How do I remember that I know you know that I know?

Communication is aided greatly when speakers and listeners take advantage of mutually shared knowledge (i.e., common ground). How such information is represented in memory is not well known. Using a neuropsychological-psycholinguistic approach to real-time language understanding, we investigated the ability to form and use common ground during conversation in memory-impaired participants with hippocampal amnesia. Analyses of amnesics' eye fixations as they interpreted their partner's utterances about a set of objects demonstrated successful use of common ground when the amnesics had immediate access to common-ground information, but dramatic failures when they did not. These findings indicate a clear role for declarative memory in maintenance of common-ground representations. Even when amnesics were successful, however, the eye movement record revealed subtle deficits in resolving potential ambiguity among competing intended referents; this finding suggests that declarative memory may be critical to more basic aspects of the on-line resolution of linguistic ambiguity.     

I know I can do this,but where's my motivation?

Breadth of scope and inclusion of teachers as co-investigators made the Weinstein et al. intervention unusually powerful and well adapted to its context although its effects are difficult to interpret. Future efforts might build on this model by expanding its purview even further, particularly by including more self-report data, attending to educational aims and curricular content in addition to instructional method, addressing the value aspects as well as the expectancy aspects of motivation, and seeking to develop enduring dispositions of motivation to learn in students and autonomous goal setting in teachers.     

Mourning’s dissonance; who am I who mourns and whom do I mourn?

In this article I explore how a relational psychoanalytic and phenomenological perspective can open out new possibilities for interpretations of experiences of bereavement. I critically discuss Freud’s acclaimed paper, ‘Mourning and melancholia’ in the light of work by philosophers Merleau-Ponty (a phenomenologist) and Judith Butler (a contemporary post-modern feminist philosopher). I reflect on how questions of identity, language, and embodiment, crucial themes in Merleau-Ponty’s and Butler’s theorising of human subjectivities, emerge in two literary/autobiographical accounts of mourning: Nora Webster, by the contemporary Irish writer, Colm Tóibín, and Mourning Diary by the French philosopher, Roland Barthes. Through my discussion of these philosophical and literary texts I argue for a psychoanalytic perspective which is attuned to the conscious and unconscious subtleties and complexities of mourning and engages with the ways in which the identities of the mourner and the mourned and the relations between them are, for the mourner, constantly in flux. I emphasize the importance of attending in the psychoanalytic relationship to the specificity and uniqueness of individuals’ languages of mourning and to the effects on experiences of bereavement of gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and physical ability within particular socio-historical and cultural contexts.     

Who do you think I think I am? Accuracy in perceptions of others’ self-esteem

This study was conducted to assess the accuracy of perceptions of others’ self-esteem and to examine the potential moderating variables of target gender, perceiver gender, and degree of acquaintance. Degree of acquaintance was the only hypothesized moderator reliably related to accuracy. An overall tendency to overestimate targets’ self-esteem was evinced, but was not related to any of the hypothesized moderators. The data suggested that perceivers are influenced by a false consensus effect when estimating others’ level of self-esteem, independent of their degree of acquaintance with targets. Implications of the findings and directions for future investigation are discussed.     

Why do I hate thee? Conflict misperceptions and intergroup mistrust

Members of partisan social groups often exaggerate how much their own opinions differ from those of their rivals. In the present two studies, partisans estimated their own and their rivals' attitudes toward different issues related to the social conflict and also made a variety of evaluative judgments about their own and the rival group. The authors found that (a) partisans perceive more disagreement with their rivals about values that are central to their own sides' ideological position than those that are central to their rivals' position and (b) perceptions of disagreement about the partisans' own central values are what predicts partisans' global evaluations of members of the outgroup (e.g., disliking, trait stereotypes, perceived similarity). Furthermore, partisans believed their adversaries were motivated by an opposition to the partisans' own core values rather than by promotion of the adversaries' core values. Discussion concentrates on the theoretical and applied implications of these findings.     

When do I ponder? The role of elaboration in counterfactual thinking

The counterfactual thought such as “If only I had…” has a powerful impact on people's subsequent behavioral intentions. The literature has documented what may happen with CFT. But little has been done to investigate how CFT produces these effects. In this research, three studies provided evidence to show that elaboration rather than priming is the mechanism for CFT to have an effect on behavioral intentions; and the factors such as argument strength, outcome severity, and goal valence may interfere with such counterfactual effects. These theoretical contributions to the CFT literature offer important managerial implications and help marketers determine optimal persuasion strategies to influence consumers' information processing style.     

What do I think you're doing? Action identification and mind attribution

The authors examined how a perceiver's identification of a target person's actions co-varies with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target's action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3, they were reduced for a target suffering misfortune. In Study 4, it was again found that action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, but like that for the self or a liked other, positive actions were identified at higher levels than negative actions, with the reverse being true for disliked others. In Study 5, the authors found that instructing participants to adopt the target's perspective did not affect mind attribution but did lead to higher level identifications of the target's actions.     

Why did I do that? Explaining actions activated outside of awareness

We review the latest research investigating how people explain their own actions when they have been activated nonconsciously. We will discuss evidence that when nonconsciously activated behavior is unexpected (e.g., norm- violating, against self -standards), negative affect arises and triggers confabulations aimed to explain the behavior. Nonconsciously activated behaviors may provide a window into everyday confabulation of (erroneous) explanations for behavior, which may also affect self-knowledge. Implications for self-concept formation and intentionality are discussed.     

