Beliefs m Realistic and Unrealistic Control: Assessment and Implications

ABSTRACT Scales were constructed to measure perceived control over controllable events (realistic control) and perceived control over uncontrollable events (unrealistic control). Internal reliability, test-retest reliability, and discriminant validity of both scales were adequate. Study 1 measured perceived personal control over hassles that judges rated on general controllability. For hassles very high in controllability, perceived personal control was related to belief in realistic control but not to belief in unrealistic control; for hassles very low in controllability, perceived personal control was related to belief in unrealistic control but not to belief in realistic control. Study 2 showed that participants high in unrealistic control belief (but not those high in realistic control belief) persevered more on a task that was in part uncontrollable. Study 3 showed that the combination of low realistic control belief and high unrealistic control belief predicted poorer future health, particularly for participants who have reported the experience of many negative events and/or hassles. The conditions under which unrealistic control results in maladaptive outcomes are discussed.     

The Power of Pictures: Vertical Picture Angles in Power Pictures

Conventional wisdom suggests that variations in vertical picture angle cause the subject to appear more powerful when depicted from below and less powerful when depicted from above. However, do the media actually use such associations to represent individual differences in power? We argue that the diverse perspectives of evolutionary, social learning, and embodiment theories all suggest that the association between verticality and power is relatively automatic and should, therefore, be visible in the portrayal of powerful and powerless individuals in the media. Four archival studies (with six samples) provide empirical evidence for this hypothesis and indicate that a salience power context reinforces this effect. In addition, two experimental studies confirm these effects for individuals producing media content. We discuss potential implications of this effect.     

Unrealistic optimism and genetic risk

The study examined whether life stress moderated the effects of a physical activity intervention. Women (n = 184) and 154 men (61% non-Hispanic white, average age 24 years) from an urban university participated. Data were analyzed separately for men and women using a 2 × 2 ANCOVA adjusting for baseline physical activity (intervention vs. control × high life stress vs. low stress) with total physical activity at one-year and two-year assessments as dependent variables. No significant main effect for stress or condition was found. The interaction was significant (p = 0.015) for men at one-year, indicating that men in the intervention group with high stress were more active than low stress intervention men. Instruction received in the intervention group on the stress-relieving properties of physical activity may have helped men with high stress to adopt or maintain physical activity.     

Trading on illusions: Unrealistic perceptions of control and trading performance

This paper examines the impact of illusory control beliefs on the performance of traders in financial instruments. The authors argue that the task and environment faced by traders are conducive to the development of illusions of control and that individual propensity to illusion of control will be (inversely) related to trader performance. Using an innovative computer task, designed to assess illusion of control in the field, data from 107 traders in four organizations showed individual differences in this bias to have a significant, inverse, association with performance, as measured by managers' ratings of trader performance and by total remuneration. The authors conclude that, at least in this context, illusion of control is maladaptive and that it is productive to take an individual difference approach to the study of such illusions. Implications for debates about the costs and benefits of positive illusions are discussed.     

Unrealistic optimism and perceived control: role of personal competence

This work analyzed the effects of unrealistic optimism in the interaction between the emotional valence of future events, the perception of control over these events, and the person with whom one compares oneself. It was hypothesized that, if the person of comparison is judged as very competent, a pessimistic bias should be produced. Likelihood of four different types of events (positive and controllable, positive and uncontrollable, negative and controllable, and negative and uncontrollable) were rated by 133 university students (22 men and 111 women) for themselves, for an average student, for their best friend, and for a bright friend. A pessimistic bias was observed on the relative likelihood of the events when the comparison was made between oneself and a competent and bright friend, when events were perceived as controllable, especially positive ones. Not enough is known, however, to provide meaningful interpretation at present; that must await further data and theoretical development.     

Advising and Counseling Students Who Have Unrealistic Academic Objectives

This study explores the motivation of United States and foreign students who have academic or career aspirations that seem beyond their reach and suggests approaches for working with them.     

Frank Ebersole on Wittgenstein and Pictures in Philosophy

How do we get into trouble in philosophy, and what do pictures have to do with it? This article addresses Frank Ebersole's thoughts on (Wittgenstein's remarks on) pictures in philosophy. It identifies the puzzlement generated for Ebersole by what Wittgenstein says and also considers some puzzling aspects of Ebersole's own renderings of pictures. It distinguishes between the philosophical picture and the pictorial form in which it may be crystalized and shows how philosophy's reliance on situationally disembedded grammatical stories (pictorial or not) leads us into trouble. Accordingly, responding to such trouble consists not in recovering the picture, in the sense of a single “object” or image we had before our mind's eye, but in—what is better described as Ebersole's strategy of—supplying a grammatical example (pictorial or otherwise) to go with our thinking, an example that makes what we think and say clear to ourselves.     

