Superego distortions and self-attack

Some people demand an unachievable level of self-perfection, and experience extremely harsh self-criticism when they inevitably fall short of this impossibly high standard. As a result of early trauma or neglect, patients who have internalized part-objects that are particularly responsive to aggression also appear to lack supportive introjects which could normally serve to counterbalance innate aggressivity. The resultant superego malformations are overly harsh and charged with self-destructive intent. Self-attack may range from guilt-ridden self-loathing to physical assault on the body. Suicide is viewed as restorative and survivable. Treatment interventions include superego analysis as a way to identify internalized self-attack, disentangle organized self-destructive elements and support counter-balancing forces for affect tolerance.     

On the (In)Compatibility of Attitudes Toward Peace and War

Although attitudes toward peace and war are usually treated as two opposite poles of one dimension, in this article we argue that they may represent two distinct dimensions. To investigate this idea, we developed and tested a new balanced measure, the Attitudes Toward Peace and War (APW) Scale, in three studies (N = 4,742) in the United States and Denmark. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that attitudes toward peace and war formed two distinct, though negatively related, factors. Structural equation modeling showed that antecedents of attitudes toward peace included egalitarian ideological beliefs, the values of international harmony and equality, and empathic concern for others, and consequences included intentions to engage in peace‐related activities. On the other hand, antecedents of attitudes toward war included authoritarian ideological beliefs, the values of national strength and order, and less personal distress, and consequences included intentions to engage in warlike activities. Results also showed that political affiliation had an impact on the relationship between peace and war attitudes, with conservatives less likely to find the attitudes incompatible. The findings support the view that attitudes toward peace and war represent two distinct dimensions.     

Interference in identifying attributes and attribute names

The interference of incongruous attribute names on attribute identification was studied with two different attributes, color and direction, and with two modes of identifying response, verbaland nonverbal. Nonverbal responses made for less interference under all conditions. Semantic proximity produced more interference with color than with direction. Interference in this sort of task may reflect characteristic ways in which incoming attribute information is processed.     

In these pages

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Remindings influence the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli

Remindings—stimulus-guided retrievals of prior events—may help us interpret ambiguous events by linking the current situation to relevant prior experiences. Evidence suggests that remindings play an important role in interpreting complex ambiguous stimuli (Ross & Bradshaw Memory & Cognition, 22, 591–605, 1994); here, we evaluate whether remindings will influence word interpretation and memory in a new paradigm. Learners studied words on distinct visual backgrounds and generated a sentence for each word. Homographs were preceded by a biasing cue on the same background three items earlier, preceded by a biasing cue on a different background three items earlier, or followed by a biasing cue on the same background three items later. When biasing cues preceded the homographs on the same backgrounds as the homographs, the meanings of the homographs in learner-generated sentences were consistent with the biasing cues more often than in the other two conditions. These results show that remindings can influence word interpretation. In addition, later memory for the homographs and cues was greater when the meaning of the homograph in the sentence was consistent with the earlier biasing cue, suggesting that remindings enhanced mnemonic performance. Remindings play an important role in how we interpret ambiguous stimuli and enhance memory for the involved material.     

Active versus passive maintenance of visual nonverbal memory

Forgetting over the short term has challenged researchers for more than a century, largely because of the difficulty of controlling what goes on within the memory retention interval. But the “recent-negative-probe” procedure offers a valuable paradigm, by examining the influences of (presumably) unattended memoranda from prior trials. Here we used a recent-probe task to investigate forgetting for visual nonverbal short-term memory. The target stimuli (two visually presented abstract shapes) on a trial were followed after a retention interval by a probe, and participants indicated whether the probe matched one of the target items. Proactive interference, and hence memory for old trial probes, was observed, whereby participants were slowed in rejecting a nonmatching probe on the current trial that nevertheless matched a target item on the previous trial (a recent-negative probe). The attraction of the paradigm is that, by uncovering proactive influences of past-trial probe stimuli, it can be argued that active maintenance in memory of those probes is unlikely. In two experiments, we recorded such proactive interference of prior-trial items over a range of interstimulus (ISI) and intertrial (ITI) intervals (between 1 and 6 s, respectively). Consistent with a proposed two-process memory conception (the active–passive memory model, or APM), actively maintained memories on current trials decayed, but passively “maintained,” or unattended, visual memories of stimuli on past trials did not.     

Detecting personal familiarity depends on static frames in “thin slices” of behavior

Brief glimpses of nonverbal behavior (or “thin slices”) offer ample visual information to make reliable judgments about individuals. Previous work has largely focused on the personality characteristics and traits of individuals; however, the nature of dyadic relationships (strangers, lovers, or friends) can also be determined (Ambady & Gray, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 947–961 2002). Judgments from thin slices are known to be accurate, but the motion features supporting accurate performance are unknown. We explored whether personal familiarity was detectable within the context of “thin slices” of genuine interaction, as well as the invariant properties of thin-slice recognition. In two experiments, participants sequentially viewed two 6-s silent videos on each trial of an individual interacting with an unfamiliar partner; the other depicted the same person interacting with a personally familiar partner. All sequences were cropped so that only the target individual was visible. In Experiment 1, participants viewed either the original sequences, reversed sequences, a static-image “slideshow” of the sequence, or a static-image slideshow with blank frames separating the images. In Experiment 2, all participants viewed the original sequences and clips played at either double speed or half speed. Participants’ performance was above chance in the forward and reverse conditions, but was significantly better in both the static-image slideshow conditions. When task speed was manipulated, we found a larger performance cost for fast than for slow videos. Detecting personal familiarity via spontaneous natural gestures depends on information in static images more than on face or body movement. Although static images are typically less important for recognizing nonverbal behavior, we argue they may be valuable for making familiarity judgments from thin slices.