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Introduction
Dr Alex is a Professor of Mental Health and holds the Centennial Chair at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He also has a consultancy business and is happy to discuss contracting work.
Website: www.alexwoodpsychology.com
Publications
Publications (160)
Central to the theory underpinning schema therapy is a hierarchically structured model where maladaptive and adaptive schemas are manifestations of higher order core emotional needs which emerge through specific parenting conditions. Despite widespread use in therapy, the hierarchical model of adaptive schemas has not been tested nor has it been li...
How do income and income inequality combine to influence subjective well-being? We examined the relation between income and life satisfaction in different societies, and found large effects of income inequality within a society on the relationship between individuals’ incomes and their life satisfaction. The income–satisfaction gradient is steeper...
What measure of relative deprivation best predicts health? While numerous indices of relative deprivation exist, few studies have compared how well different measures account for empirical data. Hounkpatin et al. (2016) demonstrated that the relative ranked position of an individual i's income within a comparison group (their relative rank) was a b...
Objective:
Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) are used to measure the health benefits associated with treatments. QALYs are derived from objective mortality data weighted by assessments made by the general population of the impact on health-related quality of life associated with particular health states. In this study, a simple change is introdu...
Systematic reviews are characterized by a methodical and replicable methodology and presentation. They involve a comprehensive search to locate all relevant published and unpublished work on a subject; a systematic integration of search results; and a critique of the extent, nature, and quality of evidence in relation to a particular research quest...
Self-injurious cognitions (SICs) are cognitions about deliberately injuring oneself (self-injurious behavior [SIB]). Existing measures of the content of SICs provide varying coverage, highlighting a lack of consensus regarding which cognitions characterize SIB. Additionally, a central, unresolved conceptual and measurement issue concerns whether to...
Self-injurious cognitions (SICs) are cognitions about deliberately injuring oneself (self-injurious behavior; SIB). Existing measures of the content of SICs provide varying coverage, highlighting a lack of consensus regarding which cognitions characterize SIB. Additionally, a central, unresolved conceptual and measurement issue concerns whether to...
This study aimed at developing a revised validated version of the Young Parenting Inventory (YPI) known as YPI-R2 that had 17 theoretical subscales. Using separate ratings for fathers and mothers samples from Singapore (n = 582, 617), Manila (n = 520, 538), Jakarta (n = 366, 383), and the USA (n = 204, 214), exploratory and confirmatory factor anal...
Inter-factor correlation for Fathers Manila negative parenting.
(DOCX)
Dataset on Jakarta, Manila, Singapore, and USA.
(ZIP)
MultiGroup Fathers and Mothers.
(ZIP)
Early maladaptive schemas and their hypothesized links to early parenting patterns in the YPI, and core emotional needs.
(DOCX)
Divergent validity of the YPI-R2 (Fathers) with s-EMBU (Fathers) using the Manila sample (n = 520–5 factors 20 items).
(DOCX)
Divergent validity of the YPI-R2 (Mothers) with s-EMBU (Mothers) using the Manila sample (n = 538–6 factors 33 items).
(DOCX)
Average correlation between YPI-R2 subscales and counterparts from s-EMBU subscales.
(DOCX)
EFA of the initial item pool of the YPI with 204 items using Manila sample (Father, n = 520; Mother, n = 538).
(DOCX)
Reliability Coefficients (α), Mean (M) and Standard Deviation (SD) of the YPI-R2 (Fathers; 5 factors 20 items) and YPI-R2 (Mothers; 6 factors 33 items).
(DOCX)
Divergent validity.
(ZIP)
Legend of Questionnaires.
(ZIP)
Socio-demographic characteristics of the participants in the Singapore (Phase 1); Manila (Phase 2 & Phase 3); Jakarta & USA samples (Phase 3).
(DOCX)
Inter-factor correlation for Mothers Manila negative parenting.
(DOCX)
Young Parenting Inventory–Revised (YPI-R2) Questionnaire.
(PDF)
The factor structure of an initial item pool of 207 positive parenting items was investigated (Manila; n = 520, 538) to develop the Positive Parenting Schema Inventory. Single group and multigroup confirmatory factor analyses of the Positive Parenting Schema Inventory showed invariance of the factor structure in six out of the seven levels on two o...
The financial crisis of 2007/08 precipitated a severe global economic downturn, typically referred to as the Great Recession. However, in the United Kingdom this period has been marked by limited change in national indicators of subjective well-being. We assessed the life satisfaction change in response to the Great Recession in a sample of British...
Stata do file PLOS R1.pdf.
Stata do file.
(PDF)
Background:
Central banks set economy-wide interest rates to meet exclusively economic objectives. There is a strong link between indebtedness and psychiatric morbidity at the individual level, with interest rates being an important factor determining ability to repay debt. However, no prior research has explored whether central bank interest rate...
The mental and physical demands of working in a care home are known to lead to elevated risk for staff of work and stress related illnesses such as depression. However, little is known about how these develop. Recent developments in defeat and entrapment research have demonstrated that they are best conceptualised as a single factor. Our aim was to...
