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On This Day … 17 February

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People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – Ulric Neisser, German-American psychologist and academic (b. 1928).

Ulric Neisser

Ulric Richard Gustav Neisser (08 December 1928 to 17 February 2012) was a German-American psychologist and member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

He has been referred to as the “father of cognitive psychology”. Neisser researched and wrote about perception and memory. He posited that a person’s mental processes could be measured and subsequently analysed. In 1967, Neisser published Cognitive Psychology, which he later said was considered an attack on behaviourist psychological paradigms. Cognitive Psychology brought Neisser instant fame and recognition in the field of psychology. While Cognitive Psychology was considered unconventional, it was Neisser’s Cognition and Reality that contained some of his most controversial ideas. A main theme in Cognition and Reality is Neisser’s advocacy for experiments on perception occurring in natural (“ecologically valid”) settings. Neisser postulated that memory is, largely, reconstructed and not a snap shot of the moment. Neisser illustrated this during one of his highly publicised studies on people’s memories of the Challenger explosion. In his later career, he summed up current research on human intelligence and edited the first major scholarly monograph on the Flynn effect. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Neisser as the 32nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

What is Depressive Realism?

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Introduction

Depressive realism is the hypothesis developed by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals.

Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviours, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals’ appraisals are positively biased.

Refer to Defensive Pessimism.

Evidence (For)

When participants were asked to press a button and rate the control they perceived they had over whether or not a light turned on, depressed individuals made more accurate ratings of control than non-depressed individuals. Among participants asked to complete a task and rate their performance without any feedback, depressed individuals made more accurate self-ratings than non-depressed individuals. For participants asked to complete a series of tasks, given feedback on their performance after each task, and who self-rated their overall performance after completing all the tasks, depressed individuals were again more likely to give an accurate self-rating than non-depressed individuals. When asked to evaluate their performance both immediately and some time after completing a task, depressed individuals made accurate appraisals both immediately before and after time had passed.

In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of the brain, depressed patients were shown to be more accurate in their causal attributions of positive and negative social events than non-depressed participants, who demonstrated a positive bias. This difference was also reflected in the differential activation of the fronto-temporal network, higher activation for non self-serving attributions in non-depressed participants and for self-serving attributions in depressed patients, and reduced coupling of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex seed region and the limbic areas when depressed patients made self-serving attributions.

Evidence (Against)

When asked to rate both their performance and the performance of others, non-depressed individuals demonstrated positive bias when rating themselves but no bias when rating others. Depressed individuals conversely showed no bias when rating themselves but a positive bias when rating others.

When assessing participant thoughts in public versus private settings, the thoughts of non-depressed individuals were more optimistic in public than private, while depressed individuals were less optimistic in public.

When asked to rate their performance immediately after a task and after some time had passed, depressed individuals were more accurate when they rated themselves immediately after the task but were more negative after time had passed whereas non-depressed individuals were positive immediately after and some time after.

Although depressed individuals make accurate judgments about having no control in situations where they in fact have no control, this appraisal also carries over to situations where they do have control, suggesting that the depressed perspective is not more accurate overall. Note, however, that this finding alone does not imply depression as a cause; researchers did not control for philosophical factors such as determinism which could affect responses.

One study suggested that in real-world settings, depressed individuals are actually less accurate and more overconfident in their predictions than their non-depressed peers. Participants’ attributional accuracy may also be more related to their overall attributional style rather than the presence and severity of their depressive symptoms.

Criticism of the Evidence

Some have argued that the evidence is not more conclusive because no standard for reality exists, the diagnoses are dubious, and the results may not apply to the real world. Because many studies rely on self-report of depressive symptoms and self-reports are known to be biased, the diagnosis of depression in these studies may not be valid, necessitating the use of other objective measures. Due to most of these studies using designs that do not necessarily approximate real-world phenomena, the external validity of the depressive realism hypothesis is unclear. There is also concern that the depressive realism effect is merely a byproduct of the depressed person being in a situation that agrees with their negative bias.

What is Defensive Pessimism?

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Introduction

Defensive pessimism is a cognitive strategy identified by Nancy Cantor and her students in the mid-1980s.

Individuals use defensive pessimism as a strategy to prepare for anxiety-provoking events or performances. When implementing defensive pessimism, individuals set low expectations for their performance, regardless of how well they have done in the past. Defensive pessimists then think through specific negative events and setbacks that could adversely influence their goal pursuits. By envisioning possible negative outcomes, defensive pessimists can take action to avoid or prepare for them. Using this strategy, defensive pessimists can advantageously harness anxiety that might otherwise harm their performance.

