How something can be said about telling more than we can know: on choice blindness and introspection

The legacy of Nisbett and Wilson’s classic article, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes (1977), is mixed. It is perhaps the most cited article in the recent history of consciousness studies, yet no empirical research program currently exists that continues the work presented in the article. To remedy this, we have introduced an experimental paradigm we call choice blindness [Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., &; Olsson, A. (2005). Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310(5745), 116–119.]. In the choice blindness paradigm participants fail to notice mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they are presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. In this article, we use word-frequency and latent semantic analysis (LSA) to investigate a corpus of introspective reports collected within the choice blindness paradigm. We contrast the introspective reasons given in non-manipulated vs. manipulated trials, but find very few differences between these two groups of reports.     

‘Unconscious transference’ can be an instance of ‘change blindness’

Three experiments investigated the role of ‘change blindness’ in mistaken eyewitness identifications of innocent bystanders to a simulated crime. Two innocent people appeared briefly in a filmed scene in a supermarket. The ‘continuous innocent’ (CI) walked down the liquor aisle and passed behind a stack of boxes, whereupon the perpetrator emerged and stole a bottle of liquor, thereby resulting in an action sequence promoting the illusion of continuity between perpetrator and innocent. The ‘discontinuous innocent’ (DI) was shown immediately afterward in the produce aisle. Results revealed that: (1) more than half of participants failed to notice the change between the CI and the perpetrator, (2) among those who failed to notice the change, more misidentified the ‘CI’ than the ‘DI’, a pattern that did not hold for those who did notice the change. Participants were less likely to notice the change when they were distracted while watching the video. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘I bet you know more and are nicer too!’: what children infer from others’ accuracy

Research has shown that preschoolers monitor others’ prior accuracy and prefer to learn from individuals who have the best track record. We investigated the scope of preschoolers’ attributions based on an individual’s prior accuracy. Experiment 1 revealed that 5‐year‐olds (but not 4‐year‐olds) used an individual’s prior accuracy at labelling to predict her knowledge of words and broader facts; they also showed a ‘halo effect’ predicting she would be more prosocial. Experiment 2 confirmed that, overall, 4‐year‐olds did not make explicit generalizations of knowledge. These findings suggest that an individual’s prior accuracy influences older preschoolers’ expectations of that individual’s broader knowledge as well as their impressions of how she will behave in social interactions.     

On the Motivational Primacy of the Individual Self: ‘I’ Is Stronger than ‘We’

The self‐concept is dynamic, with momentary definition shifting from a representation of self as a unique and independent social agent to an undifferentiated and interchangeable group member. Indeed, the individual self and collective self are fundamental components of the self‐concept, with each being important and meaningful to human experience. However, are those selves equally important and meaningful? We review a program of research empirically testing three competing hypotheses that suggests that the motivational core of human experience is (a) the individual self, (b) the collective self, or (c) determined by contextual factors that make a given self momentarily accessible. The research furnished unanimous and consistent evidence that the individual self is the motivationally primary form of self‐definition.     

More than a matter of getting ‘unstuck’: flexible thinkers use more abstract representations than perseverators

Why do people perseverate, repeating prior behaviours that are no longer appropriate? Many accounts point to isolated deficits in processes such as inhibition or attention. We instead posit a fundamental difference in rule representations: flexible switchers use active representations that rely on later‐developing prefrontal cortical areas and are more abstract, whereas perseverators use latent representations that rely on earlier‐developing posterior cortical and subcortical areas and are more stimulus‐specific. Thus, although switchers and perseverators should apply the rules they use to familiar stimuli equally reliably, perseverators should show unique limitations in generalizing their rules to novel stimuli, a process that requires abstract representations. Two behavioural experiments confirmed this counterintuitive prediction early in development. Three‐year‐old children sorted cards by one rule, were asked to switch to another rule, and then were asked simply to continue their behaviour, with novel cards. Perseverators applied the rule they were using (the first rule) just as reliably as switchers applied the rule they were using (the second rule) with familiar cards; however, only switchers generalized their rule to novel cards. This finding supports an early link between active representations that support switching and abstract representations that support generalization. We interpret this synergy in terms of prefrontal cortical development.     

Pentheus rather than Oedipus: On perversion,survival and analytic ‘presencing’1

Following an introductory review of the main developments in the psychoanalytic thinking on perversion, the author focuses on her own understanding of perversion and its treatment, based on the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with severe sexual perversions. This paper uses the term ‘autotomy’ (borrowed from the fi eld of biology) to describe perversion formation as an ‘autotomous’ defence solution involving massive dissociative splitting in the service of psychic survival within a violent, traumatic early childhood situation; thus, a compulsively enacted ‘desire for ritualised trauma’ ensues. The specifi c nature of the perverse scenario embodies the specifi c experiential core quality of the traumatic situation. It is an actual repetition in the present of the imprint of a past destructive experience which is pre‐arranged and stage‐managed; it thus encounters haunting scenes of dread or psychic annihilation while, at the same time, controlling, sanitising and disavowing them. Hence, the world of severe perversion is no longer oedipal, but rather the world of Pentheus, Euripides's most tragic hero‐a world dominated by a mixture of a mother's madness, devourment, destruction and rituals of desire. According to this view, the (diffi cult) psychoanalytic treatment of perversion focuses on patient‐analyst interconnectedness‐brought about by the analyst's ‘givenness to being present’ or ‘presencing’‐at a deep, primary level of contact and impact (the emphasis being on the ontological dimension of experience). This evolving therapeutic entity creates and actualises a new, alternative experiential‐emotional reality within the pervert's alienated world, eventually generating a change in the perverse essence. The author illustrate this approach with three clinical vignettes.     

