Understanding the impact of mortality-related health-risk information: a terror management theory perspective

Four studies explored the effects of providing mortality-related health-risk information from a terror management theory perspective. Study 1 (N = 48) revealed that exposure to information about the mortality-related risks of driving made mortality salient for young male drivers. Studies 2 (N = 60) and 3 (N = 139) demonstrated that young male drivers who perceived driving (fast) to be beneficial for self-esteem reported higher intentions to take driving risks (Study 2) and drive fast (Study 3) after exposure to such information compared to controls. Study 3 further demonstrated that the inclusion of a prime to behave responsibly eliminated this effect. Study 4 (N = 92) revealed that exposure to this prime alongside the mortality-related information generated increased accessibility of responsibility-related constructs and reduced accessibility of mortality-related constructs among young male drivers. The implications of these findings for terror management theory are discussed.     

Art as a metaphor of the mind

This paper focuses on the emergent neo-Jamesian perspective concerning the phenomenology of art and aesthetic experience. Starting from the distinction between nucleus and fringe in the stream of thought described by William James, it can be argued that our appreciation of a work of art is guided by a vague and blurred perception of a much more powerful content, of which we are not fully aware. Accordingly, a work of art is seen as a kind of metaphor of our mental life, objectified to be able to reach out to a much larger audience. However, it is a “realistic” theory rooted in evolutionary psychology, which claims that our mind developed within a framework shaped by environmental pressures. The aesthetics illustrated by several novelists develops a paradigm for this theory. The search for the neuronal correlates of stream of consciousness allows to make a comparison with the recent findings of neuroaesthetics and to reject its claim that it is unnecessary to take phenomenology and psychology into account.

从个体关系的角度看文化对社会脑功能的塑造

摘 要 尽管社会认知的内容丰富多样,但其核心在于人们对“自我”、“他人”及两者关系的理解。文化作为一种独特的社会现象,对社会认知有着广泛影响,这一点集中体现在文化对“自我” 与“他人” 信息加工及其大脑机制的影响上。文化神经科学的研究表明：文化显著影响自我相关记忆、自我表征、自我觉知等自我认知过程。这可能主要来源于不同文化人群自我建构方式的不同。上述差异的神经机制主要体现为不同文化人群自我相关加工时,其内侧前额叶功能性变化的不同。与此相对应的是,文化同样显著影响人们对他人,尤其是对他人情绪的认知。这一点集中表现为表情认知的文化优势效应及共情过程的文化差异。在神经机制上这一差异主要体现为杏仁核功能的文化可塑性。文化神经科学的未来研究,可继续探讨主流文化、区域文化、宗教文化等各种形式的文化差异：1）对自我认知与情绪认知相互作用的影响与神经基础;2）对共情（empathy）、社会比较（social comparison）、心理理论（theory of mind）与协同行为（joint action）等多种社会认知过程的影响及其神经机制。 关键词 自我建构 文化神经科学 情绪认知 自我表征 共情     

Understanding global climate change: paleoclimate perspective from the world's highest mountains

Glaciers are among the world's best recorders of, and first responders to, natural and anthropogenic climate change and provide a time perspective for current climatic and environmental variations. Over the last 50 years such records have been recovered from the polar regions as well as low-latitude, high-elevation ice fields. Analyses of these ice cores and of the glaciers from which they have been drilled have yielded three lines of evidence for past and present abrupt climate change: (1) the temperature and precipitation histories recorded in the glaciers as revealed by the climate records extracted from the ice cores; (2) the accelerating loss of the glaciers themselves; and (3) the uncovering of ancient fauna and flora from the margins of the glaciers as a result of their recent melting, thus illustrating the significance of the current ice loss. The current melting of high-altitude, low-latitude ice fields is consistent with model predictions for a vertical amplification of temperature in the tropics. The ongoing rapid retreat of the world's mountain glaciers, as well as the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, is not only contributing to global sea level rise, but also threatening fresh-water supplies in many of the most populous regions. More recently, strong evidence has appeared for the acceleration of the rate of ice loss in the tropics, which especially presents a clear and present danger to water supplies for at-risk populations in South America and Asia. The human response to this issue, however, is not so clear, for although the evidence from both data and models becomes more compelling, the rate of global CO2 emissions continues to accelerate. Climatologically, we are in unfamiliar territory, and the world's ice cover is responding dramatically. The loss of glaciers, which can be viewed as the world's water towers, threatens water resources that are essential for hydroelectric power, crop irrigation, municipal water supplies, and even tourism. As these glaciers are disappearing, we are also losing very valuable paleoclimate archives.     

