Memory for conversation and the development of common ground

Efficient conversation is guided by the mutual knowledge, or common ground, that interlocutors form as a conversation progresses. Characterized from the perspective of commonly used measures of memory, efficient conversation should be closely associated with item memory—what was said—and context memory—who said what to whom. However, few studies have explicitly probed memory to evaluate what type of information is maintained following a communicative exchange. The current study examined how item and context memory relate to the development of common ground over the course of a conversation, and how these forms of memory vary as a function of one’s role in a conversation as speaker or listener. The process of developing common ground was positively related to both item and context memory. In addition, content that was spoken was remembered better than content that was heard. Our findings illustrate how memory assessments can complement language measures by revealing the impact that basic conversational processes have on memory for what has been discussed. By taking this approach, we show that not only does the process of forming common ground facilitate communication in the present, but it also promotes an enduring record of that event, facilitating conversation into the future.     

“One Nation Under God”: The System‐Justifying Function of Symbolically Aligning God and Government

Do references to God in political discourse increase confidence in the U.S. sociopolitical system? Using a system justification framework (Jost & Banaji, 1994 ), five studies provide evidence that, (1) increasingly governments symbolically associate the nation with God when public confidence in the social system may be threatened and (2) associating the nation with God serves a system‐justifying function by increasing public confidence in the system. In an analysis of U.S. presidential speeches, presidents were more likely to symbolically associate the nation with God during threatening times (Study 1). Among religious individuals, referencing God in political rhetoric increased the perceived trustworthiness of politicians, compared to patriotic secular rhetoric (Study 2) or simply priming the concept of God (Study 3). These effects were also unique to politicians from one's own sociopolitical system (Study 4). Finally, believing God has a plan for the United States attenuates the deleterious effect that perceptions of national decline have on system confidence (Study 5). Implications for the system‐justifying function of religion are discussed.     

Tracking Fluctuations in Psychological States Using Social Media Language: A Case Study of Weekly Emotion

Personality psychologists are increasingly documenting dynamic, within-person processes. Big data methodologies can augment this endeavour by allowing for the collection of naturalistic and personality-relevant digital traces from online environments. Whereas big data methods have primarily been used to catalogue static personality dimensions, here we present a case study in how they can be used to track dynamic fluctuations in psychological states. We apply a text-based, machine learning prediction model to Facebook status updates to compute weekly trajectories of emotional valence and arousal. We train this model on 2895 human-annotated Facebook statuses and apply the resulting model to 303 575 Facebook statuses posted by 640 US Facebook users who had previously self-reported their Big Five traits, yielding an average of 28 weekly estimates per user. We examine the correlations between model-predicted emotion and self-reported personality, providing a test of the robustness of these links when using weekly aggregated data, rather than momentary data as in prior work. We further present dynamic visualizations of weekly valence and arousal for every user, while making the final data set of 17 937 weeks openly available. We discuss the strengths and drawbacks of this method in the context of personality psychology's evolution into a dynamic science. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Externalizing pathology and the five-factor model: a meta-analysis of personality traits associated with antisocial personality disorder, substance use disorder, and their co-occurrence

In this meta-analysis we examined Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM) characteristics of externalizing disorders. Two pathologies, Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) and Substance Use Disorder (SUD), have significant levels of co-occurrence that may be due to shared personality traits. Results from 63 samples (N = 15,331) were analyzed in order to summarize and compare five-factor results for APD, SUD, and co-occurring APD/SUD. Shared and unique personality features were identified at both the domain and the facet level of the FFM. Moderation analyses indicated that sample source (clinical versus community) and diagnosis (psychopathy versus DSM-based APD) accounted for some of the variability at the domain level. Results are discussed with respect to personality and externalizing disorders.     

The situated person: Effects of construct accessibility on situation construals and interpersonal perception

Three studies examined the interrelationship between primed constructs, situation construal, and person perception. Previous research on priming and person perception has generally neglected the situational context. We predicted that when rich situational information is included, primed constructs can lead to assimilation effects on situation construals, which can in turn lead to contrast effects in person perceptions. Study 1 demonstrated that when situation information is included in the experimental context, primes lead to contrast in person perceptions. Study 2, employing a subliminal methodology, demonstrated that these effects could not be accounted for via previous explanations of contrast effects, such as correction-based mechanisms, that require overt recognition of the priming stimuli by the participants. Study 3 demonstrated that the contrastive effects of the priming stimuli on person perception obtained in Studies 1 and 2 are in fact due to the intervening assimilative effects of the priming stimuli on situation construal—that is, the primed constructs led to contrast effects on perceptions of the actor via their assimilative effects on perceptions of the situation in which that actor was embedded. Additionally, moderator variables demonstrated that this effect is most pronounced when the target actor’s behavior is described as relatively unambiguous or situation focus is increased.     

A cognitive model of suicidal behavior: Theory and treatment

With some prominent exceptions, much of the research designed to elucidate the nature, prevalence, and correlates of suicidal behavior has been conducted from an atheoretical perspective. Conversely, psychological theories to explain suicidal behavior are largely untested by rigorous experimental designs. We propose a cognitive model of suicidal behavior that is grounded in the empirical literature on cognitive and behavioral correlates of and risk factors for suicidal behavior. In addition, we demonstrate the manner in which the theoretical components are targeted in cognitive therapy for suicidal patients. We highlight aspects of the model with less empirical support, and we propose ways those constructs can be tested in future research.     

Spatial knowledge of geographical globes: Evidence of vertical alignment effects

This study investigated human spatial memory of geographical globes. In two experiments, participants studied locations presented on a three‐dimensional globe. Subsequently, participants' knowledge of the locations was tested employing two types of pointing task. Directional judgments from imagined locations on the globe were performed either vertically through the ground (as if digging a straight tunnel between the locations) or horizontally along the surface of the globe (the shortest distance for an aircraft to fly to a given destination). In the vertical pointing task, judgments originating from imagined locations in the upper hemisphere were superior by comparison with those originating from imagined locations in the lower hemisphere. Performance in the horizontal pointing task was more variable, with a tendency for superior judgments originating from imagined locations in the lower hemisphere. The results provide evidence of a novel alignment effect involving vertical judgments.     

Nietzsche on Art and Freedom

There are passages in Nietzsche that can be read as contributions to the free will/determinism debate. When read in that way, they reveal a fairly amateurish metaphysician with little of real substance or novelty to contribute; and if these readings were apt or perspicuous, it seems to me, they would show that Nietzsche's thoughts about freedom were barely worth pausing over. They would simply confirm the impression—amply bolstered from other quarters—that Nietzsche was not at his best when addressing the staple questions of philosophy. But these readings sell Nietzsche short. He had next to no systematic interest in metaphysics, and his concern with the question of freedom was not motivated by metaphysical considerations. Rather—and as with all of Nietzsche's concerns—his motivations were ethical. He was interested, not in the relation of the human will to the causal order of nature, but in the relation between freedom and the good life, between the will and exemplary human living. Read from this perspective, Nietzsche's remarks about freedom actually add up to something. And what they add up to is one aspect of his attempt to understand life after the model of art. Beauty, for Kant, was an image of the moral. ¹ For Nietzsche, by contrast—and the contrast can be hard to spell out—art was an image of the ethical. ² My hope here is to begin to explain why Nietzsche might have thought that the issue of freedom was relevant to that. In sections 1–3, I attempt to show why Nietzsche is not best read as a participant in the standard free will/determinism debate; in sections 4–6, I try to spell out the ethical conception of freedom that he develops instead.     

From emotional intelligence to intelligent choice of partner

The authors examined interpersonal correlates of emotional intelligence (EI) in a sample of individuals with a history of depression. The authors focused on potentially adaptive relationship dynamics associated with EI that may help protect these vulnerable individuals from further distress. Participants with high EI, as measured with the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, saw their partners as less hostile, critical, and rejecting in their support styles than did participants with low EI. Partners' own reports mostly corroborated these findings. Unexpectedly, although partners of high EI participants reported offering less active and directive support than did partners of low EI participants, high EI participants perceived their partners as more supportive than did low EI participants. Partners of emotionally intelligent participants also reported being more conscientious and open to experiences, offering some evidence of the stress-buffering hypothesis associated with higher EI.     

Adult attunement and child availability: Interaction of mother and caregiver with three‐year‐old kibbutz children

Relationships of mother and nonmaternal caregiver with 33 three‐year‐old kibbutz toddlers were investigated. Attunement and intrusiveness of these caregivers in their contact with children were determined by analysis of discrete child–adult interactions rather than by a global assessment of their relationships. The validity of these adult attunement scores was examined first by comparison of the attunement and intrusiveness scores of mother and of caregiver, and second by determining their association with independent scores of child availability to each of these caregiving adults. Results tended to support the validity of the present measures of adult attunement to the child. They indicated that in cases of disagreement mothers were more attuned than nonmaternal caregivers to the signals of the child, and the level of adult attuned agreement to the child was positively associated with cooperative attempts of children to involve caregivers in their activities © 2000 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.