BACKGROUND The term "identity" has a much longer tradition in Western philosophy than in psychology. However, the philosophical discourse addresses very different meanings of the term, which should be distinguished to avoid misunderstandings, but also to sharpen the key meanings of the term in psychological contexts. These crucial points in the philosophical concepts of identity in the sense of...

This paper outlines a psychological perspective that can be used to understand the impact of racial experiences on the functioning of African Americans in the United States. A principle aim of psychology is to understand individual variation in functioning by using theories, research, and broad hypotheses that explain and predict human functioning and apply them to understand specific behaviors...

The article takes as its starting point a new wave of researchers who use concepts such as ‘hybridity’ and ‘multiplicity’ in a bid to move the study of childhood beyond the strictures of what Lee and Motzkau call ‘bio-social dualism’, whereby the division between the ‘natural child’ of developmental psychology and the ‘social child’ of socialization theory replicates a tendency in modern though...

The degree to which the family is seen as a significant contributor to child health conditions impacts directly on the successful functioning of the pediatric psychologist. A transactional model of family functioning is proposed for pediatric psychology. Development is considered to be the result of a three-part process that starts with child behavior that triggers family interpretation that pr...

Numerous recent attempts to identify mediated and moderated effects in child-clinical and pediatric research on child adjustment have been characterized by terminological, conceptual, and statistical inconsistencies. To promote greater clarity, the terms mediating and moderating are defined and differentiated. Recommended statistical strategies that can be used to test for these effects are rev...