The camera perspective bias: a case study

In this case study, we examined how variations of the camera perspective affect adults' assessment of veracity in a real‐life high‐stake situation; a masked male confessing to a very serious crime. The interview, conducted by one of Sweden's most awarded journalists, lasted 30 minutes and consisted of over 100 detailed questions about the crime. The interview was videotaped simultaneously by three cameras positioned at different locations, each taking a unique visual perspective. One camera focused on the suspect only, one on the interviewer only, and one equally on the suspect and the interviewer. Each videotape was shown to 32 adult observers (N = 96) who were asked to assess the suspect's veracity and to report subjective cues justifying their veracity assessment. The results confirmed the camera perspective bias, by showing that the observers in the ‘suspect only’ condition assessed the confession as significantly more reliable than did the observers in the ‘interviewer only’ condition. The observers reported that they relied heavily on verbal cues when assessing the confession, and particularly regarding confidence and consistency. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inability to wink an eye and eye dominance.

Data from 56 subjects in Grades 4 to 12 only able to wink one eye indicated that the non-winking eye was used as the dominant one in tests on monocular and binocular sighting.     

Old age from an existential-analytical perspective.

Aging confronts humans with specific existential issues. They frequently cause suffering in old age. Not dealing with or insufficiently dealing with these existential themes may result in crisis, psychological disorders, and illness. By integrating existential themes of aging into the understanding of one's own life, the process of aging contributes to personal maturity.     

The theatre as an instrument of the criticism of ideologies

It is the thesis of the paper that the arts of the twentieth century have gone much further in the criticism of customary modes of thought than have both the sciences and the various critical philosophies which exist today. Moreover, they have not only developed an abstract principle of criticism, they have also studied the psychological conditions under which criticism can be expected to become effective. Some plays and the theoretical essays of Ionesco are analysed as an example. It is pointed out that Ionesco resembles Bacon in that he believes in an unchangeable basis of humanity from which all ideologies proceed. An attempt is made to free Ionesco from these dogmatic elements, theoretically, as well as practically (i.e. as regards the performance of his plays) and to utilize to the full his contributions to a theatre that is free of prejudice, and fully critical.     

The future of Catholic health care: observations from an Orthodox Christian perspective.

The author reflects on the future of Catholic health care by looking at the essays in this volume by Dennis Brodeur, Clarke E. Cochran, and Christopher J. Kauffman. The author argues that (1) Roman Catholic teaching on the Trinity is defective, yielding an inadequate model of society, (2) Roman Catholic teaching on the Incarnation is defective, yielding an impoverished understanding of the "sacramental," and (3) the institutional orientation of Roman Catholicism combined with the lack of true sacramental vision makes it nearly impossible for Roman Catholic theory to criticize the current structure of health care financing.     

Self-disclosure: an attributional perspective.

This experiment examined the effect of timing of an intimate disclosure and assignment of responsibility for the event disclosed on interpersonal attraction. Subjects were induced to interact with a confederate who in all cases revealed something quite personal about himself. The disclosure occurred either early or near the end of a 10-minute conversation. The confederate accepted responsibility for the event disclosed, did not mention responsibility, or assigned responsibility to external factors. Negative traits were assigned to the early disclosure, and he was liked significantly less than the late discloser. The results are explained in terms of differential attributions made to early and late disclosures. The results for the assignment of responsibility variable were surprising: The confederate who accepted responsibility for the event disclosed elicited more negative reactions than the confederate who blamed other factors or who did not mention responsibility. Some possible reasons for this unexpected finding are discussed.     

Enactments: an intersubjective perspective.

We offer a critique and synthesis of classical and interpersonal views of enactment. From an intersubjective standpoint, the study of enactment leads to a reconsideration of the nature of the psychoanalytic process. And enactment becomes virtually synonymous with the psychoanalytic process. Enactments are interactions of analysand and analyst with communicative and resistive meanings that lead to valuable insight and can constitute corrective emotional experiences. Enactments that are recognized and defined become valuable dramatizing moments that have condensing, clarifying, and intensifying effects upon consciousness. The inevitable participation by the analyst in enactment is compatible with appropriate analytic discipline. A case will demonstrate these points.     

Conjugate lateral eye movements as an index of hemispheric activation.

Right handers moved their eyes leftward when solving spatial problems and rightward for verbal problems when the questioner sat behind them. When facing the questioner, the same subjects moved their eyes predominantly in only one direction, either right or left, regardless of problem type. The results indicate that the cerebral hemispheres, though specialized for problem type, are also preferentially activated within the same individuals.     