Defensive pessimism is utilised in a variety of domains, and public speaking provides a good example of the process involved in this strategy. Defensive pessimists could alleviate their anxiety over public speaking by imagining possible obstacles such as forgetting the speech, being thirsty, or staining their shirts before the event. Because defensive pessimists have thought of these problems, they can appropriately prepare to face the challenges ahead. The speaker could, for instance, create note cards with cues about the speech, place a cup of water on the podium to alleviate thirst, and bring a bleach pen to remove shirt stains. These preventive actions both reduce anxiety and promote superior performance.

Refer to Depressive Realism.

Strategy Effectiveness

Though defensive pessimists are less satisfied with their performances and rate themselves higher in “need for improvement,” they do not actually perform worse than people with a more optimistic strategy. Norem and Cantor (1986) investigated whether encouraging defensive pessimists, and thereby interfering with their typical negative thinking, would result in worse performances. Participants in the study were in either encouragement or non-encouragement scenarios as they prepared to complete anagram and puzzle tasks. In the encouragement condition, the defensive pessimists were told that, based on their GPA, they should expect to do well. Defensive pessimists performed worse when encouraged than the defensive pessimists whose strategy was not manipulated. Defensive pessimism is an adaptive strategy for those who struggle with anxiety: their performance decreases if they are unable to appropriately manage and counteract their anxiety.

Key Components

Prefactual Thinking

Prefactual (i.e. “before the fact”) thinking is an essential component of defensive pessimism. Synonymous with anticipation, it denotes a cognitive strategy in which people imagine possible outcomes of a future scenario. The term prefactual was specifically coined by Lawrence J. Sanna, in 1998, to denote those activities that speculate on possible future outcomes, given the present, and ask “What will be the outcome if event E occurs?”

The imagined outcomes are either positive/desirable, negative/undesirable, or neutral. Prefactual thinking can be advantageous because it allows the individual to prepare for possible outcomes of a scenario.

For defensive pessimists, prefactual thinking offers the primary and critical method to alleviate anxiety. Usually, this prefactual thinking is paired with a pessimistic outlook, resulting in negative/undesirable imagined scenarios. With regard to the earlier example, the public speaking defensive pessimist anticipates forgetting the speech or becoming thirsty as opposed to giving an amazing speech and receiving a standing ovation.

Anxiety

As defensive pessimism is motivated by a need to manage anxiety, it is unsurprisingly also correlated with trait anxiety and neuroticism. Negative mood states promote defensive pessimists’ goal attainment strategy by facilitating the generation of potential setbacks and negative outcomes that could arise during goal pursuit, which can then be anticipated and prevented. When defensive pessimists are encouraged into positive or even just neutral mood states, they perform worse on experimental tasks than when in a negative mood state. They are more anxious because they are prevented from properly implementing their preferred cognitive strategy for goal attainment.

Self-Esteem

Defensive pessimism is generally related to lower self-esteem since the strategy involves self-criticism, pessimism, and discounting previous successful performances. Indeed, Norem and Burdzovic Andreas (2006) found that, compared to optimists, defensive pessimists had lower self-esteem entering college. At the end of four years of college, however, the self-esteem of the defensive pessimists had increased to nearly equal levels as optimists. The self-esteem of optimists had not changed, and the self-esteem of pessimists who did not employ defensive pessimism had fallen slightly by the end of college. While defensive pessimism may have implications for self-esteem, it appears that these effects lessen over time.

Compared to Pessimism

Unlike pessimism, defensive pessimism is not an internal, global, and stable attribution style, but rather a cognitive strategy utilised within the context of certain goals. Pessimism involves rumination about possible negative outcomes of a situation without proactive behaviour to counteract these outcomes. Defensive pessimism, on the other hand, utilizes the foresight of negative situations in order to prepare against them. The negative possible outcomes of a situation often motivate defensive pessimists to work harder for success. Since defensive pessimists are anxious, but not certain, that negative situations will arise, they still feel that they can control their outcomes. For example, a defensive pessimist would not avoid all job interviews for fear of failing one. Instead, a defensive pessimist would anticipate possible challenges that could come in an upcoming job interview – such as dress code, stubborn interviewers, and tough questions – and prepare rigorously to face them. Defensive pessimism is not a reaction to stressful events nor does it entail ruminating on events of the past, and should therefore be distinguished from pessimism as a trait or a more general negative outlook. Instead, defensive pessimists are able to stop using this strategy once it is no longer beneficial (i.e. does not serve a preparatory role).