Negative schemas have been widely recognized as being linked to psychopathology and mental health, and they are central to the Schema Therapy (ST) model. This study is the first to report on the psychometric properties of the Young Positive Schema Questionnaire (YPSQ). In a combined community sample (Manila, Philippines, n = 559; Bangalore, India,...
This study tests whether psychological attachment to a political party influences voluntary participation in a government-promoted public-good scheme, positing that cooperation is higher among households that identify with the party in government and lower among households that identify with the party in opposition. The focus is participation in a...
Psychometrics, an area of psychology that has developed to specifically ensure psychological constructs are measured with optimum reliability and validity, is virtually unheard of in economics. This chapter offers a guide to the necessary steps in developing subjective measures and introduces researchers to psychometrics, enabling them to evaluate...
A number of structural equation models have been developed to examine change in 1 variable or the longitudinal association between 2 variables. The most common of these are the latent growth model, the autoregressive cross-lagged model, the autoregressive latent trajectory model, and the latent change score model. The authors first overview each of...
Personality is important for a range of life outcomes. However, despite evidence that personality changes across time, there is a concerning tendency for researchers outside of personality psychology to treat measures of personality as if they are non-changing when establishing whether personality predicts important life outcomes. This is problemat...
Purpose
From Adam Smith onwards, gratitude has been held as invaluable to societal functioning in view of its role in helping individuals maintain their reciprocal obligations to one another. The purpose of the current research is to use current conceptions of gratitude derived from work in social psychology to test whether simple descriptions of h...
Objective: Although gratitude has been identified as a key clinically relevant trait for improving well-being, it is understudied within medical populations. The current study addressed this gap and extended previous and limited cross-sectional research by examining the longitudinal associations of gratitude to depression in two chronic illness sam...
Background:
Two core but untested predictions of Positive Clinical Psychology (PCP) are that (1) Many psychiatric problems can be understood as one end of bipolar continua with well-being, and (2) that reducing psychiatric symptoms will provide an equal (near linear) decrease in risk for several other psychiatric variables, irrespective of positio...
Background
A rank based social norms model predicts that drinkers’ judgements about their drinking will be based on the rank of their breath alcohol level amongst that of others in the immediate environment, rather than their actual breath alcohol level, with lower relative rank associated with greater feelings of safety. This study tested this hyp...
Existing research on Big Five personality and unemployment has relied on personality measures elicited after the respondents had already spent years in the labor market, an experience that could change personality. We clarify the direction of influence by using the British Cohort Study (N = 4,206) to examine whether conscientiousness and other Big...
Children living in low-income households face elevated risks of behavioral problems, but the impact of absolute and relative income to this risk remains unexplored. Using the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study data, longitudinal associations between Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire scores and absolute household income, distance from the regional...
Purpose
Parents face an increased risk of psychological distress compared with adults without children, and families with children also have lower average household incomes. Past research suggests that absolute income (material position) and income status (psychosocial position) influence psychological distress, but their combined effects on change...
On average, marriage tends to lead to temporary increases in life satisfaction, which quickly return to pre-marital levels. This general pattern, however, does not consider the personality of individuals entering into marriage. We examine whether following marriage pre-marital personality predicts different changes to life satisfaction in a sample...
Edited by the founder of the field, this is the first handbook on positive clinical psychology-a revolutionary approach that places equal importance on both the positive and negative aspects of mental health and well-being. The first handbook on positive clinical psychology, a revolutionary approach that places equal importance on the positive and...
This chapter attempts to clarify when and where gratitude is apparently negative, with the aim of building a more balanced study of gratitude within psychology. It discusses the positive clinical psychology (PCP), which aims to transform the discipline into one where the understanding and fostering the positive is given equal attention as understan...
This introductory chapter presents an overview of the development of Positive Clinical Psychology (PCP) and the empirical and theoretical evidence as to why the movement is needed. PCP aims to address the separatist criticism of positive psychology and redress any imbalanced focus on either the positive or negative in both positive and clinical psy...
Objective:
To explore whether negative emotions mediate the effect of diabetes cognitions on diabetes self-care and conversely whether diabetes cognitions mediate the effect of negative emotions on diabetes self-care.
Design:
Longitudinal observational study in adults with type 2 diabetes.
Main outcome measures:
Self-reported depression and an...
Loss aversion is considered a general pervasive bias occurring regardless of the context or the person making the decision. We hypothesized that conscientiousness would predict an aversion to losses in the financial domain. We index loss aversion by the relative impact of income losses and gains on life satisfaction. In a representative German samp...
In this review we argue in favour of further integration between the disciplines of positive and clinical psychology. We argue that most of the constructs studied by both positive and clinical psychology exist on continua ranging from positive to negative (e.g., gratitude to ingratitude, anxiety to calmness) and so it is meaningless to speak of one...
We first replicate a study by Vautier and Pohl (2009), who used the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) to re-examine the structure of anxiety. Using two large samples (N = 4,138 and 1,824), we also find that state and trait anxiety measure continua that range from high calmness to high anxiety. We then significantly extend previous findings and m...
