Psychological Science Research Articles

Opening Pandora's Box: Person-Sensitive Conceptualization and Measurement in Psychological Science.

Although distinctions between the study of persons, the study of populations, and the study of mechanisms are helpful for illuminating mismatches between research assumptions, problems, and methods, it may be difficult to construe these as entirely discrete branches of psychological science. I suggest that it is more appropriate to view person-levelness (or person-sensitivity) as an ideal we should actively aspire toward, within the constraints placed by other goals such as generalizability and feasibility, when pursuing knowledge about individuals. It is an ideal that we can never hope to perfectly realize-the degree to which it is realized will always be a matter of degree, and there is therefore no clear line of demarcation between the person level and other branches of psychology. This ideal can nonetheless stimulate more person-sensitive conceptualizations, measurements, and analyses.

Spiritual places: Spatial recognition of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual perception.

Tibetan Buddhism, as an indigenous religion, has a significant and far-reaching influence in the Tibetan areas of China. This study, focusing on Lhasa, explores the integration of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual perceptions within urban spaces. Employing a novel approach that combines street view data and deep learning technology, the research aims to identify and map the spatial distribution of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual sites against the backdrop of the urban landscape. Our analysis reveals a notable concentration of these spiritual places near urban architectural and cultural heritage areas, highlighting the profound connection between residents' cultural life and spiritual practices. Despite challenges posed by modern urbanisation, these spiritual sites demonstrate resilience and adaptability, continuing to serve as cultural and spiritual pillars of the Tibetan Buddhist community. This study contributes to the fields of urban planning, religious studies, and digital humanities by demonstrating the potential of technology in examining the impact of urban development on cultural and religious landscapes. The research underscores the importance of protecting and integrating spaces of spiritual perception in urban development planning. It shows that safeguarding these spaces is crucial not only for cultural heritage preservation but also for achieving sustainable urban development and social harmony. This study opens new avenues for interdisciplinary research, advocating for a deeper understanding of the dynamic relationship between urban development and spiritual spaces from psychological, sociological, and environmental science perspectives. As urban landscapes evolve, the study emphasises the need to maintain a balance between material sustainability and cultural and spiritual richness in urban planning.

The psychometrics of rating facial attractiveness using different response scales.

Perceiving facial attractiveness is an important behaviour across psychological science due to these judgments having real-world consequences. However, there is little consensus on the measurement of this behaviour, and practices differ widely. Research typically asks participants to provide ratings of attractiveness across a multitude of different response scales, with little consideration of the psychometric properties of these scales. Here, we make psychometric comparisons across nine different response scales. Specifically, we analysed the psychometric properties of a binary response, a 0-100 scale, a visual analogue scale, and a set of Likert scales (1-3, 1-5, 1-7, 1-8, 1-9, 1-10) as tools to measure attractiveness, calculating a range of commonly used statistics for each. While certain properties suggested researchers might choose to favour the 1-5, 1-7 and 1-8 scales, we generally found little evidence of an advantage for one scale over any other. Taken together, our investigation provides consideration of currently used techniques for measuring facial attractiveness and makes recommendations for researchers in this field.

Campbell's Law Explains the Replication Crisis: Pre-Registration Badges Are History Repeating.

Campbell's Law explains the replication crisis. In brief, useful tools such as hypotheses, p-values, and multi-study designs came to be viewed as indicators of strong science, and thus goals in and of themselves. Consequently, their use became distorted in unanticipated ways (e.g., hypothesizing after results were known [HARKing], p-Hacking, misuses of researcher degrees of freedom), and fragile findings proliferated. Pre-registration mandates are positioned as an antidote. However, I argue that such efforts, perhaps best exemplified by pre-registration badges (PRBs), are history repeating: Another useful tool has been converted into an indicator of strong science and a goal in and of itself. This, too, will distort its use and harm psychological science in unanticipated ways. For example, there is already evidence that papers seeking PRBs routinely violate the rules and spirit of pre-registration. I suggest that pre-registration mandates will (a) discourage optimal scientific practice, (b) exacerbate the file drawer problem, (c) encourage pre-registering after results are known (PRARKing), and (d) create false trust in fragile findings. I conclude that multiple design features can help support replicability (e.g., adequate sample size, valid measurement, robustness checks, pre-registration), none should be canonized, replication is the only arbiter of replicability, and the most important solution is sociocultural: to foster a field that reveres and reinforces robust science-just as we once revered and reinforced flashy but fragile science.