Compared to Other Cognitive Strategies

Self-Handicapping

Elliot and Church (2003) determined that people adopt defensive pessimism or self-handicapping strategies for the same reason: to deal with anxiety-provoking situations. Self-handicapping is a cognitive strategy in which people construct obstacles to their own success to keep failure from damaging their self-esteem. The difference between self-handicapping and defensive pessimism lies in the motivation behind the strategies. Beyond managing anxiety, defensive pessimism is further motivated by a desire for high achievement. Self-handicappers, however, feel no such need. Elliot and Church found that the self-handicapping strategy undermined goal achievement while defensive pessimism aided achievement. People who self-handicapped were high in avoidance motivation and low in approach motivation. They wanted to avoid anxiety but were not motivated to approach success. Defensive pessimists, on the other hand, were motivated to approach success and goal attainment while simultaneously avoiding the anxiety associated with performance. Although it was found that defensive pessimism was positively correlated with goals related to both performance-avoidance and anxiety-avoidance, it was not found to be a predictor of one’s mastery of goals.

Strategic Optimism

In research, defensive pessimism is frequently contrasted with strategic optimism, another cognitive strategy. When facing performance situations, strategic optimists feel that they will end well. Therefore, though they plan ahead, they plan only minimally because they do not have any anxiety to face. While defensive pessimists set low expectations, feel anxious, and rehearse possible negative outcomes of situations, strategic optimists set high expectations, feel calm, and do not reflect on the situation any more than absolutely necessary. Strategic optimists start out with different motivations and obstacles: unlike defensive pessimists, strategic optimists do not have any anxiety to surmount. In spite of their differences in motivation, strategic optimists and defensive pessimists have similar objective performance outcomes. For both strategic optimists and defensive pessimists, their respective cognitive strategies are adaptive and promote success.

What is Self-Handicapping?

Published on by Andrew Marshall2 Comments

Introduction

Self-handicapping is a cognitive strategy by which people avoid effort in the hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem.

It was first theorised by Edward E. Jones and Steven Berglas, according to whom self-handicaps are obstacles created, or claimed, by the individual in anticipation of failing performance.

Self-handicapping can be seen as a method of preserving self-esteem but it can also be used for self-enhancement and to manage the impressions of others. This conservation or augmentation of self-esteem is due to changes in causal attributions or the attributions for success and failure that self-handicapping affords. There are two methods that people use to self-handicap: behavioural and claimed self-handicaps. People withdraw effort or create obstacles to successes so they can maintain public and private self-images of competence.

Self-handicapping is a widespread behaviour amongst humans that has been observed in a variety of cultures and geographic areas. For instance, students frequently participate in self-handicapping behaviour to avoid feeling bad about themselves if they do not perform well in class. Self-handicapping behaviour has also been observed in the business world. The effects of self-handicapping can be both large and small and found in virtually any environment wherein people are expected to perform.

Refer to Self-Defeating Personality Disorder and Defensive Pessimism.

Overview and Relevance

The first method people use to self-handicap is when they make a task harder for themselves in fear of not successfully completing that task, so that if they do in fact fail, they can simply place the blame on the obstacles rather than placing the blame on themselves. This is known to researchers as behavioural handicapping, in which the individual actually creates obstacles to performance. Examples of behavioural handicaps include alcohol consumption, the selection of unattainable goals, and refusal to practise a task or technique (especially in sports and the fine arts).

The second way that people self-handicap is by coming up with justifications for their potential failures, so that if they do not succeed in the task, they can point to their excuses as the reasons for their failures. This is known as claimed self-handicapping, in which the individual merely states that an obstacle to performance exists. Examples of claimed self-handicaps include declarations that one is experiencing physical symptoms.

Self-handicapping behaviour allows individuals to externalise failures but internalise success, accepting credit for achievements but allowing excuses for failings. An example of self-handicapping is the student who spends the night before an important exam partying rather than studying. The student fears failing his exam and appearing incapable. In partying the night before the exam the student has engaged in self-defeating behaviour and increased the likelihood of poor exam performance. However, in the event of failure, the student can offer fatigue and a hangover, rather than lack of ability, as plausible explanations. Furthermore, should the student receive positive feedback about his exam, his achievement is enhanced by the fact that he succeeded, despite the handicap.

Individual Differences

People differ in the extent to which they self-handicap and most research on individual differences has used the Self-Handicapping Scale (SHS). The SHS was developed as a means of measuring individuals’ tendency to employ excuses or create handicaps as a means to protect one’s self-esteem. Research to date shows that SHS has adequate construct validity. For example, individuals who score high on the SHS put in less effort and practice less when concerned about their ability to perform well in a given task. They are also more likely than those rated low self-handicappers (LSH) to mention obstacles or external factors that may hinder their success, prior to performing.

