New Ideas in Psychology最新文献

Although stressors are frequently linked to several negative health outcomes, experiencing stressors may be necessary for enhancing performance. At present, the literature is lacking a unified, comprehensive framework that accounts for both positive and negative outcomes following stressors. Therefore, we introduce the framework of hormesis, which has been applied in biological research for decades. According to hormesis, small-to-medium doses of a stressor can stimulate an organism's response, while large doses cause detrimental effects. In this article, we argue that these dose-response dynamics can be found in various domains of performance psychology (i.e., eustress and distress, psychological momentum, emotions, motivation, confidence, cognitive performance, training, skill acquisition, adversity, and trauma). Furthermore, hormesis also accounts for the inter- and intra-individual variability commonly found in responses to stressors. Finally, from an applied perspective, leveraging hormesis may stimulate new psychological interventions that mimic the well-known effects of (toxic) vaccinations at the level of behavior.

The art therapy assessment involves the classification of the psychological state of the drawer into several groups (e.g., normal or abnormal) and the estimation of it in numeric (e.g., psychological examination score) based on the interpretation of his or her drawing. Based on a qualitative approach to these tasks, a statistical approach relying various quantitative features of drawings has broadened the scope and methods in the analysis of the psychological states through drawings. In this paper, we explore an artificial intelligence approach and discuss its superiority over the statistical approach and also identify its limitations. The synergistic effects of the interdisciplinary framework combining qualitative, statistical, and artificial intelligence approaches is expected to make a critical contribution to the development of art therapy assessment.

Clinician-administered interviews are widely considered the ‘gold standard’ method of assessing psychological distress. We challenge this assumption by noting that there is no empirical evidence demonstrating that psychological distress scores derived from clinician-administered interviews more accurately reflect true psychological distress scores than those derived from self-report questionnaires. Furthermore, we argue that the clinician-administered interview method is not well-suited to measuring subjective experiences of psychological distress and is likely to generate higher levels of measurement error compared to self-reports due to there being two sources of measurement error: the interviewee and the interviewer. Contrary to popular opinion, we argue that the self-report method is superior to the clinician-administered interview method for assessing subjective psychological distress.

This paper reviews research on biological essentialist beliefs and what these entail for perceiving genetic hybrids. It is suggested that hybrid perception results from the characteristics of essentialist reasoning, according to which living beings are endowed with a specific identity as a member of a natural kind. The most important elements of attributing an essence onto an individual are its perceived causal power to determine group membership, being immutable, discrete with regard to an individual's membership in exactly one category, making members of a category appear homogeneous, and ensuring intergenerational stability. Mixing two essences as in genetic engineering strips the hybrid of an unambiguous identity in perception, and results in its devaluation. Such devaluation seems to occur on a non-conscious level and across cultures. The basic claims not only hold for animals but also apply to the human domain and to inter-ethnic procreation, primarily for respondents with conservative worldviews.

Although a growing body of research and theory has sought to advance a motivational perspective on chronic pain, the precise meaning of motivation as a concept and the nature and functional characteristics of its component mechanisms remain controversial and articulated from diverse analytic perspectives. This paper has three main objectives: (1) to offer a detailed examination of directional motivation and the nature of motivational mechanisms and motivational contexts, (2) to summarize the structural and functional characteristics of goals and self-regulatory processes as viewed from a control theoretic framework, and (3) to address how an account of human motivation built upon the active pursuit of goals aided by self-regulatory support mechanisms can illuminate some of the core aspects of chronic pain adaptation and the processes underlying the acute to chronic pain transition.

Objective

Identity (i.e. one's sense of self) has been proposed by traditional theoretical frameworks to be a fundamental factor of anorexia nervosa (AN). However, more research is needed to extend and consolidate the existing literature. As such, this narrative review aimed to synthesise relevant literature to gain a better understanding of the role of identity in AN.