Why do I feel this way? Attributional assessment of happiness and unhappiness

ABSTRACT

Much research has shown that how people explain events affects subjective well-being (SWB), in particular when they explain positive events as being due to internal, stable, and global factors, and negative events as being due to external, unstable, and local factors. In the current research, we asked: how do people explain their SWB itself, and how do such attributions in turn relate to SWB? In repeated measures studies 1 (N = 281) and 2 (N = 169) participants viewed happy feelings as more personally controllable, stable, and internally caused compared to unhappy feelings. In Study 3 (N = 142) participants made causal attributions about accurate SWB feedback, or about randomly assigned false (low or high) SWB feedback. Those in the false low-SWB feedback condition attributed their SWB to external and unstable factors controlled by others compared to those in the high-level feedback condition. In all three studies, attributing SWB to stable, personally controllable factors was positively associated with SWB.     

Why do I study? The moderating effect of attachment style on academic motivation

Past research has shown the importance of considering close others' interests when pursuing goals, but no research has examined potential moderators of this effect. Two studies examined how attachment style moderates the association between reasons for studying and academic outcomes. In Study 1, 119 participants reported their attachment style, the reasons why they study, and their study habits. As predicted, the association between relational reasons and studying was positive for secure individuals and negative for avoidant individuals. In Study 2, 195 participants reported their attachment style and reasons for studying, as well as their GPA and academic well-being. As predicted, the association between relational reasons and GPA was positive for secure individuals, whereas the associations between personal reasons for studying and academic well-being were positive for avoidant individuals. These results indicate the importance of considering individual differences as moderators of the association between goal motives and outcomes.     

I won’t do it! Self-prediction,moral obligation and moral deliberation

This paper considers the question of whether predictions of wrongdoing are relevant to our moral obligations. After giving an analysis of ‘won’t’ claims (i.e., claims that an agent won’t Φ), the question is separated into two different issues: firstly, whether predictions of wrongdoing affect our objective moral obligations, and secondly, whether self-prediction of wrongdoing can be legitimately used in moral deliberation. I argue for an affirmative answer to both questions, although there are conditions that must be met for self-prediction to be appropriate in deliberation. The discussion illuminates an interesting and significant tension between agency and prediction.     

I know how you felt last night,or do I? Self- and external ratings of emotions in REM sleep dreams

We investigated whether inconsistencies in previous studies regarding emotional experiences in dreams derive from whether dream emotions are self-rated or externally evaluated. Seventeen subjects were monitored with polysomnography in the sleep laboratory and awakened from every rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage 5 min after the onset of the stage. Upon awakening, participants gave an oral dream report and rated their dream emotions using the modified Differential Emotions Scale, whereas external judges rated the participants’ emotions expressed in the dream reports, using the same scale. The two approaches produced diverging results. Self-ratings, as compared to external ratings, resulted in greater estimates of (a) emotional dreams; (b) positively valenced dreams; (c) positive and negative emotions per dream; and (d) various discrete emotions represented in dreams. The results suggest that this is mostly due to the underrepresentation of positive emotions in dream reports. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.     

‘I feel sorry for them and I should do something,but I don't.’ Spatial imaginaries and resistance to feminist change in the dramatic arts

This article engages with how emotions play a significant role in keeping, and changing, social structures and cultural beliefs when a heteronormative gender order is problematized. The stage is university level programs in performer training and their work to integrate theoretical knowledge on gender into students' creative and pedagogical practice. The results show that changes in space, new spatial imaginaries, bring about a power disturbance and status relations that require a re-monitoring of who we are in the eyes of others. The article illustrates how fear can reveal where individuals’ and groups interests lie and orient them toward what must be done to preserve or develop these interests in a desirable direction. The reason feelings of fear, anger and shame emerge in reaction to changing power and status relations is that a decline in status and power entails a loss of agency as well as emotional and economic security, and in a deeper sense existential meaning and identity.     

Mind-wandering,how do I measure thee with probes? Let me count the ways

In the past decade, a new field has formed to investigate the concept of mind-wandering, or task-unrelated thought. The state of mind-wandering is typically contrasted with being on-task, or paying attention to the task at hand, and is related to decrements in performance on cognitive tasks. The most widely used method for collecting mind-wandering data—the probe-caught method—involves stopping participants during a task and asking them where their attention is directed. In this review, 145 studies from 105 articles published between 2005 and 2015 were classified according to the framing and wording of the thought probe and response options. Five distinct methodologies were identified: neutral (in which counterbalancing was used to equally emphasize on-task and off-task states), dichotomous (say “yes” or “no” to one thought state), dichotomous (choose between two thought states), categorical, and scale. The review identifies at least 69 different methodological variants, catalogues the verbatim probes and response options used in each study, and suggests important considerations for future empirical work.     

What do you think I think you think?: Strategic reasoning in matrix games

In reasoning about strategic interpersonal situations, such as in playing games, an individual's representation of the situation often includes not only information about the goals and rules of the game, but also a mental model of other minds. Often such mental models involve a hierarchy of reflexive reasoning commonly employed in social situations ("What do you think I think you think..."), and may be related to the developmental notion of 'theory of mind'. In two experiments, the authors formally investigate such interpersonal recursive reasoning in college-age adults within the context of matrix games. Participants are asked to predict the moves of another player (experimenter's confederate) in a two-choice, sequential-move game that may terminate at various stages with different payoffs for each player. Participants are also asked to decide optimally on their own moves based on the prediction made. Errors concerning the prediction, or translation of those predictions into decisions about one's action, were recorded. Results demonstrate the existence of a "default" mental model about the other player in the game context that is dynamically modified as new evidence is accumulated. Predictions about this other player's behavior are, in general, used consistently in decision-making, though the opponent tends to be modeled, by default, to behave in a myopic fashion not anticipating the participant's own action.