Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology – serie

The concept of self-handicapping can be legitimately anchored in a vari­ ety of intellectual contexts, some old and some newer. As this volume reminds us, Alfred Adler was perhaps the first to articulate the signifi­ cance of various self-defeating claims and gestures for protecting the self­ concept. Thus the apparent paradox of "defeat" in the interests of "pro­ tection. " More recently (but still more than 30 years ago), Heider's "naive psychology" added attributional rhetoric to the description of self-defeat­ ing strategies. While predominantly cognitive in its thrust, the attribu­ tional approach incorporated several motivational influences-especially those involving egocentric concerns. Heider hardly violated our common sense when he suggested that people are inclined to attribute their performances in a self-serving manner: the good things I caused; the bad things were forced upon me. The notion of self-handicapping strategies, proposed by Berglas and myself a little more than a decade ago, capitalized on these homely truths while adding a particular proactive twist. We not only make ex­ cuses for our blunders; we plan our engagements and our situational choices so that self-protective excuses are unnecessary. In doing so, we use our attributional understanding to arrange things so that flawed and failing performances will not be interpreted in ways that threaten our self-esteem.

In the myth of Daphne and Apollo, Cupid fired two arrows: one causing flight from love, the other passionate attraction. Cupid aimed his first arrow at Daphne, a beautiful nymph who loved her freedom; the next struck Apollo, who lusted after Daphne. Daphne, frightened and intent upon virginity, fled Apollo but was unable to run fast enough. When her strength was almost gone, she sought protection in the familiar waters of her father's river. He answered her prayers: Her hair became leaves, and her feet, roots growing into the ground; she was transformed into a laurel tree. Apollo, kissing the sprouting bark, pledged to honor Daphne by placing a laurel wreath on the head of every hero who won a victory. Unable to evade the consequences of the arrow that wounded her, Daphne called upon the river, the creative power of both nature and time-a symbol of fertility, but also of oblivion-to help her survive when her strength was gone. Daphne's inner triumph in the face of injury is an appropriate sym­ bol for the types of transformation witnessed by psychologists. In his book on symbols, Circlot (1962, p. 173) writes that the crowning of the poet, artist, or conqueror with laurel leaves "presupposes a series of inner victories over the negative and dissipative influence of the basest forces. " Further, the tree "denotes the life of the cosmos: its consistence, growth, proliferation, generative, and regenerative processes" (Circlot, 1962, p. 328).

The self-knower has become a hero within many contemporary cultures. This hero goes by various different titles, including the" self-insightful/' the "self-actualized/' the "autonomous and mature/' the "representative of independent thinking/' the "morally virtuous/' and many more. The common denominators of civilization's preoccupation with the self­ knower are (1) the mundane, popular literature that draws our attention to our "inner being" and (2) the remarkable intensity of therapies and quasitherapies that promise insight into the true core of our inner being. A characteristic example from an extensive, week-or month-long training course would read, "Come because you want to discover your self ... . Through Mr. X [the group leaderl, we can realize our true identities ... . This gives our lives sense and perspective." We have tried to trace the logic underlying the diverse self-knower movements and have found three common themes underlying them. For one, the varieties of theories and treatments associated with self-knowl­ edge are interested exclusively in the appearance of the self-knower. Each representative of the self-knower school has its own set of criteria for identifying the self-knowing person, and in tum, each member of the self-knower school represents certain convictions about how individuals should be evaluated. For instance, if someone manifests warmth and char­ ity, that person is likely to be pronounced healthy, adjusted, and self­ knowing.

This book is a cumulation of a research program that began in the sum­ mer of 1978, when I was a doctoral student at the University of Missouri. What started as a graduate student' s curiosity about individual differ­ ences in need for personal control led to a personality scale, a few pub­ lications, some additional questions, and additional research. For reasons I no longer recall, I named this personality trait desire for control. One study led to another, and questions by students and colleagues often spurred me to apply desire for control to new areas and new questions. At the same time, researchers around the globe began using the scale and sending me reprints of articles and copies of papers describing work they had done on desire for contro!. In the past decade or so, I have talked or corresponded with dozens of students who have used the scale in their doctoral dissertation and master's thesis research. I have heard of or seen translations of the Desirability of Control Scale into German, Polish, Japanese, and French. There is also a children's version of the scale. I estirnate that there have now been more than a hundred studies conducted on desire for contro!.

In this important work twelve eminent scholars review the latest theoretical work on human aggressive behavior. Emerging theories of aggression; peers, sex-roles, and aggression; environmental investigation and mitigation of aggression; development of adult aggression; and group aggression in adolescents and adults are all discussed in detail to provide clinicians, researchers, and students with a cutting-edge overview of the field.

