An existential function of evil: The effects of religiosity and compromised meaning on belief in magical evil forces

In three studies, we tested the assertion that the need for meaning motivates belief in magical evil forces. Believing that there are magical evil forces at work in the world, though unpleasant, may contribute to perceptions of meaning in life as the existence of such forces supports a broader meaning-providing religious worldview. We assessed religiosity, measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2) perceptions of meaning, and assessed the extent to which participants attributed a murderer’s actions to magical evil causes (e.g., having a dark soul). Low levels of perceived meaning or experimentally threatened meaning were associated with a greater tendency to make magical evil attributions, but only among individuals reporting high levels of religiosity. In Study 3, we assessed religiosity, experimentally threatened perceptions of meaning, and measured general belief in magical evil forces. Meaning threat increased belief in magical evil, but only among those reporting high levels of religiosity.     

The higher they are,the harder they fall: The effects of wrongdoer status on observer punishment recommendations and intentionality attributions

In two studies, we explore whether the status of a wrongdoer affects observers’ attributions for the wrongdoer’s actions and opinions about the wrongdoer’s deserved punishment. We find that observers attribute greater intentionality to the actions of high status wrongdoers than the identical actions of low status wrongdoers, and consequently recommend more severe punishments for the former than the latter. Additionally, we find that the relationship between a wrongdoer’s status and observers’ attributions is driven by observers’ perceptions of the wrongdoer’s underlying social motives: high status wrongdoers are presumed to be more interested in their own welfare (self-concerned), and less interested in the welfare of others (other-concerned), than low status individuals. These findings have implications for the psychology of retributive justice, and suggest that punitive reactions may be influenced as much by characteristics of the criminal as they are by characteristics of the crime.     

The effects of attributions of intent and apology on forgiveness: When saying sorry may not help the story

Despite the oft-cited positive effects of an apology on forgiveness, forgiveness does not always follow. In three studies we tested the ironic notion that, following an interpersonal transgression, an apology following an attribution of intent might further hinder, rather than benefit, the forgiveness process. The findings of three studies were systematically replicated and supported our primary prediction that, following attributions of intent, saying sorry does not always lead to forgiveness. When offenders intentionally committed a transgression, forgiveness was less likely following an apology. However, when offenses were unintentional, forgiveness was more likely following an apology. We also showed that these effects were explained by participants’ impression of the transgressor.     

Foxhole atheism,revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief

Although fear of death features prominently in many historical and contemporary theories as a major motivational factor in religious belief, the empirical evidence available is ambivalent, and limited, we argue, by imprecise measures of belief and insufficient attention to the distinction between implicit and explicit aspects of cognition. The present research used both explicit (questionnaire) and implicit (single-target implicit association test; property verification) measurement techniques to examine how thoughts of death influence, specifically, belief in religious supernatural agents. When primed with death, participants explicitly defended their own religious worldview, such that self-described Christians were more confident that supernatural religious entities exist, while non-religious participants were more confident that they do not. However, when belief was measured implicitly, death priming increased all participants' beliefs in religious supernatural entities, regardless of their prior religious commitments. The results are interpreted in terms of a dual-process model of religious cognition, which can be used to resolve conflicting prior data, as well as to help explain the perplexing durability of religious belief.     

道德与关系惩罚对初中生公共物品困境中合作行为的影响

本研究模拟公共物品两难困境范式,以初中生为被试,通过两个实验分别考察道德惩罚和关系惩罚对不同性别和社会价值取向个体合作行为的影响。结果发现:(1)两种惩罚条件下初中生的合作水平均显著高于无惩罚条件,但当惩罚撤除后只有关系惩罚条件下的效应还存在;(2)初中女生在两种惩罚条件下的合作水平均显著高于无惩罚条件,而男生只在关系惩罚条件下出现该情况;(3)亲社会取向与亲自我取向初中生在两种惩罚阶段均表现出更高的合作水平,但在惩罚撤除后,只有亲社会取向者保持了高合作水平。这些结果表明,关系惩罚的作用较为持久,且对男生的影响更为突出,不过两种惩罚在亲社会取向者身上均显现出延后效应。     

The big, the bad, and the boozed-up: Weight moderates the effect of alcohol on aggression

Most people avoid the “big, drunk guy” in bars because they do not want to get assaulted. Is this stereotype supported by empirical evidence? Unfortunately, no scientific work has investigated this topic. Based on the recalibrational theory of anger and embodied cognition theory, we predicted that heavier men would behave the most aggressively when intoxicated. In two independent experiments (Ns = 553 and 327, respectively), participants consumed either alcohol or placebo beverages and then completed an aggression task in which they could administer painful electric shocks to a fictitious opponent. Both experiments showed that weight interacted with alcohol and gender to predict the highest amount of aggression among intoxicated heavy men. The results suggest that an embodied cognition approach is useful in understanding intoxicated aggression. Apparently there is a kernel of truth in the stereotype of the “big, drunk, aggressive guy.”     