Research on why income influences health has produced mixed findings. Many, but not all, studies suggest that the relationship between income and health is due to income indicating psychosocial position rather than the associated material benefits. The inconsistent findings may be partly due to the use of the Yitzhaki Index, a function which calcul...
This paper assesses the determinants of take-up of a voluntary waste separation scheme, in a scenario where residents sorted, stored and paid for collection of recycling waste even though mixed waste was collected at the kerbside more conveniently, free of charge and without any quantity limits. Uptake of the scheme was positive, persistent and div...
This paper reviews empirical evidence for associations between goal conflict, ambivalence, self-discrepancy, self-concordance and well-being. The research indicates that goal conflict, ambivalence and discrepancy impede well-being, whilst concordance promotes well-being. The evidence was strongest for ambivalence, self-discrepancy, and self-concord...
This paper reports a test of the relative income rank hypothesis of depression, according to which it is the rank position of an individual's income amongst a comparison group, rather than the individual's absolute income, that will be associated with depressive symptoms. A new methodology is developed to test between psychosocial and material expl...
In this review we argue in favour of further integration between the disciplines of positive and clinical psychology. We argue that most of the constructs studied by both positive and clinical psychology exist on continua ranging from positive to negative (e.g., gratitude to ingratitude, anxiety to calmness) and so it is meaningless to speak of one...
Two types of social norm message frame for encouraging seeking of alcohol-related health information by excessive drinkers were compared: (a) how much the average person actually drinks and (b) how their drinking ranks among others. It was hypothesized, in accordance with recent evidence of how the brain represents value, that Frame (b) would be mo...
People's evaluations in the domain of healthy eating are at least partly determined by the choice context. We systematically test reference level and rank-based models of relative comparisons against each other and explore their application to social norms nudging, an intervention that aims at influencing consumers' behavior by addressing their ina...
Previous research has suggested that defeat (conceptualized as a failed social struggle) and entrapment (conceptualized as a perceived inability to escape from aversive situations) form a single construct that reliably predicts psychopathological outcomes in clinical and community settings. However, scales designed to assess defeat and entrapment m...
Low income is an established risk factor for suicidal thoughts and attempts. This study aims to explore income within a social rank perspective, proposing that the relationship between income and suicidality is accounted for by the rank of that income within comparison groups.
Participants (N = 5779) took part in the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Sur...
How do perceptions of being supported relate to the amount of social support received? Received and perceived support have generally been found to be only moderately related. Previous research has however focused on the amount of support received regardless of whether it was needed. We hypothesized that a measure of support received when needed wou...
Unemployment has a strongly negative influence on well-being, but it is unclear whether it also alters basic personality traits. Whether personality changes arise through natural maturation processes or contextual/environmental factors is still a matter of debate. Unemployment, a relatively unexpected and commonly occurring life event, may shed lig...
It was shown that student satisfaction ratings are influenced by context in ways that have important theoretical and practical implications. Using questions from the UK's National Student Survey, the study examined whether and how students' expressed satisfaction with issues such as feedback promptness and instructor enthusiasm depends on the conte...
This article describes the largest evaluation of a UK child bereavement service to date. Change was assessed using conventional statistical tests as well as clinical significance methodology. Consistent with the fact that the intervention was offered on a universal, preventative basis, bereaved young people experienced a statistically-significant,...
Objective:
Financial resources are a potent determinant of health, yet it remains unclear why this is the case. We aimed to identify whether the frequently observed association between absolute levels of monetary resources and health may occur because money acts an indirect proxy for a person's social rank.
Method:
To address this question we ex...
Gratitude is essential to social life and well-being. Although research with youth populations has gained momentum recently, only two gratitude interventions have been conducted in youth, targeting mostly adolescents. In the current research, we tested a new intervention for promoting gratitude among the youngest children targeted to date. Elementa...
The concepts of “defeat” (representing failed social struggle) and “entrapment” (representing an inability to escape from a situation) have emerged from the animal literature, providing insight into the health consequences of low social rank. Evolutionary models suggest that these constructs co-occur and can lead to the development of mental disord...
Increasingly, psychological research has indicated that an individual’s personality changes across the lifespan. We aim to better understand personality change by examining if personality change is linked to striving towards fulfilment, as suggested by existential–humanistic theories of personality dynamics. Using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study,...
This paper describes a new model of students' concern about indebtedness within a rank-based social norms framework. Study 1 found that students hold highly variable beliefs about how much other students will owe at the end of their degree. Students' concern about their own anticipated debt - and their intention of taking on a part-time job during...
Higher income is associated with greater well-being, but do income gains and losses affect well-being differently? Loss aversion, whereby losses loom larger than gains, is typically examined in relation to decisions about anticipated outcomes. Here, using subjective-well-being data from Germany (N = 28,723) and the United Kingdom (N = 20,570), we f...
Prosociality represents an important aspect of social functioning in adolescents and is related to the risk of psychological problems. The current paper describes the development and psychometric testing of two new short-form versions of prosocial perceptions named the Brief Adolescent Prosocial Perceptions Scale Self- (BAPPS-S) and Parent-report (...