A number of characteristics have been related to self-handicapping (e.g. hypochondriasis) and research suggests that those more prone to self-handicapping may differ motivationally compared to those that do not rely on such defensive strategies. For example, fear of failure, a heightened sensitivity to shame and embarrassment upon failure, motivates self-handicapping behaviour. Students who fear failure are more likely to adopt performance goals in the classroom or goals focused on the demonstration of competence or avoidance of demonstrating incompetence; goals that heighten one’s sensitivity to failure.

A student, for example, may approach course exams with the goal of not performing poorly as this would suggest a lack of ability. To avoid ability attributions and the shame of failure, the student fails to adequately prepare for an exam. While this may provide temporary relief, it renders one’s ability conceptions more uncertain, resulting in further self-handicapping.

Gender Differences

While research suggests that claimed self-handicaps are used by men and women alike, several studies have reported significant differences. While research assessing differences in reported self-handicapping have revealed no gender differences or greater self-handicapping among females, the vast majority of research suggests that males are more inclined to behaviourally self-handicap. These differences are further explained by the different value men and women ascribe to the concept of effort.

Major Theoretical Approaches

The root of research on the act of self-handicapping can be traced back to Adler’s studies about self-esteem. In the late 1950s, Goffman and Heider published research concerning the manipulation of outward behaviour for the purpose of impression management. It was not until 30 years later that self-handicapping behaviour was attributed to internal factors. Until this point, self-handicapping only encompassed the usage of external factors, such as alcohol and drugs. Self-handicapping is usually studied in an experimental setting, but is sometimes studied in an observational environment.

Previous research has established that self-handicapping is motivated by uncertainty about one’s ability or, more generally, anticipated threats to self-esteem. Self-handicapping can be exacerbated by self-presentational concerns but also occurs in situations where such concerns are at a minimum.

Major Empirical Findings

Experiments on self-handicapping have depicted the reasons why people self-handicap and the effects that it has on those people. Self-handicapping has been observed in both laboratory and real world settings. Studying the psychological and physical effects of self-handicapping has allowed researchers to witness the dramatic effects that it has on attitude and performance.

Jones and Berglas gave people positive feedback following a problem-solving test, regardless of actual performance. Half the participants had been given fairly easy problems, while the others were given difficult problems. Participants were then given the choice between a “performance-enhancing drug” and a drug that would inhibit it. Those participants who received the difficult problems were more likely to choose the impairing drug, and participants who faced easy problems were more likely to choose the enhancing drug. It is argued that the participants presented with hard problems, believing that their success had been due to chance, chose the impairing drug because they were looking for an external attribution (what might be called an “excuse”) for expected poor performance in the future, as opposed to an internal attribution.

More recent research finds that, generally, people are willing to use handicaps to protect their self-esteem (e.g. discounting failings) but are more reluctant to employ them for self-enhancement. (e.g. to further credit their success). Rhodewalt, Morf, Hazlett, and Fairfield (1991) selected participants who scored high or low on the Self-Handicapping Scale (SHS) and who had high or low self-esteem. They presented participants with a handicap and then with success or failure feedback and asked participants to make attributions for their performance. The results showed that both self-protection and self-enhancement occurred, but only as a function of levels of self-esteem and the level of tendency to self-handicap. Participants who were high self-handicappers, regardless of their level of self-esteem, used the handicap as a means of self-protection but only those participants with high self-esteem used the handicap to self-enhance.

In a further study, Rhodewalt (1991) presented the handicap to only half of the participants and gave success and failure feedback. The results provided evidence for self-protection but not for self-enhancement. Participants in the failure feedback, handicap absent group, attributed their failures to their own lack of ability and reported lower self-esteem to the handicap-present, failure-feedback condition. Furthermore, the handicap-present failure group reported levels of self-esteem equal to that of the successful group. This evidence highlights the importance of self-handicaps in self-protection although it offers no support for the handicap acting to self-enhance.

Another experiment, by Martin Seligman and colleagues, examined whether there was a correlation between explanatory styles and the performance of swimmers. After being given false bad times on their preliminary events, the swimmers who justified their poor performance to themselves in a pessimistic way did worse on subsequent performances. In contrast, the subsequent performances of those swimmers who had more optimistic attributions concerning their poor swimming times were not affected. Those who had positive attributions were more likely to succeed after given false times because they were self-handicapping. They attributed their failure to an external force rather than blaming themselves. Therefore, their self-esteem remained intact, which led to their success in subsequent events. This experiment demonstrates the positive effects that self-handicapping can have on an individual because when they attributed the failure to an external factor, they did not internalise the failure and let it psychologically affect them.