The effect of the amount of blood in a violent video game on aggression, hostility, and arousal

The current study utilized the General Aggression Model, with an emphasis on aggression-related priming, to explore the different effects on hostility, physiological arousal, and state aggression in those who played a violent video game (Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance) with differing levels of blood (maximum, medium, low, and off). Simple effects analyses showed that those in the maximum blood and medium blood conditions had a significant increase in hostility and physiological arousal, while those in the low blood and no blood conditions did not have such an increase in arousal and hostility. Further analyses indicated that those in the maximum and medium blood conditions used the character’s weapon significantly more often than those in the low and blood absent conditions. Implications and future research are discussed.     

The effect of auditory versus visual violent media exposure on aggressive behaviour: The role of song lyrics, video clips and musical tone

Five decades of research have shown clear links between exposure to violent visual media and subsequent aggression, however there has been little research that directly compares the effects of exposure to violent visual versus auditory media, or which has experimentally tested the effect of violent song lyrics with musical ‘tone’ held constant. In the current study 194 participants heard music either with or without lyrics, and with or without a violent music video, and were then given the chance to aggress using the hot sauce paradigm. Musical tone was held constant across groups, and a fifth (control) group had no media exposure at all. Experimental groups, on average, were significantly more aggressive than controls. The strongest effect was elicited by exposure to violent lyrics, regardless of whether violent imagery accompanied the music, and regardless of various person-based characteristics. Implications for theories of media violence and models of aggression are discussed.     

Reaching for Virtue, Stumbling on Sin: Concepts of Good and Evil in a Postmodern Era

Although our culture struggles to understand the origins and nature of good and evil behavior, the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis contribute to the discourse primarily indirectly. By examining early Judaism and Christianity, the authors seek to clarify the foundation of contemporary understanding of good and evil in Western society. Looking through the multiple filters of religion, philosophy, psychoanalysis and psychology, groundwork is laid for definitions of good and evil, which can be understood subjectively and measured objectively. As we investigate morality, will, and choice in the varied ologies and across time, we note how much emotion and volition are secondary in modern thinking about evil. Moreover, the place of will as a positive force in development is largely ignored, except by prescient thinkers like Otto Rank. To grasp evil's nature we need to integrate past with present, contrast conscious to unconscious desires, and allow that being bad is not necessarily unnatural or pathological, but can be a transitional stage in the growth of one's conscience.     

The relative law of effect: effects of shock intensity on response strength in multiple schedules

Key pecking of four birds was reinforced with food according to a two-component multiple variable-interval 1-minute variable-interval 4-minute schedule. In addition, key pecking was punished by a brief shock according to a variable-interval 30-second schedule during both components of the multiple schedule. The intensity of the shock was varied. For all birds, punishment had a stronger suppressive effect on the responding maintained by the leaner food schedule, and the ratio of responding during the two components of the multiple schedule became closer to the ratio of reinforcement as shock intensity was increased, as the relative law of effect predicts. At the higher shock intensity, there was some evidence that the ratio of responses overmatched the ratio of reinforcements.     

Media violence and the self: The impact of personalized gaming characters in aggressive video games on aggressive behavior

A recent development in video games is that players can design and personalize their own in-game characters. It was predicted that this innovation could lead to elevations in the intensity of the psychological effects of video games. The present study confirmed this hypothesis, revealing that participants who played an aggressive video game using their own, personalized character exhibited higher levels of aggressive behavior than participants who played an aggressive game with a non-personalized character. The aggressive behavior levels of the own-character players also exceeded those of individuals who played a non-aggressive game, regardless of whether or not they used a personalized character. Process analyses revealed that participants playing a violent video game with a personalized game character experienced more arousal and self-activation than they did when playing with an impersonal, default game character, which in turn increased aggressive responses.     

The interaction between impulsivity and neighborhood context on offending: the effects of impulsivity are stronger in poorer neighborhoods

This research blends 2 traditions of theorizing on the causes of crime, one focused on the role of individual differences and the other focused on structural and contextual variables. Two related studies examined the relations among impulsivity, neighborhood context, and juvenile offending. The first, cross-sectional study uses a large sample of 13-year-old inner-city boys, whereas the second, longitudinal study offers a conceptual replication using 17-year-old inner-city boys who are a subset of the original sample. Across both studies, results indicate that the effects of impulsivity on juvenile offending are stronger in poorer neighborhoods. Furthermore, nonimpulsive boys in poor neighborhoods were at no greater risk for delinquency than nonimpulsive boys in better-off neighborhoods.     

