We investigate several possible links between psychological factors and trading performance in a sample of 80 anonymous day-traders. Using daily emotional-state surveys over a fiveweek period as well as personality inventory surveys, we construct measures of personality traits and emotional states for each subject and correlate these measures with daily normalized profits-and-losses records. We find that subjects whose emotional reaction to monetary gains and losses was more intense on both the positive and negative side exhibited significantly worse trading performance. Psychological traits derived from a standardized personality inventory survey do not reveal any specific "trader personality profile", raising the possibility that trading skills may not necessarily be innate, and that different personality types may be able to perform trading functions equally well after proper instruction and practice.

Increased interest in the practice of brief counseling and therapy has been accompanied by an expansion of research activity. Nevertheless, signs abound of a schism between science- and practice-based understandings. This article outlines major approaches to brief counseling practice, including psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and strategic; summarizes recent research on brief therapeutic outcomes and processes; and identifies overlapping themes in the science and practice literatures. An integrative model of brief intervention, capable of being flexibly modified for a variety of client populations, is offered as a framework for future practice, research, and training activities.

Research and practice trends are fueling a vigorous interest in brief therapy, highlighting the question of the relationship between treatment duration and outcome. A number of investigations have reported a weak or nonexistent relationship between duration and outcome, yielding the possible conclusion that there are few differences between brief and longer term treatments. A finer-grained analysis, however, based on such methodological factors as the nature, source, and timing of outcome measures, reveals intriguing dose-effect linkages within particular helping modalities. Summarizing process and outcome research, this article identifies potential client, therapist, and contextual mediators of the brevity of treatment. Recent research concerning stages of change within psychotherapy is advanced as an integrative framework that yields researchable hypotheses concerning the factors that facilitate outcomes at various points in the helping process.

Classical stage‐based theories of human development, drawn from organismic worldviews, possess many shortcomings when extended to counseling applications. In attempting to reduce development to linear, hierarchical sequences, these theories fail to account for the interactional nature of change processes and implicitly pathologize developmental diversity. Responding to these shortcomings, counselors are turning to contextualist models of development that emphasize process over outcome. In this article I review key assumptions of contextualism, as embodied in social role theory and the life‐span developmental tradition, highlighting relevant theory and research. I propose that two vital forces within current counseling—constructivism and interactional counseling—are animated by contextualist notions of development. Specific implications of contextualism for future counseling research and practice are outlined.

ABSTRACIThe possibility that self-aware subjects in previous objective sellawareness studies displayed heightened negative affect and avoidance reactions because they were made to focus on pernmnent negative discrepancies was investigated in the present research. Subjects were first induced to regard a negative real-ideal discrepancy as either permanent or reducible in size, and then were either made or not made objectively self-aware. As expected, those self-aware subjects who anticipated no reduction in discrepancy size were found to be more negative in mood and quicker to exit from the experimental room than were their counterparts in the other three conditions. It was concluded that selffocused attention only generates aversive reactions when it brings to awareness a negative real-ideal discrepancy which the individual feels cannot he altered.Objective self-awareness theory (Duval & Wicklund, 1972;Wicklund, 1975) proposes that conscious attention is bidirectional in nature, capable of being directed at any moment toward the self (objective self-awareness) or the environment (subjective self-awareness). According to the theory, when people direct their attention toward themselves, they analyze their status on salient trait dimensions and focus upon the discrepancies that exist between their ideals and their actual, or real, positions on these dimensions. It is hypothesized that objectively self-aware individuals experience unpleasant affect when their attention is directed toward a negative discrepancy, and that foUovdng an initial reaction of self-criticism, they seek to avoid self-focusing circumstances or, if inescapable, to bring about discrepancy reduction.