Examines whether the positive association between social support and well-being is attributable more to an overall beneficial effect of support (main- or direct-effect model) or to a process of support protecting persons from potentially adverse effects of stressful events (buffering model). The review of studies is organized according to (1) whether a measure assesses support structure (the existence of relationships) or function (the extent to which one's interpersonal relationships provide particular resources) and (2) the degree of specificity (vs globality) of the scale. Special attention is given to methodological characteristics that are requisite for a fair comparison of the models. It is concluded that there is evidence consistent with both models. Evidence for the buffering model is found when the social support measure assesses the perceived availability of interpersonal resources that are responsive to the needs elicited by stressful events. Evidence for a main effect model is found when the support measure assesses a person's degree of integration in a large social network. Both conceptualizations of social support are correct in some respects, but each represents a different process through which social support may affect well-being. Implications for theories of social support processes and for the design of preventive interventions are discussed.

/pdf/stress-social-support-and-the-buffering-hypothesis-37b7abjbst.pdf

Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.

Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. However, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusion--that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation--extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for increased use of indirect measures--which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with recent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects are often reduced by focusing judges' attention on their judgment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination.

/pdf/implicit-social-cognition-attitudes-self-esteem-and-2j32pp6h9o.pdf

Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes.

The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena.

/pdf/bad-is-stronger-than-good-42gd5eyc1l.pdf

Bad is Stronger than Good

Bad is stronger than good

ions as internal properties of clients rather than as hypothetical constructs of therapists has resulted in considerable confusion about the types of changes effected by different approaches to the modification of behavior. It is widely assumed that behavioral and psychodynamic approaches are concerned with fundamentally different subject matters. The latter methods supposedly treat complexes, repressed impulses, ego strengths and mental apparatuses, the underlying causes of behavior, whereas behavioral approaches are believed to modify only superficial behavior. This apparent difference in subject matter, however, exists primarily in the therapists’ conceptualizations, not in actual practice. Ego strength, to take an example, is a www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 235 hypothetical construct and not an entity within the client. One can neither observe nor modify hypothetical constructs. The person’s behavior— broadly defined to include cognitive, emotional, and motor expressions—is the only class of events that can be altered through psychological procedures, and therefore it is the only meaningful subject matter of psychotherapy. Similarly, stimulus variables are the only events that the therapist can modify to effect behavioral change. Psychotherapy, like any other social influence enterprise, is thus a process in which the therapist arranges stimulus conditions that produce desired behavioral changes in the client. If, for instance, a psychotherapist creates conditions that increase the frequency of the behaviors from which ego strength is inferred, the client will be said to have acquired increased ego strength as a function of treatment. On the other hand, if the frequency of www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 236 ego-strength behaviors has been reduced in the course of psychotherapy, the client has suffered a loss in ego strength. Clearly, ego strength is simply a hypothetical abstraction whose presumed behavioral referents are the only reality the psychotherapist can modify. In the final analysis, social-learning approaches and all other existing forms of treatment modify the same subject matter, namely, behavioral phenomena. Most discussions of change-inducing processes, however, focus on treating the inferences made from behavioral events as though these abstractions existed independently and caused their behavioral referents. Philosophers of science have cautioned against the attribution of causal potency to described properties of behavior. Their warnings have had little impact on personality theorizing. Neither traits nor types, as concepts, have www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 237 any real existence. They are merely words, and words do not exist in the eye of the observer nor in the people observed. A man can not be said to have either a type or a trait, but he can be said to fit either a type or a trait. At present the fit will be inexact, for dimensions of personality have not yet been quantified well enough to permit of accurate measurement. In the case of height, the measurement can be precise, and little confusion results from saying that a man has a certain height. Observation and concept are so closely related that the phrase is not ordinarily understood to mean more than it says, namely, that the extent of a given datum of observation in one direction fits a certain section of an ideal dimension of distance. But if an attempt is made to fit some mode of human conduct to the trait of courage, the looseness of correspondence between behavior and concepts leads to mischievous reification. The concept parts company with behavior, picks up undefined notions in its flight from reality, and finally acquires an independent real existence in its own right, so that when it is said that a man has courage, he will be thought of as the fortunate owner of something considerably www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 238 more significant than a certain pattern of behavior [Pratt, 1939, p. 115]. Similarly, a person who is plagued with “weak ego strength” will be viewed as suffering from something vastly more significant than the behavioral referents from which the construct is inferred. For purposes of further illustration, let us designate behaviors in which persons violate social and legal codes of behavior and frequently engage in assaultive activities as the external expressions of an inferred zoognick. Based on prevailing clinical practices, the zoognick would come to represent an intrapsychically functioning agent. An honorific causative power would be conferred upon this hypothetical zoognick, whereas the observed behavior from which its existence is inferred would be depreciated as superficial behavioral manifestations. Before long, www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 239 psychological tests would be constructed to measure zoognick strength on the basis of which diagnosticians would tautologically attribute clients’ behavior to the action of the underlying zoognick. Proceeding on the assumption that “patient variables are not conceived to be behaviors, but constructs concerning internal constellations” (Wallerstein, 1963), psychotherapeutic goals would be stated in terms of removing the pernicious zoognick. On the other hand, direct modification of the deviant behavior would be considered not only superficial but potentially dangerous, since elimination of the symptomatic expressions might force the zoognick to emerge in equally pernicious substitute forms. A sufficiently charismatic exponent of zoognick theory could undoubtedly develop a sizable following with the same extraordinary conviction in the vital importance and causative potency of www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 240 zoognicks as that shown by adherents of libidinal forces. Oedipal complexes, collective unconsciouses, and self-dynamisms. Finally, humanists would embrace zoognick theory as more befitting the complexities of human beings than those simplistic mechanistic doctrines that stubbornly insist that the zoognick is the deviant behavior rechristened. Most treatment approaches devote remarkably little attention to the selection of objectives; when they are specified (Mahrer, 1967), the intended outcomes generally include a variety of abstract virtues described in socially desirable terms, such as reorganization of the self, restoration of functional effectiveness, development of individuation and self-actualization, establishment of homeostatic equilibrium, where there is id there shall ego be and where superego was there shall conscious ego be, achievement of identity, www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 241 acceptance of self-consciousness, enhancement of ego strength, or the attainment of self-awareness, emotional maturity, and positive mental health. While some of these objectives allude to vaguely defined behavioral characteristics, most refer to nebulous hypothetical states. These abstractions convey little information unless they are further defined in terms of specifically observable behavior. Behavioral Specification of Objectives A meaningfully stated objective has at least two basic characteristics (Mager, 1961). First, it should identify and describe the behaviors considered appropriate to the desired outcomes. The term “behavior” is used in the broad sense to include a complex of observable and potentially measurable activities including motor, cognitive, and physiological classes of responses. www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 242 After the intended goals have been specified in performance, and preferably in measurable terms, decisions can be made about the experiences that are most likely to produce the desired outcomes. For example, the statement, “Increase the person’s self-confidence and self-esteem,” designates a therapeutic intent; but it furnishes little guidance, since it does not reveal the kinds of behaviors the person will exhibit after he has achieved increased self-esteem. Once self-esteem and the behaviors that will be esteem producing for a particular client have been delineated, one can arrange conditions that will create the requisite behaviors and thereby produce the condition of positive selfevaluation. In some instances learning vocational skills may be most relevant to acquiring selfesteem; in some cases developing interpersonal competencies that will secure positive responses from others may be most appropriate; in other www.freepsychotherapybooks.org 243 cases eliminating alienating social behaviors may be required if self-evaluation is to be altered; and finally, in cases where a person is relatively competent socially and vocationally, an increase in self-esteem behavior may require the modification of stringent, self-imposed standards of behavior upon which self-approving and self-deprecatory responses are contingent. Similarly, unless the goals specify the behavior that persons will exhibit when successfully self-actualized, internally integrated, self-accepted, personally reconstructed, homeostatically equilibrated, or emotionally matured, such goals provide little