Understanding physical activity declines during COVID-19: The affective repercussions of disruption to exercise routines

Recent research has examined psychological factors that forestalled declines in physical activity (PA) during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Surprisingly, there has been limited evidence of an association between intrinsic motivation (IM) and PA. We reasoned that IM may have not predicted PA because COVID-19 restrictions limited opportunities to engage in exercise in ways that produced positive affective experiences (i.e., inherent rewards). Using data from a cross-sectional survey (N = 373 participants), we tested a moderated mediation model that predicted perceived changes to affective experiences during exercise would mediate the association between disruption to one’s exercise routine and self-reported declines in PA, and that effects would be moderated by IM. Evidence of moderated mediation was found, suggesting that disruptions to exercise routines were associated with fewer positive affective experiences during exercise that predicted declines in PA engagement, especially for people who typically exercised for intrinsic reasons.     

Flow experience in physical activity: Examination of the internal structure of flow from a process-related perspective

Considering the phenomenology of flow experience reflects attentional processes, Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi (Handbook of positive psychology, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002) classified the components of flow experience into proximal conditions and the characteristics of a subjective state while being in flow. The present study was conducted to clarify the concept of flow through examination of the interrelationships among the components from a process-related perspective. A total of 1,048 participants completed the Japanese versions of the Flow State Scale-2 (Kawabata et al. in Psychol Sport Exerc 9:465–485, 2008), and based on their scores, 591 respondents were considered to be in a flow state during their physical activity. A proposed higher-order confirmatory factor model and a full structural equation model were tested for the flow respondents. The results of the higher-order model indicated that the 9 flow factors were empirically classified into the flow state and its proximal condition. Furthermore, the outcomes of the full structural model preliminarily supported the hypothesized sequential relationships among flow factors.     

权变视角下的情绪劳动:调节变量及其作用机制

调节变量是近年来情绪劳动研究关注的重点问题之一。实证研究显示,反映员工个体特征、工作情境特征的多组变量以及文化情境对情绪劳动效应具有显著的调节作用。权变视角下的情绪劳动研究发现:(1)展现规则在组织、行业、文化三个不同水平影响个体在工作场所的情绪表达;(2)表层扮演潜在的消极效应可以借助个体内在的保护机制或通过组织管理干预被削弱、消除,甚至是转化为积极的力量;(3)深层扮演的积极效应具有较高的跨人群、跨情境稳定性;(4)文化情境对情绪劳动作用过程具有重要的约束作用。在一定条件下,情绪劳动要求、情绪劳动行为都可以成为有益于员工的组织生活要素。     

促进当事人的改变：基于治疗性最近发展区的视角

作为心理治疗的有效区域,治疗性最近发展区是指当事人当前适应问题经验的能力和通过治疗师的协助能够达成的潜在能力之间的距离。早期的同化模型理论更注重对心理治疗改变过程的描述,治疗性最近发展区理论则能够进一步解释治疗师在不同阶段的帮助策略。在研究上,治疗性最近发展区理论建立在非传统的方法论基础上,通过不断累积个案的质性研究,帮助治疗师理解和解释不同咨询效果的互动过程,并使理论得到持续发展;在临床上,治疗性最近发展区为理解心理治疗过程中倒退现象提供了新视角,并能够有效指导在治疗过程中采取挑战性还是支持性策略。未来研究可从临床上探索经验丰富的治疗师的实践智慧,也可选取较大跨度的治疗对话序列,对不同流派的特点,从不同参与者的视角出发进行研究,进而深化对心理治疗过程机制的理解。     

