ISSN : 1229-067X
For the past three years, our editorial team has been striving to transfigure 『Korean Journal of Psychology: General』into a representative journal of Korean Psychological Association. In this special report, our endeavors, achievements, and future challenges are discussed. We hope that this work will further the growth of 『Korean Journal of Psychology: General』
Inequality has been rapidly rising throughout the world during the last 30 to 40 years and thus,problems associated with inequality have emerged as an important social issue. In line with this, there has been a growing academic interest from social scientists with diverse backgrounds. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined the psychological effects of inequality in Korea. Given that inequality in Korea is at an alarming level, it is necessary as well as interesting to understand how inequality affects individual’s mind and behavior in Korea. Therefore, in the present article, we conducted an organized overview on psychology of inequality not only to highlight the importance of psychological impacts of inequality but also to motivate future research on related topics. More specifically, we first introduced different measurements of inequality used in previous studies to provide useful information for researchers who want to start studying inequality. Next, we reviewed empirical findings regarding the effects of inequality on psychological outcomes ranging from subjective well-being, prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, to decision-makings. Finally, we proposed a theoretical model that may shed a new light on the literature on psychological impacts of inequality and discussed the future directions.
The purpose of this study is to introduce George Kelly's Personal Construct Psychology(PCP), a subset of constructivist psychology, and the Repertory Grid Technique(Repgrid). Then, we intended to discuss the applications and availability, limitations of Repgrid. In terms of PCP, humans construe the meaning of life by forming, testing, and revising their own personal construct system of their world. Each individual creates constructs of how the world is construed, and applies it to reality. This theory provides a useful picture of a person because it helps us to understand the person's personality, the inner world, and the meaning of the individual. Repgrid technique is a structured interview technique, assessment tool, psychotherapeutic technique, and research methodology that is developed to explore the personal construct system. This technique provides idiosyncratic information in the content of construct system, and quantifiable measures of construct system in the cognitive structure. Repgrid technique is performed in four steps: Design phase - Administration Phase - Mathematical Analysis - Interpretation Phase. To assist in practical understanding, we described the definitions and examples of elements, constructs and rating,and used a case studied by Leach et al (2001). For analysis of the grid data, we conducted OpenRepGrid. Then, we represented and described the measurements and indices produced in OpenRepGrid with tables and figures. Finally, we discussed the availability and limitations of Repgrid technique.
In a variety of people-oriented disciplines such as psychology, social welfare, nursing, education, a number of research were carried out to show positive influences of spirituality on various aspects of people's lives. As research on the topic of spirituality were vitalized lately, several articles analysing trends of spiritual research in Korea were published. They all, however, focused on identifying research methodology, participants of research, measuring instruments, method of analysis, etc. of advanced research on spirituality and on diagnosing and prescribing future directions of spiritual research in terms of those aspects. Different from these previous articles of trend analysis, the present article analysed variables and programs used in research on spirituality, and attempted to figure out (1) the positive (or negative) human attributes which proved to be facilitated (or suppressed) via spirituality or spiritual enhancement programs, and (2) the variables or programs which proved to demonstrate the effects of enhancing spirituality. In this article 582 pieces of spiritual research performed from the 1970s to 2016 were selected and analysed. Based on the results of these analyses the topics to be addressed in future research on spirituality were discussed, including customizing spiritual enhancement programs suited to the needs and characteristics of various groups of people.
The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in the positive and negative affect intensity, which are sub-dimensions of affect intensity, focusing on the personality traits and emotion regulation strategies. For this purpose, 332 adults were administered Affect Intensity Measure, International Personality Item Pool, and Emotion Regulation Strategy Questionnaire. Correlation analysis revealed that positive affect intensity showed a positive correlation with neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, while negative affect intensity correlated positively with neuroticism and negatively with conscientiousness. Positive affect intensity showed a positive correlation with the adaptive strategies while negative affect intensity correlated positively with the maladaptive strategies and negatively with the adaptive strategies. Next, data were classified into four groups according to the level of positive and negative affect intensity, and the characteristics of each group were compared using multivariate analysis. As a result, there were significant differences among groups in neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness excluding openness. The ‘unpleasant group’ (positive low and negative high) and ‘pleasant group’ (positive high and negative low) showed higher neurotic scores than ‘calm group’ (positive low and negative low) and ‘intense group’ (positive high and negative high). In the order of ‘pleasant group’, ‘intense group’, and ‘unpleasant group’, they showed high scores in extroversion. In the emotion regulation strategies, ‘unpleasant group’ and ‘intense group’ used maladaptive strategies more often than ‘calm group’ and ‘pleasant group’, and ‘pleasant group’ and ‘intense group’ used adaptive strategies more often than ‘unpleasant group’. Finally, implications and limitations of this study were discussed.
The mediational model is one of the most actively used analytical methods in the social sciences or psychology. However, the methods of testing the mediated effect with categorical dependent variables have been relatively unknown. The aims of the present study are to integrate studies on the methods of estimating the mediated effect of the model with a binary dependent variable over the last 30 years and to discuss key issues in order to encourage researchers to choose the most appropriate approach to their data. To achieve this goal, we explore the two streams of estimating the mediated effect of the model with a binary dependent variable, traditional vs. causal inference approaches. For the traditional approach,we introduce and integrate several extended structural equation modeling methods that accommodate a binary dependent variable in the mediational model. Then, we introduce the causal inference approach which allows researchers to estimate the mediated effect non-parametrically without specifying the form or distribution of the model before estimation, and extend it into a model that includes a binary dependent variable. Finally, we illustrate the procedures for applying the traditional and the causal inference approaches using real data and discuss the results.