Misattribution and speech anxiety

It has been reported that misattribution can enhance the social behavior of shy subjects. By extrapolation, misattribution should also calm speech-anxious subjects and improve their speechmaking. We therefore crosscut misattribution versus control and high versus low speech anxiety, and assessed the impact on nervous behavior and speechmaking. Misattribution did not significantly affect most of the behavior of subjects making speeches. We discuss the implications of these findings for misattribution when personality traits are involved.     

话说灶王

有关灶王的描述,读者一定很熟悉。《红楼梦》第五十三回《宁国府除夕祭宗祠,荣国府元宵开夜宴》中,谈到荣国府除夕供灶王的景像时说:“那晚,各处佛堂灶王前焚香上供。王夫人正房院内设着天地纸马香供。大观园正门上挑着角灯,两旁高照,各处皆有路灯。上下人等,打扮的花团锦簇。一夜人声杂沓,语笑喧阗,爆竹起火,络绎不绝。”灶王何许人也?且听我细细道来。一、灶王是谁灶王又称“灶神”、“灶君”、“灶君老爷”、“老灶爷”等,是我国古代神话中主管饮食之神。旧时民间灶王信仰颇为广泛,多将灶君像供奉于灶头。古代文献中,对灶王是谁有多种说…     

Evil and the god of indifference

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - The evidential problem of evil involves a rarely discussed challenge, namely the challenge of defending theism against the hypothesis of a morally...     

Misattribution of arousal and the effects of self-threatening information

Two experiments are reported on the effects of misattributing arousal. In both experiments, subjects took an intelligence test and received fictitious negative results about their performance. In the first experiment, subjects before receiving feedback were given a pill labeled as arousing; however, the ostensible effectiveness of the pill was varied. The greater the alleged strength of the pill, the less the test was derogated following feedback about performance on it and the more effort subjects reported expending on the test. In the second experiment, subjects were told that the pill was either arousing or relaxing and that its effect lasted for either a short or a long period of time. Initial test evaluations were more positive and estimates of effort expended were greater when the pill was described as arousing than when it was described as relaxing. However, whereas these differences were maintained over time when the pill's effects were described as of long duration, they disappeared over time when the pill's effects were described as of short duration.     

测量内隐态度的情感错误归因程序

情感错误归因程序（AMP）是一种新近发展出来的以投射为基本原理的内隐社会认知研究方法。AMP的内部处理机制可分为情绪的激发、归因以及猜测三个过程,每种过程都有其发生概率。AMP具有良好的信度和效度,最突出的特点是其对警告的抗拒性。此外虽作为一种相对性的内隐测量工具,但AMP也能很好地研究单一的态度对象。还介绍了几种新近出现的AMP改进范式。     

Misattribution theory of tendentious humor

Male and female subjects were treated rudely or in a normal manner by a female experimenter in order to establish (a) a negative or (b) a neutral affective disposition toward her. Subjects then witnessed her in one of three conditions: (a) She experienced a misfortune that was associated with innocuous humor cues; (b) she experienced the same misfortune, but the humor cues were not present; (c) the same humor cues were present, but no misfortune was experienced. Subjects' facial expressions of mirth were unobtrusively recorded and later coded by naive judges. No appreciable sex differences in mirth were found. Negative dispositions led to greater mirth reactions to the misfortune than neutral dispositions whether or not humor cues were associated with than misfortune. The dispositional variation was of no consequence in the reactions to humor cues as such, however. Under conditions of neutral disposition, mirth in response to the misfortune plus the humor cues was the sum of the mirth reactions to the component parts in isolation. Under conditions of negative disposition, mirth in response to the combination of misfortune and humor cues exceeded the sum of the responses to the components. A misattribution theory of tendentious humor was developed from Freudian thinking, and the findings were considered to be consistent with it although not definitive. Additionally, the findings were considered to give further support to the disposition theory of mirth.     

