What is Mormon Transhumanism?

Abstract

Mormon transhumanism is the idea that humanity should learn how to be compassionate creators. This idea is essential to Mormonism, which provides a religious framework consistent with naturalism and supportive of human transformation. Mormon transhumanists are not limited to traditional or popular accounts of religion, and embrace opportunities and risks of technological evolution. Although usually considered secular, transhumanism has some religious origins and sometimes functions as religion. Accelerating change contextualizes a Mormon transhumanist narrative of common expectations, aspirations, and parallels between Mormonism and transhumanism. Mormon transhumanism has produced secular arguments for faith in God and religious arguments for transhumanism.     

An electromyographic investigation of the impact of task relevance on facial mimicry

When viewing a face expressing emotion, the viewer's face mimics the same emotion. It is unknown whether such facial mimicry takes place when the viewed emotion is a task irrelevant property of the face. The present experiment addressed this question by asking participants to judge either the emotional expression or the colour of a series of happy and angry faces that were either blue or yellow. Electromyographical recordings showed that when emotion was ignored, there was a tendency for facial muscle activity to be suppressed. Nonetheless, participants’ facial expressions mimicked target expressions, with the zygomaticus cheek muscle being more active when viewing a smiling face and the corrugator brow muscle more active when viewing an angry face. These data support the automatic encoding of irrelevant emotional information, as well as suppression of emotional information by selective attention.     

Sensorimotor fluency influences affect: Evidence from electromyography

Fluency of visual processing induces affective responses, with easier-to-process stimuli being preferred (Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). The present study extends this research to the motor domain by investigating the effect of sensorimotor fluency on affective reactions to objects in a categorisation task. In fluent stimulus–response (s–r) trials, grasp-compatible objects were presented on the same side of the screen as the response hand; in non-fluent trials, grasp incompatible objects were presented on the opposite side of the screen to the response hand. Affective responses were measured implicitly using face muscle activity (electromyography). As predicted, participants exhibited greater cheek muscle activity (associated with smiling) in trials with s–r compatible responses compared with incompatible responses. These findings support hedonic models of fluency in which fluent processing elicits direct emotional experience, and suggest that models of hedonic fluency should take into account the integration of the motor system in visual processing.     

Taste familiarity and apomorphine-induced taste aversions in humans

Human volunteers learned taste aversions to a relatively novel cranberry flavor paired with apomorphine-induced illness. These aversions were significantly reduced by pretreatment familiarization to the flavor unless an unpalatable interfering flavor was introduced just prior to the administration of apomorphine. The outcomes have implications for taste-aversion learning in humans and for the control of flavor preferences in patients undergoing illness-inducing chemotherapy.     

Using the Research Domain Criteria Framework to Explore Associations Between MMPI–2–RF Constructs and Physiological Variables Assessed by Eye-Tracker Technology

The National Institute of Mental Health has proposed a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of psychopathology, abandoning the traditional categorical model in favor of one based on hierarchically organized dimensional constructs (Insel et al., 2010 Insel, T., Cuthbert, B., Garvey, M., Heinssen, R., Pine, D. S., Quinn, K., … Wang, P. (2010). Research domain criteria (RDoC): Toward a new classification framework for research on mental disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 167, 748–751.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). One explicit goal of this initiative, the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project, is to facilitate the incorporation of newly available neurobiologic variables into research on psychopathology. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2–Restructured Form (MMPI–2–RF; Ben-Porath &; Tellegen, 2008/2011 Ben-Porath, Y., &; Tellegen, A. (2011). Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Restructured Form: Manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 2008) [Google Scholar]) represents a similar paradigm shift, also adopting a hierarchical arrangement of dimensional constructs. This study examined associations between MMPI–2–RF measures of psychopathology and eye-movement metrics. Participants were college students (n = 270) who completed the MMPI–2–RF and then viewed a sequence of 30-s video clips. Results show a pattern of positive correlations between pupil size and emotional/internalizing dysfunction scales when viewing video eliciting negative emotional reactions, reflecting greater arousability in individuals with higher scores on these measures. In contrast, when viewing stimuli depicting angry, threatening material, a clear pattern of negative correlations was found between pupil size and behavioral/externalizing trait measures. These data add to the construct validity of the MMPI–2–RF and support the use of the RDoC matrix as a framework for research on psychopathology.     

An Empirically Keyed Scale for Measuring Managerial Attitudes Toward Women Executives

A scale (MATWES) is presented providing reliability and some validity measures regarding managerial attitudes toward women executives. Methodology used demonstrates an empirical approach to scale development through the employment of a projective test for item generation and the use of a panel of women executives who served as Q-sorters to select the items. The use of the Scale as a research instrument and its value in minimizing researcher bias in its construction are discussed.     

Infants generate goal-based action predictions

Predicting the actions of others is critical to smooth social interactions. Prior work suggests that both understanding and anticipation of goal-directed actions appears early in development. In this study, on-line goal prediction was tested explicitly using an adaptation of Woodward's (1998) paradigm for an eye-tracking task. Twenty 11-month-olds were familiarized to movie clips of a hand reaching to grasp one of two objects. Then object locations were swapped, and the hand made an incomplete reach between the objects. Here, infants reliably made their first look from the hand to the familiarized goal object, now in a new location. A separate control condition of 20 infants familiarized to the same movements of an unfamiliar claw revealed the opposite pattern: reliable prediction to the familiarized location, rather than the familiarized object. This study suggests that by 11 months infants actively use goal analysis to generate on-line predictions of an agent's next action.