Principles of behavior modification

Multimethod analysis of social reinforcement exchange between maritally distressed and nondistressed spouse and stranger dyads.

: A study has sought to identify the relative contribution or weighting of specified classes of exchanged behavioral events and quality of experience outside of one's relationship believed to be of importance conceptually to the reported satisfaction provided by a dyadic relationship While previous studies have relied essentially upon retrospective reporting, the investigation utilizes partners' observations of exchanged pleasurable and unpleasurable events as well as daily ratings of quality of outside experience The study also has sought to illuminate reciprocity between dyadic exchange of pleasant and unpleasant events or consequences (Author)

A behavioral analysis of the determinants of marital satisfaction.

: The paper summarizes a conceptualization of marital conflict, describes the assessment devices that were developed for measuring dyadic conflict, and analyzes intervention modules. The data on effectiveness of the intervention consist of the findings with regard to distressed couples, negative or aversive interacting and problem solving, increase in relationship satisfaction post treatment, and significant increases in reported pleasures from spouses. While the study did not employ a control group, the use of multi-leveled assessment techniques led a conclusion that the intervention package functioned as designed. (Author)

A Framework for Conceptualizing Marital Conflict, A Technology for Altering It, Some Data for Evaluating It.

: The marital interaction coding system (MICS) has been developed and used to objectively record verbal and nonverbal behaviors that occur as marriage partners attempt to negotiate, in a laboratory setting, resolutions of their marital problems. Primary emphasis is placed on the accurate coding of every behavior emitted that can be classified, with these responses being recorded sequentially in 30-second blocks. The basic unit is defined as a verbal or nonverbal response which is homogeneous in content, without regard for its duration or its arbitrary syntactical properties, such as division into words and sentences. Homogeneity of content is judged with reference to the 28 categories which have been created.

Marital Interaction Coding System.

The development of a 14-item intensity scale measuring likelihood of marriage dissolution is described. The Marital Status Inventory (MSI) forms a Guttman-like scale. Preliminary discriminant validity data are presented for the self-report scale indicating that couples presenting with marital problems score significantly higher than couples seeking parent-child related therapy. The predictive validity of the scale remains to be demonstrated, but the MSI is reported for use by researchers and clinicians.

Robert L. Weiss

Papers

Multimethod analysis of social reinforcement exchange between maritally distressed and nondistressed spouse and stranger dyads.

A behavioral analysis of the determinants of marital satisfaction.

A Framework for Conceptualizing Marital Conflict, A Technology for Altering It, Some Data for Evaluating It.

Marital Interaction Coding System.

The Marital Status Inventory: Development of a Measure of Dissolution Potential.