Previous research has looked at the consequences of self-handicapping and have suggested that self-handicapping leads to a more positive mood (at least in the short term) or at least guards against a drop in positive mood after failure. Thus, self-handicapping may serve as a means of regulating one’s emotions in the course of protecting one’s self-esteem. However, based on past evidence that positive mood motivates self-protective attributions for success and failure and increases the avoidance of negative feedback, recent research has focused on mood as an antecedent to self-handicapping; expecting positive mood to increase self-handicapping behaviour. Results have shown that people who are in positive mood are more likely to engage in self-handicapping, even at the cost of jeopardising future performance.

Research suggests that among those who self-handicap, self-imposed obstacles may relieve the pressure of a performance and allow one to become more engaged in a task. While this may enhance performance in some situations for some individuals, in general, research indicates that self-handicapping is negatively associated with performance, self-regulated learning, persistence and intrinsic motivation. Additional long-term costs of self-handicapping include worse health and well-being, more frequent negative moods and higher use of various substances.

Zuckerman and Tsai assessed self-handicapping, well-being, and coping among college students on two occasions over several months. Self-handicapping assessed on the first occasion predicted coping with problems by denial, blaming others and criticising oneself as well as depression and somatic complaints. Depression and somatic complaints also predicted subsequent self-handicapping. Thus, the use of self-handicapping may lead to not only uncertainty as to one’s ability but also ill-being, which in turn may lead to further reliance on self-handicapping.

Applications

There are many real world applications for this concept. For example, if people predict they are going to perform poorly on tasks, they create obstacles, such as taking drugs and consuming alcohol, so that they feel that they have diverted the blame from themselves if they actually do fail. In addition, another way that people self-handicap is by creating already-made excuses just in case they fail. For example, if a student feels that they are going to perform badly on a test, then they might make up an excuse for their potential failure, such as telling their friends that they do not feel well the morning of the test.

Occurrence in Sports

Previous research has suggested that because in Physical Education (PE) students are required to overtly display their physical abilities and incompetence could be readily observed by others, PE is an ideal setting to observe self-handicapping. Because of its prevalence in the sporting world, self-handicapping behaviour has become of interest to sports psychologists who are interested in increasing sports performance. Recent research has examined the relationship between behavioural and claimed self-handicaps and athletic performance as well as the effects self-handicapping has on anxiety and fear of failure before athletic performance.

Controversies

One controversy was revealed in a study done at the University of Wyoming. Previous research indicated a negative correlation between self-handicapping behaviours and boosting one’s self-esteem; it was also shown that people who focus on the positive attributes of themselves are less likely to self-handicap. This study, however, demonstrates that this claim is only partially accurate because the reduction of self-handicapping is only apparent in an area unrelated to the present self-esteem risk. As a result, the attempt to protect self-esteem becomes a detriment to future success in that area.

What is Self-Injury Awareness Day?

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Introduction

The orange ribbon of self-harm awareness.

Self-injury Awareness Day (SIAD) (also known as Self-Harm Awareness Day) is a grassroots annual global awareness event/campaign on 01 March, where on this day, and in the weeks leading up to it and after, some people choose to be more open about their own self-harm, and awareness organisations make special efforts to raise awareness about self-harm and self-injury.

Some people wear an orange awareness ribbon, write “LOVE” on their arms, draw a butterfly on their wrists in awareness of “the Butterfly Project” wristband or beaded bracelet to encourage awareness of self-harm. The goal of the people who observe SIAD is to break down the common stereotypes surrounding self-harm and to educate medical professionals about the condition.

Background

Depression and self-harm often go hand-in-hand, though there are many other reasons people self-harm. As many as two million Americans currently engage in self-harm, with methods like cutting, burning, scratching, bruising, and hitting themselves, along with other more harmful methods. It’s said that these behaviours promote feelings of control and help relieve tension, while helping the person express their emotions and escape the numbness that accompanies depression.

SIAD was created to spread awareness and understanding of self-injury, which is often misrepresented and misunderstood in the mainstream. Those who self-harm are often left feeling alone and afraid to reach out for help because they fear they will be seen as “crazy”.

Participating Organisations

Organisations involved in SIAD include:

  • Sociedad Internacional de Autolesión.
  • LifeSIGNS (Self-Injury Guidance & Network Support).
  • Self-Injury Foundation.
  • YoungMinds.
  • ChildLine.
  • The Mix (a UK digital charity).
  • Adolescent Self-Injury Foundation.
  • Cars for hope.

