Artur Nilsson

Cycloid psychosis: regional cerebral blood flow correlates of a psychotic episode

Eight patients meeting Leonhards criteria for cycloid psychosis were investigated on repeated occasions during a psychotic episode, with regional cerebral blood flow measurements and clinical ratings. The results showed that, at admission to the hospital, when the patients were clinically exacerbated, the mean hemispheric blood flow was significantly elevated compared with values from a normal control group. The hemispheric blood flow level covaried significantly with the degree of clinical symptoms, such that the more elevated the cortical blood flow was, the more behaviorally disturbed was the patient. At discharge from the hospital, the patients had no residual symptoms and the cortical blood flow was normal. These findings differ distinctly from those commonly made in other psychoses, such as schizophrenia.

Neuropsychological assessment of schizophrenic patients during a psychotic episode: persistent cognitive deficit?

Neuropsychological test performance and clinical symptoms were assessed in 14 schizophrenic patients at admission to and discharge from an acute inpatient psychiatric service. Despite significant clinical improvement at discharge, no major change in cognitive performance was observed. Furthermore, patients at discharge were significantly impaired compared with normal control subjects case‐matched for gender, age, handedness and level of education. The results suggest that some degree of cognitive impairment may be relatively independent from schizophrenic symptoms and that such impairment may represent part of a residual enduring “trait” vulnerability.

Are siblings of schizophrenic individuals psychologically disturbed ? a perceptgenetic inquiry

Questions about psychopathology among siblings of schizophrenic individuals were addressed by means of a projective test, the Perceptgenetic Object‐Relation Test (PORT), which uses tachistoscopic presentations of 3 object‐relation themes: attachment, separation and oedipal. Twenty‐two siblings of schizophrenic individuals ‐ 10 siblings of patients with recent onset, and 12 siblings of chronic patients ‐ were compared with normal controls and with siblings of mentally handicapped people. Earlier observations of unstable defensive organizations among the siblings of chronic schizophrenic patients were corroborated, particularly in response to the attachment theme. The schizophrenia siblings fell within the narcissistic‐borderline spectrum of PORT. The 50% drop‐out rate was discussed as reflecting anxiety and evasiveness, and the results were seen as substantiating that siblings of schizophrenic people are structurally if not clinically affected by their sibship.

A non-reductive science of personality, character, and well-being must take the person's worldview into account

In his foundational work for personality psychology, Allport (1927, 1937) distinguished personality from character. Personality was, on Allports account, a descriptive concept referring to a psycho-physical structure, whereas character was personality evaluated in accordance with moral norms. When he introduced the paradigmatic “lexical” method of deriving personality trait terms from the dictionary, he therefore sought to exclude all trait terms with ostensive normative content. This approach had a profound effect upon the field, and researchers are still today working on how to optimally purge personality of normative content (e.g., Backstrom et al., 2009; Pettersson and Turkheimer, 2010). Its appropriateness as a paradigm for the entire field of personality psychology can, however, be questioned (Kristjansson, 2012; Nilsson, 2014). It is plausible that some personality characteristics particularly relevant to psychic illness, human flourishing, and moral behavior are intrinsically value-laden (Cloninger et al., 1993; Cawley et al., 2000; Peterson and Seligman, 2004). I will focus on Cloningers approach here, because he has, in addition to introducing an influential model of character, discussed the philosophical foundations of the study of character and well-being. For Cloninger (2004), character is not only value-laden; it refers to uniquely human aspects of personality representing “what people make of themselves intentionally” (p. 44), as contrasted with their animalistic temperament. He wants the science of character and well-being to transcend the dichotomy between materialist reductionism and Cartesian dualism, by taking the persons consciousness, agency, and processes of self-growth seriously while integrating this with knowledge about the human physical and biological constitution. Although I agree with this idea of having a non-reductive psychological science, I disagree with Cloninger about what it entails. I will therefore review Cloningers (2004) approach from a philosophical perspective, in a critical and, hopefully, constructive way. I will defend a notion of non-reductive psychology based upon contemporary academic philosophy and argue that Cloningers approach is not genuinely non-reductive. I will suggest that a non-reductive psychological science must take the persons worldview into account and argue that Cloningers approach limits our understanding of human psychology by not considering the role of worldviews in the development of character and well-being.

