What's Bad About Bad Faith?

Abstract: Contemporary common sense holds that authenticity is an ethical ideal: that there is something bad about inauthenticity, and something good about authenticity. Here we criticize the view that authenticity is bad because it detracts from the wellbeing of the inauthentic person, and propose an alternative moral account of the badness of inauthenticity, based on the idea that inauthentic behaviour is potentially misleading.     

Social influences on creativity: Evaluation,coaction, and surveillance

Numerous anecdotal accounts exist of an incubation period promoting creativity and problem solving. This article examines whether incubation is an empirically verifiable phenomenon and the possible role therein of nonconscious processing. An Idea Generation Test was employed to examine (a) whether an incubation effect occurred and (b) the impact of different types of break on this effect. In the Idea Generation Test, two groups of participants were given a distracting break, during which they completed either a similar or an unrelated task, and a third group worked continuously (N = 90). The Idea Generation Test was validated against established measures of cognitive ability and personality, and was found to exhibit variance distinct from those marker tests. Most important, results demonstrated that having a break during which one works on a completely different task is more beneficial for idea production than working on a similar task or generating ideas continuously. The advantage afforded by a break cannot be accounted for in terms of relief from functional fixedness or general fatigue, and, although it may be explicable by relief from task-specific fatigue, explanations of an incubation effect in terms of nonconscious processing should be (re)considered.     

Toward an Analytical Model of Ethical Decision Making in Plagiarism

Plagiarism by students is a common and worldwide phenomenon with a significant impact on our society. Numerous studies on the pervasive nature of plagiarism among students have focused on the behavioral aspects of plagiarism and how to prevent it. Based on an empirical study of a sample of 463 eighth graders in Hong Kong, this article offers an analytical model to understand the ethical decision-making process in plagiarism among students. Using this model, students' plagiaristic behavior can be analyzed in terms of their moral judgment, moral intensity, and perceived risks.     

Measuring consciousness in dreams: The lucidity and consciousness in dreams scale

In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary research project aimed at assessing consciousness in dreams. For this purpose, we compared lucid dreams with normal non-lucid dreams from REM sleep. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams are an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness, giving valuable insights into the structure of conscious experience and its neural correlates during sleep. However, the precise differences between lucid and non-lucid dreams remain poorly understood. The construction of the Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams scale (LuCiD) was based on theoretical considerations and empirical observations. Exploratory factor analysis of the data from the first survey identified eight factors that were validated in a second survey using confirmatory factor analysis: INSIGHT, CONTROL, THOUGHT, REALISM, MEMORY, DISSOCIATION, NEGATIVE EMOTION, and POSITIVE EMOTION. While all factors are involved in dream consciousness, realism and negative emotion do not differentiate between lucid and non-lucid dreams, suggesting that lucid insight is separable from both bizarreness in dreams and a change in the subjectively experienced realism of the dream.     

A methodological note on evaluating performance in a sustained-attention-to-response task

We evaluated the influence of speed–accuracy trade-offs on performance in the sustained attention to response task (SART), a task often used to evaluate the effectiveness of techniques designed to improve sustained attention. In the present study, we experimentally manipulated response delay in a variation of the SART and found that commission errors, which are commonly used as an index of lapses in sustained attention, were a systematic function of manipulated differences in response delay. Delaying responses to roughly 800 ms after stimulus onset reduced commission errors substantially. We suggest the possibility that any technique that affects response speed will indirectly alter error rates independently of improvements in sustained attention. Investigators therefore need to carefully explore, report, and correct for changes in response speed that accompany improvements in performance or, alternatively, to employ tasks that control for response speed.     

Belief bias during reasoning among religious believers and skeptics

We provide evidence that religious skeptics, as compared to believers, are both more reflective and effective in logical reasoning tasks. While recent studies have reported a negative association between an analytic cognitive style and religiosity, they focused exclusively on accuracy, making it difficult to specify potential underlying cognitive mechanisms. The present study extends the previous research by assessing both performance and response times on quintessential logical reasoning problems (syllogisms). Those reporting more religious skepticism made fewer reasoning errors than did believers. This finding remained significant after controlling for general cognitive ability, time spent on the problems, and various demographic variables. Crucial for the purpose of exploring underlying mechanisms, response times indicated that skeptics also spent more time reasoning than did believers. This novel finding suggests a possible role of response slowing during analytic problem solving as a component of cognitive style that promotes overriding intuitive first impressions. Implications for using additional processing measures, such as response time, to investigate individual differences in cognitive style are discussed.     

When sex isn't special: Priming onto a sex decision

Recognition of famous faces is speeded by prior exposure. This repetition priming has been shown for familiarity judgements (familiar/unfamiliar), semantic judgements (British/American), and naming. However, no benefit of priming has been found onto a sex judgement made to an image of a face. The absence of priming is normally explained by appealing to the fact that sex judgements can be made to a face without needing to access memory for that person, and that priming has its effects within the memory system. Here we ask subjects to make sex judgements to famous people's surnames (e.g., Tyson, Geldof), a task that requires them to access their memories for people. Under these conditions we observe the normal pattern of priming. We argue that structural, rather than episodic models of processing fit the data most naturally.     

Difficulties adjusting to post-discharge life following a spinal cord injury: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 individuals who had experienced a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI), focusing on the participants' lived experience of SCI. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and were analysed for recurrent themes using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Here, we present three inter-related recurrent themes all concerning difficulties in adjusting to home life following hospital discharge: "loss of camaraderie", "lack of post-discharge care" and "other people's reactions to spinal cord injury". Participants reported that the camaraderie they formed with fellow patients during their rehabilitative stay in hospital generated feelings of security and community. This was discussed in stark contrast to the isolation and loneliness that they subsequently experienced post-hospital discharge. A perceived lack of physical, practical and psychological support coupled with negative and stigmatising reactions of the wider community served to make adjustment to home life post-SCI particularly difficult for the participants. The findings are discussed in relation to extant SCI literature, and recommendations for future health care of individuals with SCI are made.