Review of General Psychology

This article presents a model of ethical reasoning. The article reviews lapses in ethical reasoning and the great costs they have had for society. It presents an eight-step model of ethical reasoning that can be applied to ethical challenges and illustrates its application. It proposes that ethical reasoning can be taught across the curriculum. It further points to a source of frustration in the teaching and application of ethics: ethical drift. Finally it draws conclusions.

The study of well-being is hampered by the multiplicity of approaches, but focusing on a single approach begs the question of what “well-being” really is. We analyze how well-being is defined according to the three main kinds of theories: “Liking” approaches (generally adopted by psychologists), “Wanting” approaches (predominant among economists), and “Needing” approaches (used in both public policy and psychology). We propose an integrative framework, the engine model of well-being, drawing on Seligman (Seligman, M. E. P., 2011, Flourish. New York, NY: The Free Press) and Sen's (Sen, A. K., 1999, Development as freedom. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press) emphasis on the plurality of this construct by distinguishing among (a) inputs (resources that enable well-being), (b) processes (internal states of mechanisms influencing well-being), and (c) outcomes (the intrinsically valuable behaviors that reflect the attainment of well-being). We discuss implications for research, measurement, and interventions.

The evolution and development of adaptations results from the gradual selection of traits that enable organisms to acquire and maintain resources needed for survival and reproduction. We argue that instances of individual, regional, and global violence are rooted in our adaptations to seek, acquire, maintain, and utilize limited resources, regardless of whether such adaptations are currently successful at doing so. However, violence is not the only strategy employed by organisms to acquire resources; cooperation, reciprocity, and social bonding are behaviors that likewise may prove useful in this endeavor. We speculate about how individual adaptations and their byproducts may interact with the adaptations of other individuals and with societal and cultural phenomena, both violently and nonviolently. Finally, we discuss how individual decisions can affect higher level regional and global violence. Individual decisions carry moral weight for the individual in question and for society as a whole. We argue that individual decisions and behaviors can have far-reaching consequences on the well-being of others and that an evolutionary consciousness may help us to understand the effects of our personal choices on the existence of individual and group-level violence.

This article examines the origins of psychology's adoption of a standardized style and format for its publications and the controversies that this decision engendered. The present account draws on perspectives derived from the history of reading and the sociology of professions to explain the historical appeal of such standards. Archival documents are used to trace the events that led to the drafting of the first set of publication standards in 1929. Where previous historical accounts of the publication manual have stressed the influence of behaviorism, the discipline's leaders embraced these instructions because of the perception of information overload resulting from the rapid expansion and professionalization of psychology following World War I. Under the auspices of the National Research Council, a committee on publication practices surveyed scientists, editors, and publishers in the hopes of making more efficient the communication of psychological knowledge within an increasingly large and anonymous discipline. Archival documents also reveal an animated debate over whether the progress of psychology as a science required the adoption of universally followed rules trusted by all or the cultivation of the scientist's creativity and individuality of expression.

Energy psychology is a clinical and self-help modality that combines verbal and physical procedures for effecting therapeutic change. While utilizing established clinical methods such as exposure and cognitive restructuring, the approach also incorporates concepts and techniques from non-Western healing systems. Its most frequently utilized protocols combine the stimulation of acupuncture points (by tapping on, holding, or massaging them) with the mental activation of a targeted psychological issue. Energy psychology has been controversial, in part due to its reliance on explanatory mechanisms that are outside of conventional clinical frameworks and in part because of claims by its early proponents—without adequate research support—of extraordinary speed and power in attaining positive clinical outcomes. This paper revisits some of the field's early claims, as well as current practices, and assesses them in the context of existing evidence. A literature search identified 51 peer-reviewed papers that report or investigate clinical outcomes following the tapping of acupuncture points to address psychological issues. The 18 randomized controlled trials in this sample were critically evaluated for design quality, leading to the conclusion that they consistently demonstrated strong effect sizes and other positive statistical results that far exceed chance after relatively few treatment sessions. Criteria for evidence-based treatments proposed by Division 12 of the American Psychological Association were also applied and found to be met for a number of anxiety-based conditions, including PTSD. Neurological mechanisms that may be involved in these surprisingly strong findings are also considered.

The United States possesses a distinctive cultural mindset characterized by a lack of regard for and even lack of awareness of the perspectives of other countries, coupled with a passionate desire to spread American values throughout the world. We term this mindset American psychological isolationism. Like American moral values more generally, this psychological outlook has its roots in America's unique religious and cultural history. The American Puritans' religious zeal contributes to America's ideological self-certainty and lack of regard for the values of others. At the same time, America's sense of divine mission in spreading its values, whether other countries like it or not, is traceable to the Puritans' view of themselves as a “shining city on a hill” destined to save all the world.

Correlations between sets of measurements produced by several measures can be determinative of the validity of these measures only insofar as theories about how these measurements relate in correlation and regression terms are already known to be true. However, scientific theories can only be known to be true insofar as they have already been demonstrated to be true by valid measurements. Therefore, only the nature of a measure that produces the measurements for representing a dimension can justify claims that these measurements are valid for that dimension, and this is ultimately exclusively a matter of the normative definition of that dimension in the science that involves that dimension. Thus, contrary to the presently prevailing theory of construct validity, a measure's measurements themselves logically cannot at all indicate their own validity or invalidity by how they relate to other measures' measurements unless these latter are already known to be valid and the theories represented by all these several measures' measurements are already known to be true. It is only the conformity of a measure to the normative conceptual analysis and so definition of a dimension that can make the measurements it produces valid measurements on that dimension. This makes it essential for each basic science to achieve normative conceptual analyses and definitions for each of the dimensions in terms of which it describes and causally explains its phenomena.