A theoretical solution to the problem of personality-situation interaction

There has been much debate and research on the relative roles and the interaction of personality and situational factors in the determination of behaviour, and more broadly on the relative status of psychology and social science as explanations for human action. Much of this is based on a misconception, to which a branch of applied mathematics called automata theory suggests the answer. If our objective is redefined as the explanation of situation-behaviour relations by reference to psychological processes, rather than the explanation of behaviour by reference to situational and psychological factors, then many of the confusions and inconsistencies disappear. On this view, behaviour varies from situation to situation in a way which varies from person to person. However, the two processes are of different kinds and different orders, and they are only misrepresented as commensurable causes working interactively to produce a common effect. Alternative formulations are presented, and their implications discussed for research in individual and social psychology.     

The Port-Royal semantics of terms

Conclusion It is tempting to say from the contemporary point of view that thePort-Royal Logic is full of confusions as well as insights. I have focused on several of these confusions and their relations, in particular the confusions between complex idea and proposition, between proposition and judgment, and especially between name and predicate. In particular I have tried to emphasize the instability of the Port-Royal semantics — the ways in which their theory of terms vacillates between earlier views and something closer to a modern analysis. It may, however, be more profitable to regard this work as incorporating several logics, and to view the confusions as the inevitable results of the dynamical tensions among these different views.     

The role of target gender and race in children's encoding of category‐neutral person information

Two studies are reported that examine whether children encode category‐neutral information about target persons with respect to gender and race categories. In Study 1, using a semi‐naturalistic adaptation of the ‘who said what?’ technique (Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff, & Ruderman, 1978), children of 5, 8 and 11 years were asked to recall peers' choices in a preference task. For all three age groups, significantly more within‐sex than between‐sex confusions were found, indicating that children had encoded neutral information about targets with respect to their sex. In Study 2, 5‐, 8‐ and 11‐year‐old children were presented with a conventional ‘who said what?’ task in which they were shown four photographs, two of black children and two of white children, along with 16 statements attributed to the target children (i.e. four statements to each child). Following this, 16 statement cards had to be assigned to photographs of the four target persons to indicate ‘who said what’. Across all age groups there were significantly more within‐ than between‐race confusions. The evidence from these two studies indicates that even for category‐neutral information, gender and race play an important role in children's initial encoding of others' behaviour.     

Is Neurolaw Conceptually Confused?

In Minds, Brains, and Law, Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson argue that current attempts to use neuroscience to inform the theory and practice of law founder because they are built on confused conceptual foundations. Proponents of neurolaw attribute to the brain or to its parts psychological properties that belong only to people; this mistake vitiates many of the claims they make. Once neurolaw is placed on a sounder conceptual footing, Pardo and Patterson claim, we will see that its more dramatic claims are false or meaningless, though it might be able to provide inductive evidence for particular less dramatic claims (that a defendant may be lying, or lacks control over their behavior, for instance). In response, I argue that the central conceptual confusions identified by Pardo and Patterson are not confusions at all. Though some of the claims made by its proponents are hasty and sometimes they are confused, there are no conceptual barriers to attributing psychological properties to brain states. Neuroscience can play a role in producing evidence that is more reliable than subjective report or behavior; it therefore holds out the possibility of dramatically altering our self-conception as agents and thereby the law.     

Valuation theory,the self-confrontation method,and scientific personality psychology

This article presents an invited commentary on the two previous articles by Hermans and Bonarius (1991) and by Hermans (1991). Primary focus is placed on certain enduring confusions regarding the historic ‘nomothetic vs. idiographic’ controversy in personality psychology, the traces of those confusions in the writings of Hermans and Bonarius, and the importance of eliminating those confusions if the full potential of valuation theory and the self-confrontation method is to be realized, not only as a means of gaining idiographic knowledge and clinically helpful insights, but also as a means of gaining genuinely nomothetic knowledge in the domain of personality.     

Genes and Citizens: Can Moral Philosophy Learn from Evolutionary Biology?

The claim that moral philosophers have something to learn from recent neo-Darwinian theory cannot be sustained – at least, not in the case of the three theses characteristic of the latter on which I concentrate. The first thesis, reductionism, is open to some serious, and familiar, objections. Neo-Darwinism can escape those objections only by weakening its position to a point at which it can no longer be described as distinctively reductionist. The second, atavism, mistakenly attempts to generalise from the apparent persistence of` ‘vestigial’ behaviour patterns. Third, neo-Darwinists are frequently guilty of a number of confusions over the relation between fact and value. In conclusion, I point out that neo-Darwinism derives a certain ideological dynamic from the misleading supposition that patterns of explanation which succeed in one area necessarily apply in others. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The separate roles of the reflective mind and involuntary inhibitory control in gatekeeping paranormal beliefs and the underlying intuitive confusions