Methods

PubMed, Scopus (Elsevier), and Web of Science databases were searched for this narrative review using keywords ‘anorexia’, ‘identity’ and ‘sense of self’. The relevant literature research findings were synthesised into three overarching themes: identity impairments, loss of self to the ‘AN-identity’, and the role of identity in recovery.

Results

Overall, findings suggest identity disturbances could be a central element of AN, and may influence both maintenance of and recovery from AN.

Conclusions

The reviewed findings support identity-focused theoretical frameworks of AN. However, there is a clear need for further research to clarify possible mechanisms of action involving identity disturbance in AN, including how identity may be better addressed in treatment.

First-person access to experience is of eminent importance for psychological research and for various applied domains such as the prevention and treatment of mental and physical illness. It is therefore of major interest to find ways to enhance the accuracy of introspective access to experience. Interventions based, for example, on meditation or adaptive feedback training were able to advance the accuracy of metacognitive access (i.e., a subcomponent of introspective access). However, there is an open debate about possible confounds and especially the transfer of the training effect to other domains. With the current series of studies, we aimed to test an intervention to advance introspective access that (1) was based on a conceptualization of the sense of certainty, (2) comprised a first-person approach addressing cognitive as well as affective and somatic dimensions of experience, and (3) prioritized low training duration and attainment of high experiential depth. We investigated a domain-specific (study A, n = 65) and a domain-general (study B, n = 70) effect of sense of certainty training on metacognitive accuracy and finally tried to replicate the domain-specific effect (study C, n = 41). Altogether, the studies showed mixed results regarding a domain-specific and negative results regarding a domain-general effect of the intervention. Based on our findings, we discuss implications of a first-person approach to training systematic self-enquiry. We offer both a conservative and a liberal interpretation of our results and suggest that this important issue is not put aside prematurely and that the training of access to experience through first-person enquiry is given a fair chance in future research.

In the last couple of decades, there has been an increasing trend of sports psychology research studies drawing on theoretical models from the realm of work and organizational psychology. These models have been either directly applied or adapted to fit the sports context. The purpose of this narrative review is to explore the advantages and potential drawbacks of using models rooted in work and organizational psychology in sports psychology. We will first examine the similarities between the two contexts, followed by an in-depth analysis of theoretical models that have been successfully or unsuccessfully transferred to sports psychology, such as the Goal Setting Theory, the Theory of Transformational Leadership, the Conservation of Resources Theory, and the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation-Recovery Model. Ultimately, this review will provide a comprehensive overview of the benefits and pitfalls associated with applying work and organizational psychology theoretical models to sports psychology.

Positive Psychology has reconstructed how we understand happiness. The practices and discourses it presents to perform that reconceptualization appear as if free from political interest or intentionality. However, this article will show that its proposals define a subtle new form of government which we will call Psychopolitics. Instead of placing the population or the body of the citizen at the centre of political struggles, it focuses on the psyche. Through an extreme defence of positive emotions and happiness as the key to a good life, Positive Psychology promotes a type of friendly power relations, which instead of punishing motivates and empowers the individual's creativity. To illustrate all of this, we conducted a case study with a Positive Psychology training course taught in a Spanish state university. Content analysis was used to explain the recurring themes and practices of this new discipline of positivity, showing how health is redefined around the happiness axis, and how happiness becomes an individual responsibility. We conclude that all these dimensions are simply a categorical definition of a new type of power relations which may characterise the 21st century.

We consider it necessary to consolidate a developmental theory of Executive Functions. Research based on standardized tasks have limitations that makes it difficult to study and analyze their development with children under the age of two years. To address these issues, we present a constructivist, pragmatic, semiotic, and sociocultural perspective to study the early development of Executive Functions in everyday situations. We propose to place the detailed analysis of children's action at the center of the research. This perspective allows us to analyze their goals and means, as well as their search for understanding. In this perspective, the uses of the objects and gestures are the means that children employ to achieve their goals and build their understanding. We include three paradigmatic illustrations that exemplify this approach.