The Catholic Church,moral doctrine,and HIV prevention in Recife,Brazil: Negotiating the contradictions between religious belief and the realities of everyday life

Religious beliefs have had a key role in shaping local responses to HIV and AIDS. As the world's largest Catholic country, Brazil is no exception. Yet little research has been conducted to document how religious doctrine is enacted in practice among its lay leaders and followers. In this article, we present ethnographic research from Recife, Brazil, conducted to understand the way in which religious doctrines are interpreted at a local level. Contextualised within the sociology of contemporary Brazilian Catholicism, we draw on interviews with clergy members, lay leaders, and parishioners to discuss how the Catholic Church's vision of sexuality translates into everyday lives of its followers. We explore the disjuncture between the Catholic ideals of fidelity and delaying sex until marriage with the everyday reality of the Church's followers, highlighting the role that gender plays in defining sexual roles and expectations. We conclude by posing questions for future research and HIV prevention strategies considering the formal institutional response of the Brazilian Catholic Church to AIDS on the one hand, and the social and cultural contexts in which Catholics live their daily lives on the other.     

Forgetting in context: The effects of age, emotion, and social factors on retrieval-induced forgetting

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the finding that selectively retrieving some information impairs subsequent memory for related but nonretrieved information. This occurs both for the individual doing the remembering (i.e., within-individual retrieval-induced forgetting: WI-RIF), as well as for individuals merely listening to those recollections (i.e., socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting: SS-RIF). In the present study, we examined how the contextual factors of age and emotion independently and interactively affect both WI-RIF and SS-RIF. The results indicated that both WI-RIF and SS-RIF occurred at equivalent levels, both for younger and older adults and for neutral and emotional information. However, we identified a boundary condition to this effect: People only exhibited SS-RIF when the speaker that they were listening to was of the same sex as themselves. Given that participants reported feeling closer to same-sex speakers, this suggests that people co-retrieve more, and therefore exhibit increased SS-RIF, with close others. In everyday life, these RIF effects should influence what information is remembered versus forgotten in individual and collective memories.     

The effects of distraction on performance in the chronically obese: Restraint, obesity, and neuroticism

The present study was conducted in order to assess the effect of distraction on the proof-reading performance of obese restrained and unrestrained eaters. Chronically obese subjects were categorized as restrained or unrestrained and assigned to conditions of distraction and no distraction. Results support the notion that restrained vs unrestrained eaters in the obese class differentially respond to external cues in their non-eating behavior. The pattern of the interaction suggested that distraction facilitates the performance of unrestrained eaters and inhibits the performance of restrained eaters. These results support previous research findings that some characteristics of the obese may be due to the over-representation of restrained eaters in that class. Also, neuroticism was found to be correlated with restraint. Additional analyses indicated that neuroticism moderated the restraint x distraction interaction. The relationship between neuroticism and restraint as well as the therapeutic implications of the study are discussed.     

Effects of in-group and out-group support on behavioral consistency: The majority and minority in the context of an intergroup belief cross

Abstract:   The present study investigated the social determinants required to stimulate consistency in minority members' attitudes and behavior. The experiment was designed to examine the consistency of individuals in the context of an intergroup belief cross wherein the majority belief (or minority) in a categorical in-group shifted to the minority (or majority) in the out-group. The results indicated that the members of a majority within an in-group consistently preserved their behavioral intentions and beliefs even though they were positioned as a minority within an out-group. That is, the minority members in the whole intergroup context maintained consistency diachronically as a result of support from the majority of their in-group. The theoretical implications on the consistency of minority members, such as whistle-blowers in companies, are discussed.     

The effects of instructions, incentive, and feedback on a community problem: dormitory noise

A reinforcement system utilizing instructions, modelling, feedback, and group reinforcement was employed in an attempt to reduce disruptive noise on three university residence halls. A fourth hall received the same treatment program without the reinforcement component. Noise scores were determined by recording the number of discrete noise occurrences over a criterion decibel level. On all four residential floors, noise scores during treatment conditions were lower than initial and final baseline levels. Additionally, periods of noise reduction corresponded to the changing criterion multiple-baseline and reversal designs utilized. Pre- and posttreatment questionnaire responses from the three reinforcement floors paralleled changes in objective noise data. At posttreatment, residents reported less noise disturbance of study and sleep and more control over the noise situation and floor problems in general. These results indicated that a comprehensive behavior-modification treatment package was effective in reducing disruptive noise in university residence halls. Difficulties in data collection and anomalies in the data are discussed. Future directions for field-based behavior-modification research are outlined.     

The effects of cystic fibrosis on couples: marital satisfaction, emotions, and coping strategies

An earlier diagnosis and better overall multidisciplinary care enable people suffering from Cystic Fibrosis (CF) to have a life expectancy of 40. Consequently, new populations and questions about the development of the life of couples have arisen. This study by questionnaires takes a first look at marital adjustment, anxiety, depression, and emotion focused, social support focused, and problem focused coping strategies in 16 CF patients and their partners. As a whole, the couples' marital adjustment level was good; it was higher for men who were patients than men who were partners, and vice versa for women. Anxiety was high for at least one partner in 10 of the couples; depression, for at least one partner in seven of them. The participants seem to use coping strategies to a lesser extent than the general population. The results are discussed in terms of how the quality of life as a couple with one partner suffering from CF is affected by the proper mutual adjustment of the partners.