Self-perceived strengths among people who are homeless.

This study examined self-perceived strengths among 116 people who were homeless. Those who had experienced a longer period of current homelessness tended to report fewer personal strengths (r = -0.23).

Looking on the bright side: downward counterfactual thinking in response to negative life events.

Past research has found that downward counterfactual thoughts are rarely generated in response to negative life events. However, the authors suggest that under conditions in which self-enhancement motives are prominent, downward counterfactuals will be more frequent than upward counterfactuals. When motives were explicitly manipulated (Study 1), people generated more downward counterfactuals in the self-enhancement than in the self-improvement and control conditions.

Culture and social comparison seeking: the role of self-motives.

Three studies examined the relation between cultural background and social comparison seeking. Compared to European Canadians, Asian Canadians sought more social comparisons, particularly those that were upward (Study 1), more social comparisons after failure (Study 2), and more social comparisons after failure when the opportunity for self-improvement was made salient (Study 3). Taken together, these data spotlight Asian Canadians' interest in social comparisons that allow for self-improvement.

Psychology and culture.

Psychological processes influence culture. Culture influences psychological processes. Individual thoughts and actions influence cultural norms and practices as they evolve over time, and these cultural norms and practices influence the thoughts and actions of individuals.

Maximizing versus satisficing: happiness is a matter of choice.

Can people feel worse off as the options they face increase? The present studies suggest that some people--maximizers--can. Study 1 reported a Maximization Scale, which measures individual differences in desire to maximize. Seven samples revealed negative correlations between maximization and happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and positive correlations between maximization and depression, perfectionism, and regret.

Resilience to loss and chronic grief: a prospective study from preloss to 18-months postloss.

The vast majority of bereavement research is conducted after a loss has occurred. Thus, knowledge of the divergent trajectories of grieving or their antecedent predictors is lacking. This study gathered prospective data on 205 individuals several years prior to the death of their spouse and at 6- and 18-months postloss.

Illness experience, depression, and anxiety in chronic fatigue syndrome.

Objective: Given the high rate of psychiatric comorbidity with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), we considered two possible correlates of anxiety and depression: lack of illness legitimization and beliefs about limiting physical activity.

Method: A total of 105 people diagnosed with CFS reported on their experiences with medical professionals and their beliefs about recovery and completed the depression and anxiety subscales of the Brief Symptom Inventory.

Results: Those who said that their physician did not legitimize their illness (36%) had higher depression and anxiety scores (P's<.

What's wrong with cross-cultural comparisons of subjective Likert scales?: The reference-group effect.

Social comparison theory maintains that people think about themselves compared with similar others. Those in one culture, then, compare themselves with different others and standards than do those in another culture, thus potentially confounding cross-cultural comparisons. A pilot study and Study 1 demonstrated the problematic nature of this reference-group effect: Whereas cultural experts agreed that East Asians are more collectivistic than North Americans, cross-cultural comparisons of trait and attitude measures failed to reveal such a pattern.

Learning considered within a cultural context. Confucian and Socratic approaches.

A Confucian-Socratic framework is used to analyze culture's influence on academic learning. Socrates, a Western exemplar, valued private and public questioning of widely accepted knowledge and expected students to evaluate others' beliefs and to generate and express their own hypotheses. Confucius, an Eastern exemplar, valued effortful, respectful, and pragmatic acquisition of essential knowledge as well as behavioral reform.

Divergent consequences of success and failure in japan and north america: an investigation of self-improving motivations and malleable selves.

Self-enhancing and self-improving motivations were investigated across cultures. Replicating past research, North Americans who failed on a task persisted less on a follow-up task than those who succeeded. In contrast, Japanese who failed persisted more than those who succeeded.

Searching for meaning in loss: are clinical assumptions correct.

Three assumptions guiding research and clinical intervention strategies for people coping with sudden, traumatic loss are that (a) people confronting such losses inevitably search for meaning, (b) over time most are able to find meaning and put the issue aside, and (c) finding meaning is critical for adjustment or healing. We review existing empirical research that addresses these assumptions and present evidence from a study of 124 parents coping with the death of their infant and a study of 93 adults coping with the loss of their spouse or child to a motor vehicle accident. Results of these studies indicate that (a) a significant subset of individuals do not search for meaning and yet appear relatively well-adjusted to their loss; (b) less than half of the respondents in each of these samples report finding any meaning in their loss, even more than a year after the event; and (c) those who find meaning, although better adjusted than those who search but are unable to find meaning, do not put the issue of meaning aside and move on.

Negotiating false memories: interviewer and rememberer characteristics relate to memory distortion.

In a recent study, more than half of the participants were led to create a partial or complete false memory for an emotional childhood event (e.g., serious animal attack).

Hunger, eating, and ill health.

Humans and other warm-blooded animals living with continuous access to a variety of good-tasting foods tend to eat too much and suffer ill health as a result--a finding that is incompatible with the widely held view that hunger and eating are compensatory processes that function to maintain the body's energy resources at a set point. The authors argue that because of the scarcity and unpredictability of food in nature, humans and other animals have evolved to eat to their physiological limits when food is readily available, so that excess energy can be stored in the body as a buffer against future food shortages. The discrepancy between the environment in which the hunger and eating system evolved and the food-replete environments in which many people now live has led to the current problem of overconsumption existing in many countries.

Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?

It is assumed that people seek positive self-regard; that is, they are motivated to possess, enhance, and maintain positive self-views. The cross-cultural generalizability of such motivations was addressed by examining Japanese culture. Anthropological, sociological, and psychological analyses revealed that many elements of Japanese culture are incongruent with such motivations.

The nature of real, implanted, and fabricated memories for emotional childhood events: implications for the recovered memory debate.

A central issue in the recovered memory debate is whether it is possible to "remember" a highly emotional incident which never occurred. The present study provided an in-depth investigation of real, implanted, and fabricated (deceptive) memories for stressful childhood events. We examined whether false memories for emotional events could be implanted and, if so, whether real, implanted, and fabricated memories had distinctive features.

The cultural construction of self-enhancement: an examination of group-serving biases.

Self-serving biases, found routinely in Western samples, have not been observed in Asian samples. Yet given the orientation toward individualism and collectivism in these 2 cultures, respectively, it is imperative to examine whether parallel differences emerge when the target of evaluation is the group. It may be that Asians show a group-serving bias parallel to the Western self-serving bias.

Counterfactual thinking and ascriptions of cause and preventability.

Research suggests that counterfactuals (i.e., thoughts of how things might have been different) play an important role in determining the perceived cause of a target outcome.

Should this child be removed from home? Hypothesis generation and information seeking as predictors of case decisions.

Two vital aspects of the investigative process in child abuse and neglect (CAN) cases are (a) generating as many plausible hypotheses as possible and (b) seeking out as much uncontaminated information as possible. Alternatively, unwarranted assumptions about the nature of CAN cases can impair investigative decision making. We examined whether the numbers of (a) unwarranted assumptions, (b) hypotheses generated, and (c) requests for additional information concerning a hypothetical reported case of CAN predicted level of agreement with a premature decision to remove a child from home among a group of CAN professionals.