Discerning the Relations Between Conversation and Cognition

Although hailing from cognate analytical schools, the contributors to Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter’s edited volume Conversation and Cognition hold a remarkable diversity of views on the nature of “mental states” and their import for the purposes of analyzing naturally occurring interaction. I offer a critical analysis of some of the contributors’ discussions of cognition in social interaction in an effort to clarify some obstinate issues with respect to the meanings of words in our cognitive vocabulary (e.g. “thought” and “realization”) and their identification in analyses of conversation.     

Affective atmospheres

In this paper I reflect on the concept of affective atmospheres in the context of the distinction between affect and emotion that has emerged in recent work on emotion, space and society. The concept of atmosphere is interesting because it holds a series of opposites -- presence and absence, materiality and ideality, definite and indefinite, singularity and generality -- in a relation of tension. To develop this account of atmosphere I juxtapose Marx's materialist imagination with a phenomenology attentive to singular affective qualities. By invoking a material imagination based on the movement and lightness of air, we learn from the former about the turbulence of atmospheres and their indeterminate quality. From the latter, we learn that atmospheres are singular affective qualities that emanate from but exceed the assembling of bodies. As such, to attend to affective atmospheres is to learn to be affected by the ambiguities of affect/emotion, by that which is determinate and indeterminate, present and absent, singular and vague.     

The Price of Pain and the Value of Suffering

ABSTRACT— Estimating the financial value of pain informs issues as diverse as the market price of analgesics, the cost-effectiveness of clinical treatments, compensation for injury, and the response to public hazards. Such valuations are assumed to reflect a stable trade-off between relief of discomfort and money. Here, using an auction-based health-market experiment, we show that the price people pay for relief of pain is strongly determined by the local context of the market, that is, by recent intensities of pain or immediately disposable income (but not overall wealth). The absence of a stable valuation metric suggests that the dynamic behavior of health markets is not predictable from the static behavior of individuals. We conclude that the results follow the dynamics of habit-formation models of economic theory, and thus, this study provides the first scientific basis for this type of preference modeling.     

Framing and Editing Interpersonal Arguments

Since argument frames precede most other arguing processes, argument editing among them, one’s frames may well predict one’s preferred editorial standards. This experiment assesses people’s arguing frames, gives them arguments to edit, and tests whether the frames actually do predict editorial preferences. Modest relationships between argument frames and argument editing appear. Other connections among frames, editing, and additional individual differences variables are more substantial. Particularly notable are the informative influences of psychological reactance. A new theoretical contribution is offered, connecting argument frame research to Erving Goffman’s frame analysis.     

A Defence of Weighted Lotteries in Life Saving Cases

The three most common responses to Taurek’s ‘numbers problem’ are saving the greater number, equal chance lotteries and weighted lotteries. Weighted lotteries have perhaps received the least support, having been criticized by Scanlon What We Owe to Each Other (1998) and Hirose ‘Fairness in Life and Death Cases’ (2007). This article considers these objections in turn, and argues that they do not succeed in refuting the fairness of a weighted lottery, which remains a potential solution to cases of conflict. Moreover, it shows how these responses actually lead to a new argument for weighted lotteries, appealing to fairness and Pareto-optimality.

Warnings given to observers can eliminate order effects

ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to examine the impact of warnings on order effects in attributions of ability.MethodQualified soccer coaches (N = 146) rated the ability of two soccer players (a control and target player) each shown, on video, performing a passing task eight times. For the control player, all participants saw the same footage in the same order. For the target player, participants viewed the same footage with half viewing a declining (successful to unsuccessful) performance pattern and half viewing an ascending pattern. Additionally, coaches either received no warning of the danger of order effects, a warning prior to viewing any footage, a warning prior to viewing the target player or a warning prior to rating the target player.ResultsResults indicated that primacy effects were observed in the no warning condition and the warning prior to rating the target. However, when warnings were given prior to observing the target player no order effects were observed.ConclusionThe results indicate that order effects can be eliminated by warning observers of the phenomenon.     

A paradox for some theories of welfare

Sometimes people desire that their lives go badly, take pleasure in their lives going badly, or believe that their lives are going badly. As a result, some popular theories of welfare are paradoxical. I show that no attempt to defend those theories from the paradox fully succeeds.     

EMOTLAB: Software for studying emotional signaling in economic bargaining games

EMOTLAB software creates a virtual social environment in which individuals interact via computer with a virtual interaction partner in a series of economic bargaining games. The virtual partner appears on the participant's computer screen as a digital image (e.g., video or picture file) during each trial. A key feature of EMOTLAB software is its ability to control both the strategic behavior and the emotion signaling behavior (e.g., anger vs. embarrassment) of the virtual interaction partner. By simply editing a series of text files that control the subroutines governing the different features of the experiment (payoff structure, number of trials, etc.), EMOTLAB can generate an essentially infinite number of different social bargaining situations in which participants earn monetary payoffs contingent upon their decisions. This paper provides an overview of this software and how one can edit various subroutines to generate a typical experimental session in which research participants encounter a virtual interaction partner who displays different emotional signals.     

A role for eyebrows in regulating the visibility of eye gaze direction

The human eye is unique amongst those of primates in having white sclera against which the dark iris is clearly visible. This high-contrast structure makes the gaze direction of a human potentially easily perceptible to others. For a social creature such as a human, the ability to perceive the direction of another's gaze may be very useful, since gaze usually signals attention. We report data showing that the accuracy of gaze deviation detection is independent of viewing distance up to a certain critical distance, beyond which it collapses. This is, of itself, surprising since most visual tasks are performed better at closer viewing distances. Our data also show that the critical distance, but not accuracy, is affected by the position of the eyebrows so that lowering the eyebrows reduces the critical distance. These findings show that mechanisms exist by which humans could expand or restrict the availability of their gaze direction to others. A way to regulate the availability of the gaze direction signal could be an advantage. We show that an interpretation of eyebrow function in these terms provides a novel explanation for several well-known eyebrow actions, including the eyebrow flash.