一次有关数字脑图的调查记实

本研究是在哲学教学过程中,用心理学方法对学生进行思维训练的意外收获,通过对604名大学一年级学生的问卷调查,发现在三分之二以上人的大脑中,对数字的记忆是有脑图的,没有脑图的人是相同,有脑图的人,其图形多种多样,精彩纷呈。数字在人脑中究竟是怎样存在的？这是从毕达哥拉斯时代就为哲学家关注的课题。本文在调查的基础上得出了几点推论,并就脑图的形成及其对记忆和思维的影响等提出疑问。     

双语和双言对图片命名和分类的不对称影响

采用普通话-英语双语者、粤语-普通话双言者和普通话单言者为被试, 比较他们图片命名与图片分类的成绩。结果表明, 普通话-英语双语者用优势语言命名图片的反应时比普通话单语者显著长, 错误率显著高。在第4次和第5次重复呈现图片时, 普通话-英语双语者与普通话单语者的命名反应差异不显著。普通话-英语双语者与普通话单语者对图片分类的反应差异不显著。这表明, 双语影响图片命名却不影响图片分类。粤语-普通话双言者对图片命名和图片分类的反应模式和普通话-英语双语者一致, 表明粤语-普通话双言和普通话-英语双语有类似的认知机制。普通话和粤语是作为两种语言储存在粤语-普通话双言者的头脑中的。     

The Metaphysics of Meaning: Hopkins on Wittgenstein

Abstract

Jim Hopkins (2012 Hopkins, Jim (2012) ‘Rules, Privacy, and Physicalism’, in Jonathan Ellis and Daniel Guevara (eds) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) defends a ‘straight’ (non-skeptical) response to Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, a response he ascribes to Wittgenstein himself. According to this response, what makes it the case that A means that P is that it is possible for another to (correctly) interpret A as meaning that P. Hopkins thus advances a form of interpretivist judgment-dependence about meaning. I argue that this response, as well as a variant, does not succeed.     

Fearfulness and Affective Evaluations of Pictures

Subjects high and low in temperamental fearfulness made a speeded decision regarding whether each of a series of affective pictures was unpleasant or pleasant. Fearful subjects made faster decisions on unpleasant pictures than did low fear subjects, whereas no difference was found between low and high fear participants when processing pleasant materials. Reaction time differences as a function of fearfulness were amplified when unpleasant pictures were also high in arousal, suggesting that stimulus intensity is a relevant methodological factor when assessing effects of temperament in cognitive processing. Taken together, these data are consistent with the hypothesis that an anxious or fearful temperament is associated with rapid reactions to unpleasant events.     

Pictures of treatment by Gill and Schafer

Roy Schafer and Merton Gill evoke two historically distinguished images of psychoanalytic treatment, one showing analysis elaborating life histories, and the other picturing the analyst as stirring transference embers into flame. A close examination of their implied theories of therapeutic action suggests that they mainly differ on whether allusions to the analyst are often localized in certain gestures or are always uniformly distributed throughout the patient's presentation. Because of this theoretical difference, these authors use different means to invite new experience, and they weigh differently the advantage of having a firm guide to turning-points in behavior against the advantage of maintaining an unconfinable curiosity.     

图形信息在记忆系统中的保持与提取

图形信息的保持与提取是图形信息加工的重要环节。不同记忆系统对图形信息的加工特点存在差异。语义信息必须经过复述才能进入长时记忆系统,图形信息似乎也可以经复述进入长时记忆。相比之下,两者的途径和方式有所不同。影响图形特征提取的因素既有刺激物的外在因素,也包括记忆者的内在因素,如期望、经验和推理等．记忆系统的信息加工特性研究主要以抽象的语义信息加工为主,还应进一步加强图形信息记忆过程的研究。     

Grasping the Nature of Pictures

The role of experience in the development of pictorial competence has been the center of substantial debate. The four studies presented here help resolve the controversy by systematically documenting and examining manual exploration of depicted objects by infants. We report that 9-month-old infants manually investigate pictures, touching and feeling depicted objects as if they were real objects and even trying to pick them up off the page. The same behavior was observed in babies from two extremely different societies (the United States and the Ivory Coast). This investigation of pictures occurs even though infants can discriminate between real objects and their depictions. By the time infants are 19 months of age, their manual exploration is replaced by pointing at depicted objects. These results indicate that initial uncertainty about the nature of pictures leads infants to investigate them. Through experience, infants begin to acquire a concept of "picture." This concept includes the fact that a picture has a dual nature (it is both an object and a representation of something other than itself), as well as knowledge about the culturally appropriate use of pictures.