Can Empathy Promote Cooperation When Status and Money Matter?

Abstract

In the present study we ask, Does empathy also support cooperative behaviors when the status (high, low) of an individual differs relative to other group members and is determined by either chance or effort? In response to this unexplored question, the present study involved a series of 4 experiments using a linear public goods game (Experiment 1–3, 4-player; Experiment 4, 2-player). Regardless of the way in which status was achieved (chance, effort), those with low status cooperated more compared with their high-status counterparts. Empathy in and of itself revealed very small overall increases in cooperative behavior. Overall, status and monetary incentives appear to be more salient than empathy in guiding behaviors in a social dilemma task.     

Can Visual Illusions Be Used to Facilitate Sport Skill Learning?

Recently it has been reported that practicing putting with visual illusions that make the hole appear larger than it actually is leads to longer-lasting performance improvements. Interestingly, from a motor control and learning perspective, it may be possible to actually predict the opposite to occur, as facing a smaller appearing target should enforce performers to be more precise. To test this idea the authors invited participants to practice an aiming task (i.e., a marble-shooting task) with either a visual illusion that made the target appear larger or a visual illusion that made the target appear smaller. They applied a pre–post test design, included a control group training without any illusory effects and increased the amount of practice to 450 trials. In contrast to earlier reports, the results revealed that the group that trained with the visual illusion that made the target look smaller improved performance from pre- to posttest, whereas the group practicing with visual illusions that made the target appear larger did not show any improvements. Notably, also the control group improved from pre- to posttest. The authors conclude that more research is needed to improve our understanding of whether and how visual illusions may be useful training tools for sport skill learning.     

Can We Consider Religiousness as a Protective Factor Against Doping Behavior in Sport?

Religiousness is rarely studied in relation to doping behaviors in sport. In this study, we sampled 27 weightlifting/powerlifting athletes from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using the originally developed questionnaire and by means of Spearman’s correlation, we interpreted data and discussed relationships between (a) social, religious, sport, and educational factors, and (b) substance use criteria, including cigarettes, alcohol, analgesics, nutritional supplementation, and doping behaviors. In conclusion, we found (1) that religiousness can be considered as a potential protective factor against doping, but also (2) that religious subjects tend to deny and underestimate the doping behaviors in their sport. Both of these findings should be extensively studied in future investigations.     

Giving Debiasing Away: Can Psychological Research on Correcting Cognitive Errors Promote Human Welfare?

ABSTRACT— Despite Miller's (1969) now-famous clarion call to "give psychology away" to the general public, scientific psychology has done relatively little to combat festering problems of ideological extremism and both inter- and intragroup conflict. After proposing that ideological extremism is a significant contributor to world conflict and that confirmation bias and several related biases are significant contributors to ideological extremism, we raise a crucial scientific question: Can debiasing the general public against such biases promote human welfare by tempering ideological extremism? We review the knowns and unknowns of debiasing techniques against confirmation bias, examine potential barriers to their real-world efficacy, and delineate future directions for research on debiasing. We argue that research on combating extreme confirmation bias should be among psychological science's most pressing priorities.     

Emotional intelligence or adaptive emotions?

R. D. Roberts, M. Zeidner, and G. Matthews (2001) challenged the adequacy of the psychometric properties of the principal performance measure of emotional intelligence (EI). They raised doubt about the existence of emotion-related abilities that influence behavioral outcomes and social competence after controlling for general intelligence and personality. I agree with Roberts et al. that demonstrating the discriminant and predictive validity of a measure of EI in the context of rival predictors will require more research. I agree with the proponents of EI that emotion-related abilities do exist and show that such abilities in children account for unique variance in measures of adaptive behavior and social competence. However, evidence from developmental and clinical research suggest that these emotion-related abilities and their influence on socioemotional competence stem more from the direct effects of emotions than from a special form of intelligence.     

Growth in Criticism?

Reports of global ecumenical conversations are regularly published by the World Council of Churches in a collection of volumes titled Growth in Agreement. The assumption is that the dialogues are not just repeating the same arguments they made half a century ago, but that relations between member churches have grown qualitatively as a result of this process. This paper asks whether Orthodox critique of Roman Catholic ecclesiology reflects signs of growth or continues “traditional” stereotypical thinking about other churches and religions. The paper first examines Orthodox reactions to Lumen Gentium during and immediately after the Second Vatican Council, then compares them with Orthodox reactions to the council’s 50th anniversary. The paper concludes by asking whether Pope Francis’ endeavour to reform the Catholic Church in the direction of greater synodality is partly the result of the expectations of our sister churches’ representatives over the past 50 years.     

Does Drinking Promote Risky Sexual Behavior?

ABSTRACT— The present review argues that, popular lore notwithstanding, the well-documented association between usual patterns of alcohol use and risky sex reflects multiple underlying processes that are both causal and noncausal (spurious) in nature. It is further argued that even alcohol's acute causal effects on sexual behavior are more variable than they are commonly assumed to be. Drinking can promote, inhibit, or have no effect on behavior, depending on the interplay of factors governing behavior in a particular situation and the content of individually held beliefs about alcohol's effects.     