Психология юридического труда: аналитический прогноз для будущих юристов (к вопросу о разработке психологической теории юридической деятельности)

The absence of the concept of “legal work” in modern psychological science leads to a negative tendency to interpret it through the legal norms established in Russian legislation in modern research in the field of legal psychology and economic theory. This fact leads to a fundamental error in obtaining objective scientific knowledge associated with the use of methodological tools not peculiar to this field of scientific knowledge. The research of V.L. Vasiliev, M.I. Enikeev, M.M. Kochenov, A.E. Zhalinsky, Yu.V. Chufarovsky is primarily focused on the study of the professionograms of individual legal specialties, while the fundamental issue of the formation of an approach to the definition of the concept of “legal work” has not yet been resolved. Being multifaceted, the sphere of legal activity often, contrary to the laws of economic theory, does not provide any surplus product, while the regulatory and establishing function of this activity allows us to talk about it as a transitional stage to the introduction of the concept of “artificial intelligence activity” into scientific circulation and legislation in the near future. The issues of defining the concept of “legal labor” in the conditions of the prevailing scientific concepts of labor psychology cause a lot of difficulties. Thus, the concepts of L.S. Vygotsky, S.L. Rubinstein, V.D. Shadrikov recognized in the scientific community do not provide answers to a number of questions related to the essence of legal work, such as the possibility of distinguishing “legal action” and a number of others. Despite the recognition in scientific legal circles of the research of D.I. Meyer, by the way, professor of Kazan Imperial University, the concepts of “legal action” proposed by him from the point of view of modern psychological science are absolutely unacceptable, since he primitively calls all actions performed by a person “legal”, without taking into account that such legal actions can only be performed within the framework of regulated by the law of public relations. So eating breakfast in the morning, this sign is absent in most cases, and therefore there is no need to qualify this action as legal. Despite the described scientific problems, the trends in the development of this scientific field of knowledge (“psychology of legal work”) are very dynamic. They will be discussed in the publication.

On Persons, Populations, and Causal Mechanisms Some Critical Reflections on Lundh (2023).

While agreeing with Lundh (2023) on many of his major points, this article also questions the notion of a 'population psychology.' It is argued that the knowledge produced in population-level studies, whether correlational, experimental, or mixed, is inherently demographic in nature. Concerning individual-level studies, agreement with Lundh (2023) is expressed concerning the need to distinguish between a conception of individuals as mere depositories of neurophysiological mechanisms on the one hand, and as active, purposeful agents on the other. It is suggested that the conceptual framework called 'critical personalism' would well serve a scientific psychology committed to the latter view.

Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare utilization among children in U.S. foster care: Recommendations to challenge the status quo based on a scoping review

Prior work has examined racial and ethnic disparities in the access to and utilization of healthcare services. However, evidence across studies is mixed, making it challenging to precisely identify where the racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare utilization are amongst children in foster care, and which race and ethnicity groups are most impacted by such disparities. As such, the purpose of the current study was to conduct a scoping review to synthesize evidence on the topic of racial and ethnic disparities in the physical and mental or behavioral healthcare utilization for children in the U.S. foster care system (PROSPERO ID: CRD42021272072). Comprehensive literature searches were conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, and Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. Of the 414 studies identified, 23 met inclusion criteria: peer-reviewed journal article, published between 1991 and 2023, written in English, examined healthcare access or utilization of children in the U.S. foster care system as outcomes, included and disaggregated results by children’s race and ethnicity, conducted quantitative analysis, and was observational in study design. In the physical healthcare utilization domain, Black children were less likely to utilize routine and preventative check-ups and more likely to utilize medical services for treating chronic illnesses such as asthma, compared to White children. In the mental or behavioral healthcare utilization domain, Black and Hispanic/Latine children were less likely to utilize both inpatient and outpatient mental health services, compared to White children. Furthermore, notable variations were observed by specific service types and continuity of services over time. Implications include additional research and education about racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare utilization amongst children in foster care, as well as implementing regulations and oversights that mandate racial equity in the child welfare and healthcare service pathways.

