Mapping Lay Perceptions of Contemporary Global Culture and Its Ideological and Political Correlates

Despite growing interest, the content and political correlates of contemporary global culture remain to be systematically explicated. Global culture is argued to be an extension of American‐Western culture, and thus, to propagate an economically conservative agenda alongside a liberal‐progressive social agenda. These conflicting emphases require the decomposition of conservatism into its economic and social facets, as suggested by the dual‐process motivational (DPM) model. The current studies tested lay perceptions of this global culture and its political correlates, within a Jewish Israeli context. Studies demonstrated that the global culture cluster together with Western culture (Preliminary Study and Study 1) to form a globalized‐Western culture (GWC). Endorsement of GWC was found to positively associate with economic conservatism and through its mediation with SDO (Studies 1 and 2). Contrarily, social conservatism, best indexed by RWA (Study 1), and negative evaluations of gender unorthodoxy (Study 2), was demonstrated to link with lower endorsement of GWC. The results are discussed in the context of Jewish‐Israeli society, and future directions for a political psychology of globalization are suggested.     

Embracing Chance Tactically: A Different Perspective on Risk Taking

Although they value certainty, people are willing to take risks to avoid losses. Consequently, they are risk‐seeking in the domain of losses but risk‐avoidant in the domain of gains. This behavior, frequently demonstrated in framing experiments, is traditionally explained in terms of prospect theory. We suggest a different account whereby involving chance in one's decisions may serve a strategic impression‐formation function. In the domain of losses actors may embrace chance to distance themselves from the outcomes and deflect possible blame. Given potential gains, however, actors may avoid uncertainty to enhance their association with valued outcomes. We test this idea by manipulating the level of actors' personal responsibility for the decision outcomes. The results of four studies consistently showed that when personal responsibility is high, the original framing effect is replicated (i.e., greater risk‐taking when choices are framed in terms of losses rather than gains). However, when because of assigned role or decision circumstances, actors experience low personal responsibility for the outcomes, and the classic framing effect is eliminated. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Working memory capacity in generalized social phobia

Research suggests that understanding complex social cues depends on the availability of cognitive resources (e.g., Phillips, Channon, Tunstall, Hedenstrom, & Lyons, 2008). In spite of evidence suggesting that executive control functioning may impact anxiety (e.g., Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), relatively few studies have examined working memory in individuals with generalized social phobia. Moreover, few studies have examined the role of threat-relevant content in working memory performance in clinically anxious populations. To this end, the present study assessed working memory capacity (WMC) in individuals with generalized social phobia and nonanxious controls using an operation span task with threat-relevant and neutral stimuli. Results revealed that nonanxious individuals demonstrated better WMC than individuals with generalized social phobia for neutral words but not for social threat words. Individuals with generalized social phobia demonstrated better WMC performance for threat words relative to neutral words. These results suggest that individuals with generalized social phobia may have relatively enhanced working memory performance for salient, socially relevant information. This enhanced working memory capacity for threat-relevant information may be the result of practice with this information in generalized social phobia.     

Religion and Spirituality in Coping with Advanced Breast Cancer: Perspectives from Malaysian Muslim Women

This article is part of a larger study on the role of spirituality in coping with breast cancer among Malaysian Muslim women. The study seeks to reveal the meaning of the experience through the stories of three Muslim women surviving advanced breast cancer, to better understand the deep meanings that inform their experiences with spirituality and transformation as they cope with the challenges of breast cancer. Data were gathered using in-depth interview. Qualitative methods were used in identifying two themes—illness as an awakening and hope and freedom comes from surrendering to God. The themes were discussed in the context of two broad areas: (1) what are the new meanings these women discovered in their experiences with cancer; and (2) how did the new meanings change their lives? The study suggests that cancer survivors’ experiences with cancer and their learning processes must be understood within the appropriate cultural context. This is especially so for spirituality. The common emphasis of spirituality on relationship with God, self and others, may significantly influence how people learn to live with cancer.     

Educating American Muslim Leadership (Men and Women) for the Twenty‐First Century

Abstract. Educating and training Muslim men and women leaders who are capable of effectively navigating the multi‐ethnic and multi‐religious terrain in America – particularly in the post 9–11 milieu – requires the development of a new critical American Muslim pedagogy. This new pedagogy, centered in Islamic epistemology and ontology, should selectively appropriate the best of traditional Muslim educational paradigms and modalities used over time. However, the traditional Muslim model must not be reified, but rather be subjected to a sharp critique which maintains the richness of its spiritual and intellectual legacy but rejects teachings and interpretations used to create false dichotomies resulting in binary constructs, particularly those which pit Muslims against the west. Finally, the new critical American Muslim pedagogy must embrace all of the best discursive practices (e.g., pedagogies of Freire and others) that engage us in a critical analysis of the way in which power and privilege, even in religious communities, operate to marginalize and suppress women, minorities, and people of color.     

