Adjustment (Psychology)

Participants were 199 children (105 females) in grades three through eight (mean age = 11.03 years). Five attachment coping strategies were assessed (preoccupied, avoidant, indecisive, coercive, and caregiving), and four aspects of perceived maternal behavior were assessed (reliable support, harassment, overprotection, and fear induction). Numerous meaningful associations were found between the attachment measures and the perceived parenting measures. For instance, perceived maternal overprotectiveness was significantly related to preoccupied and indecisive coping strategies, whereas perceived maternal harassment, fear induction, and reliable support were related in various ways to avoidant, indecisive, coercive, and caregiving attachment coping strategies. In general, the associations found between the perceived parenting measures and the attachment measures support the construct validity of the self-report measures of attachment and confirm that self-report measures are a fruitful way to assess attachment style in middle childhood.

Background. Adherence to the behavioral change component of the hemodialysis regimen is difficult for many reasons; when individuals fail to adhere, the nurses often become frustrated and individuals may be labeled nonadherent leading to inappropriate interventions. As the number of older adults starting hemodialysis increases, one contributing factor to nonadherence in this population may be cognitive impairment. Objective. The overall purpose of the study was to explore differences in global cognition, in self-report cognition, and in language ability relative to adherence in a sample of older adults undergoing hemodialysis. Methods. This pilot study examined the differences in cognition and adherence of older adults (≥60 years) undergoing out-patient hemodialysis three times a week for at least one year. Nonprobability purposive sampling was used to obtain a sample from multiple centers which offered a diverse sample of study participants (n=63). Stories of the challenges of making life style changes were audiotaped and analyzed with linguistic analysis and word count (LIWC) software and various standardized instruments that measure global cognition (3MS and MMSE), self-report cognition (KDQOL-CF) and language ability (COWA, subsets of BDAE Reading: Sentence and Paragraph and BDAE Complex Ideation) were administered during hemodialysis. Determination of adherence or nonadherence (based on literature) was completed as the last activity of data collection. Results. Statistical significance was not achieved when exploring the difference of global cognition, self-report cognition, and language ability relative to adherence (p > .05). A relationship between structural elements of big words, cognitive process and insight words used in story and measures of adherence was revealed (p < .05). Although statistical significance was not reached the descriptive data supports that a relationship between cognitive impairment and measures of adherence were present across groups. The majority (64%) of nonadherent participants had cognitive impairment; 34% of the middle group and 5% of the adherent group had cognitive impairment. Discussion. Cognitive impairment is prevalent among older adults undergoing hemodialysis, however a relationship between cognitive impairment and adherence was not revealed in this study. This may be the result of the small sample size and adherence markers that were not sensitive in this population. This preliminary work offered a descriptive foundation which generated more questions that may be answered with further research.

The toxic combination of social, psychological, environmental, cultural, and physiological trauma Mayas living in Southeast Florida face daily places them at higher risk for mental and physical disorders (Marmot & Wilkinson, 2006; WHO, 2010, September). The burden of disease is not limited to mental disorder comorbidities; psychological stress can also induce or exacerbate chronic medical diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension (Brunner & Marmot, 2006; Sridhar, 2007). ... The continuation of this disregard will add to the health disparity of this nation by delaying assessment, treatment, and development of interventions. The purpose of this study was to explore cumulative trauma as it related to social determinants of health and pathophysiological, psychological, and health behaviors of 102 adult Mayas living in Southeast Florida. The trauma profile for the Mayan population sample obtained through this study reflected high exposure to different types of trauma; collective identity trauma was most frequently reported, followed by survival trauma, achievement trauma, secondary trauma, and personal identity trauma, with high rates of repetition of the same traumas ... Key words: Maya; alcohol; ASSIST; cumulative trauma; Beck Depression Inventory-II; genocide; Guatemala; Hispanic; social determinants of health.

This study examined how narcissism affects preadolescent children's choices of peer targets for aggression. Based on the idea that narcissists have a grandiose sense of self that requires nourishment, we hypothesized that narcissistic children are especially likely to attack peers who threaten, or fail to nourish, their grandiose self. We assessed narcissism and the degree to which each child's aggression toward peers depended on (a) the child's perceived liking by each peer, (b) the child's liking of each peer, (c) each peer's actual liking of the child, and (d) the child's perceived similarity to each peer. Participants were 197 children in the fourth through eighth grades at a university school. Narcissism predicted the four types of target-specific aggression in disparate ways for boys and girls. Narcissistic boys were especially likely to direct aggression toward male peers whom (a) they perceived as disliking them, (b) they disliked, and (c) they perceived as dissimilar to themselves. Narcissistic girls were especially likely to attack female peers whom they perceived as similar to themselves. Narcissism may enhance different motives for boys and girls in same-sex peer relatinships. We propose that narcissism enhances investment in status and rivalry amoung girls while enhancing the motive to attack dissimilar peers among boys.