Does Emotional Arousal Influence Swearing Fluency?

This study assessed the effect of experimentally manipulated emotional arousal on swearing fluency. We hypothesised that swear word generation would be increased with raised emotional arousal. The emotional arousal of 60 participants was manipulated by having them play a first-person shooter video game or, as a control, a golf video game, in a randomised order. A behavioural measure of swearing fluency based on the Controlled Oral Word Association Test was employed. Successful experimental manipulation was indicated by raised State Hostility Questionnaire scores after playing the shooter game. Swearing fluency was significantly greater after playing the shooter game compared with the golf game. Validity of the swearing fluency task was demonstrated via positive correlations with self-reported swearing fluency and daily swearing frequency. In certain instances swearing may represent a form of emotional expression. This finding will inform debates around the acceptability of using taboo language.     

Post-Divorce Maternal Disclosure and the Father–Adolescent Relationship: Adolescent Emotional Autonomy and Inter-Reactivity as Moderators

Utilizing longitudinal data from a project that examined the post-divorce lives of mothers and adolescents, we addressed two questions: (a) Does exposure to negative maternal disclosure about the ex-husband/father impact adolescents’ perceptions of the father-adolescent relationship? and (b) Are adolescents with low emotional autonomy and high emotional inter-reactivity especially vulnerable? Participants were 154 adolescents, who ranged in age from 12 to 18 years at wave two. Although there was no significant bivariate association between maternal negative disclosure about the father and father-adolescent relationship quality, boys’ level of emotional autonomy and emotional inter-reactivity moderated the association between maternal negative disclosure and the father–adolescent relationship. As hypothesized, boys with lower levels of emotional autonomy and higher levels of emotional inter-reactivity vis-à-vis their mothers perceived a lower quality of relationship with their father when their mother frequently disclosed negatively about the ex-husband/father. Research and applied implications are discussed.     

Emotional intelligence: A promise unfulfilled?

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a relatively new construct in differential psychology. Proponents of EI have made strong claims for its importance in basic and applied psychology. This article considers whether the promise of EI has been fulfilled. We examine various fundamental challenges to establishing EI as a major individual differences factor, including cross‐cultural issues. We then examine strategies for assessing EI as a personal quality distinct from general intelligence and personality, and evaluate leading tests and scales for EI. Various sources of validity evidence demonstrate the value of research on EI, but we also identify various weaknesses of existing instruments. It appears that there is no strong, over‐arching general factor of EI that shapes human emotional functioning across a range of diverse contexts. Instead, we advocate a “multipolar” conception of EI that discriminates temperament, information‐processing, emotion‐regulation and acquired skills. Focusing research on more narrowly defined but conceptually coherent research domains may be a more productive strategy than seeking to define an all‐embracing general EI.     

Can Religion Promote Virtue?: A More Stringent Test of the Model of Relational Spirituality and Forgiveness

Rather than simply studying whether religious individuals are more forgiving than nonreligious individuals, recent research has focused on how religion may promote a more fluid and efficient forgiveness process. The present studies sought to strengthen evidence for a model of relational spirituality and forgiveness (Davis, Hook, & Worthington, 2008 Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N. and Worthington, E. 2008. Relational spirituality and forgiveness: The roles of attachment to God, religious coping, and viewing the transgression as a desecration. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 27: 293–301.  [Google Scholar]), given the reliance of prior studies on cross-sectional designs that did not control for hurtfulness of the offense. In Study 1, spiritual appraisals predicted unforgiveness, controlling for hurtfulness and other covariates. Furthermore, using structural equation modeling, empathy was found to partially mediate the relationship between spiritual appraisals and unforgiveness. In Study 2, participants (N = 123) completed a survey weekly for 6 weeks that included measures of relational spirituality and forgiveness. Appraisals of relational spirituality predicted subsequent unforgiveness, as well as the rate of decline in unforgiveness. Thus, using a more stringent test, we found additional evidence for the model.     

Should Religious Naturalists Promote a Naturalistic Religion?

Religious naturalism refers here to a view of reality, and it will be contrasted with versions of supernaturalism and of atheistic naturalism. Naturalistic religion refers to certain varieties of religion, especially some inspired by the universality of science and the need for a global ethics. In this essay I explicate why a religious naturalist need not advocate a naturalistic religion. Rather, a religious naturalist can build upon the heritage of religious traditions and be open to, but at the same time be agnostic about, the idea of a nonnatural ground of reality . The religious naturalism I defend has been criticized from various directions: one reviewer in this journal considered it too much indebted to the traditions, and hence "reactionary" and supernaturalistic; another considered it too minimalist in its religion ("virtually nonexistent") as a consequence of the preference for a too sober version of naturalism. My distinction between religious naturalism and naturalistic religion may answer some of these objections.     