What is Relapse Prevention?

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Introduction

Relapse prevention (RP) is a cognitive-behavioural approach to relapse with the goal of identifying and preventing high-risk situations such as unhealthy substance use, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, sexual offending, obesity, and depression.

It is an important component in the treatment process for alcohol use disorder, or alcohol dependence.

Underlying Assumptions

Relapse is seen as both an outcome and a transgression in the process of behaviour change. An initial setback or lapse may translate into either a return to the previous problematic behaviour, known as relapse, or the individual turning again towards positive change, called prolapse. A relapse often occurs in the following stages: emotional relapse, mental relapse, and finally, physical relapse. Each stage is characterised by feelings, thoughts, and actions that ultimately lead to the individual’s returning to their old behaviour.

Relapse is thought to be multi-determined, especially by self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, craving, motivation, coping, emotional states, and interpersonal factors. In particular, high self-efficacy, negative outcome expectancies, potent availability of coping skills following treatment, positive affect, and functional social support are expected to predict positive outcome. Craving has not historically been shown to serve as a strong predictor of relapse.

Efficacy and Effectiveness

Carroll et al. conducted a review of 24 other trials and concluded that RP was more effective than no treatment and was equally effective as other active treatments such as supportive psychotherapy and interpersonal therapy in improving substance use outcomes. Irvin and colleagues also conducted a meta-analysis of RP techniques in the treatment of alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, and polysubstance use, and upon reviewing 26 studies, concluded that RP was successful in reducing substance use and improving psychosocial adjustment. RP seemed to be most effective for individuals with alcohol problems, suggesting that certain characteristics of alcohol use are amenable to the RP. Miller et al. (1996) found the GORSKI/CENAPS relapse warning signs to be a good predictor of the occurrence of relapse on the AWARE scale (r = .42, p < .001).

Prevention Approaches

General Prevention Theories

Some theorists, including Katie Witkiewitz and G. Alan Marlatt, borrowing ideas from systems theory, conceptualize relapse as a multidimensional, complex system. Such a nonlinear dynamical system is believed to be able to best predict the data witnessed, which commonly includes cases where small changes introduced into the equation seem to have large effects. The model also introduces concepts of self-organisation, feedback loops, timing/context effects, and the interplay between tonic and phasic processes.

Rami Jumnoodoo and Dr. Patrick Coyne, in London UK, have been working with National Health Service users and carers over the past ten years to transfer RP theory into the field of adult mental health. The uniqueness of the model is the sustainment of change by developing service users and carers as ‘experts’ – following RP as an educational process and graduating as Relapse Prevention Practitioners. The work has won many national awards, been presented at many conferences, and has resulted in many publications.

Terence Gorski MA has developed the CENAPS (Centre for Applied Science) model for relapse prevention including Relapse Prevention Counselling (Gorski, Counselling For Relapse Prevention, 1983) and a system for certification of Relapse Prevention Specialists (CRPS).

Depression

For the prevention of relapse in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), several approaches and intervention programmes have been proposed. Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy is commonly used and was found to be effective in preventing relapse especially in patients with more pronounced residual symptoms. Another approach often used in patients who wish to taper down antidepressant medication is Preventive Cognitive Therapy, an 8-weeks lasting psychological intervention programme delivered in individual or group sessions that focuses on changing dysfunctional attitudes, enhancing memories of positive experiences and helping patients to develop personal relapse prevention strategies. Preventive Cognitive Therapy has been found to be equally effective in preventing a return of depressive symptoms as antidepressant medication use alone in the long-term treatment of MDD. In combination with pharmaceuticals, it was found to be even more effective than antidepressant use alone.

What is Rationalisation (Psychology)?

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Introduction

Rationalisation is a defence mechanism (ego defence) in which apparent logical reasons are given to justify behaviour that is motivated by unconscious instinctual impulses.

It is an attempt to find reasons for behaviours, especially ones own. Rationalisations are used to defend against feelings of guilt, maintain self-respect, and protect oneself from criticism.

Rationalisation happens in two steps:

  • A decision, action, judgement is made for a given reason, or no (known) reason at all.
  • A rationalisation is performed, constructing a seemingly good or logical reason, as an attempt to justify the act after the fact (for oneself or others).

Rationalisation encourages irrational or unacceptable behaviour, motives, or feelings and often involves ad hoc hypothesizing. This process ranges from fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defence against ridicule from others) to mostly unconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal feelings of guilt or shame). People rationalise for various reasons – sometimes when we think we know ourselves better than we do. Rationalisation may differentiate the original deterministic explanation of the behaviour or feeling in question.

