Emotion regulation has taken on a growing role in the study of psychopathology, both in research as a process, and as a part of a treatment. The interest in emotion regulation has led to an increase in the assessment of this construct, primarily with explicit measures of emotion regulation. However, explicit measures are limited in that they are retrospective, subject to response biases, and impacted by method effects. Further, explicit measures only assess single strategies of emotion regulation at a time. Implicit measures of emotion regulation are not subject to these limitations. One implicit measure of emotion regulation is Etkin’s Emotional Conflict Task, which conceptually follows the Stroop task. The current study utilized the Emotional Conflict Task, but examined psychopathology dimensionally instead of categorically. This allowed for more precise assessment of psychopathology and increased statistical power, without the loss of information inherent to categorical assessment. Until now, the Emotional Conflict Task has only been examined in a few clinical samples, and only with very small sample sizes. This study examined convergent and divergent validity of the Emotional Conflict Task as well as incremental validity over current measures of emotion regulation. Sixty outpatients with anxiety and mood disorders completed the Emotional Conflict Task and a standard battery of questionnaires, along with a semi-structured diagnostic assessment, as part of their intake assessment when presenting for assessment and treatment at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Convergent validity of the Emotional Conflict Task was assessed by correlating it with two explicit measures of emotion regulation. Next, hierarchical regression was used to examine incremental validity of the Emotional Conflict Task, specifically the amount of variability in functional impairment accounted for, as measured by the Work and Social Adjustment Scale. Finally, this measure was correlated with dimensional measures of psychopathology and temperament to assess the differential relations between these constructs. Results indicated that the Emotional Conflict Task did not correlate with explicit measures of emotion regulation, was not predictive of functional impairment, and was not correlated with dimensional measures of psychopathology or temperament. Potential causes for these null findings and future directions are discussed.

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<p>In addition to replicating examinations of gender bias in the diagnosis of all cluster B personality disorders (PDs), this is the first study to examine the extent to which patient sexual orientation biases the diagnosis of antisocial, histrionic, and narcissistic PDs as well as whether or not such sexual orientation bias differs by patient gender. Furthermore, this study is the first to examine how such gender and sexual orientation biases are moderated by (1) the model of personality pathology used (i.e., traditional DSM vs. dimensional Alternate Model of Personality Disorders [AMPD]) and (2) measurement specificity (i.e., global PD measurement vs. symptom-level measurement). To undertake these examinations, it utilized a vignette describing a patient whose gender identification (man or woman) and sexual orientation (heterosexual or gay/lesbian) were experimentally manipulated. Clinicians (<em>N</em>=435) were randomly assigned to examine one of the resultant four vignettes, after which they each completed three measures of personality pathology. Though there was evidence of gender bias, such bias was twice-to-four times as weak as gender bias found in past similar studies. There was no evidence of significant diagnostic bias based on patient sexual orientation and sexual orientation bias did not differ by patient gender. Broadly, neither gender nor sexual orientation bias was moderated by the model of personality pathology underlying the measures used, by the specificity with which the pathology was measured, or by clinician characteristics (i.e., age, gender, sexual orientation, licensure status, race). Results suggest a decrease in gender and sexual orientation bias within experimental contexts relative to that which was found by prior studies. Further examinations should elucidate the mechanisms moderating diagnostic bias. </p>

The aim of this thesis was to choose some types of investments and set the expected return using time series; furthermore to compare these possibilities using multi-dimensional assessment. I chose four types of investments, namely: mutual funds, life insurance, additional pension savings and building savings. I expected a monthly deposit of 1000 CZK for a period of 20 years in my thesis. In case the investor would keep this money cash or on a bank account, where he would not have to pay account fees and have a zero interest rate, he would save 240 000 CZK during this period. Based on published historical returns I modeled the expected return of the investment by means of methods of time series. For modeling the return I used the model of linear trend. The highest revaluation is expected with the additional pension savings, where the dynamic strategy brings the overall return of 414 214 CZK, the balanced strategy 379 874 CZK and the conservative strategy 333 209 CZK. The investment into mutual funds using conservative strategy brings 317 894 CZK, using balanced strategy brings the return of 314 986 CZK. When choosing the conservative strategy of life insurance the overall return is 296 071 CZK and when choosing the balanced strategy it is 292 614 CZK. The expected return of the building saving is 286 139 CZK. However, it is not recommended to opt for an investment only based on the expected return. We have to take into consideration as well the risk of the investment, input one-time fee and the overall fee (monthly or annual fees). For this reason I determined the category of the above mentioned criteria, which I set using scoring method. For the determination of the order I chose the TOPSIS method and the scoring method. Based on the carried out above methods it is certain that the best investment is investing in additional pension savings.