Trait emotional intelligence profiles of students from different university faculties

This study investigated the trait emotional intelligence (trait EI or trait emotional self‐efficacy) profiles of 512 students from five university faculties: technical studies, natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, it was hypothesised that (a) social sciences would score higher than technical studies in Emotionality, (b) arts would score higher than technical studies in Emotionality, (c) arts would score lower than technical studies in Self‐control, and (d) there would be an interaction between gender and faculty, whereby female students would score higher than male students within the social sciences only. Several other exploratory comparisons were also performed. Results supported hypotheses (a), (b), and (d), but not hypothesis (c), although the differences were in the predicted direction.     

The Sources and Resources of Our Indigenous Theology

In this article I describe the sources of my indigenous theology out of my own experiences, my worldview, and as a woman. In the first part, I mention our struggles of resistance as the source from which we draw our strength and hopes to resist oppression and dream of a different society, as our ancestors dreamed and acted. I then speak of our living for the day as an act of ideological resistance. It is possible that many readers do not yet understand it, but this involves a worldview different from that of Western capitalism. Some communities in the Amazon still practise this other worldview and take it as their guide. They live day by day, concerned not for the morrow but for the present day; they attempt to live a life of quality, justice and honesty, as if it were the last day of their lives. The source from which our theological enterprise springs is also our wise men and women, who still survive in our communities. They are the guardians of our ancestral wisdom on life, the cosmos and our relations with the created world and its creatures. Moreover, our lifestyle is based on caring for and protecting Pachamama as one of the joint creators with God, who offers us life and enables us to live in the world as brothers and sisters, because we come into being in Pachamama and return to her.     

Sustained vs. transient cognitive control: Evidence of a behavioral dissociation

This study assessed whether two well known effects associated with cognitive control, conflict adaptation (the Gratton effect) and conflict context (proportion congruent effects), reflect a single common or separate control systems. To test this we examined if these two effects generalized from one kind of conflict to another by using a combined-conflict paradigm (involving the Simon and Spatial Stroop tasks) and manipulating the proportion of congruent to incongruent trials for one conflict (Simon) but not the other (Spatial Stroop). We found that conflict adaptation effects did not generalize, but the effect of conflict context did. This contrasting pattern of results strongly suggests the existence of two separate attentional control systems, one transient and responsible of online regulation of performance (conflict adaptation), the other sustained and responsible for conflict context effects.     

Lists of Spanish sentences with equivalent predictability, phonetic content, length, and frequency of the last word

This paper presents a pool of Spanish sentences designed for use in cognitive research and speech processing in circumstances in which the effects of context are relevant. These lists of sentences are divided into six lists of 25 equivalent high-predictability sentences and six lists of 25 low-predictability sentences according to the extent to which the last word can be predicted by the preceding context. These lists were also equivalent in phonetic content, length and frequency of the last word. These lists are intended for use in psycholinguistic research with Spanish-speaking listeners.     

Rearing practices and impulsivity/hyperactivity symptoms in relation to inflated responsibility and obsessive‐compulsive symptoms

Smári, J., Rúrik Martinsson, D., & Einarsson, H. (2010). Rearing practices and impulsivity/hyperactivity symptoms in relation to inflated responsibility and obsessive‐compulsive symptoms. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 392–397. The aim of the study was to investigate potential precursors of inflated responsibility (responsibility attitudes) and obsessive‐compulsive (OCD) symptoms. It was argued that both parental overprotection and impulsivity, separately and in interaction with each other, contribute to inflated responsibility and OCD symptoms. In a large sample of young adults (N = 570), self‐report measures of OCD symptoms (OCI‐R), responsibility attitudes (RAS), anxiety/depression (HADS), rearing practices (EMBU), present and past impulsivity/hyperactivity symptoms (IMP/HY) were administered. Overprotection as well as IMP/HY were found to predict OCD symptoms as well as inflated responsibility. Finally, a significant interaction was found between IMP/HY and overprotection with regard to both OCD symptoms and inflated responsibility. This effect reflected that IMP/HY was more strongly related to OCD symptoms and responsibility in people who had not been overprotected than in people who had been. Conversely overprotection was related to OCD symptoms and responsibility in people low but not in people high in IMP/HY. The results seem to indicate that the inadequacy between offer and need for parental control may play a role in the development of OCD symptoms.     

Emotion Education without Ontological Commitment?

Emotion education is enjoying new-found popularity. This paper explores the ‘cosy consensus’ that seems to have developed in education circles, according to which approaches to emotion education are immune from metaethical considerations such as contrasting rationalist and sentimentalist views about the moral ontology of emotions. I spell out five common assumptions of recent approaches to emotion education and explore their potential compatibility with four paradigmatic moral ontologies. I argue that three of these ontologies fail to harmonise with the common assumptions. Either those three must therefore be rejected or, if we want to retain one or more of them (for instance, Jesse Prinz’s recent rebranding of hard sentimentalism that I explore in detail), we need to revise our assumptions about the practice of emotion education in ways that are both radical and, I argue, ultimately unacceptable.     

Han Fei's Enlightened Ruler

In this essay I will revise, based on the notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’ or mingzhu and his critique of the literati of his time, the common belief that Han Fei was an amoralist and an advocate of tyranny. Instead, I will argue that his writings are dedicated to advising those who ought to rule in order to achieve the goal of a peaceful and stable society framed by laws in accordance with the dao.     

Training to Generate Creative Metaphors by Reviving Dormant Analogies

Most creativity techniques encourage breaking away from stored knowledge and known solutions. Counter to this approach, this study assessed the effectiveness of an intervention based on introducing minimal variations to well-established knowledge structures. Two groups were tasked with generating creative metaphorical titles for short essays. While the experimental group had been trained in extending and reinstantiating conceptual metaphors, the control group had been trained on creativity techniques unrelated to the task. Training increased the number of novel metaphorical titles derived from conceptual metaphors, and these titles were more creative than novel metaphorical titles not derived from conceptual metaphors. Finally, the titles generated via the deliberate use of the trained heuristics were as creative as those of the same type that were spontaneously produced by the control group. The implications for interventions to promote creativity are discussed.     

Contribution to the Discussion on the Analytic Frame

Our conception of the analytic frame or setting has changed over the years, partly as a necessary response to the changes in the pace and conditions of modern life, but also as a consequence of our deeper understanding of the analytic relationship and the patients' emotional needs. The shape taken by the setting at any moment of the treatment is a co-construction—partly conscious and partly unconscious—of the pair. However, the manifest setting, its impact on the parties, and its unconscious meanings are also something to be explicitly analyzed during the analytic dialogue. I present a brief clinical vignette of an analysis in which the changes in the setting, determined by external factors, later revealed their unconscious relational meaning. The various stages of this treatment were (a) a standard four-sessions-a-week analysis on the couch, (b) a condensed analysis with two double-sessions held once a week on a same day, and (c) a telephonic analysis interparsed with some occasional presential sessions. I discuss the tranference–countertransference implications of this evolution.