‘It's not that we hate you’: Understanding children's gender attitudes and expectancies about peer relationships

Widespread gender segregation, evident throughout elementary school, seems to imply that girls and boys have negative feelings and thoughts about one another, and classic theories of inter‐group processes support this idea. However, research has generally overlooked children's feelings and perceptions about gender‐related interpersonal interactions. This paper investigates the nature of children's attitudes about same‐ and other‐gender peers, and explores how those attitudes relate to the expectancies and beliefs children hold about same‐ and other‐gender peer interactions. Children (N= 98 fifth graders) completed questionnaires assessing their global liking of own‐ and other‐gender peers ( Yee & Brown, 1994 ), positive and negative attitudes about own‐ and other‐gender peers, and outcome expectancies related to interacting with own‐ and other‐gender peers. Results indicated that rather than being characterized by out‐group negativity, children's inter‐group gender attitudes are best characterized by an in‐group positivity bias. Children's positive and negative affective attitudes were also significantly associated with outcome expectancies. In contrast, global liking of own‐ and other‐gender peers was less predictive of outcome expectancies. Thus, the greater specificity of the affective attitude measures appeared to be a more predictive and potentially fruitful gauge of children's feelings about own‐ and other‐gender peers. Results are discussed in terms of the need for finer grained and more extensive studies of children's gender‐related feelings and cognitions about own‐ and other‐gender peers.     

Peter Winch on ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘Socratic’ Reasoning

Peter Winch often returned to questions about the nature of logic. In the context of his work on Wittgenstein and political philosophy in the 1990s, Winch described a contrast between ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘Socratic’ reasoning. Aristotelian conceptions of reasoning, attributed to Frege and Russell, would see logic as a formal science and rationality as consistency with pre‐existent rules of inference. The Socratic conception, attributed to Wittgenstein, understands rational argument as a form of socially embedded dialogue that involves moral relationships and a dimension of depth. Rational persuasion may also involve use of persuasive images and examples.     

Monsters,dreams and madness: Commentary on ‘The arms of the chimeras’

Considering Freudian and Post‐Freudian approaches to the intersubjective Beatrice Ithier puts the work of Michel de M'Uzan and Thomas Ogden in comparison. To this comparison I add a consideration of the work of Christopher Bollas. The highly creative clinical approaches these three theorists take is shown to be informed by their elaborations of the Freudian notion of unconscious communication and by new approaches to the issue of identity. Attention is paid to differentiating traumatic from fanciful chimeras; and to the experience of the analyst undergoing the sorts of transformations requisite to entering this psychic space marked by fluid exchanges of being and becoming, wherein analyst becomes patient, new subjects are created through shared dreams, and through which monsters appear.     

‘Of the group’ and ‘for the group’: How followership is shaped by leaders' prototypicality and group identification

Previous research has focused on the importance of leaders being seen to be of the group (i.e. to be prototypical of a group) but less on the impact of leaders' own degree of identification with the group. Also, little is known about the combined impact of leader prototypicality and leader identification on followers' responses. This paper reports two studies that address these lacunae. Study 1 shows experimentally that perceived leader identification and prototypicality interact to determine followers' personal identification with leaders and their perceptions of leader charisma. Findings indicate that high identification can compensate for low prototypicality such that high‐identified leaders are able to inspire followership when leaders are low prototypical. Study 2 replicates these findings in the field by examining followers' responses to workgroup leaders. In addition, results demonstrate that the aforementioned responses are more pronounced for highly identified followers. The present research extends social identity theorizing by demonstrating that leaders' inability to inspire followership derives as much from their failure to project a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ as part of their self‐concept as from a failure to exemplify group‐typical attributes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positioning a ‘mature’ self in interactive practices: How adolescent males negotiate ‘physical attraction’ in group talk

This article presents a discursive psychological approach in examining the ways that adolescent boys (ages 12–15 years) accomplish a sense of ‘maturity’ by bringing off and managing certain features of ‘heterosexuality’ in group interaction. We focus on and analyse moments when the boys negotiate implicit challenges, make evaluations and offer assessments concerning their physical and sexual attraction to girls' looks. These moments are highly important for negotiating their peer status, for working toward a distinction between ‘childhood’ and ‘adolescence’, and for marking a normatively heterosexual self within the burgeoning institution of adolescence. We will specifically show how ‘heterosexual desire’ is carefully managed in group discussions where the boys participate in normative heterosexuality, but in ways that are nevertheless designed to appear mature and knowing, rather than shallow, naïve or sexist. Three discursive methods of negotiation are identified and described in detail: (1) underscoring the non‐literality of actions by appealing to motives, (2) denials with built‐in concessions, and (3) differentiation through caricature. Couched within the proposed discursive framework, we are reversing the traditional logic of developmental approaches to ‘maturation’. Rather than viewing maturation as the effect of resolving developmental tasks, we argue that ‘maturity’ comes to existence in the way talk is accomplished; that is, as highly flexible and fragile projections of identity that involve a continuous refinement of ‘finely tuned positioning skills'.