Evidence suggests that self-reports of the frequency of an event, the most common way of measuring rates of conflict, are an unreliable source of data and that minor changes in question format can result in major changes in the results obtained (Bless, Bohner, Hild & Schwarz 1992; Schwarz, 1991; Schwarz, 1999; Winkielman, Knauper & Schwarz, 1998). In the conflict literature, different studies report different rates of conflict and different associations between conflict frequency and individual adjustment. Therefore, the present study examined how alterations in the measurement of conflict frequency affected how many conflicts participants reported and whether different measures of conflict were differentially associated with psychological adjustment outcomes (i.e., alcohol use, drug use, depression, delinquency, and interpersonal support). Response scales, reference periods, and question formats of conflict measures were manipulated to examine differences in conflict frequency reports. Results indicate that the changes in conflict measurement produce varied amounts of conflict across conditions and that changes in the measurement of conflict frequency change the associations between conflict frequency and adjustment outcomes.

Self-concept stability was tested in three studies to examine the relationship between stability in one's self-concept and the ability to adapt to changes in the social environment. Much of the literature on the topic of self-stability emphasizes the functional benefits of stability and the negative outcomes associated with instability. Dynamical systems theory purports however that stability in a dynamical system is indicative of a loss of complexity that limits the range of the systems behavior. Accordingly, this series of studies tests the idea that a stable self-system may have a more limited range of behaviors than unstable self-systems and this may have implications for adapting to changes in one's social environment. The overarching hypothesis is that compared to those with less stable self-views, those with stable self-views will demonstrate lower levels of flexibility of behavior in response to changing social demands. Study 1 assessed the dynamics of participants' evaluations by asking them to complete a self-descriptive recording and evaluate their self-descriptions using the mouse paradigm procedure. Participants also completed a series of questionnaires assessing personality factors and behavioral and cognitive flexibility. Study 2 expanded on the first study by adding a well-validated measure of self-esteem stability and a social conceptualization of behavioral flexibility. Study 3 tested participants' willingness to demonstrate behavioral flexibility in an actual social situation and examined the effects of stress on the relationship between stability and flexibility.

Establishing and maintaining a clear and stable view of oneself is one of the major goals that human beings are motivated by. Individuals' environment is overflowing with a variety of self-relevant feedback. Yet, humans are able to generalize their experience into idiosyncratic self-concept, that despite being the largest, and most complex of all cognitive structures provides a good frame of reference for regulation of action, emotion, and cognition. This research project examined a dynamic model of self-regulation that explains how humans manage to arrive at and maintain a coherent understanding of who they are and what they are like despite the abundance and constant influx of often contradictory self-relevant information. The dynamic model of self-regulation emphasizes the role of selective attention to specific regions of the self-concept as a prerequisite for self-concept adaptive development and functional expression. From a dynamical systems perspective the self-concept is conceptualized as a dynamic cognitive structure of knowledge that becomes organized into meaningful self-aspects (i.e., identities, self-perceived traits, roles) that differ with respect to evaluative coherence. Some self-aspects are coherent and comprise exclusively positive or exclusively negative elements, while other do not achieve evaluative coherence and are comprised of self-beliefs with mixed evaluations. As the focus of conscious attention changes between coherent and incoherent areas, the experience of Self and implications of self-concept for ongoing processes change accordingly. The total number of 296 participants took part in four studies conducted in Poland and in the United States.

This mixed methods sequential research study was performed to explore the role of identity in posttraumatic growth and psychological adjustment for adults with cancer. One hundred nineteen individuals participated in an online survey which included items from Brief COPE, Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer (Mini-MAC), Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ), Sense of Coherence Scale - 3 items (SOC-3), Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), Illness Intrusiveness Ratings Scale (IIRS), and Centrality of Event Scale (CES). A two-step cluster analysis divided the sample into two clusters based on the integration of cancer into identity: High Cancer Identity Cluster (cancer identity scores above M) with strong cancer identity and Low Cancer Identity Cluster (scores below the M) with a weak or absent cancer identity. HCIC yielded positive and negative subgroups. A discriminant analysis revealed which variables are significant predictors of group membership: PTG factor New Possibilities (Wilks'l = .781, F (1, 119) = 32.834, p = .000), Psychological Adjustment factor Anxious Preoccupation (Wilks' l= .863, F (1, 119) = 18.612, p = .000), Illness Intrusiveness factor Intimate Relationships (Wilks' l= .794, F (1, 119) = 30.348, p = .000), and Illness Perception factor Perceived Life Impact of Cancer (Wilks' l= .783, F (1, 119) = 32.412, p = .000). From the sample, 17 individuals and spouses/partners were interviewed to obtain a deeper understanding of the lived experience of cancer. Qualitative themes of suffering, woundedness, and uncertainty were found. Narrative data corroborated the quantitative data and contributed depth to the analysis. A new Cancer Identity Process Model was offered in which assimilative and accommodative efforts are informed by identity structures.