Patterns of relational responding and a healthy self in older adolescents

Abstract

Evidence from Contextual Behavioral Science indicates that two patterns of relating facilitate a sense of self, namely, self-as-distinction and self-as-hierarchy. Although the latter has been associated with better mental health outcomes relative to self-as-distinction, to date these types of relating have not been examined directly at a baseline level, wherein manipulation has not occurred. The present study examined the relative contribution of self-as-distinction and self-as-hierarchy on depression, stress, and anxiety in a sample of 102 young people, while controlling for deictic ability and gender. The role of psychological flexibility was also examined using mediation analysis. While self-as-hierarchy emerged as a significant predictor of lower levels of stress and depression, psychological flexibility was not found to mediate this relationship. Self-as-distinction did not emerge as a significant predictor of any outcome variable. Suggestions for future research on the basis of these findings are discussed.

Relating is an Operant: A Fly Over of 35 Years of RFT Research

“…Subsequent research has shown that improvement due to training on the ability to reverse deictic relations does not necessarily change Theory of Mind performance (Montoya-Rodríguez & Molina-Cobos, 2016) and that the details of training matter. From an operant perspective, these findings give broad support to the idea that we can treat ToM as a series of relational (deictically-involved) operant classes but they also emphasize that the details of the specific relations appear to matter, not just as a means of shaping ToM skills, but in the management of other areas of human complexity such as how emotions are described or addressed by behavior (Moran & McHugh, 2019).…”

“…Historically, research on perspective-taking has been densely limited to fields such as cognitive and developmental psychology, especially when cross-sectional developmental profiles have been employed. Behavior analytic studies using perspective-taking training have been growing, however (McHugh et al, 2009;Moran & McHugh, 2019).…”

Redefining “masstige” luxury consumption in the post-COVID era

“…If self as content is a solid domination of appointed content, “self as process” can be considered a more flexible flow of such content and of the human experience more generally. Self as process comes into being as an integral part of living a vital life ( Moran & McHugh, 2019 ). As time flies by, individuals pass from instant to instant throughout their life.…”

An experimental investigation of the effects of perspective-taking on emotional discomfort, cognitive fusion and self-compassion

“…A limitation of this study is that the direction of causality could also be reversed, in that reductions in outcomes such as depression could also have led to the improvements in self as context / perspective-taking. Moran and McHugh (2019) showed that for non-clinical adolescents, framing the self hierarchically with psychological experience was associated with reduced stress, depressed mood and avoidance behaviour, whilst framing the self with only distinction relations was not. Finally, Moran, Almeida and McHugh (2018) found in a cross-sectional analysis of nonclinical participants, that measures of self as content, self as process and self as context all independently predicted poorer mental health in theoretically hypothesised directions.…”

“…This kind of framing leads to the experience of 'self as story' or 'conceptualised self' (also called 'self as content') in ACT. RFT postulates that in self as story, psychological content and 'I' are framed in coordination and both in the here and now (Moran & McHugh, 2019).…”