Effects of a Brief Mindfulness Induction On Death-Related Anxiety

This study examined effects of a mindfulness induction on proximal and distal defense responses to mortality salience and negative affect. Three experimental conditions were included: mindfulness, mind-wandering, and worrying. Participants in the mindfulness condition underwent a mindfulness induction at the experiment’s outset, while participants in the other two conditions underwent a mind-wandering or worry induction. Inductions involved following guided audio instructions presented via headphones. All conditions (N = 77) underwent a mortality salience induction after experimental manipulation, involving a written exercise pertaining to one’s death. Results indicated fewer proximal responses in the mindfulness and mind-wandering groups, compared with the worrying group, but no differences in distal responses. Negative affect was lower in the mindfulness group than in the worrying group following mortality salience. Results suggest that mindfulness exercises effectively buffer against negative affect and some responses to mortality salience, although these effects are not different from those of mind-wandering

Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire:development and psychometric evaluation

We document the development of the Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire—for use in multiple areas of psychology. It is designed to measure current feelings of and memory of love towards a specific parent during important time periods in childhood. In all samples (total N = 1527), we consistently found high internal reliability. We report the basic psychometrics of the 28-item subscale version in both undergraduate and US nonclinical adult samples and identified 10-item and 4-item subscale versions. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire has eight subscales: assessing mother and father separately during first, sixth, and ninth grade, as well as current feelings. We found a pattern of correlations that one would expect between existing attachment scales and the Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire. A factor analysis demonstrated that Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire items capture something different from the factors in established attachment measures. We found that the order of the subscales can be presented in a fixed order (mother-first and chronologically) without large order effects. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire demonstrated a single factor within subscales, reliability, and validity. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire can be used in clinical, social, developmental, and cognitive psychology

Relationships Between Religiosity, Spirituality, and Personality: A Multivariate Analysis

It has been purported that univariate analyses may be too simplistic when studying correlates of religiosity and spirituality (Thoresen & Harris, 2002). Consequently, the current study evaluated the relationships between religiosity, spirituality, and personality at both the univariate and multivariate levels. Our results suggest strong relationships between these constructs at both levels. At the univariate level, all religiosity and spirituality variables, excluding the Extrinsic orientation, demonstrated significant associations with the Big Five. However, at the multivariate level, the Extrinsic orientation. in conjunction with the Quest orientation and the Intrinsic orientation, demonstrated a significant association with the Big Five. These findings support the supposition that religious and spiritual constructs ought to be examined at a multivariate level and further explicates the nature of religious and spiritual constructs by grounding them within a comprehensive taxonomy of personality. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserve

Self-Esteem Instability and Humor Styles: Does the Stability of Self-Esteem Influence How People Use Humor?

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether self-esteem instability moderated the association between self-esteem level and the use of humor. This was accomplished by examining the associations that humor styles had with self-esteem level and self-esteem instability among 499 undergraduates. The results of the present study show that self-esteem instability moderated the association between self-esteem level and humor styles such that individuals with stable high self-esteem reported the highest levels of affiliative humor as well as the lowest levels of aggressive and self-defeating humor. These results suggest that individuals with stable and unstable forms of self-esteem employ different styles of humor

Memory of Love Towards Parents Questionnaire: Development and Psychometric Evaluation

We document the development of the Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire—for use in multiple areas of psychology. It is designed to measure current feelings of and memory of love towards a specific parent during important time periods in childhood. In all samples (total N = 1527), we consistently found high internal reliability. We report the basic psychometrics of the 28-item subscale version in both undergraduate and US nonclinical adult samples and identified 10-item and 4-item subscale versions. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire has eight subscales: assessing mother and father separately during first, sixth, and ninth grade, as well as current feelings. We found a pattern of correlations that one would expect between existing attachment scales and the Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire. A factor analysis demonstrated that Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire items capture something different from the factors in established attachment measures. We found that the order of the subscales can be presented in a fixed order (mother-first and chronologically) without large order effects. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire demonstrated a single factor within subscales, reliability, and validity. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire can be used in clinical, social, developmental, and cognitive psychology

Hope and the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior: Replication and Extension of Prior Findings