Intuitive thinking is known to predict paranormal beliefs, but the processes underlying this relationship, and the role of other thinking dispositions, have remained unclear. Study 1 showed that while an intuitive style increased and a reflective disposition counteracted paranormal beliefs, the ontological confusions suggested to underlie paranormal beliefs were predicted by individual differences in involuntary inhibitory processes. When the reasoning system was subjected to cognitive load, the ontological confusions increased, lost their relationship with paranormal beliefs, and their relationship with weaker inhibition was strongly accentuated. These findings support the argument that the confusions are mainly intuitive and that they therefore are most discernible under conditions in which inhibition is impaired, that is, when thinking is dominated by intuitive processing. Study 2 replicated the findings on intuitive and reflective thinking and paranormal beliefs. In Study 2, ontological confusions were also related to the same thinking styles as paranormal beliefs. The results support a model in which both intuitive and non‐reflective thinking styles and involuntary inhibitory processes give way to embracing culturally acquired paranormal beliefs.     

The Role of Source Confusions in Television's Cultivation of Social Reality Judgments

The chief hypothesis of this study was that errors in memory (specifically source confusions) contribute to the link between television viewing and social reality judgments. Fiction-to-news confusions (fictional programming remembered as news) were hypothesized to positively predict TV-biased judgments of reality. News-to-fiction confusions (news remembered as fiction) were hypothesized to negatively predict such judgments. The results of an experiment in which subjects watched television programming containing both news and fiction indicated that these hypotheses were supported. Levels of confusion interacted with daily television viewing and with the level of certainty attached to the confusions. A manipulation of the visual similarity of the news and fiction content affected subjects'tendency to make source confusions.     

Aging and effect of predictability on reality monitoring

This study compared the direction of source confusions and the effect of predictability on reality monitoring for internally generated information and externally derived information in younger (mean age 19-25) and older (mean age 70-85) adults. Participants were invited to listen to the conclusions of simple stories or to generate and imagine them. Conclusions could be either highly predictable (Experiment 1) or unpredictable (Experiment 2). The change in predictability produced changes in the direction of source confusions only in older adults. When a story ended in a predictable way, older adults attributed to imagination conclusions that were actually perceived, whereas the pattern of confusions tended to reverse with unpredictable stories.     

Phonemic behavior of aphasic patients with posterior cerebral lesions

The investigation analyzed the phonemic paraphasic errors of 10 asphasic patients with posterior cerebral lesions. The results indicated that paraphasic speech is characterized by complex confusions, often occurring at the ends of words and often involving phonemic transpositions. Many of the unusual and unexpected phonemic errors appeared to be due to simultaneous semantic and phonologic confusions.     

"Mirror-image" errors without mirror-image stimuli

Recent work has indicated that discrimination between upright and inverted stimuli is difficult when stimuli are one above the other, and discrimination between stimuli turned left and right is difficult when stimuli are side by side. That is, errors are frequent under conditions in which mirror-image confusions can be made. Young children were given a task requiring the matching of orientation of (a) identical realistic figures that could form mirror images of each other or (b) nonidentical realistic figures that could not form mirror images. The same pattern of errors appeared for the identical and nonidentical figures, indicating that the errors are not mirror-image confusions. It is argued that the errors are due to a strategy of matching analogous parts of the two figures.     

Evidence that short-term memory is not the limiting factor in the tachistoscopic full-report procedure

An experiment was conducted to determine whether acoustic short-term memory is the factor which limits performance in the tachistoscopic full-report paradigm. Many Es have demonstrated the existence of phonemic encoding in short-term memory. The confusion errors from a tachistoscopic full-report task were, therefore, analyzed for the presence of acoustic confusions. Absolutely no evidence for acoustic confusions was found; visual confusions, however, were abundant. It was concluded that acoustic short-term memory is not the limiting factor in the full-report paradigm.     

Formal lexical paragraphias in a single case study: how "masterpiece" can become "misterpieman" and "curiosity" "suretoy"

Formal lexical errors are relatively rare in the production of aphasic patients. In this study, we report the case of DW, who makes a high proportion of these errors. A few other cases have previously been reported, but DW shows a number of distinguishing characteristics. First, formal lexical errors are made in spelling and not in spoken speech. Second, they are associated with morphological errors and not with semantic errors. Third, they often combine lexical units in ways which are semantically and morphologically illegal. Finally, the majority of morphological errors involve the insertion, rather than the deletion, of suffixes. This pattern can be explained by hypothesizing that DW's errors arise because of confusions among a cohort of lexical neighbors activated top-down from a phonological input and bottom-up from shared letters. One possible cause of the confusions is lack of proper inhibition among lexical competitors.     