Systematic review and meta-analysis:relative age in attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder.

Youngest students in their class, with birthdates just before the school entry cut-off date, are overrepresented among children receiving an Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis or medication for this. This is known as the relative age effect. This systematic review and meta-analysis summarises the evidence on the influence of relative age on ADHD symptoms, diagnosis and medication prescribing. As no review to date has investigated the association with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, this is also examined. Following prospective registration with PROSPERO, we conducted a systematic review according to the PRISMA guidelines. We searched seven databases: Medline, Embase, PsycInfo, Web of Science Core Collection, ERIC, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection, and Cochrane Library. Additional references were identified from manual search of retrieved reviews. We performed a meta-analysis of quantitative data. Thirty-two studies were included, thirty-one investigated ADHD and two ASD. Younger relative age was associated with ADHD diagnosis and medication, with relative risks of 1.38 (1.36-1.52 95% CI) and 1.28 (1.21-1.36 95% CI) respectively. However, risk estimates exhibited high heterogeneity. A relative age effect was observed for teacher ratings of ADHD symptoms but not for parent ratings. With regard to ASD, the youngest children in their school year were more likely to be diagnosed with ASD. This review confirms a relative age effect for ADHD diagnosis and prescribed ADHD medication and suggests that differences in teacher and parent ratings might contribute to this. Further research is needed on the possible association with ASD.

Applications of turning point analysis in behavioral medicine research: A systematic scoping review

BackgroundTurning Point Analysis (TPA) is a methodological approach that allows scholars to retrospectively capture change over time by identifying instances of critical change (i.e., turning points) encountered across a given time period. While TPA has been used to examine time as a variable in health and illness experiences, the use of the method in behavioral medicine scholarship may be limited by the lack of understanding of TPA procedures and applicability. ObjectiveTo describe how TPA has been used and enhance its accessibility by identifying and synthesizing methods of TPA data collection and analysis. MethodsA systematic search of electronic databases, including Academic Source Premier, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, APA PsycInfo, and ProQuest Dissertation and Theses Database, was conducted in May 2020. In July 2020, we used hand searching to identify additional articles, including forward and back tracking seminal articles on TPA. Studies were screened in duplicate. ResultsOf the 1184 studies screened for this review, we included 52. Studies used TPA to examine relational (k = 40), organizational (k = 6), and individual (k = 6) variables and included an analysis of either turning points (k = 28), the trajectories of change over time created by the turning points (k = 3), or both (k = 21). Turning points and trajectories were captured and analyzed using qualitative and quantitative analytic approaches, with most studies using either purely qualitative (k = 26) or mixed methods (k = 21). ConclusionsThe findings of this review provide insight into the varied applications of TPA and suggest the potential value of this methodological approach in better understanding health experiences across time. By synthesizing the procedural and analytic steps to conducting a TPA, this review could also increase the accessibility and use of TPA in behavioral medicine research.