The interpersonal‐psychological theory of suicidal behavior (IPTS; Joiner, 2005) posits that suicidal behavior occurs when an individual has a desire for death (due to the combination of perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness) in addition to an acquired capacity for suicide, which is present when the individual has a low fear of death and high pain tolerance. Previous research has demonstrated an expected negative relation between trait hope and perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, as well as a more perplexing finding that hope is positively associated with the acquired capability. In a sample of 230 college students, measures of the three components of the IPTS were administered, along with measures of hope, depression, and painful and/or provocative events. Hierarchical regression analyses replicated the previously found associations between hope and burdensomeness and belongingness while controlling for depression and demographic variables. The positive association between hope and acquired capacity was also replicated, but a mediation analysis demonstrated that the effect was statistically accounted for by distress tolerance. The results further support the incremental validity of hope as a consideration in suicide risk assessments and suggest that hope may serve as a protective factor with respect to suicidal desire

Health Anxiety, Rumination, and Negative Affect: A Mediational Analysis

Objective: A ruminative cognitive style has been associated with a variety of mood and anxiety disorders. This study examined whether a ruminative cognitive style is associated with health anxiety, even when controlling for negative affect. Method: College students (N=198) completed measures of health anxiety, rumination, and negative affect and estimated the likelihood that ambiguous symptoms were indicative of catastrophic illnesses. These data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results: A ruminative cognitive style was both indirectly associated with health anxiety via its strong relationship with negative affect and was also directly associated with health anxiety. Furthermore, catastrophizing ambiguous symptoms was also directly related to health anxiety. Conclusion: High health anxiety individuals not only hold dysfunctional beliefs about health and illness but they also think about their distress in a ruminative manner. A more complete cognitive-behavioral model of health anxiety should include not only cognitive contents ( what ) but also cognitive style ( how ). (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Revised Protective Behavioral Strategies Scale

Psychometrically sound measures of the use of protective behavioral strategies are only in a development stage at this point. One such measure, the Protective Behavioral Strategies Scale (PBSS), has shown particular promise in this area. This study aimed to build on the PBSS by (a) evaluating revisions to the measure intended to yield more reliable scores from the serious harm reduction (SHR) subscale and (b) evaluating the factor structure of the revised measure and the stability of the factor structure across White non-Hispanics and African Americans and between women and men using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Three additional items were added to the SHR subscale, which improved its functioning. A 2-factor model best fit the data, and the factor structure of the measure was invariant across White non-Hispanic and African American men and women. Suggestions for further refinement of the measure and future research are provided

Development and Validation of the Pediatric Diabetes Routines Questionnaire for Adolescents

This study describes the development and psychometric evaluation of an adolescent self-report version of the Pediatric Diabetes Routines Questionnaire (PDRQ:A), a measure of diabetes-specific routines for youth with type 1 diabetes, and further validation of the parent-version (PDRQ:P) in an adolescent sample. Participants included 120 parent–adolescent dyads (ages 12–17) and an additional 24 parents who completed measures of diabetes-specific adolescent routines, general adolescent routines, diabetes self-care, and family support of youth diabetes care. The PDRQ:P/A demonstrated good internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and parent–child agreement, and adequate validity coefficients. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a one-factor model. Promising results were obtained. The PDRQ:P/A is a clinically feasible parent- and self-report measure that can provide valuable information regarding how frequently adolescents engage in their diabetes management tasks in a consistent manner. Addition of an adolescent report format will enhance the utility of the measure for clinical and research use

Principal Components Analyses of the MMPI-2 PSY-5 Scales

The Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5) is a five-factor personality trait model designed for assessing personality pathology using quantitative dimensions. Harkness, McNulty, and Ben-Porath developed Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) scales based on the PSY-5 model, and these scales were recently added to the standard MMPI-2 profile. Although the PSY-5 constructs are multidimensional in definition, explicit subscales for the broader PSY-5 scales have not been developed. The primary goals of this study were to empirically derive subscales for the MMPI-2 PSY-5 scales using principal components analysis (PCA) and to replicate these subscales with an independent sample. Individual PSY-5 scales were analyzed using PCA with an initial sample of 4,325 MMPI-2 protocols, and the component structure was replicated with a second sample of 4,277 MMPI-2 protocols. A third sample of 4,327 protocols was used to further evaluate the internal consistency reliabilities of the resulting facet subscales. Overall, replicable facet subscales were identified with content areas that are largely congruent with Harkness and McNulty\u27s model