The Bilingualism of the Language of the Victim and the Language of the Victimizer

Inspired by a panel which took place at the 2018 IARPP conference in New York – this paper, which deals with the bilingualism of the language of the victim and the language of the perpetrator, offers a close reading of the panel’s three papers, trying to characterize their unique poetics of testimony through a differentiation between four modes of traumatic testimony which are distinguished from one another by the degree of the psychic motility they succeed to form in relation to traumatic memories: the “metaphoric”, the “metonymic”, the “excessive” and the “Muselmann” testimonial modes. The last part of the paper suggests a link between the testimonial language of the victim and the testimonial language of the victimizer, trying to understand these polarized languages as two variations of the refusal to mourn.     

Liking and attributions of motives as mediators of the relationships between individuals' reputations,helpful behaviors,and raters' reward decisions

Two studies investigated the mediating effects of liking and attributions of motives on the relationship between a ratee's reputation and helpful behaviors and raters' reward decisions. During managerial simulations, raters evaluated individuals after watching videotapes in which the individual's reputation and helpful behaviors were manipulated. Results indicated an interaction effect between reputation and helpful behaviors such that a helpful person with a good reputation received more rewards than did a helpful person with a bad reputation. In contrast, an unhelpful person with a good reputation did not receive better rewards than an unhelpful person with a bad reputation. Moreover, raters' liking of ratees and the motives raters attributed to ratees' helpful behaviors mediated the relationship between the manipulations and raters' reward decisions.     

Is depression taxonic,dimensional, or both?

The current investigation examines the potential importance of item selection in the ongoing discussion regarding the taxonicity of depression. Following J. C. Coyne (1994), we contrast the taxonicity of "distress" with the taxonicity of a syndrome more focused on somatic symptoms (i.e., the involuntary defeat syndrome). Using 4 samples of 984 undergraduates, we first replicate the J. Ruscio and A. M. Ruscio (2000) results by showing that distress item indicators are dimensional. We then demonstrate taxonicity using items focused on somatic symptoms and reflective of disruption of multiple homeostatic mechanisms. Results suggest that item selection is central to the determination of taxonicity in depression.     

Conflicting processes in the extinction of conditioned taste aversion: behavioral and molecular aspects of latency,apparent stagnation,and spontaneous recovery

The study of experimental extinction and of the spontaneous recovery of the extinguished memory could cast light on neurobiological mechanisms by which internal representations compete to control behavior. In this work, we use a combination of behavioral and molecular methods to dissect subprocesses of experimental extinction of conditioned taste aversion (CTA). Extinction of CTA becomes apparent only 90 min after the extinction trial. This latency is insensitive to muscarinic and β-adrenergic modulation and to protein synthesis inhibition in the insular cortex (IC). Immediately afterwards, however, the extinguishing trace becomes sensitive to β-adrenergic blockade and protein synthesis inhibition. The subsequent kinetics and magnitude of extinction depend on whether a spaced or massed extinction protocol is used. A massed protocol is highly effective in the short run, but results in apparent stagnation of extinction in the long-run, which conceals fast spontaneous recovery of the preextinguished trace. This recovery can be truncated by a β-adrenergic agonist or a cAMP analog in the insular cortex, suggesting that spontaneous overtaking of the behavioral control by the original association is regulated at least in part by β-adrenergic input, probably operating via the cAMP cascade, long after the offset of the conditioned stimulus. Hence, the performance of the subject in experimental extinction is the sum total of multiple, sometimes conflicting, time-dependent processes.     

Effect of endogenous attention on detection of weak gustatory and olfactory flavors

The effect of endogenous attention on the detectability of weak flavorants was examined in an absolute detection (two-alternative forced-choice) task. Attention to sucrose improved the detectability of sucrose, a gustation-based flavorant, both when the alternative was water and when it was vanillin. But attention to vanillin did not improve the detectability of vanillin, an olfaction-based flavorant, either when the alternative was water or when it was sucrose. Nor did attention improve the detectability of vanillin when the alternative was citric acid, a tastant that is qualitatively less similar to vanillin than is sucrose. Attention had no positive effect on the detection of either sucrose or vanillin when it was mixed with the other substance. These findings suggest that although it is possible to attend selectively to gustatory flavors, it may be more difficult to attend selectively to olfactory flavors--perhaps because attention to flavors, which are taken in the mouth, is directed spatially toward the tongue, where gustatory, but not olfactory, receptors are located.