Introducing an instrument to measure body and fitness-related self-conscious emotions: The BSE-FIT

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to develop a new self-report instrument to assess experiences of shame, guilt, authentic pride, and hubristic pride in a fitness context.Design and methodIn Study 1, 41 potential items were developed and assessed for item quality and comprehension. In Study 2, a panel of experts (N = 8; M = 10.55, SD = 6.49 years of experience) assessed the scale and items for validity evidence based on content. Participants in Study 3 (N = 435) completed the Body-related Self-Conscious Emotions Fitness instrument (BSE-FIT) and other established self-report measures of body image, personality, emotion, and behavior. A subset of participants (n = 38; 38% male) in Study 3 completed a 2-week follow-up.ResultsThe BSE-FIT subscale scores demonstrated evidence for internal consistency, temporal stability over a 2-week period, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity. A 4-factor conceptualization of the instrument was supported.ConclusionsOverall, the final 16-item BSE-FIT instrument shows promise as a new instrument for assessing shame, guilt, and authentic and hubristic facets of pride in fitness contexts.     

Constructing formal semantics from an ontological perspective. The case of second-order logics

In a first part, I defend that formal semantics can be used as a guide to ontological commitment. Thus, if one endorses an ontological view \(O\) and wants to interpret a formal language \(L\) , a thorough understanding of the relation between semantics and ontology will help us to construct a semantics for \(L\) in such a way that its ontological commitment will be in perfect accordance with \(O\) . Basically, that is what I call constructing formal semantics from an ontological perspective. In the rest of the paper, I develop rigorously and put into practice such a method, especially concerning the interpretation of second-order quantification. I will define the notion of ontological framework: it is a set-theoretical structure from which one can construct semantics whose ontological commitments correspond exactly to a given ontological view. I will define five ontological frameworks corresponding respectively to: (i) predicate nominalism, (ii) resemblance nominalism, (iii) armstrongian realism, (iv) platonic realism, and (v) tropism. From those different frameworks, I will construct different semantics for first-order and second-order languages. Notably I will present different kinds of nominalist semantics for second-order languages, showing thus that we can perfectly quantify over properties and relations while being ontologically committed only to individuals. I will show in what extent those semantics differ from each other; it will make clear how the disagreements between the ontological views extend from ontology to logic, and thus why endorsing an ontological view should have an impact on the kind of logic one should use.     

The cyclopean eye vs. the sighting-dominant eye as the center of visual direction

In three experiments, competing hypotheses concerning the center of visual direction were examined with the stimuli used in the Card test which requires a subject to position the card with a hole so that a target can be seen. Each experiment used six right- and six left-sighting-eye subjects. In Experiment 1, the aperture and the target were collinear with the sighting eye. The mean apparent locations of the aperture when the target was fixated, and of the target when the aperture was fixated, were consistent with only the cyclopean-eye hypothesis; that is, the 95% confidence intervals of these means contained the predicted values from the cyclopean-eye hypothesis but not those from the sighting-eye hypothesis. In Experiment 2, subjects moved the card from the side of the nonsighting eye, and in 88% of the trials it was stopped when the nonsighting eye viewed the target. In Experiment 3, the target was viewed through the aperture with both the sighting and nonsighting eye in six different stimulus arrangements. The 95% confidence intervals of all 12 mean apparent locations of the targets contained the predicted values from the cyclopean-eye hypothesis but none of those from the sighting-eye hypothesis. These results are compatible with the cyclopean-eye hypothesis, and we therefore conclude that the sighting eye is not the center of visual direction.     

The Nursing Stress Scale: Development of an instrument

Despite increased recognition of the stress experienced by hospital nursing staffs and its effects on burnout, job satisfaction, turnover, and patient care, few instruments exist that can be used to measure stress. This paper describes the development of an instrument, the Nursing Stress Scale (NSS). It consists of 34 items that describe situations that have been identified as causing stress for nurses in the performance of their duties. It provides a total stress score as well as scores on each of seven subscales that measure the frequency of stress experienced by nurses in the hospital environment. The Nursing Stress Scale was administered to 122 nurses on five hospital units. Factor analysis indicated seven major sources of stress that closely paralleled the conceptual categories of stress on which the scale was based. Test-retest reliability as well as four measures of internal consistency indicated that the Nursing Stress Scale and its seven subscales are reliable. Validity was determined by correlating the total score from the Nursing Stress Scale with measures of trait anxiety, job satisfaction, and nursing turnover hypothesized to be related to stress. In addition, the ability of the scale to differentiate hospital units and groups of nurses known to experience high levels of stress resulting in staff turnover was examined.     

Looking the past in the eye: Distortion in memory and the costs and benefits of recalling from an observer perspective

Jordi Fernández (2015) discusses the possible benefits of two types of allegedly distorted memories: observer memories and fabricated memories. Fernández argues that even when memory does not preserve the past, some memories can still provide an adaptive benefit for the subject. I explore Fernández’s claims focussing on the case of observer perspective memories. For Fernández, observer perspectives are distorted memories because they do not preserve past experience. In contrast, I suggest that observer perspectives can accurately reflect past experience: observer perspectives are not necessarily distorted memories. By looking at the complexity of the relation between remembering trauma from an observer perspective and emotional closure, I also sound a note of caution against Fernández’s assertion that observer memories of trauma can be adaptively beneficial. Finally, I suggest that because observer perspectives are not necessarily distorted, but involve a distinct way of thinking about one’s past, such memories can be epistemically beneficial.