Psychological theories of aggression

This paper aimed to provide a short exposition of the main theories of aggression. The choice of the theories reflected, in part, the historical progression and rising complexity of the theories over time. A brief overview of the following theoretical perspectives on aggression was presented: Freud’s psychoanalytic theory; Lorenz’s ethological theory; Behaviorist theory; Frustration-aggression hypothesis; Cognitive neo-association theory; and Social learning theory. These theories are representatives of the traditional perspective, which posits that by piecing together fragments of data gained through research, we arrive at the truth about aggression. A radically different perspective was offered through the constructivist perspective, which argues that any theory is just one way of organizing the data. Drawing from personal construct theory, a different psychological perspective on aggression was proposed.

Does virtual reality increase the efficacy of psychotherapy for young adults with mild-to-moderate depression? A study protocol for a multicenter randomized clinical trial

Background The improvement of psychological treatments for depression in young adults is a pressing issue highlighted in the literature. Its relevance is determined not only because young adults are underrepresented in research, but also to prevent chronic severe mental health disorders later in life. Engagement is considered a key factor for a good therapeutic outcome, especially among young patients. In this sense, virtual reality could be particularly suited to engage young adults in the therapy process. This project aims to improve the psychological treatment of mild-to-moderate depression in young adults by testing out the efficacy of virtual reality-enhanced personal construct therapy (PCT-VR), as compared to personal construct therapy alone (PCT) and to the reference standard cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In contrast to CBT, PCT neither educates patients about depression nor gives them directions on the changes to be made in their dysfunctional behaviors or cognitions. Rather, PCT explores the coherence (or conflicts) of thoughts and behaviors with respect to the person’s sense of identity and focuses on meaning-making processes. Methods The efficacy of this innovative intervention (PCT-VR) will be compared to PCT and to CBT in a randomized clinical trial. The study includes an appraisal of therapists’ adherence and independent assessments to preserve internal validity. The Beck Depression Inventory-II is the primary outcome measure for calculating both statistical and clinical significance, but other outcomes will also be assessed (e.g., functioning, well-being, anxiety, stress) at pre- and post-therapy and at 6-month follow-up. The trial will be conducted in a naturalistic context, mostly at the usual health care center of each patient. A sample of 225 participants is targeted to reach enough statistical power to accomplish the goals of the study. Discussion We expect that providing evidence for PCT-VR will widen the repertoire of evidence-based technology-based psychotherapeutic interventions for young adults and contribute to the prevention of deteriorating courses of the disorder. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04321525. Registered on 18 February 2020

EXPLORATORY AND EXPLOITATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT: HOW PRODUCT AND ENGINEERING MANAGERS’ PERCEPTIONS DIFFER: A CASE OF TWO LARGE HIGH-TECH CORPORATIONS

Ambidexterity has been a focus for many researchers in the past few decades, and multiple angles of ambidexterity have been studied to understand how to achieve it, its antecedents, and its impact on organisations. While personal ambidexterity has been studied with respect to the tensions the individuals might experience as they juggle exploratory and exploitative innovation projects, little is known about their individual sensemaking prior to their exercise of ambidexterity. This paper aims at narrowing this gap in the literature by offering an insight, based on personal construct theory, as to why managers from product management and engineering management functions in software organisations may not be applying exploratory techniques on exploratory innovation projects. A key finding from this research indicates that managers do not differentiate between types of project in a sufficiently explicit and propositional manner, and as a result, do not choose techniques appropriate to the situation. Instead, they tend to apply exploitative techniques on exploratory innovation projects with slight variations. Recommendations to practitioners to address the issues uncovered are proposed.