«Неделя психологии» как эффективный инструмент психологического просвещения участников образовательных отношений: методика и организация

<p style="text-align: justify;">In the article actualizes the issue of improving the psychological literacy of participants in educational relations. Psychological education and prevention are seen as one of the effective tools in solving this problem. In this context, modern approaches to the implementation of these activities in psychological science and practice are revealed, among which the format of conducting the “Psychology Weeks” in educational organizations is particularly highlighted. The Great Psychological Game is considered as a form of realization of the “Psychology Week”. The article describes the practice of organizing and holding the All-Russian “Psychology Week”, implemented over the past few years on the initiative of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. A comprehensive system of methodological and informational support for the “Psychology Week” is presented. The content and effectiveness of thematic events held within the framework of the “Psychology Week” are analyzed, as well as the coverage of the target audience of educational organizations of the subjects of the Russian Federation.</p>

Методологічні засади інформаційно-аналітичного супроводу психологічної науки і освіти сьогодення

Методологічні засади інформаційно-аналітичного супроводу психологічної науки і освіти сьогодення

Metacognitive Awareness and Group Membership as Predictors of Academic Performance

Numerous studies highlighted the role of higher-order cognitive processes and metacognitive awareness in academic performance and later careers. Similarly, extracurricular activities, such as various group memberships, have a positive impact on university success, enhancing cognitive abilities alongside social and emotional factors. The aim of this research is not only to uncover simple linear relationships but to examine the impact of group membership, as an extracurricular activity, on the relationship between metacognitive awareness and academic performance. We surveyed students from the Babeș-Bolyai University Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, using the convenience sampling method and applying a correlational cross-sectional design. Positive, moderate-strength relationships were found between academic performance, metacognitive awareness, and group membership. According to the moderation model, group membership is not a significant moderator; however, based on the overall model, it can be concluded that group membership has a positive effect on academic performance. The study draws attention to the organization and support of extracurricular and co-curricular programs as activities that enhance metacognitive awareness and academic performance.

Collaborative authoring using wiki

This case study describes a collaborative online authoring project in which undergraduate students co-produce open educational resources as a learning and assessment exercise. Over 1,500 chapters and videos about how psychological science can improve people’s motivational and emotional lives have been co-created. Wikiversity provides a simple and powerful open editing and hosting platform. The project’s key pedagogical principles include students as partners, open education, guided experiential learning, and self-determined learning. Other key ingredients include scaffolding, skill development, and formative feedback. Potential issues are framed as educational opportunities, including privacy and anonymity, intellectual property and copyright, and individual versus collective work. Collaborative online authoring projects offer real-world benefits over disposable essays in higher education. The principles and methods are adaptable to a wide variety of disciplines and educational contexts, offering a scalable approach to collaborative student-staff partnerships.

METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES OF RESEARCH ON PROBLEMS OF SOCIALIZATION OF PERSONALITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR

Relevance. Despite being traditional and important for psychological and sociological sciences, the problem of socialization remains vulnerable to criticism due to the apologetic nature of its theoretical and methodological foundations. Within the limits of traditional approaches, the success or failure of the process and results of socialization are considered, in fact, in the interests of the officially recognized state ideology with a corresponding set of ideals and values. This may be acceptable for countries with established democratic regimes, but it generates many insidious questions in the conditions of confrontation between societies with different civilizational reference points. This is the situation we have today in the context of the russian-Ukrainian war. Methodology is based on the discursive approach, which does not deprive the researcher of the right to evaluate socialization from his or her ideological position, but excludes the extrapolation of these evaluations to the psychological (procedural) content of socialization. According to this approach, the discourses in which socialization takes place, rather than its psychological content itself, can be evaluated from a moral or ideological perspective. This allows for a more realistic evaluation of the socialization experience of different societies, different countries and peoples, for comparison, etc. People’s participation in the reproduction and development of discourse can be traced by the results of monitoring all-Ukrainian representative surveys conducted by the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since the early 1990s. Results. During this time, the territorial-state discourse has gradually formed as a leading one in Ukrainian society. Its value imperative is the attitude of state independence. About 80% of citizens believe that although there are many obstacles in the way of our statehood, Ukraine should still be independent.

METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF THE THEORY OF SOCIALIZATION AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Relevance. The report analyzes the methodological foundations of the study of personality socialization in the heuristic tradition of the Kyiv Philosophical and Psychological School. The laws of human development through socialization based on cultural forms are formulated. Methodology. A comprehensive approach (I. Sikorskyi, G. Chelpanov), which establishes the methods of metaphysics, theory of knowledge and logic in the theoretical arsenal of psychological science. Phenomenological approach (E. Husserl, G. Shpet), which considers the category of social existence in the trinity of individual, collective and corporate consciousness, and also uses the categories of form and content, phenomenon, meaning and sense, image and understanding as its interpretation based on one's own experience as central in the work of cognitive actions of human consciousness. Results. The use of a phenomenological approach allows us to assert that personality development appears as an active process that is carried out through the appropriation and transformation of cultural forms by a person as a subject of socialization and the formation of his own expanded identity based on them. The main mechanism of the conscious development of the personality in culture involves the following processes: 1) experiencing the significance of the new and its acceptance as a cultural form (emotional component); 2) reproduction as an interpretation of the new form in the categories of one's own experience (rational-creative component); 3) use of the understood content as a practical test of its ability (cognitive component); 4) the person's expansion of the borders of the Self or his identity through awareness of a new cultural form as part of his own experience (self-reflective meaningful component).

SPIRITUAL POTENTIAL OF THE PERSONALITY OF PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS IN ADOLESCENT AGE

The relevance of the study of spirituality is determined by the rapid social transformations and the need of a person to adapt to constant transformations in the conditions of war and peace, which is an important task not only for psychological science but also for the education system and the system of Social Policy. The new challenges of civilization prepare a person for the process of continuous changes, they require the readiness to act, to manifest oneself not only as an active creative subject of one’s own life path but also as a creator of socio-cultural activities, therefore the development of the spiritual potential of the Ukrainian nation determines the prospects of our future. The study of spiritual potential in youth will help to form a clearer picture of the worldview of today’s youth. Methodology. The study was conducted in January 2022. Sample: 60 psychology students of Vinnytsia State Pedagogical University named after Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi, aged 17-21 years. n order to diagnose the spiritual potential, the distribution of the spiritual potential in the substructures of the personality, and the spiritual value orientation of the personality, the methodology “Spiritual potential of the personality” was used (Pomitkin, 2013). Results. The results of the diagnosis of the distribution of spiritual potential in the substructures of students’ personalities show only the dominance of the respondents’ spiritual potential in the communication substructure. Diagnostics of their orientation to spiritual values demonstrate the importance of knowledge and self-knowledge for the research. According to other criteria, a low level of development of the spiritual potential of the person under investigation was determined. The obtained results can be used for further research on the development of the spirituality of young people (in the development of training programs, and psychoeducational programs) and in the psychological counseling of students.

Stockholm Syndrome and Gender-Related Ideologies and Attitudes: A Psychometric Assessment

Stockholm syndrome, a paradoxical phenomenon, characteristic of the particular psychological functioning of people in captivity and victims of mistreatment, sexual abuse and gender-based violence, arouses significant interest in psychological sciences. However, the related instrumentation remains limited, due to the fact that there is not a significant number of measurements that can evaluate it. In addition, the current main measure (the <i>scale for identifying “Stockholm Syndrome” reactions in young dating women/Escala para identificar reacciones de síndrome de Estocolmo (SISSR) relacionada con violencia de pareja</i>), only exists in the English and Spanish languages; which constitutes a linguistic obstacle for its administration to individuals who speak other languages, such as French. However, the simple translation of the items of a measurement does not guarantee its reliability from a psychometric point of view. In this vein, this study proposes the translation in French and validation of the Spanish version of this measure. It also proposes, as part of testing the predictive validity of the measure, to link the construct of Stockholm syndrome with gender-related ideologies and attitudes. The validation of the French version of the Stockholm syndrome measurement scale was carried out with two samples (N = 836) consisting entirely of women. The exploratory test (EFA) carried out with 400 participants reveals a reliable tri-factorial structure of 16 elements, after the elimination of 33 elements, due to factor loadings lower than .40. The confirmatory analysis of this factorial structure, using the Structural Equation Method (CFA-SEM), carried out on a sample of 436 participants, supports the tri-factorial structure which fits the data better. Tests of factorial invariance of the measurement, depending on marital status (n1 = 215 married women; n2 = 221 concubine) reveal a structural equivalence between the groups. The predictive validity of the measure reveals that Stockholm syndrome is linked to attitudes towards gender-based violence, sexism, feminism, non-justification of the gender system and gender-based social dominance.

