People with high perceived support have better mental health, but how this occurs is not well understood. We tested hypotheses from relational regulation theory that the main effect between perceived support and affect primarily reflects ordinary conversation and shared activity. In two studies (n = 193; n = 149), students rated three important network members and psychological reactions to each. In a third study (n = 72) strangers shared an activity in a round-robin design. Affect was strongly determined by with who participants were interacting or thinking about. Perceived support, ordinary conversation, and shared activity were strongly linked, and each was related to high positive affect, low negative affect, perceived similarity, and few negative thoughts. Perceived support's link to affect emerged when strangers shared a brief activity. Thus, much of perceived support's main effect with affect could be explained as resulting from ordinary conversation and shared activity.

As a conceptual matter, idiographic stimulus selection is purported to offer psychometric benefits for many measures, including implicit measures. Empirically, idiographic methods with the Implicit Association Test have not robustly demonstrated superiority to nomothetic methods, and to date no idiographic/nomothetic comparison has been conducted with the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). The current study compared a nomothetic and idiographic approach to the assessment of social cognition with the IRAP. Two IRAPs were administered to 69 college undergraduates in counterbalanced order, one containing the names “Abraham Lincoln” and “Adolf Hitler” (nomothetic), and one containing the names of a self-reported “friend” and “enemy” (idiographic), along with a collection of positive and negative evaluative words. A number of relevant self-reports also were administered and counterbalanced across participants with respect to order of measures. Results revealed a group difference for one of the four IRAP trial-type D-scores, and the nomothetic condition exhibited higher estimates of internal consistency. Results also indicated order effects for internal consistency as well as unexpected IRAP effects with both conditions suggesting that response options may influence performance at the task. Future studies on the impact of response options as well as the differential ability of nomothetic and idiographic IRAPs to predict other behaviors of interest may provide important data about the impact of these procedural variables on the utility of the measure.

As a conceptual matter, idiographic stimulus selection is purported to offer psychometric benefits for many measures, including implicit measures. Empirically, idiographic methods with the Implicit Association Test have not robustly demonstrated superiority to nomothetic methods, and to date no idiographic/nomothetic comparison has been conducted with the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). The current study compared a nomothetic and idiographic approach to the assessment of social cognition with the IRAP. Two IRAPs were administered to 69 college undergraduates in counterbalanced order, one containing the names “Abraham Lincoln” and “Adolf Hitler” (nomothetic), and one containing the names of a self-reported “friend” and “enemy” (idiographic), along with a collection of positive and negative evaluative words. A number of relevant self-reports also were administered and counterbalanced across participants with respect to order of measures. Results revealed a group difference for one of the four IRAP trial-type D-scores, and the nomothetic condition exhibited higher estimates of internal consistency. Results also indicated order effects for internal consistency as well as unexpected IRAP effects with both conditions suggesting that response options may influence performance at the task. Future studies on the impact of response options as well as the differential ability of nomothetic and idiographic IRAPs to predict other behaviors of interest may provide important data about the impact of these procedural variables on the utility of the measure.

As a conceptual matter, idiographic stimulus selection is purported to offer psychometric benefits for many measures, including implicit measures. Empirically, idiographic methods with the Implicit Association Test have not robustly demonstrated superiority to nomothetic methods, and to date no idiographic/nomothetic comparison has been conducted with the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). The current study compared a nomothetic and idiographic approach to the assessment of social cognition with the IRAP. Two IRAPs were administered to 69 college undergraduates in counterbalanced order, one containing the names “Abraham Lincoln” and “Adolf Hitler” (nomothetic), and one containing the names of a self-reported “friend” and “enemy” (idiographic), along with a collection of positive and negative evaluative words. A number of relevant self-reports also were administered and counterbalanced across participants with respect to order of measures. Results revealed a group difference for one of the four IRAP trial-type D-scores, and the nomothetic condition exhibited higher estimates of internal consistency. Results also indicated order effects for internal consistency as well as unexpected IRAP effects with both conditions suggesting that response options may influence performance at the task. Future studies on the impact of response options as well as the differential ability of nomothetic and idiographic IRAPs to predict other behaviors of interest may provide important data about the impact of these procedural variables on the utility of the measure.

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