Attitudes and donation behavior toward positive and negative charity appeals

ABSTRACT This article tries to clarify whether negative charity appeals (i.e., advertisements emphasizing the bad consequences of not helping) or positive charity appeals (i.e., advertisements emphasizing the good consequences of helping) are more effective. Previous literature does not provide a single answer to this question and we suggest that one contributing reason for this is that different studies have operationalized appeal effectiveness in different ways (e.g., actual behavior, self-rated helping intentions, or expressed attitudes about the ad or the organization). Results from four separate studies suggest that positive appeals are more effective in inducing favorable attitudes toward the ad and toward the organization but that negative appeals are more effective (in studies 1A and 1B) or at least equally effective (in studies 1C and 1D) in eliciting actual donations. Also, although people’s attitude toward the appeal (i.e., liking) was a good predictor for the expected effectiveness in increasing donation behavior (in Study 2), it was a poor predictor of actual donation behavior in all four main studies. These results cast doubt on marketing theories suggesting that attitudes toward an advertisement and toward the brand always lead to higher purchase behavior.

Humanism and Normativism facet scales and short scales

According to Polarity Theory, all ideologies are fundamentally polarized by a conflict between Humanism, which idealizes and glorifies humanity, and Normativism, which portrays human goodness and worth as contingent upon conformity and achievement. Humanism and Normativism have, however, turned out to be distinct worldviews rather than opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum. Introducing a hierarchical model of their structure and developing scales to measure each facet, I previously showed that they are negatively related across views of human nature, interpersonal attitudes, and attitudes to affect, but not across epistemologies and political values. This report presents the eight-item facet scales and fifteen-item short-measures of humanism and normativism, along with descriptive statistics for each item in US and Swedish samples. (Less)

SIDE-EFFECTS OF AN ORAL CONTRACEPTIVE WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO MENTAL SYMPTOMS AND SEXUAL ADAPTATION:

Brief summary’ A sample of 344 women, who had Anovlar prescribed in 1964, was investigated by a mailed questionnaire in March, 1966. The main emphasis of the questionnaire was placed upon a survey of possible emotional changes in connection with the use of the ovulation inhibitor. Questions were also included about previous psychiatric problems or insufficiencies as well as about somatic and gynaecological changes. About 17 per cent of the material reported an increase of psychiatric symptoms during the treatment. The most frequent symptoms reported were an increase of tiredness, irritability, sensitivity, and feeling of depression. Women with a high number of symptoms were found to have discontinued the contraceptive medication significantly earlier. They also reported to a significantly greater extent previous psychiatric symptoms. No significant relations were found between psychiatric symptoms on the one hand and parity, age, and social group on the other. About 45 per cent of the women reported improved sexual adaptation during the use of the oral contraceptive. The cause of improvement in 90 per cent was stated to be an increased feeling of security. 26 per cent of the material reported impaired sexual adaptation, the majority of these stating a decrease of libido. Women who reported an increase of psychiatric symptoms, also stated an impaired sexual adaptation, i.e. a decrease of libido, to a significantly greater extent.

Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

Bullshit-sensitivity is the ability to distinguish pseudo-profound bullshit sentences (e.g. “Your movement transforms universal observations”) from genuinely profound sentences (e.g. “The person who never made a mistake never tried something new”). Although bullshit-sensitivity has been linked to other individual difference measures, it has not yet been shown to predict any actual behavior. We therefore conducted a survey study with over a thousand participants from a general sample of the Swedish population and assessed participants’ bullshit-receptivity (i.e. their perceived meaningfulness of seven bullshit sentences) and profoundness-receptivity (i.e. their perceived meaningfulness of seven genuinely profound sentences), and used these variables to predict two types of prosocial behavior (self-reported donations and a decision to volunteer for charity). Despite bullshit-receptivity and profoundness-receptivity being positively correlated with each other, logistic regression analyses showed that profoundness-receptivity had a positive association whereas bullshit-receptivity had a negative association with both types of prosocial behavior. These relations held up for the most part when controlling for potentially intermediating factors such as cognitive ability, time spent completing the survey, sex, age, level of education, and religiosity. The results suggest that people who are better at distinguishing the pseudo-profound from the actually profound are more prosocial.