Do Korean Fraction Names Promote Part-Whole Reasoning?

We investigated the effects of transparent fraction names on children's reasoning about fractions. U.S. and Korean first and second graders were tested using verbal and nonverbal measures. On a verbal task, Korean students were worse at interpreting their own conventional fraction names than interpreting modified terms with a more familiar word for parts. This indicates that Korean fraction names may not be as transparent as previously claimed (e.g., Miura et al., 1999 Miura , I. T. , Okamoto , Y. , Vlahovic-Stetic , V. , Kim , C. C. , & Han , J. H. ( 1999 ). Language supports for children's understanding of numerical fractions: Cross-national comparisons . Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 74 , 356 – 365 . [Google Scholar]). On nonverbal tasks, such as matching equivalent pictures of fractions and solving mixed-number problems using objects, students from both nations performed above chance and about equally well. However, U.S. students were more likely than Korean students to misinterpret a sharing task in terms of whole numbers, leading to significantly below-chance performance in the former group.     

Is Emotional Magnitude Spatialized? A Further Investigation

Accumulating evidence suggests that different magnitudes (e.g., number, size, and duration) are spatialized in the mind according to a common left–right metric, consistent with a generalized system for representing magnitude. A previous study conducted by two of us (Holmes & Lourenco, 2011 ) provided evidence that this metric extends to the processing of emotional magnitude, or the intensity of emotion expressed in faces. Recently, however, Pitt and Casasanto ( 2018 ) showed that the earlier effects may have been driven by a left–right mapping of mouth size rather than emotional magnitude, and they found no evidence for an emotional magnitude mapping when using words as stimuli. Here, we report two new experiments that further examine these conclusions. In Experiment 1, using face stimuli with mouths occluded, we replicate the original finding: Less emotional faces were associated with the left and more emotional faces with the right. However, we also find that people can reliably infer the sizes of the occluded mouths, and that these inferred mouth sizes can explain the observed left–right mapping. In Experiment 2, we show that comparative judgments of emotional words yield a left–right mapping of emotional magnitude not attributable to stimulus confounds. Based on these findings, we concur with Pitt and Casasanto that faces pose challenges for isolating the forces driving spatialization, but we suggest that emotional magnitude, when assessed using unconfounded stimuli in a sufficiently sensitive task, may indeed be spatialized as originally proposed. Suggestions for further research on the spatialization of emotional magnitude are discussed.     

Evidence‐Based Practices Reduce Juvenile Recidivism: Can State Government Effectively Promote Implementation Among Probation Departments?

California places tens of thousands of juveniles into its 58 county-based justice systems every year. The offenders do not generally experience reduced rates of recidivism. Evidence-based practices can reliably and significantly reduce these rates. Probation departments have infrequently chosen to implement these practices, in large part because of the training, data collection, and organizational change required. Current state law does not effectively mandate these practices and more importantly fails to recognize and fund the substantial and ongoing training and technical assistance that would be required to implement these practices. State government could best promote evidence-based practices by working collegially with probation departments to obtain and distribute private and public funding to support effective implementation.     

Is Life Skill Development a By-Product of Sport Participation? Perceptions of Youth Sport Coaches

The purpose of this study was to understand youth sport coaches’ perceptions of life skill development. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 youth sport coaches across 5 organizations. Analyses revealed 4 themes based on coaches’ perceptions: (a) life skills are a by-product of sport participation, and transfer “just happens”; (b) if intentionally addressed, it's reactive; (c) coaches recognize the value of intentionally teaching life skills; and (d) coaches identify challenges associated with using an explicit approach to teaching life skills. Results provide evidence for the state of the current sport context and highlight areas for coach education related to life skills integration.     

How Emotional Are Populists Really? Factors Explaining Emotional Appeals in the Communication of Political Parties

Are populists really more emotional than mainstream parties? The alleged link between populism and emotional communication has barely been subject to systematic empirical scrutiny. I use literature on populist communication and appraisal theory to generate expectations about which political parties use which emotional appeals. I test these claims by applying a novel emotional dictionary to a large set of text data including more than 700,000 press releases and tweets from three European countries. As expected, I find that populist parties use significantly more negative emotional appeals (anger, fear, disgust, sadness) and less positive emotional appeals (joy, enthusiasm, pride, hope) than mainstream parties. Furthermore, I find that political actors adapt the usage of emotional appeals to different purposes depending on the communication medium and the politicians' status level. This study entails important implications for the research on emotional appeals in politics and populist communication.     

Can Evil Attract?

It has sometimes been claimed that the perceived badness of an act can in some circumstances, or for some agents, be a reason for performing it. The present paper challenges this claim, arguing that it is hard to make sense of the idea that a negative evaluation of an action can provide an intelligible reason for doing it. Apparent counter-examples are discussed and dismissed and the paper concludes with some general reflections on the relationship between evaluation and motivation.