Enhancing the imagined contact effect

Recent research has found that mentally simulating positive out-group contact experiences can promote tolerance and more positive intergroup perceptions. We investigated two ways of enhancing this imagined contact effect. In Study 1 we found that asking participants to generate more detail in their imagined encounter led to expectations of their having a greater number of out-group acquaintances in the future. In Study 2 we found that instructing participants to close their eyes during an imagined encounter led to heightened intentions to engage in future actual contact. These findings add further support to the notion that imagining intergroup contact may be a valuable addition to existing interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations.     

Enhancing the Imagined Contact Effect

ABSTRACT

Recent research has found that mentally simulating positive out-group contact experiences can promote tolerance and more positive intergroup perceptions. We investigated two ways of enhancing this imagined contact effect. In Study 1 we found that asking participants to generate more detail in their imagined encounter led to expectations of their having a greater number of out-group acquaintances in the future. In Study 2 we found that instructing participants to close their eyes during an imagined encounter led to heightened intentions to engage in future actual contact. These findings add further support to the notion that imagining intergroup contact may be a valuable addition to existing interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations.     

A dissociation between judged causality and imagined locations in simple dynamic scenes

To mentally extrapolate the trajectory of a moving object that disappears from sight, different sources of information can be exploited: memory of its last visible position, its inferred movement through time, and general understanding of the causal structure of the scene. It is often assumed that these cues are integrated into unified analog mental representations. In our experiment, participants predicted the position of an object that disappeared behind an occluder and estimated the degree to which the movement was caused by another object. They made considerable errors in predicting imagined displacements. Moreover, their predictions were misaligned with their judgments of causality. They predicted the positions of the invisible moving objects better in events that they judged less causally correct than in events that they judged more causally correct. These results suggest that physical and cognitive parameters of imagined dynamic events do not merge into unitary mental models simulating actual states of the world.     

When music tempo affects the temporal congruence between physical practice and motor imagery

When people listen to music, they hear beat and a metrical structure in the rhythm; these perceived patterns enable coordination with the music. A clear correspondence between the tempo of actual movement (e.g., walking) and that of music has been demonstrated, but whether similar coordination occurs during motor imagery is unknown. Twenty participants walked naturally for 8 m, either physically or mentally, while listening to slow and fast music, or not listening to anything at all (control condition). Executed and imagined walking times were recorded to assess the temporal congruence between physical practice (PP) and motor imagery (MI). Results showed a difference when comparing slow and fast time conditions, but each of these durations did not differ from soundless condition times, hence showing that body movement may not necessarily change in order to synchronize with music. However, the main finding revealed that the ability to achieve temporal congruence between PP and MI times was altered when listening to either slow or fast music. These data suggest that when physical movement is modulated with respect to the musical tempo, the MI efficacy of the corresponding movement may be affected by the rhythm of the music. Practical applications in sport are discussed as athletes frequently listen to music before competing while they mentally practice their movements to be performed.     

想象积极群际接触与群际关系改善实验研究述评

想象群际接触的基本思想指,在心理上想象一个积极的群际接触会创设一个心理接触的脚本,激发与外群体成员成功互动的观念,积极互动观念也就伴随产生对外群体的积极情感,导致对外群体的积极感知,增强和外群体进一步接触的意愿。想象群际接触的实验操纵比较简单,设置实验组和控制组,采用指导语的方式,但是想象群际接触的效应受群体地位、内群体认同状况等变量的调节。在未来的研究中, 需要注意提高研究的效度,加强机制、直接行为效应的研究,想象群际接触理论为改善群际关系提供了一个崭新的框架。     

Physical home environment is associated with prefrontal cortical thickness in adolescents