Many conclusions individuals come to do not fall under the definition of rationalisation as the term is denoted above.

Brief History

Quintilian and classical rhetoric used the term colour for the presenting of an action in the most favourable possible perspective. Laurence Sterne in the eighteenth century took up the point, arguing that, were a man to consider his actions, “he will soon find, that such of them, as strong inclination and custom have prompted him to commit, are generally dressed out and painted with all the false beauties [colour] which, a soft and flattering hand can give them”.

DSM Definition

According to the DSM-IV, rationalisation occurs:

“when the individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for their own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self serving but incorrect explanations”.

Examples

Individual

  • Rationalisation can be used to avoid admitting disappointment: “I didn’t get the job that I applied for, but I really didn’t want it in the first place.”

Egregious rationalisations intended to deflect blame can also take the form of ad hominem attacks or DARVO.

  • Ad hominem refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious.
  • DARVO is an acronym for deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender – a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.

Some rationalisations take the form of a comparison. Commonly, this is done to lessen the perception of an action’s negative effects, to justify an action, or to excuse culpability:

  • “At least [what occurred] is not as bad as [a worse outcome].”
  • In response to an accusation: “At least I didn’t [worse action than accused action].”
  • As a form of false choice: “Doing [undesirable action] is a lot better than [a worse action].”
  • In response to unfair or abusive behaviour: “I must have done something wrong if they treat me like this.”

Based on anecdotal and survey evidence, John Banja states that the medical field features a disproportionate amount of rationalisation invoked in the “covering up” of mistakes. Common excuses made are:

  • “Why disclose the error? The patient was going to die anyway.”
  • “Telling the family about the error will only make them feel worse.”
  • “It was the patient’s fault. If he wasn’t so (sick, etc.), this error wouldn’t have caused so much harm.”
  • “Well, we did our best. These things happen.”
  • “If we’re not totally and absolutely certain the error caused the harm, we don’t have to tell.”
  • “They’re dead anyway, so there’s no point in blaming anyone.”

In 2018 Muel Kaptein and Martien van Helvoort developed a model, called the Amoralisations Alarm Clock, that covers all existing amoralisations in a logical way. Amoralisations, also called neutralisations, or rationalisations, are defined as justifications and excuses for deviant behaviour. Amoralisations are important explanations for the rise and persistence of deviant behaviour. There exist many different and overlapping techniques of amoralisations.

Collective

  • Collective rationalisations are regularly constructed for acts of aggression, based on exaltation of the in-group and demonisation of the opposite side: as Fritz Perls put it, “Our own soldiers take care of the poor families; the enemy rapes them”.
  • Celebrity culture can be seen as rationalising the gap between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, by offering participation to both dominant and subaltern views of reality.

Criticism

Some scientists criticise the notion that brains are wired to rationalise irrational decisions, arguing that evolution would select against spending more nutrients at mental processes that do not contribute to the improvement of decisions such as rationalisation of decisions that would have been taken anyway. These scientists argue that learning from mistakes would be decreased rather than increased by rationalisation, and criticise the hypothesis that rationalisation evolved as a means of social manipulation by noting that if rational arguments were deceptive there would be no evolutionary chance for breeding individuals that responded to the arguments and therefore making them ineffective and not capable of being selected for by evolution.

Psychoanalysis

Ernest Jones introduced the term “rationalisation” to psychoanalysis in 1908, defining it as “the inventing of a reason for an attitude or action the motive of which is not recognized” – an explanation which (though false) could seem plausible. The term (Rationalisierung in German) was taken up almost immediately by Sigmund Freud to account for the explanations offered by patients for their own neurotic symptoms.

As psychoanalysts continued to explore the glossed of unconscious motives, Otto Fenichel distinguished different sorts of rationalisation – both the justifying of irrational instinctive actions on the grounds that they were reasonable or normatively validated and the rationalising of defensive structures, whose purpose is unknown on the grounds that they have some quite different but somehow logical meaning.

Later psychoanalysts are divided between a positive view of rationalisation as a stepping-stone on the way to maturity, and a more destructive view of it as splitting feeling from thought, and so undermining the powers of reason.

Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger highlighted in 1957 the discomfort caused to people by awareness of their inconsistent thought. Rationalisation can reduce such discomfort by explaining away the discrepancy in question, as when people who take up smoking after previously quitting decide that the evidence for it being harmful is less than they previously thought.

