Knowing what we can do: actions,intentions, and the construction of phenomenal experience

How do questions concerning consciousness and phenomenal experience relate to, or interface with, questions concerning plans, knowledge and intentions? At least in the case of visual experience the relation, we shall argue, is tight. Visual perceptual experience, we shall argue, is fixed by an agent’s direct unmediated knowledge concerning her poise (or apparent poise) over a currently enabled action space. An action space, in this specific sense, is to be understood not as a fine-grained matrix of possibilities for bodily movement, but as a matrix of possibilities for pursuing and accomplishing one’s intentional actions, goals and projects. If this is correct, the links between planning, intention and perceptual experience are tight, while (contrary to some recent accounts invoking the notion of ‘sensorimotor expectations’) the links between embodied activity and perceptual experience, though real, are indirect. What matters is not bodily activity itself, but our practical knowledge (which need not be verbalized or in any way explicit) of our own possibilities for action. Such knowledge, selected, shaped and filtered by the grid of plans, goals, and intentions, plays, we argue, a constitutive role in explaining the content and character of visual perceptual experience.     

Multiple commitments in the Chinese context: Testing compatibility, cultural, and moderating hypotheses

This paper evaluates the contribution of the multiple constituencies of commitment framework in explaining work attitudes and behaviors in a sample of Chinese manufacturing workers. Findings suggest that the organization, the supervisor, and co-workers were seen by respondents as separate commitment foci. Although the various commitments were moderately positively correlated, they were related differently to the dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior and withdrawal cognitions, in a way which provides support for the “compatibility” hypothesis. There was only limited support for our “cultural” hypothesis. An analysis of interactions between commitments suggested that commitment to supervisor was a stronger positive predictor of protecting company resources and interpersonal harmony when commitment to work group was lower, providing partial support for our moderating hypotheses.     

Combating stereotype threat: The effect of self-affirmation on women’s intellectual performance

The present studies were designed to investigate the effects of self-affirmation on the performance of women under stereotype threat. In Study 1, women performed worse on a difficult math test when it was described as diagnostic of math intelligence (stereotype threat condition) than in a non-diagnostic control condition. However, when women under stereotype threat affirmed a valued attribute, they performed at levels comparable to men and to women in the no-threat control condition. In Study 2, men and women worked on a spatial rotation test and were told that women were stereotyped as inferior on such tasks. Approximately half the women and men self-affirmed before beginning the test. Self-affirmation improved the performance of women under threat, but did not affect men’s performance.     

Psychological defense in anticipation of anxiety: eliminating the potential for anxiety eliminates the effect of mortality salience on worldview defense

A large body of research has shown that when people are reminded of their mortality, their defense of their cultural worldview intensifies. Although some psychological defenses seem to be instigated by negative affective responses to threat, mortality salience does not appear to arouse such affect. Terror management theory posits that the potential to experience anxiety, rather than the actual experience of anxiety, underlies these effects of mortality salience. If this is correct, then mortality-salience effects should be reduced when participants believe they are not capable of reacting to the reminder of mortality with anxiety. In a test of this hypothesis, participants consumed a placebo purported to either block anxiety or enhance memory. Then we manipulated mortality salience, and participants evaluated pro- and anti-American essays as a measure of worldview defense. Although mortality salience intensified worldview defense in the memory-enhancer condition, this effect was completely eliminated in the anxiety-blocker condition. The results suggest that some psychological defenses serve to avert the experience of anxiety rather than to ameliorate actually experienced anxiety.     

Expressing passion for luxury enhances perceived authenticity

Consumers are often viewed unfavorably when using luxury products. They are seen as seeking status and managing impressions, and therefore judged as inauthentic. How can luxury consumers alleviate these negative social consequences? Our pilot studies suggest that although many consumers are passionate about luxury products and brands, they avoid sharing this passion with others because they fear being judged negatively. However, we propose that publicly expressing one's passion for luxury can mitigate the social costs of luxury consumption. Six experiments (including three supplemental experiments) show that expressing passion for luxury causes others to perceive luxury consumers as more authentic, consequently increasing perceptions of their warmth and trustworthiness, and leading others to demonstrate greater interest in knowing more about them. Expressing passion for luxury enhances perceived authenticity by prompting observers to attribute the luxury consumption more to intrinsic motivation (e.g., consuming luxury for inherent enjoyment and pleasure) rather than extrinsic motivation (e.g., status enhancement). The effects of passion expression are attenuated for non-luxury consumption because non-luxury consumption is generally unlikely to elicit inferences about extrinsic motives.     

Killing begets killing: evidence from a bug-killing paradigm that initial killing fuels subsequent killing

Killing appears to perpetuate itself even in the absence of retaliation. This phenomenon may occur in part as a means to justify prior killing and so ease the threat of prior killing. In addition, this effect should arise particularly when a killer perceives similarity to the victims because similarity should exacerbate threat from killing. To examine these ideas, the authors developed a bug-killing paradigm in which they manipulated the degree of initial bug killing in a "practice task" to observe the effects on subsequent self-paced killing during a timed "extermination task." In Studies 1 and 2, for participants reporting some similarity to bugs, inducing greater initial killing led to more subsequent self-paced killing. In Study 3, after greater initial killing, more subsequent self-paced killing led to more favorable affective change. Implications for understanding lethal human violence are discussed.     

Tool use as situated cognition

Vaesen disregards a plausible alternative to his position, and so fails to offer a compelling argument for unique cognitive mechanisms. We suggest an ecological alternative, according to which divergent relationships between organism and environment, not exotic neuroanatomy, are responsible for unique cognitive capacities. This approach is pertinent to claims about primate cognition; and on this basis, we argue that Vaesen's inference from unique skills to unique mechanisms is unwarranted.