Ego depletion and positive illusions: does the construction of positivity require regulatory resources?

Individuals frequently exhibit positive illusions about their own abilities, their possibilities to control their environment, and future expectations. The authors propose that positive illusions require resources of self-control, which is considered to be a limited resource similar to energy or strength. Five studies revealed that people with depleted self-regulatory resources indeed exhibited a less-optimistic sense of their own abilities (Study 1), a lower sense of subjective control (Study 2), and less-optimistic expectations about their future (Study 3). Two further studies shed light on the underlying psychological process: Ego-depleted (compared to nondepleted) individuals generated/retrieved less positive self-relevant attributes (Studies 4 and 5) and reported a lower sense of general self-efficacy (Study 5), which both partially mediated the impact of ego depletion on positive self-views (Study 5).     

Terror salience and punishment: Does terror salience induce threat to social order?

In recent times, international terrorism has become one of the most serious concerns of the modern Western world. As a consequence, the risk and fear of terrorism is more salient in people’s minds (i.e. terror salience), which is supposed to affect behavioral responses in our society. The present research suggests that increased punishment of violations of criminal laws is one societal reaction to increased terror salience. It was consistently shown that increased terror salience, induced by either varying the temporal distance from the London terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005 (Study 1), by vignettes in the form of newspaper articles manipulating the expected terror risk (Study 2), or by pictures of recent terrorist attacks (Studies 3 and 4), significantly increased the punishment assigned to a violation of criminal laws that was completely unrelated to terror (i.e. car theft and rape). Finally, Study 4 revealed that (a) the effect of terror salience on punishment is indeed due to increased perception of threat to social order and (b) that this effect cannot be explained by the general negative nature of the stimulus material employed in this study.     

镜像神经元与主体间性现象学

来自神经科学最新研究发现的镜像神经元在对现象学理论主体间性的解释方面做出了极其重要的贡献。G.Rizzolatti和V.Gallese通过对灵长类动物的实验发现了一个位于大脑运动前区具有表征其它动物视觉编码的运动功能的神经元系统。这些镜像神经元可以表征与个体自身行为相似的动作图式。这些研究可能会延伸到关于人类其他认知与情感功能的研究。我将会分析这一神经科学发现是如何被"转译"成现象学意义上我们自身经验到的感知、情感和意志。     

Psychiatrischer Beitrag

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