On This Day … 15 February

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People (Births)

  • 1856 – Emil Kraepelin, German psychiatrist and academic (d. 1926).
  • 1940 – Vaino Vahing, Estonian psychiatrist, author, and playwright (d. 2008).

Emil Kraepelin

Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin (15 February 1856 to 07 October 1926) was a German psychiatrist.

H.J. Eysenck’s Encyclopaedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics.

Kraepelin believed the chief origin of psychiatric disease to be biological and genetic malfunction. His theories dominated psychiatry at the start of the 20th century and, despite the later psychodynamic influence of Sigmund Freud and his disciples, enjoyed a revival at century’s end. While he proclaimed his own high clinical standards of gathering information “by means of expert analysis of individual cases”, he also drew on reported observations of officials not trained in psychiatry.

His textbooks do not contain detailed case histories of individuals but mosaic-like compilations of typical statements and behaviours from patients with a specific diagnosis. He has been described as “a scientific manager” and “a political operator”, who developed “a large-scale, clinically oriented, epidemiological research programme”.

Vaino Vahing

Vaino Vahing (15 February 1940 to 23 March 2008), was an Estonian writer, prosaist, psychiatrist and playwright.

Starting from 1973, he was a member of the Estonian Writers Union. Vahing has written many articles about psychiatry, but also literature, including novels, books and plays with psychiatric and autobiographical influences.

He has acted in several Estonian films.

What is Delusional Misidentification Syndrome?

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Introduction

Delusional misidentification syndrome is an umbrella term, introduced by Christodoulou (in his book The Delusional Misidentification Syndromes, Karger, Basel, 1986) for a group of delusional disorders that occur in the context of mental and neurological illness.

They all involve a belief that the identity of a person, object, or place has somehow changed or has been altered. As these delusions typically only concern one particular topic, they also fall under the category called monothematic delusions.

Background

This psychopathological syndrome is usually considered to include four main variants:

  • The Capgras delusion is the belief that (usually) a close relative or spouse has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor.
  • The Fregoli delusion is the belief that various people the believer meets are actually the same person in disguise.
  • Intermetamorphosis is the belief that an individual has the ability to take the form of another person in both external appearance and internal personality.
  • Subjective doubles, described by Christodoulou in 1978 (American Journal of Psychiatry 135, 249, 1978), is the belief that there is a doppelgänger or double of themselves carrying out independent actions.

However, similar delusional beliefs, often singularly or more rarely reported, are sometimes also considered to be part of the delusional misidentification syndrome. For example:

  • Mirrored-self misidentification is the belief that one’s reflection in a mirror is some other person.
  • Reduplicative paramnesia is the belief that a familiar person, place, object, or body part has been duplicated. For example, a person may believe that they are in fact not in the hospital to which they were admitted, but an identical-looking hospital in a different part of the country, despite this being obviously false.
  • Cotard’s syndrome is a rare disorder in which people hold a delusional belief that they are dead (either figuratively or literally), do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In rare instances, it can include delusions of immortality.
  • Syndrome of delusional companions is the belief that objects (such as soft toys) are sentient beings.
  • Clonal pluralisation of the self, where a person believes there are multiple copies of themselves, identical both physically and psychologically, but physically separate and distinct.
  • Clinical lycanthropy is the belief that one is turning or has turned into an animal.

There is considerable evidence that disorders such as the Capgras or Fregoli syndromes are associated with disorders of face perception and recognition. However, it has been suggested that all misidentification problems exist on a continuum of anomalies of familiarity, from déjà vu at one end to the formation of delusional beliefs at the other.

What is Decompensation (Psychology)?

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Introduction

In medicine, decompensation is the functional deterioration of a structure or system that had been previously working with the help of allostatic compensation.

Background

Decompensation may occur due to fatigue, stress, illness, or old age. When a system is “compensated,” it is able to function despite stressors or defects. Decompensation describes an inability to compensate for these deficiencies. It is a general term commonly used in medicine to describe a variety of situations.

Physiology

For example, cardiac decompensation may refer to the failure of the heart to maintain adequate blood circulation, after long-standing (previously compensated) vascular disease (see heart failure). Short-term treatment of cardiac decompensation can be achieved through administration of dobutamine, resulting in an increase in heart contractility via an inotropic effect.

Kidney failure can also occur following a slow degradation of kidney function due to an underlying untreated illness; the symptoms of the latter can then become much more severe due to the lack of efficient compensation by the kidney.

Psychology

In psychology, the term refers to an individual’s loss of healthy defence mechanisms in response to stress, resulting in personality disturbance or psychological imbalance. Some who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder may decompensate into persecutory delusions to defend against a troubling reality.