Negative life events, coping responses, and combat-related psychopathology: A prospective study.

This study examined the relations of life events and coping responses to combat-related psychopathology among 255 Israeli soldiers who suffered a combat stress reaction episode during the 1982 Lebanon War. Follow-ups 1 and 2 years after their participation in combat found (a) significant effects of psychopathology at 1 year after the war on the occurrence of negative life events and the choice of coping responses during the following year; (b) unique and significant effects of negative life events and coping responses on psychopathology at 2 years after the war; (c) a significant interaction between life events and coping responses on psychopathology; and (d) a significant indirect effect of negative life events on psychopathology via the choice of coping responses. Theoretical implications of the findings were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult attachment style and affect regulation: Strategic variations in subjective self–other similarity.

Six studies examined the link between adult attachment style and subjective self–other similarity. In Studies 1–3, data were collected on representations of self–other similarity in the realms of traits and opinions. Studies 4–5 examined the effects of affective inductions on the link between attachment and self–other similarity. Study 6 examined the cognitive maneuvers people differing in attachment style use for changing self–other similarity upon distress arousal. Whereas avoidant persons underestimated self–other similarity and anxious–ambivalent persons overestimated it, secure persons provided more accurate similarity scores. These differences were exacerbated by negative affect and mitigated by positive affect. Insecure persons' distortions resulted from transformations they made in representations of the self and others. Results are discussed in terms of attachment theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment working models and the sense of trust: An exploration of interaction goals and affect regulation.

Five studies examined the association between adult attachment style and the sense of trust in close relationships. Study 1 focused on the accessibility of trust-related memories. Studies 2–5 focused on trust-related goals and coping strategies, while using different data collection techniques (open-ended probes, diary methodology, lexical decision task). Findings showed that secure persons felt more trust toward partners, showed higher accessibility of positive trust-related memories, reported more positive trust episodes over a 3-week period, and adopted more constructive strategies in coping with the violation of trust than insecure persons. In addition, whereas intimacy attainment was the main trust-related goal for all the attachment groups, security attainment was an additional goal of anxious-ambivalent persons, and control attainment was an additional goal of avoidant persons. Findings are discussed in terms of attachment working models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment style and the mental representation of the self.

Six studies examined the association between attachment style and several aspects of the mental representation of the self in adolescents. Studies 1 and 2 focused on the hedonic tone of the self-structure, Studies 3 and 4 focused on its complexity, and Studies 5 and 6 focused on discrepancies between domains and standpoints of the self. Results indicated that secure and avoidant persons had a more positive view of themselves than anxious-ambivalent persons. In addition, secure persons were found to have a more balanced, complex, and coherent self-structure than insecure persons, either avoidant or anxious-ambivalent. The discussion emphasizes the connection between the internalization of attachment experiences and the construction of the self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Secondary traumatization among wives of posttraumatic combat veterans: A family typology.

Examined the relationship between family environment and the psychosocial adjustment of 127 wives of Israeli combat stress reaction (CSR) and 85 non-CSR veterans of the 1982 Lebanon War. Wives from conflict-oriented families were found to display the highest levels of psychological and behavioral problems, followed by wives from rigid-moral and midrange families. The healthiest wives in this sample came from expressive families. Results indicate that family environment has a similar effect on all wives, irrespective of whether or not the husband had suffered a wartime stress reaction. Findings show, however, that wives of traumatized veterans have to contend far more often than other wives with conflict and rigidity in family functioning, whereas wives of nontraumatized veterans tend to benefit from an expressive family environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fear and Compassion: A Terror Management Analysis of Emotional Reactions to Physical Disability.

Objective: To examine whether death anxiety underlies emotional reactions toward people with disabilities (PWDs). Study Design: In Study 1, participants were primed with thoughts of death, read a vignette describing a PWD, and completed a compassion scale. Study 2 replicated the design of Study 1 and also examined the impact of target ethnicity. Studies 3 and 4 assessed the impact of physical disability on death-related cognitions and on fear of personal death. Results: Men reacted to death primes by emotionally withdrawing from a PWD and reporting less compassion, whereas women exhibited more compassionate responses. These differences in compassion were reflected in the death-related cognitions and fears sparked by physical disability. Conclusions: The human need to manage the terror of death shapes emotional reactions toward PWDs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When sex is more than just sex: Attachment orientations, sexual experience, and relationship quality.

The authors explored the contribution of individual differences in attachment orientations to the experience of sexual intercourse and its association with relationship quality. In Study 1, 500 participants completed self-report scales of attachment orientations and sexual experience. The findings indicated that whereas attachment anxiety was associated with an ambivalent construal of sexual experience, attachment avoidance was associated with more aversive sexual feelings and cognitions. In Study 2, 41 couples reported on their attachment orientations and provided daily diary measures of sexual experiences and relationship interactions for a period of 42 days. Results showed that attachment anxiety amplified the effects of positive and negative sexual experiences on relationship interactions. In contrast, attachment avoidance inhibited the positive relational effect of having sex and the detrimental relational effects of negative sexual interactions. The authors discuss the possibility that attachment orientations are associated with different sex-related strategies and goals within romantic relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult attachment style and the perception of others: The role of projective mechanisms.

In 3 reported studies the authors examined attachment-style differences in the perception of others and the hypothesis that projective mechanisms underlie these differences. In these studies, participants reported on their attachment style and generated actual-self–traits and unwanted-self–traits. Then, a 2nd session was conducted, in which impression formation about new persons (Study 1), the ease of retrieval of memories about known persons (Study 2), or memory inferences about learned features of fictional persons (Study 3) were assessed. Findings indicate that whereas anxious-ambivalent persons' impression formation, memory retrieval, and inferences about others reflected the projection of their actual-self-traits, avoidant persons' responses reflected the projection of their unwanted-self–traits. Findings are discussed in terms of the regulatory goals and strategies that characterize the mental representations of each attachment style. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The affective component of the secure base schema: Affective priming with representations of attachment security.

Using an affective priming procedure (S. T. Murphy & R. B. Zajonc, 1993), 7 studies examined the effects of the contextual activation of representations of attachment security (secure base schema) on the evaluation of neutral stimuli under either neutral or stressful contexts. In all the studies, participants also reported on their attachment style. Results indicated that the subliminal priming of secure base representations led to more positive affective reactions to neutral stimuli than did the subliminal priming of neutral or no pictures under both neutral and stressful contexts. Although the subliminal priming of positively valued, attachment-unrelated representations heightened positive evaluations under neutral contexts, it failed to elicit positive affect under stressful contexts. The results also revealed interesting effects of attachment style. The discussion focuses on the affective component of the secure base schema. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Thresholds and tolerance of physical pain in suicidal and nonsuicidal adolescents.

It was hypothesized that suicidal inpatient adolescents (n?=?38) will exhibit a higher tolerance for physical pain than nonsuicidal inpatients (n?=?29) and control participants (n?=?34). Participants provided self-reports of hopelessness, dissociation, suicidal tendencies, depression, and anxiety and were administered a series of thermal pain stimuli by means of a Thermal Sensory Analyzer (TSA). The suicidal participants significantly differed from the 2 controls in pain thresholds and tolerance and in most self-report measures, even after controlling for motivation, medication, diagnosis, and length of hospitalization. Significant correlations were found between pain measures and self-report measures. The results were discussed in terms of the role that body experiences play in suicidal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)