Adopting a unique situation-oriented perspective, this book studies the occurence and control of aggression on the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of physical and social ecologies. The wide ranging viewpoint clarifies important aspects of all forms of aggression to provide psychologists, sociologists, and criminologists with a powerful aid for treatment and intervention techniques.

Summarizing 25 years of research, the author integrates virtually the entire published literature on the phenomenon of learned helplessness, as well as some unpublished data, into a single coherent theoretical framework. Dr. Mikulincer accounts for the complex nature of the phenomenon by focusing on cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes, and then details a new coping perspective to deal with uncontrollable events. His groundbreaking work will become an essential reference for all future work in the field.

Procrastination is a fascinating, highly complex human phenomenon for which the time has come for systematic theoretical and therapeutic effort. The present volume reflects this effort. It was a labor of love to read this scholarly, timely book-the first of its kind on the topic. It was especially encouraging to find that its authors are remarkably free of the phenomenon they have been investigating. One might have expected the opposite. It has often been argued that people select topics that trouble them and come to understand their problems better by studying or treating them in others. This does not appear to be true of the procrastination researchers represented in this book. I base this conclusion on two simple observations. First, the work is replete with recent refer­ ences and the book itself has reached the reader scarcely a year following its completion. Second, when one considers the remarkable pace of pro­ grammatic research by these contributors during the past decade, it is clear that they are at the healthy end of the procrastination continuum. The fascinating history of the term procrastination is well documented in this book. The term continues to conjure up contrasting, eloquent images-especially for poets. When Edward Young wrote in 1742, "Pro­ crastination is the Thief of Time," he was condemning the waste of the most precious of human commodities.

Covering over fifteen years of research, this compilation offers the first comprehensive review of the relationships between self-efficacy, adaptation, and adjustment. Following a general overview of self-efficacy, renowned researchers discuss important topics such as depression, anxiety, addictive disorders, vocational and career choice, preventive behavior, rehabilitation, stress, academic achievement and instruction, and collective efficacy. Psychologists concerned with social cognition and practitioners in clinical counseling will find this an invaluable reference.

Challenging current notions in self-esteem literature, this volume offers new insights into efficacy, agency, and self-esteem as well as the influence of these constructs on psychological well-being. The contributions by prominent researchers contain substantial new theoretical and empirical research that focuses on a wide range of personality and motivational phenomena.

Raymond M. Bergner offers the first comprehensive reference to address the highly prevalent and debilitating forms of self-criticism. This resource features an extensive array of strategies for assessing these patterns as well as the factors maintaining them. In addition, the volume is complete with therapeutic intervention strategies to help patients abandon pathological self-critical practices. The author desribes a therapeutic relationship that greatly enchances the efficacy of the interventions mentioned throughout the book.

In The Psychology of Vandalism, Arnold P. Goldstein thoroughly examines the status, causation, prevention, and remediation of vandalistic behavior. Goldstein provides vandal- and environment-oriented explanations and interventions. He includes 169 tactics to reduce vandalism as well as ways for selecting and combining these tactics into programs. A selection of exemplary research reports evaluate diverse vandalism interventions. This reference will benefit graduate students, practitioners, and academics in clinical, social, and environmental psychology as well as criminology.

Forced hospitalization of people with mental disorders has long been a critical issue in the mental health services. Coercion and Aggressive Community Treatment is the first sustained description and analysis of what happens when `aggressive' treatment becomes `coerced' treatment. Mental health professionals poignantly discuss the tension they feel between wanting to do everything to treat desperately ill people and the need to respect the rights of these same people who want to make their own decisions, even if this means forgoing treatment.

Social Cognitive Psychology is the first text to provide comprehensive coverage of the field, including thorough discussions of its historical foundations cross-referenced with significant recent developments. Highlights include ;the discipline's origins in pragmatic philosophy and the need for a second social psychology; the contributions of cognition, affect, and direct perception to social knowing, and the development of positive and negative self theories in social context.This valuable reference contains comprehensive chapter summaries, lists of key terms and concepts, and graphs of processing models from various theories.

A pragmatic social cognitive psychology covers a lot of territory, mostly in personality and social psychology but also in clinical, counseling, and school psychologies. It spans a topic construed as an experimental study of mechanisms by its natural science wing and as a study of cultural interactions by its social science wing. To learn about it, one should visit laboratories, field study settings, and clinics, and one should read widely. If one adds the fourth dimen­ sion, time, one should visit the archives too. To survey such a diverse field, it is common to offer an edited book with a resulting loss in integration. This book is coauthored by a social personality psychologist with historical interests (DFB: Parts I, II, and IV) in collaboration with two social clinical psychologists (CRS and JEM: Parts III and V). We frequently cross-reference between chapters to aid integration without duplication. To achieve the kind of diversity our subject matter represents, we build each chapter anew to reflect the emphasis of its content area. Some chapters are more historical, some more theoretical, some more empirical, and some more applied. All the chapters reflect the following positions.

