Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation

Meditation can be conceptualized as a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of well-being and emotional balance. Among these various practices, there are two styles that are commonly studied. One style, focused attention meditation, entails the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object. The other style, open monitoring meditation, involves nonreactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment. The potential regulatory functions of these practices on attention and emotion processes could have a long-term impact on the brain and behavior.     

Correspondence analysis and association models constrained by a conditional independence graph

The manner in which the conditional independence graph of a multiway contingency table effects the fitting and interpretation of the Goodman association model (RC) and of correspondence analysis (CA) is considered.Estimation of the row and column scores is presented in this context by developing a unified framework that includes both models. Incorporation of the conditional independence constraints inherent in the graph may lead to equal or additive scores for the corresponding marginal tables, depending on the topology of the graph. An example of doubly additive scores in the analysis of a Burt subtable is given.Thanks are due to anonymous referees who substantially improved the original draft of this paper.     

Attention enhances apparent perceptual organization

Perceptual organization and selective attention are two crucial processes that influence how we perceive visual information. The former structures complex visual inputs into coherent units, whereas the later selects relevant information. Attention and perceptual organization can modulate each other, affecting visual processing and performance in various tasks and conditions. Here, we tested whether attention can alter the way multiple elements appear to be perceptually organized. We manipulated covert spatial attention using a rapid serial visual presentation task, and measured perceptual organization of two multielements arrays organized by luminance similarity as rows or columns, at both the attended and unattended locations. We found that the apparent perceptual organization of the multielement arrays is intensified when attended and attenuated when unattended. We ruled out response bias as an alternative explanation. These findings reveal that attention enhances the appearance of perceptual organization, a midlevel vision process, altering the way we perceive our visual environment.     

Fear and Implicit Racism: Whites’ Support for Voter ID laws

Oftentimes, Whites are unaware that they may have slighted Blacks. Although researchers have spent a considerable amount of attention disentangling this form of implicit (unconscious) racial bias from explicit (conscious) racial bias, we are less clear about the conditions that cause implicit racism to matter in American politics. In this article, we offer a theory of how fear and Whites' unconscious racial bias are tightly linked in memory, and triggering this emotion can make these implicit attitudes more salient in public opinion. To test our theory, we focus on Whites’ opinions toward voter ID laws. Our expectation is that inducing fear should cause implicit racism to play an important role in Whites’ evaluation of the policy. Using an adult national experiment over two waves, we induced several emotions to elicit fear, anger, or relaxation. The findings show that the fear condition causes Whites high in implicit racism to be more supportive of voter ID laws than similar individuals in the anger and control conditions. On the other hand, fear does not cause Whites high in explicit racism to be more supportive of voter ID laws.     

Motives for secondary social sharing of emotions

This study provides new evidence of motives of secondary social sharing of emotions. In a retrospective study, 140 female (Mage = 29.4 yr., SD=12.8) and 116 male (M = 29.5 yr., SD = 13.1) participants were asked to recall a recent situation in which they had talked to a third person about a positive or negative, low or high intensity emotional narrative they had heard. 70% of the respondents reported having secondarily shared the reported event rapidly after the narration with several persons and at several times. Moreover, they not only described the event, the speaker's reaction and their own reactions, but also revealed the identity of their first confidant. Participants reported having spread the emotional narrative more widely in the high negative condition in order to seek emotional support and social comparison.     

Is memory for stimulus magnitude Bayesian?

This study was designed to determine whether memory for stimulus values is a Bayesian weighting of the magnitude of a stimulus and the central tendency of an exemplar's category (Huttenlocher, Hedges, & Vevea, 2000). In five experiments, participants reproduced the remembered size of a geometric figure drawn from one of two categories whose means for size differed. Reproductions were biased toward the mean of the combined distribution rather than the mean of either category. Reproductions were also influenced by the size of the stimulus on the preceding trial. Neither of these results is entirely consistent with the view that recollections are partially constructed from a consideration of the long-run probabilities established by category membership.     

Rock Stars in Anti‐Drug‐Abuse Commercials: An Experimental Study of Adolescents' Reactions1

Two studies examined adolescents' perceptions and effectiveness of rock stars in antidrug‐abuse public‐service announcements (PSAs). In the pilot study (N= 24 teenagers), adolescents expected rock musicians, and in particular heavy metal musicians, to be drug users. In our experimental study (N= 78 high school students aged 15 to 16 years), one group was shown 4 PSAs produced by Rock Against Drugs, using rock stars Jon Bon Jovi, Aimee Mann, Gene Simmons, and Belinda Carlysle as spokespersons. The comparison group was shown 4 equivalent PSAs that were created using unknown actors selected for their similarity to the rock stars in terms of age, ethnicity, and gender, but without any reference to rock music. PSA ratings were taken on 4 scales: attractiveness, expertness, trustworthiness, and overall PSA rating. Pretest and posttest measures of drug attitudes supported our hypotheses that countermessages from rock stars denormalize the connection between rock music and drugs, and that adolescents respond more positively to PSAs with rock stars than to PSAs without rock stars.     

The social network of solidarity with migrants: The role of perceived injunctive norms on intergroup helping behaviors

Using an ego-centered network approach, we examine across two studies whether and how injunctive network norms—behaviors that are approved by alters—are related to majority members’ decisions to participate in helping actions supporting migrants. We hypothesize that the more people perceive their personal social networks as positive toward humanitarian actions for migrants, the more they consider their opinions on migration issues as self-defining, and the more they are willing to mobilize in helping behaviors. With a name generator approach, we collected personal social network data among majority members of Belgian, mobilized volunteers (Study 1, N = 204) and Swiss, non-mobilized participants (Study 2, N = 247). Results demonstrate the impact of injunctive network norms in promoting and maintaining helping actions for migrants, and the role of self-defining attitudes. Overall, the results highlight the importance of injunctive norms within personal social networks for participation in intergroup helping behaviors.