Biologically embedded experiences alter developmental trajectories in ways that can influence health, learning, and/or behavior. These systematic differences in experiences may contribute to different biological outcomes as individuals grow and develop, including at the neural level. Previous studies of biologically embedded experiences on neurodevelopment have focused on large‐scale institutional or economic factors (e.g. socioeconomic status [SES]) and psychosocial factors (e.g. caregiving behavior). Less attention has focused on how the quality of the immediate home settings, such as the physical home environment (PHYS), influences neurodevelopment. Moreover, no study has investigated these effects in adolescents, who undergo significant physical maturation and neurodevelopment that may influence how they respond to their physical environments. The goal of the current study was to examine whether PHYS quality is biologically embedded in the developing adolescent brain as evidenced by cognitive achievement and cortical development in 56 (48% female) healthy adolescents (14–18 years (M = 16.83 years, SD = 1.17). Using in‐home assessments of the physical home environment, anatomical brain scans, and indices of academic achievement, we found that adolescents who have more physical problems in the home (e.g. structural hazards, crowding, excessive noise, poorly lit) have thinner prefrontal cortices, which was associated with lower levels of reading achievement, independent of SES and psychosocial factors. By conducting home visits to assess physical characteristics of adolescents’ home, we highlight a typically overlooked aspect of the home environment that has relevance for adolescents’ cognitive and brain development.     

Spiritual emergency and counselling: An exploratory study

Growing up in a multicultural community in England brought me into close personal contact with the beliefs and perceptions about healing held by people of many different cultures. In many cases, no strong boundary was seen between physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of an illness, and experiences of hearing voices or seeing visions were accepted as normal everyday occurrences. During my training as a counsellor, I came into contact with the work of Stanislav Grof on the concept of spiritual emergency, which, together with the work of African and European authors who were exploring transpersonal aspects of psychology, provided a theoretical framework for researching how counsellors respond to clients wishing to explore experiences of spiritual crisis. This paper describes an exploratory study into the phenomenon of spiritual emergency within counselling. Questionnaires were distributed by post to people known to have been in counselling relationships, and interviews were conducted with three informants reporting different types of spiritual experience. All respondents who completed questionnaires reported having at least one of the ‘non‐ordinary’ experiences classified by Stanislav Grof as characteristics of a ‘spiritual emergency’. Several participants felt unable to explore this experience with their counsellors, some for fear of being labelled as mentally ill, while others found their counsellors helpful and sympathetic. Differences in dealing with spiritual phenomena were apparent between European and non‐European participants. These findings are discussed in relation to theory and practice.     

Characteristics of memories for near-death experiences

Near-death experiences are vivid, life-changing experiences occurring to people who come close to death. Because some of their features, such as enhanced cognition despite compromised brain function, challenge our understanding of the mind-brain relationship, the question arises whether near-death experiences are imagined rather than real events. We administered the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire to 122 survivors of a close brush with death who reported near-death experiences. Participants completed Memory Characteristics Questionnaires for three different memories: that of their near-death experience, that of a real event around the same time, and that of an event they had imagined around the same time. The Memory Characteristics Questionnaire score was higher for the memory of the near-death experience than for that of the real event, which in turn was higher than that of the imagined event. These data suggest that memories of near-death experiences are recalled as “realer” than real events or imagined events.     

It's only a dream if you wake up: Young adults' achievement expectations,opportunities, and meritocratic beliefs

The present paper examines university graduates' beliefs about how meritocratic socioeconomic status (SES) attainment in U.S. society is for themselves (merit agency beliefs) and for most other people (merit societal beliefs), and how these distinct beliefs are differentially associated with labour market experiences and achievement‐goal attitudes and expectations in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Data from a 10‐month longitudinal study of 217 graduates from the 2013 class of a large public U.S. university were analysed using multilevel modelling. The results indicate that most participants optimistically expected to attain upward social mobility. Furthermore, participants' merit agency beliefs were reflective of their labour market prospects and experiences, and calibrated their achievement‐goal attitudes and expectations. However, participants' merit societal beliefs were not associated with these labour market experiences and achievement‐goal attitudes and expectations. The distinction between merit agency beliefs and merit societal beliefs may be motivationally beneficial by allowing individuals to continue striving toward the uncertain long‐term goal pursuit of upward social mobility despite the short‐term struggles and setbacks many young adults are likely to experience in the aftermath of the Great Recession.     

