Using source cues and familiarity cues to resist imagination inflation

To investigate whether people can resist imagination inflation--the imagination-induced increased confidence that fictitious childhood events really happened--we gave them different types of cues. In a three-stage procedure, participants: (1) rated their confidence that a list of childhood events had happened to them, (2) imagined some of these events, and (3) made confidence ratings a second time. Subjects received either no cues about the source of the imagined event, an additional source cue (perspective), an additional familiarity cue (a plausibility questionnaire), or both cues. Only subjects who had both types of cues resisted imagination inflation. These results suggest that additional cues can sometimes safeguard people from becoming more confident that fictitious events were genuine experiences.     

Hypnotic suggestion of stimulus change and visual cortical evoked potential.

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether the hypnotic suggestion of stimulus intensity change would affect the physical parameters (latencies, amplitudes) of the visual cortical evoked potential. Stimulus intensity was kept constant as visual cortical evoked potentials were measured under conditions in which it was suggested that stimuli were "bright" or "dim". The results of both experiments led to the conclusion that, under the present condition, hypnotic suggestion of stimulus intensity change did not result in changes in visual cortical evoked potentials.     

Supervision and imagination

Abstract :  This paper explores the role of imagination for the supervisor and examines the differences between the supervisor's use of creative and defensive imagination. It is suggested that reverie and imagining play a central role in supervision but that these need to be harnessed in the service of the reality principle. It is argued that the Jungian emphasis on the ego-self relationship provides a context for this process. A clinical example of work with a supervisee is described in which hidden aspects of a strong erotic transference/countertransference were revealed in the supervisor's imagining and became available for reflection.     

Evoking the moral imagination: Using stories to teach ethics and professionalism to nursing,medical, and law students

Four years ago, as colleagues in our university's law and medical schools, we designed and began offering a course for law, medical, and nursing students, studying professionalism and professional ethics by reading and discussing current and earlier images of nurses, doctors, and lawyers in literature. We wanted to make professional ethics, professional culture, and professional education the objects of study rather than simply the unreflective consequences of exposure to professional language, culture, and training. We wanted to do it in an interdisciplinary course where aspiring professionals could share their self-conceptions and their conceptions of each other, and we wanted to do it by using stories, our primary means for organizing experience and claiming meaning for it. This article tells the story of that experience: why we did it; how we did it; what we learned from doing it.     

Functional representations common to visual perception and imagination

Subjects determined whether probe dots appearing in component squares of a 5 X 5 grid fell on a figure that, depending on the condition, was (a) visually presented as a pattern of darkened squares, (b) only remembered from a preceding presentation of such a pattern, or (c) imaginally generated from a verbal code. The speed and accuracy of the responses to the probes as well as the functional dependencies of the reaction times on structural variables were essentially the same whether the figural pattern was imagined, remembered, or actually seen. Reaction times averaged between 400 and 500 msec and were consistently faster (a) for on-figure than for off-figure responses, (b) for simpler figures that had fewer squares, (c) for off-figure probes that were more distant from the figure, and (d) for on-figure probes that consisted either of more dots on the figure or of a dot at the intersection of a horizontal and a vertical bar. The reults were consistent with a model in which a subject's perceptual or imaginal representations of these forms contain barlike units that respond independently to the probes.     

Responsibility and evil imagination

In this Niebuhrian perspective on hostile and violent discourse the author utilizes H. R. Niebuhr's fourfold notion of responsibility and his concept of evil imagination to examine relations marred by protracted hostility toward hated other or others. The author argues that violent and hostile discourse manifests a particular form of responsibility whereby persons expressing hostility toward hated others construct, by way of negative representations, maligned histories and identities for the other and at the same time construct an idealized or glorified history and identity for themselves. These positive and negative representations and histories, then, are utilized to answer questions regarding interpretation, accountability, and solidarity. Niebuhr's concept of evil imagination is employed to hypothesize about the intransigence of this form of responsibility and to suggest reasons why elevated and maligned representations, identities, and histories are, more often than not, inextricably and tragically linked.     

In search of how people change. Applications to addictive behaviors.

How people intentionally change addictive behaviors with and without treatment is not well understood by behavioral scientists. This article summarizes research on self-initiated and professionally facilitated change of addictive behaviors using the key trans-theoretical constructs of stages and processes of change. Modification of addictive behaviors involves progression through five stages--pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance--and individuals typically recycle through these stages several times before termination of the addiction. Multiple studies provide strong support for these stages as well as for a finite and common set of change processes used to progress through the stages. Research to date supports a trans-theoretical model of change that systematically integrates the stages with processes of change from diverse theories of psychotherapy.     

Circumventing resistance: Using values to indirectly change attitudes

Most research on persuasion examines messages that directly address the attitude of interest. However, especially when message recipients are inclined to resist change, indirect methods might be more effective. Because values are rarely attacked and defended, value change could serve as a useful indirect route for attitude change. Attitudes toward affirmative action changed more when the value of equality was attacked (indirect change) than when affirmative action was directly attacked using the same message (Experiments 1-2). Changes in confidence in the value were responsible for the indirect change when the value was attacked (controlling for changes in favorability toward the value), whereas direct counterarguments to the message were responsible for the relative lack of change when the attitude was attacked directly (Experiment 2). Attacking the value of equality influenced attitudes toward policies related to the value but left policy attitudes unrelated to the value unchanged (Experiment 3). Finally, a manipulation of value confidence that left attitudes toward the value intact demonstrated similar confidence-based influences on policies related to the value of freedom (Experiment 4). Undermined value confidence also resulted in less confidence in the resulting policy attitudes controlling for the changes in the policy attitudes themselves (Experiments 3 and 4). Therefore, indirect change through value attacks presented a double threat-to both the policy attitudes and the confidence with which those policy attitudes were held (potentially leaving them open to additional influence). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The imagination and psychological healing

As one of the internal senses or inward wits, the imagination was long thought to play a crucial role in the age-old struggle between the rational and the irrational, and it was conceived of as a faculty that might be damaged in some forms of psychopathology. During the Renaissance it emerged as a force or factor with a considerable potential for causing harm in the form of disease and for doing good in the form of curing disease. Its place in psychological healing has been significant for much of the time since then, including a lively attention to it in the work of Carl Jung and in the guided imagery techniques of recent decades.     

Metaphysics and the philosophical imagination

Methods and goals in philosophy are discussed by first describing an ideal, and then looking at how the ideal might be approached. David Lewis??s work in metaphysics is critically examined and compared to analogous work by Mackie and Carnap. Some large-scale philosophical systematic work, especially in metaphysics, is best treated as model-building, in a sense of that term that draws on the philosophy of science. Models are constructed in a way that involves deliberate simplification, or other imaginative modification of reality, in order to make relationships visible or problems tractable.     

American psychology and the religious imagination

In just three generations, American psychology grew from a fledgling science to a culturally authoritative discipline. Standard accounts of psychology's meteoric rise typically omit what most needs to be illuminated: the resonance between psychological theory and the symbolic universe underlying America's popular religious imagination. This article sketches a cultural history of American psychology by examining how many of its core concepts invoke a metaphysical horizon associated with the nation's heritage of unchurched spirituality.     

Exposure to suggestion and creation of false auditory memories

The experiment investigated the possibility of creating false auditory memory through exposure to suggestion. Research by Loftus and others has indicated that, through suggestion, false memories can be created. Participants viewed a short film and were given a 9-item questionnaire. Eight questions were used as filler while one question asked respondents to recall a phrase one character had said. Although the character actually said nothing, 23 of 30 respondents recalled having heard him speak and specifically recalled his words. This statistically significant result shows that auditory memories can also be created.