinkers (n = 24) strongly associated alcohol with arousal on the arousal IAT (especially men) and scored higher on explicit arousal expectancies than light drinkers (n = 24). On the valence IAT, both light and heavy drinkers showed strong negative implicit associations with alcohol that contrasted with their positive explicit judgments (heavy drinkers were more positive). Implicit and explicit cognitions uniquely contributed to the prediction of 1-month prospective drinking. Heavy drinkers' implicit arousal associations could reflect the sensitized psychomotor-activating response to drug cues, a motivational mechanism hypothesized to underlie the etiology of addictive behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instructional set, interview context, and the incidence of "don't know" responses.

Examined a hypothesis formulated by E. J. Webb, D. T. Campbell, R. D. Schwartz, and L. Sechrest (see PA, Vol. 40:6543) that instructions emphasizing a respondent's importance to an attitude survey would result in a reduced number of "don't know" responses to the items. A 20-item questionnaire was administered to 180 undergraduates under 3 contexts: face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, and group administration. Contrary to the hypothesis, in both the telephone and group administration contexts, there were significantly more "don't knows" under the instructions emphasizing the respondents' importance than with the control instructions. There was no difference between instructional sets in the face-to-face context. Results are discussed in terms of the social environments within which the questionnaires were administered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit attitudes toward high-fat foods in obesity.

This study examined implicit and explicit attitudes toward high-fat foods in obese (n = 30) and normal-weight controls (n = 31). The Implicit Association Test (A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) was used to measure the differential association of the 2 target categories--high-fat vs. low-fat food words--with an attribute dimension (positive vs. negative). Results suggest that obese people are characterized by a significantly stronger implicit negative attitude toward high-fat foods than are normal-weight controls. This implicit negative attitude is contradictory to their preferences and behavior: Several studies indicate that obese people prefer and consume high-fat foods. Apparently, obese people like the taste of high-fat foods but not the fat content itself, not only on the explicit but also on the implicit level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The structure of intraindividual value change.

Values are assumed to be relatively stable during adulthood. Yet, little research has examined value stability and change, and there are no studies on the structure of value change. On the basis of S. H. Schwartz’s (1992) value theory, the authors propose that the structure of intraindividual value change mirrors the circumplexlike structure of values so that conflicting values change in opposite directions and compatible values change in the same direction. Four longitudinal studies, varying in life contexts, time gaps, populations, countries, languages, and value measures, supported the proposed structure of intraindividual value change. An increase in the importance of any one value is accompanied by slight increases in the importance of compatible values and by decreases in the importance of conflicting values. Thus, intraindividual changes in values are not chaotic, but occur in a way that maintains Schwartz’s value structure. Furthermore, the greater the extent of life-changing events, the greater the value change found, whereas age was only a marginal negative predictor of value change when life events were taken into account. Implications for the structure of personality change are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Solution-oriented therapy for chronic and severe mental illness.

Reviews the book, Solution-oriented therapy for chronic and severe mental illness by Tim Rowan and Bill O'Hanlon (see record 2001-01051-000). This book presents clever and compelling interventions that are very informed, caring, egalitarian, and anchored in what we now know that clients with severe mental illness (SMI) want. The first eight chapters are extraordinarily good. They cover hopeful approaches for demoralized patients, methods of challenging beliefs such as the impossibility of change, ideas that blame, and ideas that disempower or invalidate clients or families. The last four chapters, however, lacked innovation, were too short and too basic, and simply did not have much to say. The cases the authors presented suggested that the clients they were working with were high functioning people with SMI. The authors do not appear to address the patients with neurocognitive deficits, lower IQs, poor verbal skills, and deficits in basic life skills. Also, the reference list is very brief and ignores most of the work that has appeared in the last 10 years or so. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Le statut socio-économique de la famille et le développement cognitif dans la première année de vie.

Children's cognitive development is related to the quality of the environment in which they grow up. Family socioeconomic status (SES) can be used as a proxy measure for the quality of that environment. To date, no epidemiological study has yet looked at the cognitive development of children under two years of age in relation to SES. The purpose of this study is to evaluate, in a cohort of 2,223 five-month-old infants from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (QLSCD), the relationship between specific aspects of SES and a key acquisition of the sensorimotor stage, i.e. the ability to coordinate the schemata of vision and prehension in order to grasp an object within reach. In addition to family income and parental level of education, maternal and paternal age at the time of the study, family type, number of children in the family, immigration status of the mother and her age at the birth of her first child were considered in SES. Latent class analyses were performed to estimate the infants' level of cognitive development, then submitted to loglinear modeling to account for the association between the various aspects of SES and cognitive development. Infants of approximately five months of age within the Quebec population differed amongst themselves in terms of their ability to coordinate vision and prehension, although these differences were unrelated to gender. Infants who had the fewest number of siblings, and whose mothers were younger and non-immigrant, were more likely to coordinate vision and prehension at five months, regardless of gender. These results suggest that a significant variation in the rate of cognitive development during the first year of life is associated with certain aspects of family SES. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Auditory dominance in temporal processing: New evidence from synchronization with simultaneous visual and auditory sequences.