Learning Contracts and the Use of Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) for Occupational Therapy Students on Mental Health Fieldwork

SUMMARY

To counteract stereotyped views of the mentally ill and to empower occupational therapy students on their mental health clerkship, students developed individualized learning contracts. The contract required formulating their educational goals as a series of graded steps structured through the use of a sequential numerical scale, Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) (Kiresuk & Sherman, 1968). Goals were related to the students' social-emotional concerns and anxieties encountered in this practice area through an affective GAS also known as a comfort scale. Task skills were addressed via a psychomotor/cognitive GAS. Students took an active role in monitoring their progress on their GAS while exploring emotional reactions. Through the use of an interactive log format, students received ongoing feedback and support from the academic instructor while honing their performance and clinical reasoning skills. Students often articulated a positive transformation of their views of the mentally ill and their sense of efficacy and comfort in working with this population fostered by success with their personal goal achievement on their GAS.     

消费者拍照行为影响消费体验的双刃剑效应

拍照是消费者对体验进行视觉记录的手段。虽然拍照“打卡”成为人们的日常生活和企业营销的重要工具,但目前未发现有文章系统介绍拍照行为对消费体验的影响。拍照行为通过调整注意资源和认知参与对消费体验产生双刃剑效应。具体而言,拍照行为会给消费者带来以“视觉体验红利”为主的红利效应;还会因缺失其他感官(嗅觉、味觉、听觉或触觉)的真实体验产生“匮乏效应”。个人因素和情景因素是拍照行为影响消费体验的重要边界条件。未来研究可以从比较不同拍照内容的效应差异、研究环境变量在拍照效应中的影响、拓展拍照的双刃剑效应在企业营销层面的研究等方面展开。     

Life satisfaction goes with pleasure and personal growth goes with interest: Further arguments for separating hedonic and eudaimonic well-being

Some theories suggest that pleasure and interest are separable emotions, with distinct functions and phenomenology. This study proposes a functional model of well-being that draws on these insights. It argues that both pleasure and satisfaction are elements of hedonic well-being and that their main function is to reward goal achievement and to mentally signalize that the body is in homeostatic stability. In contrast, the main function of interest is to promote mental and physical growth, and to suppress hedonic tendencies of premature returns to a homeostatic balance during difficult strivings. The feeling of interest facilitates personal growth, and is thus an indicator of eudaimonic well-being. A follow-up study (N?=?145 Norwegian students) gave empirical support to these assumptions. Life satisfaction predicted feelings of pleasantness while personal growth predicted feelings of interest. With a projective technique, it was further demonstrated that satisfaction produces pleasant stories, but not interesting stories.     

The self and others in the experience of pride

Pride is seen as both a self-conscious emotion as well as a social emotion. These categories are not mutually exclusive, but have brought forth different ideas about pride as either revolving around the self or as revolving around one’s relationship with others. Current measures of pride do not include intrapersonal elements of pride experiences. Social comparisons, which often cause experiences of pride, contain three elements: the self, the relationship between the self and another person, and the other person. From the literature on pride, we distilled three related elements; perceptions and feelings of self-inflation, other-distancing, and other-devaluation. In four studies, we explored whether these elements were present in pride experiences. We did so at an implicit (Experiment 1; N?=?218) and explicit level (Experiment 2; N?=?125), in an academic setting with in vivo (Experiment 3; N?=?203) and imagined pride experiences (Experiment 4; N?=?126). The data consistently revealed that the experience of pride is characterised by self-inflation, not by other-distancing nor other-devaluation.     

Uniting the perspectival subject: Two approaches

Visual forms of episodic memory and anticipatory imagination involve images that, by virtue of their perspectival organization, imply a “notional subject” of experience. But they contain no inbuilt reference to the “actual subject,” the person actually doing the remembering or imagining. This poses the problem of what (if anything) connects these two perspectival subjects and what differentiates cases of genuine memory and anticipation from mere “imagined seeing.” I consider two approaches to this problem. The first, exemplified by Wollheim and Velleman, claims that genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations are phenomenally “unselfconscious,” with the co-identity of the notional and actual subjects secured by a determinate causal history. The second approach posits some distinctive phenomenal property that attaches to genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations and serves to experientially conflate the notional and actual subject. I consider a version of the second approach, derived from Kierkegaard’s discussions of phenomenal “contemporaneity,” and argue that this approach can better account for the possibility of affective alienation from the selves we were and will be: the way in which our sense of self and awareness of our causal history can sometimes come apart.     

