Anorexia nervosa (AN) is commonly attributed to psychological conflicts, attempts to be fashionably slender, neuroendocrine dysfunction, or some combination of these factors. Considerable research reveals these theories to be incomplete. Psychological and societal factors account for the decision to diet but not for the phenomenology of the disorder; theories of biological defects fail to expla...

This study examined how meritocracy beliefs may buffer women from the negative psychological effects of an acute situation of gender discrimination. Although some research indirectly suggests that believing that meritocracy exists may increase wellbeing, group consciousness theories suggest that disbelieving that meritocracy exists will enhance psychological adjustment to gender discrimination....

With a constructive knowledge-based theory of perception as its foundation, this paper starts with a review and critique of some artificial-intelligence programs that purport to see. It is then argued that these computer programs for scene analysis offer the hope of providing a more adequate account oo the current psychological theories. This thesis has several aspects. The one emphasized here ...

This study examines why women exhibit higher rates of psychological distress and affective and anxiety disorders whereas men report more problems with alcohol and alcohol-related disorders. Using two waves of panel data from 5,001 respondents to the National Co-morbidity Survey, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling are utilized to compare the stress process of distress,...

Writing in 1957 Carl Rogers, a pioneer of person-centred therapy, identified an empowering client-therapist relationship as the essence of a therapeutic process and proposed that an empowering relationship could, in and of itself, create the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful outcomes in mental health settings [17]. Whilst modern psychological theories no longer favour an exclus...

Theories of psychological categories have all conformed to the thesis that for every psychological category, there is a final criterion that is the ultimate arbiter of category membership. This final criterion not only determines a category’s boundaries but also key aspects of its cognitive significance. I propose that the thesis is false: there are no final criteria. I then explore what a theo...

To date, the study of societal change in social and political psychology has been dominated by an intergroup relations research agenda. But in addition to intergroup dynamics, there are other major pathways to societal change and emancipation, which are almost never systematically considered in psychological research. The distribution of technologies (e.g., “ICT for development”) or money (e.g....

BACKGROUND Health care practice based on research evidence requires that evidence is synthesised, and that recommendations based on this evidence are implemented. It also requires an intermediate step: translating synthesised evidence into practice recommendations. There is considerable literature on evidence synthesis and implementation, but little on how guideline development groups (GDGs) pr...

INTRODUCTION Theories of delusions often underplay the role of their content. With respect to persecutory delusions, taking threat as fundamental suggests that models of threat-related, aversive learning, such as the Conditioned Avoidance Response (CAR) task, might offer valid insights into the underlying normal and abnormal processes. In this study, we reappraise the psychological significance...

Psychological research has increasingly recognized the importance of integrating temporal dynamics into its theories, and innovations in longitudinal designs and analyses have allowed such theories to be formalized and tested. However, psychological researchers may be relatively unequipped to analyze such data, given its many characteristics and the general complexities involved in longitudinal...