Cognitive exercise through body movement: Using a fun and short neuropsychological tool to adapt physical activity and enhance pleasure in individuals suffering from mental illnesses

Mental illness is associated to both metabolic and cognitive deficits. The idea here is to use adapted physical activity (APA) to help both aspects of pathology within a personal-targeted cognitive intervention program in order to enhance self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Using a multi-experience neuropsychological tool set (comprising touch pad exercises, wood puzzles and one-on-one semi-structured interviews), the different domains of action, timing, executive functions and social cognition were evaluated in a short 30-minute session. These computerized neuropsychological data were then used to adapt the difficulty of the proposed physical activity. Results obtained in a small group of ten patients revealed that the battery was well accepted. Both quantitative and qualitative results were collected and suggested that after 4 sessions of 2 h activity, the scores were improved for motor planning, motivation and the subjective report of quality of life. These preliminary data are important as they show that new technology can now be used to adapt automatically physical activities to the motor, cognitive and emotional capacities of the targeted individuals. Touch pads may also afford an innovating way to evaluate efficiently cognitive abilities while preserving the pleasure of the moment.     

The imagination of the body: The logic of imagination and the metaphor of therapeutic space in the therapeutic community of Thalassa House

In this paper the author discusses the metaphors of the community in Thalassa House, a therapeutic community in Hungary of which he is both the founder and leader.     

Conflict of interest as seen from a researcher's perspective

The continuous growth of the pharmaceutical industry is expected to require a considerable output of new drugs, with speedy development and approval processes. This profit-driven expansion of the drug market may broaden the already established erosion of the role of academia in favor of commercial clinical research organizations. Less and less control on the clinical trial design, its conduct and the resulting publication[s] is the likely consequence. Academic medicine and governments should find means to sustain the development of independent clinical research. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

Understanding the relations between different forms of racial prejudice: a cognitive consistency perspective

Research on racial prejudice is currently characterized by the existence of diverse concepts (e.g., implicit prejudice, old-fashioned racism, modern racism, aversive racism) that are not well integrated from a general perspective. The present article proposes an integrative framework for these concepts employing a cognitive consistency perspective. Specifically, it is argued that the reliance on immediate affective reactions toward racial minority groups in evaluative judgments about these groups depends on the consistency of this evaluation with other relevant beliefs pertaining to central components of old-fashioned, modern, and aversive forms of prejudice. A central prediction of the proposed framework is that the relation between "implicit" and "explicit" prejudice should be moderated by the interaction of egalitarianism-related, nonprejudicial goals and perceptions of discrimination. This prediction was confirmed in a series of three studies. Implications for research on prejudice are discussed.     

Working well with a disability: Health promotion as a means to employment

Purpose/Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the utility of the Working Well with a Disability health-promotion program with vocational rehabilitation (VR) clients. Health-promotion interventions have been shown to reduce limitation from secondary conditions, which can be a significant barrier to labor force participation among people with disabilities. The state and federal VR system represents a potential access point for delivery of health-promotion activities. Research Method/Design: A total of 297 VR clients participated in a randomized trial of the Working Well health promotion program. Control and intervention participants provided baseline and four waves of quarterly follow-up data. Data were analyzed with repeated-measures ANOVA. Results: Intervention-group participants who attended over half of the Working Well sessions reported significantly lower rates of limitation from secondary conditions over the 1-year study span, F(1, 124) = 4.11, p = .004. Control-group participants also experienced significantly lower rates of limitation, but pre- to postdifferences were less dramatic, F(1, 308) = 4.19, p = .006. Conclusions/Implications: Overall, health data indicated that the Working Well program may be particularly helpful to VR clients with higher rates of secondary health conditions and may represent one strategy for overcoming barriers to employment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).