Instrumental help-seeking as a function of normative performance goal orientations: A “catastrophe”

Research on achievement goal theory has suggested significant links between goal adoption and help-seeking behaviors. The present study investigates the effects of actual achievement and emotions on help-seeking behavior under conditions of normative and non-normative performance approach goals. Data were collected from 120 university students who were tested individually in a number of tasks with the aid of a specialized software. A cusp catastrophe model was tested, which significantly predicted help-seeking as a function of student’s affective experience during the normative goal condition only. The emotions of anger, sadness and surprise acted as bifurcation factors, while achievement on the task acted as the asymmetry variable. Findings were not replicated in the non-normative goal condition with the linear model fitting the data best in the absence of normative evaluations. It is concluded that the cusp catastrophe model provides a better understanding of help-seeking behavior during achievement pursuits when the possibility of failure is imminent.     

Reply to Mr. D⊘⊘r

Certain facts about subjective successions support, I hold, a theory of mind‐dependent sensory data. Suppose that no such theory is true and, furthermore, that as one experiences a visual subjective succession, that of which one is visually aware consists typically in a static physical array. Nevertheless one will, I hold, experience a certain change taking place within one's visual field; and under the imagined conditions, it is hard to fathom what this change could be. Various seemingly plausible and helpful suggestions are examined and rejected. I conclude that neither a common‐sense realism nor, in fact, any view which rejects mind‐dependent sensory data can deal satisfactorily with subjective successions.     

Duration of mentally simulated movement: a review

The authors review studies of mentally simulated movements. In automatic or cyclical movements, actual and motor imagery (MI) durations are similar. When athletes simulate only dynamic phases of movement or perform MI just before competing, however, environmental and time constraints lead to an underestimation of actual duration. Conversely, complex attention-demanding movements take longer to image. Finally, participants can modify the speed of MI voluntarily when they receive specific instructions. To complete the available data, the authors compared imagined and actual durations in tennis and gymnastics. Results showed systematic and disproportionate overestimation of actual duration. The authors found a relationship between complex motor skills and MI duration. They discuss the factors leading to over- and underestimation and the hypotheses that could be tested.     

Immediate Movement History Influences Reach-to-Grasp Action Selection in Children and Adults

The authors review studies of mentally simulated movements. In automatic or cyclical movements, actual and motor imagery (MI) durations are similar. When athletes simulate only dynamic phases of movement or perform MI just before competing, however, environmental and time constraints lead to an underestimation of actual duration. Conversely, complex attention-demanding movements take longer to image. Finally, participants can modify the speed of MI voluntarily when they receive specific instructions. To complete the available data, the authors compared imagined and actual durations in tennis and gymnastics. Results showed systematic and disproportionate overestimation of actual duration. The authors found a relationship between complex motor skills and MI duration. They discuss the factors leading to over- and underestimation and the hypotheses that could be tested.     

期望、体验和回忆: 当消费者不能从体验中学习

人们对消费体验的期望、回忆与真实体验时常发生分离, 而且人们很少从真实体验中得到学习。本研究认为原因之一是期望、体验和回忆三者基于不同的输入信息, 以及三者特殊的交互关系。本研究首先提出了一个关于消费者期望、体验和回忆的理论框架, 系统阐述了消费者何时不能从体验中学习以及如何能促进学习, 然后在一个消费情景中通过3×2混合实验设计考察了三者的关系。实验比较了在“预期(无体验)”、“体验后即时评价”和“体验后延迟评价”三种评价方式下被试对两种品牌火腿肠的口味评价和偏好选择。结果发现: 消费者对口味体验的期望和回忆相似, 但两者都和真实体验发生分离。最后, 本研究还讨论了这一理论框架在消费者行为中的应用、未来研究拓展等。