Misreadings by beginning readers of Serbo-Croatian

Errors in reading aloud by the beginning reader have been interpreted as reflecting the difficulty and the importance of phonemic segmentation for the acquisition of reading skills. Results from previous studies on English words patterned as consonant-vowel-consonant showed: (1) more errors on vowels than on consonants; (2) more errors on word final consonants than on word initial consonants; and suggested that (3) consonant errors were based on phonetic confusions while vowel errors were not. In contrast to their English counterparts, the beginning readers of Serbo-Croatian tested in the present study committed proportionally fewer errors on their reading of vowels than of consonants but in common with their English counterparts, their reading of final consonants was more vulnerable to error than their reading of initial consonants. This pattern of errors was found for both word and pseudoword consonant-vowel-consonant structures and the pattern of vowel confusion, like the pattern of consonant confusions, was rationalized by speech-related factors. The differences between the patterns of confusions for Serbo-Croatian and for English could be due to the difference between the two orthographies in the precision with which they represent the phonology or to the fact that the vowels of English are qualitatively less distinct phonologically than the vowels of Serbo-Croatian.     

Source confusion as an explanation of cultivation: a test of the mechanisms underlying confusion of fiction with reality on television

Cultivation studies have found evidence that heavy television viewers adopt a world view congruent with how the world is portrayed in fictional television programs. An explanation is that viewers may remember fictional TV stories as realistic stories or news (fiction-to-news confusion). Until now, fiction-to-news confusion was found only if at least a week evolved between watching TV and asking viewers what was remembered. The present study conducted with a purposive sample of students and employees of a college in The Netherlands (N=96; M age = 28.6 yr., SD = 10.9) indicates that fiction-to-news confusions can also occur almost immediately after watching. In addition, whereas earlier research suggests that fiction-to-news confusions are associated with heavy viewing, i.e., more confusion when more hours per day are spent on TV viewing in leisure time, and faulty memory, the present study more specifically suggests that participants make many fiction-to-news confusions when they are exposed to relatively many fictional TV fragments that contain threatening, violent events.     

The “ABCs” of REBT II: A Preliminary Study of Errors and Confusions Made by REBT Therapists

In this study, 19 REBT therapists from the Albert Ellis Institute??s referral list from a sample of 83 provided a specific ??ABC?? assessment of a problem and its solution that they would teach a class of counselling graduate students. This material was analysed for evidence of errors and confusions with respect to the ??ABCs?? of REBT. A total of 81 of such errors/confusions were found with most being made about beliefs at ??B??, particularly about rational beliefs. A variety of errors and confusions were also made about ??A?? and emotional ??Cs??. It was suggested that one way of addressing this state of affairs would be for the Albert Ellis Institute to introduce a theory test which applicants for Fellowship and Associate Fellowship status would have to pass before being awarded such status. Weaknesses of the current study were noted and suggestions for future research made.     

On the origins of contemporary structural theory: an appreciation of "Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation"

Hartmann's monograph was one of four works which produced a major revision of psychoanalytic theory. Following a brief summary of the monograph, this essay assesses its impact on contemporary psychoanalytic thinking. It considers some confusions about and revisions of Hartmann's ideas and explores terrain first broached in this work which has become very influential but which has not yet been fully exploited. Lastly, this essay will consider Hartmann's hope that psychoanalysis would become a general psychology.     

Death with dignity from the Confucian perspective

Death with dignity is a significant issue in modern bioethics. In modern healthcare, the wide use of new technologies at the end of life has caused heated debate on how to protect human dignity. The key point of contention lies in the different understandings of human dignity and the dignity of death. Human dignity has never been a clear concept in Western ethical explorations, and the dignity of death has given rise to more confusions. Although there is no such term as “dignity” in Confucian ethics, there are discussions of a number of ideas related to human dignity and the dignity of death. Therefore, Confucian bioethics can offer a new perspective for understanding the theoretical difficulties associated with the dignity of death and new methods for solving them. In this article, we attempt to reconstruct Confucian views on human dignity and the dignity of death and, based on those views, to analyze the following issues: the relationship between the dignity of death and biological life, the relationship between the dignity of death and suffering, the relationship between the dignity of death and the autonomy of human beings, and the relationship between the dignity of death and social justice. This article will also compare the Confucian views on these issues with the views of Western philosophers. Confucian ethics can offer distinct answers to the above issues and help resolve some confusions concerning concepts and theories in Western research on the dignity of death.     

Perceiving emotion from a talker: How face and voice work together

The experiment investigated how the addition of emotion information from the voice affects the identification of facial emotion. We presented whole face, upper face, and lower face displays and examined correct recognition rates and patterns of response confusions for auditory-visual (AV), auditory-only (AO), and visual-only (VO) expressive speech. Emotion recognition accuracy was superior for AV compared to unimodal presentation. The pattern of response confusions differed across the unimodal conditions and across display type. For AV presentation, a response confusion only occurred when such a confusion was present in each modality separately, thus response confusions were reduced compared to unimodal presentations. Emotion space (calculated from the confusion data) differed across display types for the VO presentations but was more similar for the AV ones indicating that the addition of the auditory information acted to harmonize the various VO response patterns. These results are discussed with respect to how bimodal emotion recognition combines auditory and visual information.