Accountability as a Key Virtue in Mental Health and Human Flourishing

We propose that accountability plays an implicit, important, and relatively unexamined role in psychiatry. People generally think of accountability as a relation in which one party is held accountable by another. In this paper, we examine accountability as a virtue, drawing on philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology to examine what it means to welcome being accountable in an excellent way that promotes flourishing. When people manifest accountability as a virtue, they are both responsive to others they owe a response, and they are responsible for their attitudes and actions in light of these relationships. Psychiatric treatment often aims to correct disordered forms of accountability, including difficulties with empathy and self-regulation. Both the process of treatment and the practice of professionalism depend on relationally responsible accountability. We examine accountability as an overlooked complement to healthy autonomy. Whereas acting autonomously in congruence with one’s values is characteristic of mental health, accountability that is interpersonally responsive and responsible is vital to successful treatment as well as professionalism in psychiatry. We review components of accountability and developmental aspects of the virtue; highlight the role of accountability in healthy functioning; and describe implications for psychiatric assessment, treatment, and professionalism. We aim to catalyze awareness of accountability as intrinsic to mental health care and human flourishing

Positive Reappraisals After an Offense: Event-related Potentials and Emotional Effects of Benefit-finding and Compassion

Using a within subjects design, three emotion regulation strategies (compassion‐focused reappraisal, benefit‐focused reappraisal, and offense rumination) were tested for their effects on forgiveness, well‐being, and event‐related potentials (ERPs). Participants (N = 37) recalled a recent interpersonal offense as the context for each emotion regulation strategy. Both decisional and emotional forgiveness increased significantly for the two reappraisal strategies compared to offense rumination. Compassion‐focused reappraisal prompted the greatest increase in both decisional and emotional forgiveness. Furthermore, both reappraisal strategies increased positively oriented well‐being measures (e.g., joy, gratitude) compared to offense rumination, with compassion‐focused reappraisal demonstrating the largest effect on empathy. Late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in response to unpleasant affect words were larger following the benefit‐focused reappraisal strategy, indicating frontal LPP augmentation due to affective incongruence of the unpleasant stimuli with the positive, silver‐lining orientation of the benefit‐focused reappraisal emotion regulation strategy

The Eschatological Hope Scale: Construct Development and Measurement of Theistic Eschatological Hope

This study aimed to expand psychological research on hope by contributing a construct and scale to measure central dimensions of theistic eschatological hope derived from Christian scriptures. Eschatological hope was conceptualized as the anticipation that God will make all things new, raising people to everlasting life with God in joyful celebration, including people from every culture and nation, ending all personal pain and suffering, eliminating all societal evil and harm, and bringing reconciliation and healing to all of creation. We developed the Eschatological Hope Scale with three studies (N = 1,466). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the single-factor structure of a 6-item scale with excellent internal consistency (Cronbach\u27s α \u3e .91) and good test-retest reliability. The Eschatological Hope Scale evidenced construct validity, showing significant non-redundant correlations with measures of temporal hope, religiosity, and spirituality. The Eschatological Hope Scale scores positively correlated with gratitude, forgivingness, and life hardship patience. Scores inversely correlated with depressed and anxious symptoms, negative religious coping, and negative attitudes toward God. Scores were not significantly correlated with extrinsic religiosity and searching for meaning. The Eschatological Hope Scale demonstrated incremental validity beyond other variables (hope and optimism, depression and anxiety, and religiosity) to predict three target variables: perceived presence of meaning in life, ultimate meaning, and flourishing. We offer the Eschatological Hope Scale as a gateway scale to catalyze further developments in measuring eschatological hope. We hope this work will facilitate research on the experience of living with ultimate hope across cultures and faith traditions, in seasons of suffering and celebration

Accountability: Construct Definition and Measurement of a Virtue Vital to Flourishing

Embracing accountability to others for one’s responsibilities within relationships is important for flourishing, yet underexamined. An interdisciplinary team defined the construct of accountability and developed an 11-item single-factor Accountability Scale. In national samples with US census demographic representation (total N = 1257), we conducted psychometric analyses using methods from classical test theory (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and item response theory. The Accountability Scale demonstrated internal consistency, construct validity, test-retest reliability, and incremental validity. Accountability correlated positively with relational variables (agreeableness, empathy) responsibility-oriented variables (conscientiousness, self-regulation), virtues (gratitude, forgiveness, limitations-owning humility), relational repair, perceived meaning presence, and flourishing, inversely with symptoms (personality disorders, temper, anxiety, depression), and weakly with searching for meaning and social desirability. Accountability scores superseded demographic variables, conscientiousness, and agreeableness to predict relational repair, perceived presence of meaning in life, and flourishing. We offer the accountability construct and scale to advance human flourishing research and applied work

A Many-analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

Posttraumatic Mental and Physical Health Correlates of Forgiveness and Religious Coping in Military Veterans

This study assessed mental and physical health correlates of dispositional forgiveness and religious coping responses in 213 help-seeking veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Controlling for age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, combat exposure, and hostility, the results indicated that difficulty forgiving oneself and negative religious coping were related to depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptom severity. Difficulty forgiving others was associated with depression and PTSD symptom severity, but not anxiety. Positive religious coping was associated with PTSD symptom severity in this sample. Further investigations that delineate the relevance of forgiveness and religious coping in PTSD may enhance current clinical assessment and treatment approaches