Spirituality and mental health status among Northern Plain tribes

Spirituality measures often show positive associations with preferred mental health outcomes in the general population; however, research among American Indians (AIs) is limited. We examined the relationships of mental health status and two measures of spirituality – the Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) and a tribal cultural spirituality measure – in Northern Plains AIs, aged 15–54 (n?=?1636). While the MIDI was unassociated with mental health status, the tribal cultural spirituality measure showed a significant relationship with better mental health status. Mental health conditions disproportionately affect AIs. Understanding protective factors such as cultural spirituality that can mitigate mental health disorders is critical to reducing these health disparities.     

A mind to go out of: reflections on primary and secondary consciousness

Dreaming and waking are two brain-mind states, which are characterized by shared and differentiated properties at the levels of brain and consciousness. As part of our effort to capitalize on a comparison of these two states we have applied Edelman's distinction between primary and secondary consciousness, which we link to dreaming and waking respectively. In this paper we examine the implications of this contrastive analysis for theories of mental illness. We conclude that while dreaming is an almost perfect model of organic psychosis, it is less so for schizophrenia and major affective disorder where it must serve a primarily heuristic role helping us to model hallucinations and delusions but not the diseases themselves.     

Can people really "laugh at themselves?"--experimental and correlational evidence

Laughing at oneself is considered a core component of the sense of humor in the theories of several authors. In McGhee's (1996) eight-step-training program of the sense of humor, laughing at oneself constitutes one of the most difficult levels. However, until now, only little empirical evidence on laughing at oneself exists. Using a multimethod approach, in the current study, 70 psychology students and a total of 126 peers filled in the Sense of Humor Scale (SHS, McGhee, 1996), containing as a subscale "Laughing at oneself". In addition, the participants answered the Trait and State forms of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory (STCI, Ruch, K?hler, & van Thriel, 1996; Ruch, K?hler, & van Thriel, 1997). They then were confronted with six distorted images of themselves. Facial responses of the participants were videotaped and analyzed using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS, Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002). Four indicators of exhilaration were examined: (a) experienced funniness, (b) AU12 smiles, (c) Duchenne displays, and (d) laughter. Furthermore, fake and masking smiles were studied. Results demonstrated that self- and peer reports of "laughing at oneself" converged moderately. All four indicators of exhilaration were shown, but funniness and laughter seemed to be the most strongly related indicators. Trait cheerfulness and (low) seriousness, and a cheerful mood state formed further characteristics of persons who laugh at themselves.     

Eckpunkte f��r den Vollzug der Sicherungsverwahrung

A working group from the states of Berlin and Brandenburg has worked out benchmarks for the structural organization of detention and reprimand for people who have been sentenced to preventive detention in addition to the actual punishment. Decisive for this from the very beginning was the idea to maintain the aim of social reintegration of convicted persons and to adapt the execution of preventive detention not only formally to the guidelines of the European Court of Human Rights.     

Episodic retrieval processes take place automatically in auditory negative priming

Episodic retrieval processes involved in negative priming have been argued to be susceptible to the proportion of attended repetition trials. The more trials with the same prime and probe response, the more beneficial should it be to retrieve the prime episode, particularly its response. Retrieval of the prime episode, however, is task-inappropriate for ignored repetition trials, leading to negative priming. Correspondingly, visual negative priming increases with the proportion of attended repetition trials. We tested whether the same is true for the auditory modality. Three attended repetition proportion groups (0–25–50%) showed the same amount of negative priming. All groups committed more prime response errors in ignored repetition than in control trials, implying that prime response retrieval took place. Thus, retrieval processes in auditory negative priming appear to be automatic and cannot be influenced as easily as in the visual domain. In Experiment 2, the proportion of ignored repetition trials was manipulated (25–50–75%) to test whether auditory negative priming can be strategically manipulated at all. Similar to the visual modality negative priming was reduced with increasing proportion of ignored repetition trials. Differences between visual and auditory short-term memory are discussed to account for the results.     

Facial Reactions to Emotional Facial Expressions: Affect or Cognition?

This study investigated whether observers' facial reactions to the emotional facial expressions of others represent an affective or a cognitive response to these emotional expressions. Three hypotheses were contrasted: (1) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are due to mimicry as part of an affective empathic reaction; (2) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are a reflection of shared affect due to emotion induction; and (3) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are determined by cognitive load depending on task difficulty. Two experiments were conducted varying type of task, presentation of stimuli, and task difficulty. The results show that depending on the nature of the rating task, facial reactions to facial expressions may be either affective or cognitive. Specifically, evidence for facial mimicry was only found when individuals made judgements regarding the valence of an emotional facial expression. Other types of judgements regarding facial expressions did not seem to elicit mimicry but may lead to facial responses related to cognitive load.     

Religiopoiesis

Religiopoiesis describes the crafting of religion, a core activity of humankind. Each religion is grounded in its myth, and each myth includes a cosmology of origins and destiny. The scientific worldview coheres as such a myth and calls for a religiopoietic response. The difficulties, opportunities, and imperatives inherent in this call are explored, particularly as they impact the working scientist.