The work of 47 contributors from the U.S., Canada, and Israel, the Sourcebook gives special attention to the complexity of the social support construct, expanding the field's theoretical base by seriously reappraising social support research in the context of findings from other fields of psychology and related disciplines. Personality processes are specified to account for observed associations between social support and physical well-being. Several new studies are included which illustrate empirical approaches to exploring these processes. And key contributions highlight the great strides made in understanding the links among personal dispositions, situational contexts, and potentially supportive transactions.

Aversive behaviors have greater influence on social interactions than is generally acknowledged, determining personal satisfaction, interpersonal attraction, choice of partners, and the course of relationships. What motivates aversive behaviors? To what extent do they obtain desired outcomes? In what ways are they unnecessary and destructive? How do other people respond, emotionally and behaviorally? These are just a few of the many interesting questions addressed by the 16 respected researchers who contribute to Aversive Interpersonal Behaviors. Nine chapters give this heretofore neglected subject the attention it is due, probing a dark side of interpersonal relationships to understand both its destructive and adaptive nature.

Human beings are agents: They may exert influence over their own fate. They initiate their actions, experience a considerable degree of freedom and control in their mundane activities, and respond adversely to external constraints to their agency; they are able to monitor and modify their moti- vation, affective states, and behavior. Since the sixties, the notion of person-as-agent has become increas- ingly accepted in scientific psychology. Nowadays, personal control is a standard topic in research on personality, motivation, and social behavior. The most popular approach identifies personal control with a feeling or judgment: To have control means to perceive the self as a source of causa- tion. Within this perspective, such consciously accessible contents like perceived freedom and self-determination, feelings and expectations of control, or perceived self-efficacy and competence emerge as natural tar- gets of research (see e.g., Alloy, Clements, & Koenig, 1993; Bandura, 1977; OeCharms, 1968; Oeci & Ryan, 1985; Harvey, 1976; Rotter, 1966; Thomp- son, 1993; Wortman, 1975).

Embracing all aspects of personality study, Advanced Personality addresses major established theories and vital current research topics in the field, from the perspectives of both clinical and scholarly settings. This impressive text-reference features chapters that cover, among other topics-psychobiological theories of personality- conscious and unconscious functioning-and personality disorders from a trait perspective. Written for entry-level graduate and upper-level undergraduate students, the book includes an introductory chapter with a chronological table listing all major figures in the history of the field, and tables that summarize key aspects of various theories.

All traits were not created equal. -WORCHEL AND COOPER (1983, p. 180) This book reports the findings from extensive cross-cultural studies of the relative importance ofdifferent psychological traits in 20 countries and the relative favorability of these traits in a subset of 10 countries. While the work is devoted primarily to professionals and advanced students in the social sciences, the relatively nontechnical style - ployed should make the book comprehensible to anyone with a general grasp of the concepts and strategies ofempirical behavioral science. The project grew out of discussions between the first author and third author while the latter was a graduate student at Wake Forest University, U.S.A., in 1990. The third author, a native of Chile, was studying person-descriptive adjectives composing the stereotypes - sociatedwiththe Chilean aboriginal minority knownas Mapuche (Saiz &Williams, 1992). Asweexaminedthe adjectives usedinthisstudy,it was clear that they differed in favorability and also on another dim- sionwhichwe latertermed "psychologicalimportance," i.e., the degree to which adjectives reflected more "central," as opposed to more "- ripheral,"personality characteristics.More important descriptors were those which seemed more informative or diagnostic ofwhat a person "wasreally like"and, hence, might be ofgreater significance in und- standing and predicting an individual's behavior.

This original work focuses on how stress evolves and is resolved in the interplay between persons and their social connectedness within family, tribe, and culture. Stress, Culture, and Community maintains that the primary motivation of human beings is to build, protect, and foster their resource reservoirs in order to protect the self and its social attachments. Stevan E. Hobfoll searches for the causes of psychological distress and potential methods of successful stress resistance by probing the ties that bind people in families, communities, and cultures. By focusing on the `process" rather than the `outcomes' of stress, he reshapes the stress dialogue.