Evidence that audition dominates vision in temporal processing has come from perceptual judgment tasks. This study shows that this auditory dominance extends to the largely subconscious processes involved in sensorimotor coordination. Participants tapped their finger in synchrony with auditory and visual sequences containing an event onset shift (EOS), expected to elicit an involuntary phase correction response (PCR), and also tried to detect the EOS. Sequences were presented in unimodal and bimodal conditions, including one in which auditory and visual EOSs of opposite sign coincided. Unimodal results showed greater variability of taps, smaller PCRs, and poorer EOS detection in vision than in audition. In bimodal conditions, variability of taps was similar to that for unimodal auditory sequences, and PCRs depended more on auditory than on visual information, even though attention was always focused on the visual sequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trauma, change, and psychological health in the 21st century.

The impact of stressful life events on health has been the object of inquiry for decades. Health care professionals have studied how stressful life events may precipitate or contribute to the onset of illness. Traumatic events and experiences can profoundly affect physical and psychological well-being, which in turn may predispose an individual to greater resilience or greater vulnerability to life stresses. Examined herein is the relationship between life stresses--including social stressors, political stressors, and environmental stressors--and the critical health related issues that psychologists need to prepare for in both the science and the practice of psychology over the next decade and during the 21st century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Functional intracellular P-glycoprotein

PURPOSE: To report a novel binocular perimetry test to identify monocular functional vision loss. METHODS: In a prospective study, 10 patients with monocular functional vision loss, 10 patients with monocular organic vision loss, and 10 normal subjects were tested using a Humphrey automated perimeter attachment that performs central threshold perimetry of both eyes in a single test. First, patients were tested after being told their "good" (unaffected) eye was being tested; this was followed by a second identical test said to be on the "bad" (affected) eye. Two measurements were calculated for each subject: the functional component (deltaF), defined as the difference (in dB) between the mean threshold of the first and second tests, and the organic component (deltaO), the difference (in dB) between the mean threshold of the unaffected and affected eyes. RESULTS: Patients with monocular functional vision loss produced lower thresholds when they thought their affected eye alone was being tested but little intereye difference (mean deltaF +/- SD = 17.35 +/- 7.50 dB; mean deltaO = 0.01 +/- 1.40 dB). Patients with monocular organic vision loss had little difference between tests and lower thresholds in their affected eye (mean deltaF = 0.84 +/- 1.15 dB; mean deltaO = 9.01 +/- 4.71 dB). Normal subjects demonstrated little intertest or intereye differences (mean deltaF = -0.15 +/- 0.78 dB; mean deltaO = -0.05 +/- 0.51 dB). CONCLUSION: This perimetry method effectively distinguished between normal subjects, patients with monocular functional vision loss, and patients with monocular organic vision loss.     

The validity and appropriateness of methods, analyses, and conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A rebuttal of victimological critique from Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001).

The authors respond to 2 victimological critiques of their 1998 meta-analysis on child sexual abuse (CSA). S. J. Dallam et al. (see record 2001-05308-002) (2001) claimed that B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (see record 1998-04232-002) (1998) committed numerous methodological and statistical errors, and often miscoded and misinterpreted data. The authors show all these claims to be invalid. To the contrary, they demonstrate frequent bias in Dallam et al.'s criticisms. S. J. Ondersma et al. (see record 2001-05308-001) (2001) claimed that Rind et al.'s study is part of a backlash against psychotherapists, that its suggestions regarding CSA definitions were extrascientific, and that the moral standard is needed to understand CSA scientifically. The authors show their suggestions to have been scientific and argue that it is Ondersma et al.'s issue-framing and moral standard that are extrascientific. This reply supports the original methods, analyses, recommendations, and conclusions of Rind et al. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrative perspectives on acculturation.

Comments on the original article, "Rethinking the concept of acculturation: Implications for theory and research," by S. J. Schwartz, J. B. Unger, B. L. Zamboanga, and J. Szapocznik (see record 2010-08987-001). Schwartz et al are to be commended for their attempts “to propose an expanded, multidimensional model of acculturation and of the demographic and contextual forces that can influence the acculturation process” (p. 238). In their article, they called attention to key factors such as the generational status of immigrants and their children; the role of location, particularly in ethnic enclaves; and the context of reception that immigrants enter, including the potential discrimination they may face. These variables are the crucial backdrop for the authors’ call to “focus on the higher order construct of receiving-culture acquisition as well as on the individual dimensions of this higher order construct—practices, values, and identifications” (p. 246). As a sociologist trained in social psychology, I am pleased by their incorporation of some of the sociological literature on these processes. However, I was surprised by important gaps in their discussion of Portes and Rumbaut’s (1996, 2006) work and by their neglect of one of the most widely used terms employed by sociologists to hypothesize outcomes for the very questions Schwartz et al were posing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A re-reading of Studies on Hysteria: the Freud-Breuer break revisited.

Argues that the commonly accepted view that J. Breuer and Freud ended their relationship simply because the former objected to the latter's claim as to the sexual etiology of the psychoneuroses is a myth (propounded by Freud and E. Jones) that masked an ongoing polemic in Studies on Hysteria. Breuer objected to Freud's claim that symbolic processes unconsciously determine symptoms. What disturbed both Freud and Breuer was Freud's vision of an interpenetration of intelligence and sexuality operating according to the laws of language completely out of the ego's awareness. The unconscious link between sexuality and intellection remains as problematic today. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)