Life Aspirations, Generativity and Compulsive Buying in University Students

The study of goal-oriented behaviour, because of its undeniable repercussions on physical and mental health, is one of the target topics of contemporary research. However, the content of life aspirations, emphasised from the self-determination theory, has received little attention from the field of compulsive buying although it plays an important role in the regulation of behaviour and well-being. Generativity, the personal construct that captures the intentions and/or the need to contribute (leave a legacy) to others, has never been analysed with respect to compulsive buying although it has been the source of interest of related fields (responsible consumption). Accordingly, this study seeks to shed light on the role of both constructs (life aspirations and generativity) in compulsive buying among university students. The sample consisted of 1093 Spanish university students classified either as non-compulsive buyers or compulsive buyers. Estimated prevalence of compulsive buying was 7.9%. The results of Student’s test confirm that, besides gender (women report greater propensity to the phenomenon), compulsive buyers score higher and show statistically significant differences with respect to non-compulsive buyers in all extrinsic goals (financial success, image, popularity and conformity) and hedonism. Non-compulsive buyers show significantly higher scores for the intrinsic goals of self-acceptance, affiliation and community feeling and also report a higher generative concern. The logistic regression analysis confirms that being female and the life aspirations of image, popularity and hedonism act as risk factors in compulsive buying in university students while generativity and the importance granted to the intrinsic goals of self-acceptance and affiliation are protective factors. Potential lines of action for this worrying phenomenon are discussed in the light of the findings.

Stories of Life during the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: A Qualitative Study

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on people the need to find meaning in many unprecedented ways. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore how the general Italian population dealt with government restrictions and to understand personal experiences connected with the first wave of the pandemic in light of the personal construct theory (PCT) framework. One hundred and sixteen people (over 18 years old) completed an online survey between May and June 2020. Two independent researchers ran inductive thematic content analysis on data using a specifically developed international codebook. Five major themes were identified in the participants’ narrations: difficulties, emotions, coping with lockdown measures, going back to normal, and change. The results, interpreted within the PCT transitions, showed that the pandemic represented a threat to participants’ life plans, beliefs, and certainties. Some coped with it mainly by waiting for the pandemic to end and remaining firm in their beliefs and certainties, whereas others coped by trying to find alternative ways of giving sense to this experience and reconstructing personal meanings, claiming a change in their life and in society. Differentiating personal experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic is fundamental to designing personalised strategies to promote well-being.

Transforming the Possible intoAction in Colson Whitehead’s Novel “The Intuitionist”

The XXIst century, known among others as a “culture of empiricism,” is a time of accelerated technology and engineering feats, on the one hand and of controversial race problems, on the other. For approaching Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Intuitionist,” where the writer is travelling back and forth between “the naturalist novel of race” and “the imaginative novel of ideas,” George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory will be employed as a methodological device to decode its intricate meaning. Kelly’s socio-psychological theory incorporates vectors of action and perception meant to reveal how the individual construes the world, in Whitehead’s case, how Lila Mae Watson, the city’s first black female elevator inspector, construes herself as the follower of James Fulton, another black person, father of Intuitionism and promoter of vertical thought, meant to give rise to the perfect, new generation elevator in a city marked by pain and the stoicism of black people who look for the ultimate elevator that will take them “up and out.” Kelly’s concept of motivation will be also turned into account through his argument that people act not because of “motive forces,” but because of alternative perspectives that better suit them. Motivation will also grant to Lila MaeWatson the ability “to transform the possible into action and create values” (Alfred Whitehead, qtd in Lavelle, 1997: 146) and it will be commented upon as a prestigious educational device meant to ensure a greater understanding of the communication context present in Whitehead’s novel.

Proposed extended analytic hierarchical process for selecting data science methodologies

Decision making can present a considerable amount of complexity in competitive environments; where methods that support possess great relevance. The article presents an extension of the Hierarchic Analytical Process; complemented with Personal Construct Theory, which purpose is to reduce ambiguity when defining and establishing values for the criteria in a determined problem. In recent years, the scope for decision making based on data has considerably raised, which is why Data Science as a scientific field is rising in popularity; where one of the main activities for data scientists is selecting an adequate methodology to guide a project with this traits. The steps defined in the proposed model guide this task, from establishing and prioritizing criteria based on degrees of compliance, grouping them by levels, completing the hierarchical structure of the problem, performing the correct comparisons through different levels in an ascendant manner, to finally obtaining the definitive priorities of each methodology for each validation case and sorting them by their adequacy percentages. Both disparate cases, one referred to an industrial/commercial field and the other to an academic field, were effective to corroborate the extent of usefulness of the proposed model; for which in both cases MoProPEI obtained the best results.