Pastoral care and the people of god

Various attempts in the last twenty years have sought to understand pastoral care as a function of the congregation, yet even ardent supporters have lost sight of their own vision. This article proposes that we define pastoral care as the work of the church, tie it more closely to the suffering associated with carrying out the church's mission, and develop a model of pastoral care that will differentiate everyday untrained lay pastoral care, care by clergy and trained laypersons, and pastoral psychotherapy. It offers theological rationales and draws implications for pastoral theory.Reverend Burck is Chaplain-Supervisor and Assistant Professor of Religion and Health, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, 1753 West Congress Parkway, Chicago, Illinois 60612     

Misattribution, preparatory information, and speech anxiety

In two experiments with undergraduate subjects, I compared the effects of misattribution versus information manipulations on speech anxiety. In Experiment 1, some subjects were allegedly exposed to subliminal noise while reading a speech in front of a camera. These subjects were told that subliminal noise makes people feel either unpleasantly aroused or pleasantly relaxed or that it has no effect. Subjects in a fourth condition were given accurate information about how they would feel (unpleasantly aroused) but were not exposed to the subliminal noise misattribution source. In Experiment 2, I replicated the arousing noise and accurate information conditions from the first study and added two new groups incorporating a delay that should preclude misattribution. In both experiments, the alleged presence of arousing subliminal noise reduced subjects' speech dysfluencies during the speech task, whereas the presentation of accurate information alone did not have a comparable ameliorative effect. Thus, both experiments supported the misattribution interpretation of why neutral labels for arousal can reduce emotionality.     

Contextual risk and parenting as predictors of effortful control and social competence in preschool children

Using a short-term longitudinal design (6 months), this study examined cumulative contextual risk as a predictor of effortful control (EC) and social competence in a community sample of children (N = 80, ages 33-40 months at time 1). Maternal parenting was examined as a mediator of contextual risk. EC was assessed using laboratory tasks, and parenting was assessed using observational ratings. Time 1 contextual risk was negatively related to time 2 EC after controlling for time 1 EC. Mothers' limit setting and scaffolding predicted higher time 2 EC and accounted for the effect of contextual risk. Time 1 EC, contextual risk, and parenting predicted time 2 social competence, and contextual risk had an indirect effect on social competence through parenting. Results suggest that contextual risk predicts smaller relative increases in EC and that parenting accounts for this effect. Knowledge of the factors that divert or promote effortful control can provide targets for intervention to enhance effortful control abilities and better adjustment.     

Religious authority and the transmission of abstract god concepts

According to the Standard Model account of religion, religious concepts tend to conform to “minimally counterintuitive” schemas. Laypeople may, to varying degrees, verbally endorse the abstract doctrines taught by professional theologians. But, outside the Sunday school exam room, the implicit representations that tend to guide people’s everyday thinking, feeling, and behavior are about minimally counterintuitive entities. According to the Standard Model, these implicit representations are the essential thing to be explained by the cognitive science of religion (CSR). It is argued here that this theoretical orientation of mainstream CSR misses a whole dimension of religiosity—the acceptance of certain religious authorities, that is, the acceptance of other people’s superior expertise. Average believers (especially in doctrinal traditions) tend to accept the authority of religious experts who espouse highly counterintuitive ideas that they (the laypeople) understand in a distorted form, if at all. These highly counterintuitive ideas are culturally successful because laypeople see them as being justified by people they have reason to regard as epistemic authorities. The tendency for people to endorse (without fully understanding) highly counterintuitive religious ideas espoused by intellectuals may explain parallels in the development of separate traditions (e.g., Judaism and Hinduism), as religious philosophers follow parallel lines of reasoning.     

Psychology and social control

The history of social control applications of psychology and the likelihood of a future increase in their importance are assessed. The effects of military funding of psychological research and the social consequences of very widespread unemployment are specifically considered. It is argued that psychology and related areas of cognitive science and neuroscience may well become increasingly relevant in the development of the technical components of such techniques rather than in providing ideological justifications for their use.