A Further Examination of the Distinction Between Dependency-Oriented and Achievement-Oriented Parental Psychological Control: Psychometric Properties of the DAPCS with French-Speaking Late Adolescents

Psychological control refers to parental behaviors that intrude on the psychological and emotional development of the child. In 2010, Soenens et al. proposed a distinction between two domain-specific expressions of psychological control, that is, Dependency-oriented Psychological Control (DPC) and Achievement-oriented Psychological Control (APC). The aim of this study was to evaluate the factor structure, reliability, and convergent validity of the French form of the Dependency-oriented and Achievement-oriented Psychological Control Scale (DAPCS; Soenens et al. in J Pers 78(1):217-256, 2010) in a sample of late adolescents (N=291, mean age=21.65). Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the hypothesized two-factor solution of the DAPCS for paternal as well as for maternal ratings. Moreover, high indices of internal consistency indicated that both subscales produced reliable scores. Further, convergent validity was confirmed by theoretically consistent associations between the DAPCS' subscales and well-established assessments of general parenting style dimensions. Finally, results evidenced gender specific patterns supporting the relevance of domain differentiation in the assessment of psychological control. Overall, the results of this study indicated that the French form of the DAPCS might be a useful instrument to assess two domain-specific types of parental psychological control among French-speaking adolescent

The beginning of a new era

With this editorial, the Swiss Psychological Society (SPS) is relaunching its journal under the new name Swiss Psychology Open (SPO), published by UbiquityPress. Originally founded by Jean Piaget in 1942 as the Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie und ihre Anwendungen [engl. Swiss Journal of Psychology and its Applications], SPO will continue to serve its original mission – in an open and accessible way

Talking to the dead in the classroom. How a supposedly psychic event impacts beliefs and feelings

Paranormal beliefs (PBs) are common in adults. There are numerous psychological correlates of PBs and associated theories, yet, we do not know whether such correlates reinforce or result from PBs. To understand causality, we developed an experimental design in which participants experience supposedly paranormal events. Thus, we can test an event’s impact on PBs and PB-associated correlates (Mohr, Lesaffre, & Kuhn, 2018). Here, 419 naïve students saw a performer making contact with a confederate’s deceased kin. We tested participants’ opinions and feelings about this performance, and whether these predicted how participants explain the performance. We assessed participants’ PBs and repetition avoidance (PB related cognitive correlate) before and after the performance. Afterwards, participants rated explanations of the event and described their opinions and feelings (open-ended question). Overall, 65% of participants reported having witnessed a genuine paranormal event. The open-ended question revealed distinct opinion and affect groups, with reactions commonly characterized by doubt and mixed feelings. Importantly, paranormal explanations were more likely when participants reported their feelings than when not reported. Beyond these results, we replicated that 1) higher pre-existing PBs were associated with more psychic explanations (confirmation bias), and 2) PBs and repetition avoidance did not change from before to after the performance. Yet, PBs reminiscent of the actual performance (spiritualism) increased

Predictors and Moderators of Clinical Outcomes in Adolescents with Severe Mental Disorders After an Assertive Community Treatment

Previous studies have shown that stressful life events (SLEs), gender, social functioning and pretreatment severity are some of the predictors and/or moderators of treatment outcome in psychiatric care. The current study explored the effect of these predictors and moderators on the treatment outcome related to assertive community treatment (ACT) proposed to young people with severe mental disorders. 98 patients were assessed for externalizing and emotional difficulties, at admission and then at discharge of an ACT. Analyses revealed significant improvements in terms of symptomatology. In particular, regression analyses showed that pretreatment severity is a significant predictor of the outcome on emotional symptoms and is moderated by SLE on the outcome on externalizing symptoms. Furthermore, higher social functioning proved to predict better outcome on externalizing symptoms. Our results further evidence that these factors can explain inter-individual differences in outcome related to ACT. The theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed