Ego involvement moderates the assimilation effect of affective expectations

Based on the affective expectations model and research on mental effort mobilization, two experiments manipulated affective expectations (no expectations versus positive expectations) and ego involvement (low versus high) and assessed participants’ affective reactions to hedonically neutral stimuli. In Experiment 1, evaluations were more positive when participants had positive expectations about neutral photos—but only when ego involvement was low. High ego involvement neutralized this affective expectation assimilation effect. Experiment 2 replicated these findings for experienced mood after reading a hedonically neutral short essay. Furthermore, high ego involvement led to longer response latencies in the affect ratings in Study 1. The findings support the idea that high ego involvement resulted in relatively high mental effort that was necessary to detect discrepancies between affective expectations and stimuli’s real affective potential and therefore moderated the assimilation effect to affective expectations.

Some aspects of eloquence in Descartes's works

In Descartes's philosophy, communicating scientific and philosophical truth does not represent a problem that can be traced back to humanistic rhetoric, meant as the art of persuasion. Descartes states his belief in the eloquence of reason: a clear, precise, and adequately expressed thought cannot fail to convince the listener. This is the measure of the distance between the level of truth and the level of opinion. However, the moment of confrontation with the public is also the very moment when the truth of the new knowledge enters into conflict with other, different conceptions. Education and history influence communication with the result that the distinction between intellectual conviction and persuasion becomes less straightforward. Rational eloquence, as Descartes is well aware, must be articulated in such a way as to avoid any possible language equivocation and to adopt exposition strategies ensuring effective access to readers. The aim of this paper is to illustrate some aspects of this tension as expressed by the writer Descartes with reference to a number of texts (from the Regulae to the Meditationes) that were essential for the elaboration and dissemination of his philosophy.     

Is overgeneral autobiographical memory an isolated memory phenomenon in major depression?

The present study explored the relation between overgeneral autobiographical memory (AM) and other aspects of memory functioning in depression. A total of 26 patients with major depressive disorder completed a set of memory tasks measuring AM specificity (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986), working memory, semantic memory, verbal learning, delayed verbal recall, recognition memory, and source memory. Reduced specificity of AM was related to poor working memory (central executive functioning) and poor source memory. The former finding conforms to the idea that the voluntary retrieval of specific autobiographical memories (AMs) involves central executive processes (e.g., Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000 Conway, M. A. and Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. 2000. The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107: 261–288. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The latter finding replicates and extends recent findings suggesting that overgeneral AM is part of a broader memory deficit in retrieving the specific details of the context in which information was acquired (Ramponi, Barnard, & Nimmo-Smith, 2004 Raes , F. , Hermans , D. , Williams , J. M. G. , Demyttenaere , K. , Sabbe , B. , Pieters , G . & Eelen , P. ( 2004 ). Reduced specificity of autobiographical memory: A mediator between rumination and ineffective social problem solving in major depression? Journal of affective disorders , 87 , 331 – 335  [Google Scholar]). Furthermore, in line with Ramponi et al. (2004 Raes , F. , Hermans , D. , Williams , J. M. G. , Demyttenaere , K. , Sabbe , B. , Pieters , G . & Eelen , P. ( 2004 ). Reduced specificity of autobiographical memory: A mediator between rumination and ineffective social problem solving in major depression? Journal of affective disorders , 87 , 331 – 335  [Google Scholar]), rumination was found to be related to both overgeneral AM and poor source memory.