AGE AND GENDER DIMENSIONS OF FRIENDSHIP

Since stereotypes about appropriate social behavior appear to influence questionnaires and other self-reported data concerning friendship, an in-depth interview format was used to explore gender and age differences in friendship patterns. Thirty-one subjects were interviewed: five young males, six young females, fivemidlife males, five midlife females, five older males, and five older females. As in our previous questionnaire studies, groups described friendship in superficially similar ways. However, in the taped interviews, large gender differences appeared that followed conceptually along instrumental/expressive dimensions. Women at all ages were more expressive in their friendships, showing higher levels of empathy and altruism than men. Age differences also appeared, with men developing increased concern and thoughtfulness in friendship with greater age, and women showing more tolerance and less confrontation of their friends with greater age.     

Priming of emotion recognition

Four experiments investigated priming of emotion recognition using a range of emotional stimuli, including facial expressions, words, pictures, and nonverbal sounds. In each experiment, a prime-target paradigm was used with related, neutral, and unrelated pairs. In Experiment 1, facial expression primes preceded word targets in an emotion classification task. A pattern of priming of emotional word targets by related primes with no inhibition of unrelated primes was found. Experiment 2 reversed these primes and targets and found the same pattern of results, demonstrating bidirectional priming between facial expressions and words. Experiment 2 also found priming of facial expression targets by picture primes. Experiment 3 demonstrated that priming occurs not just between pairs of stimuli that have a high co-occurrence in the environment (for example, nonverbal sounds and facial expressions), but with stimuli that co-occur less frequently and are linked mainly by their emotional category (for example, nonverbal sounds and printed words). This shows the importance of the prime and target sharing a common emotional category, rather than their previous co-occurrence. Experiment 4 extended the findings by showing that there are category-based effects as well as valence effects in emotional priming, supporting a categorical view of emotion recognition.     

The Essence of Cinema?

Philosophical Studies -     

Transgenerational Obligations: Twenty-first Century Germany and the Holocaust

Abstract Has history assigned special obligations to Germans that can transcend generation borders? Do the grandchildren of Holocaust perpetrators or the grandchildren of inactive bystanders carry any obligations that are only related to their ancestry? These questions will be at the centre of this investigation. It will be argued that five different models of justification are available for or against transgenerational obligations, namely liberalism, the unique evil argument, the psychological view, a form of consequentialist pragmatism and the community‐based approach. Only two of these models stand up to philosophical scrutiny. Applying the community‐based model leads to the conclusion that young Germans do indeed have indirect, indeterminate, but strict obligations that transcend generation borders. However, it will be argued that only the obligation of compensation can be restricted to Germans. The remaining two Holocaust‐related obligations of prevention and remembrance have to be seen as universal.