The assessment of individual differences has a long history. As early as 2200 B.C. the Chinese were employing methods to select candidates for civil service positions. Over the ensuing centuries philosophers, theologians, and the nobility all noticed and debated the role of "character" in shaping the destiny and quality of individual lives. This interest spawned widely different methods of evaluating the timbre of temperament-bumps on the head, lines on the hand, shape of the body-all of which were em­ ployed in attempts to gain insight into basic human motives. The emer­ gence of the scientific method and its application to this endeavor reinvigorated society's efforts in this direction, and an abundant variety of assessment instruments consequently became available. The outbreak of World War I created a need for the efficient assess­ ment of individual differences in large groups. Such instruments as the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet and the Army Alpha Test resulted in gen­ uine breakthroughs in assessment technology. These tests provided stan­ dardized sets of items that permitted quantitative comparisons among people. Over the years, numerous scales have been developed which have been based on widely differing levels of psychometric sophistication.

Aging is inevitable-A "psychological recession" is not . . . As I go about my daily life, I read and hear about the sometimes scary things that are happening to other people. As the saying goes, bad news sells newspapers. But I u- ally can take some solace in reasoning that this bad stuff assuredly will not occur in my life. After reading this book, however, one message has gotten through–I cannot d- miss "those" older people described in the various chapters as being dissimilar to me. After all, "old person" is a term that can be applied to me in a few more years. On this point, I once heard the following rhetorical question applied to the prejudice actions of the TV character Archie Bunker: "What would he say about "those" Puerto Ricans, if, on his next birthday, he knew that he would become a Puerto Rican?" As to aging, we best pay close attention because we soon will be "those" elders. This is why the alarming facts of this book-that our elders often are experiencing elevatedlevelsofphysicalillnessesanddepression–grabbedmebytheproverbialthroat.

Comparison of objects, events, and situations is integral to judgment; comparisons of the self with other people comprise one of the building blocks of human conduct and experience. After four decades of research, the topic of social comparison is more popular than ever. In this timely handbook a distinguished roster of researchers and theoreticians describe where the field has been since its development in the early 1950s and where it is likely to go next.

In his earlier work the author has studied stress and the personality characteristics that protect us from its effects on health and well-being. In this new book he places humor firmly within the literatures of coping processes, the moderation of stressful experiences, and health by showing how humor can help create and encourage feelings of community, closeness, and control. Lefcourt blends empirical research with anecdotal reports in this thoughtful volume.

This title provides a transcultural psychosocial conception of the nature of individual and social activity. The author presents an integrated view of how people develop a psychosocially-based awareness of themselves and their milieus to shape what he refers to as their "internested" social systems. In so doing he challenges current deficit/prevention emphases in the helping disciplines and promotes a constructive, prosocial model of individual and social approaches to change.

Are dominance and submission inevitable in human relationships? Believing that sadomasochism is becoming an ever more obtrusive phenomenon in developed countries, the author surveyed 48 self-declared sadomasochists (43 male, 5 female) and 35 controls (26 male, 9 female) in an effort to elicit information on early family relationships, morale, and sexual behavior and fantasy; she also looks at the philosophy of masochism and its damaging effects.

On an MTV special aired in 2000, young interviewees were asked to confess the worse thing they were ever told during a romantic breakup. One person tearfully responded "that I suck in bed. " More recently, an acquaintance of mine admitted to his new girlfriend that he "has a mean streak. " She decided not to date him after that. Another memorable and painful example of openness occurred years ago when I served as a member of a suicide intervention team. I was called to a very disturbing scene in an upscale neighborhood to console a woman who was threaten­ ing to take her life on the lawn in front of her children. Her husband had just confessed his long-term affair to her that morning and she felt that her world was coming apart. Fortunately, she did not take her life but was left with the humiliation of haVing her neighbors know about her private troubles. The question these examples bring to mind is, "Why do people so often reveal potentially stigmatizing personal information to others?" The reader probably has an intuitive answer to this question already. It can seem like such a burden-even torture-to keep secrets from other people. Hiding such things as feelings of discontent from a boyfriend or girlfriend, violations of the law from close friends, and indiscretions from employers can be alienating. People want others to know them; therefore they often end up disclosing self-incriminating information.

Massive traumatic stress resulting from armed conflict and terrorism is a prime concern of governments, non-government organizations and the United Nations. Yet there is little systematic knowledge of how to address psychological problems of these proportions. These situations are further complicated by the lack of culturally appropriate models for mental health care in many low-income countries. This volume describes a variety of public mental health and psychosocial programs in conflict and post-conflict situations in Africa and Asia. Each chapter details the psychosocial and mental health aspects of specific conflicts and examines them within their sociopolitical and historical contexts. Trauma, War, and Violence: Public Mental Health in Socio-Cultural Context will be of great interest to psychologists, social workers, anthropologists, historians, human rights experts, and psychiatrists working or interested in the field of psychotrauma.