The Effects of Questionnaire Length on the Relative Impact of Response Styles in Ambulatory Assessment

Ambulatory assessment (AA) is becoming an increasingly popular research method in the fields of psychology and life science. Nevertheless, knowledge about the effects that design choices, such as questionnaire length (i.e., number of items per questionnaire), have on AA data quality is still surprisingly restricted. Additionally, response styles (RS), which threaten data quality, have hardly been analyzed in the context of AA. The aim of the current research was to experimentally manipulate questionnaire length and investigate the association between questionnaire length and RS in an AA study. We expected that the group with the longer (82-item) questionnaire would show greater reliance on RS relative to the substantive traits than the group with the shorter (33-item) questionnaire. Students (n = 284) received questionnaires three times a day for 14 days. We used a multigroup two-dimensional item response tree model in a multilevel structural equation modeling framework to estimate midpoint and extreme RS in our AA study. We found that the long questionnaire group showed a greater reliance on RS relative to trait-based processes than the short questionnaire group. Although further validation of our findings is necessary, we hope that researchers consider our findings when planning an AA study in the future.

Psychology as a Science of the Soul: Evangelos Christou's The Logos of the Soul (1963).

After Evangelos Christou (1923-1956) studied philosophy at King's College, Cambridge, with Wittgenstein and others, he earned a doctorate at the Jung Institute in Zürich. He then returned home to Alexandria, near which he died in a car crash. The Logos of the Soul, published posthumously, argued for a psychology that would be neither a natural scientific psychology, devoted to causal analyses, nor a philosophical discipline that analysed mental events. Psychology would be an autonomous science of the soul, an unknown distinct from body and mind. Science deals with bodies and behaviours; philosophy with the mental concepts and acts. Psychology deals with "psychological experience". Dreams and fantasies can be sources of psychological experience, but so can perceptual acts and mental acts. Meaning occurs when something encounters an ego or self in a psychological experience. Observation in psychology is participant observation, akin to witnessing of a drama. Psychological methods, such as psychotherapy, are both means of discovery and means of becoming. Christou's work brought together Jung's analytical psychology and mid-century British philosophy in order to stake out the ground for psychology that would be an empirical analysis of psychological experience and a logical analysis of the concepts used in that psychology.

Science of psychological phenomena and their testing.

There is no crisis of replication and generalizability in psychological science, only misunderstanding or forgetting the fundamental nature of psychological phenomena and resultant implications for empirical testing. Stability-variability is the central feature of every psychological phenomenon, meaning that brain-mind interactions can only create stable patterns from which there will always be deviations. Psychological phenomena are not comparable to COVID-19 vaccines that were very effective (95%) initially for almost everyone for a long time. Replications cannot be the gatekeepers of scientific psychological knowledge, only constructive additions and explorations contributing to theory development and measurement improvement. Once a logically justified and theoretically well-developed hypothesis is presented, the phenomenon exists as long as one of the following conditions is true: (1) it has not been shown logically that the phenomenon cannot exist or (2) it has not been shown empirically that the phenomenon does not exist. Like in physics and other sciences, generalization to theory is critical in psychological science, but less important relative to hypothetical (phantom) populations. Initial COVID-19 vaccines were effective because they worked for the right theoretical reason, the mRNA mechanism. This central principle holds true for psychological phenomena as well, with findings generalizing to the theoretical explanation regarding the presence and manifestations of behaviors brought about by the brain-mind interactions, or stated differently, generalization of psychological phenomena to specific behaviors and under specific conditions as proposed by the theory. Instead of the narrow focus on generalization to hypothetical populations, psychological phenomena and associated generalization could more productively be examined from the nine proposed perspectives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).