Recognizing Anxiety Disorders in the Aftermath of the World Trade Center Crisis

This article seeks to educate the reader on how to recognize the presence of anxiety disorders as they occur in the church community. The author uses medical information, Scriptural wisdom and a case illustration to help concerned Christians to assist sufferers in getting appropriate care. Anxiety disorders in the aftermath of the World Trade Center trajedy will be on the rise and the paper addresses this matter particularly for clergy, caregivers and professional counselors.     

The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention

We investigated whether a fearful expression enhances the effect of another's gaze in directing the attention of an observer. Participants viewed photographs of faces whose gaze was directed ahead, to the left or to the right. Target letters then appeared unpredictably to the left or right. As expected, targets in the location indicated by gaze were detected more rapidly. In nonanxious volunteers the effects of fearful gaze did not differ from neutral gaze, but fearful expression had a more powerful influence in a selected high anxious group. Attention is thus more likely to be guided by the direction of fearful than neutral gaze, but only in anxiety-prone individuals.     

Reasons or rationalizations: The role of principles in the moral dumbfounding paradigm

Moral dumbfounding occurs when people maintain a moral judgment even though they cannot provide reasons for it. Recently, questions have been raised about whether dumbfounding is a real phenomenon. Two reasons have been proposed as guiding the judgments of dumbfounded participants: harm-based reasons (believing an action may cause harm) or norm-based reasons (breaking a moral norm is inherently wrong). Participants in that research (see Royzman, Kim, & Leeman, 2015), who endorsed either reason were excluded from analysis, and instances of moral dumbfounding seemingly reduced to non-significance. We argue that endorsing a reason is not sufficient evidence that a judgment is grounded in that reason. Stronger evidence should additionally account for (a) articulating a given reason and (b) consistently applying the reason in different situations. Building on this, we develop revised exclusion criteria across three studies. Study 1 included an open-ended response option immediately after the presentation of a moral scenario. Responses were coded for mention of harm-based or norm-based reasons. Participants were excluded from analysis if they both articulated and endorsed a given reason. Using these revised criteria for exclusion, we found evidence for dumbfounding, as measured by the selecting of an admission of not having reasons. Studies 2 and 3 included a further three questions relating to harm-based reasons specifically, assessing the consistency with which people apply harm-based reasons across differing contexts. As predicted, few participants consistently applied, articulated, and endorsed harm-based reasons, and evidence for dumbfounding was found.     

Participants' reactions to “Equity with the world”

According to traditional Equity theory, the injustices that an individual encounters in one relationship should not affect his other relationships. By definition, the equitableness of one relationship (say the AB relationship) depends entirely on how much Participants A and B contribute to the relationship and how much they get out of it.Austin, in Austin and Walster (1973), however, argues that Equity theory must make transrelational predictions. He argues that persons attempt to maintain both “Person-specific Equity” and “Equity with the World” (e.g., Equity with others in general). The authors predicted (and found) that whether a person focuses on “Person-specific Equity” or “Equity with the World” depends on whether or not he feels “accountable” for his behavior. When participants knew they could not be held accountable for their actions, they routinely sacrificed Person-specific Equity in order to maintain Equity with the World. However, when they knew they would have to confront their second partner eventually, they rarely sacrificed Person-specific Equity. (Evidently, they assumed their partners would not sympathize with their desire to maintain transrelational equity.)In this experiment, we predicted (and found) that such pessimism (by persons wishing to restore “Equity with the World”) is not justified. Inequitably treated partners' dissatisfaction and hostility were markedly blunted when individuals believed that their “unfair” partner was attempting to restore “Equity with the World“.     

Balance,positivity, and agreement in the Jordan Paradigm: A defense of balance theory

It was argued that Heider's p?o?x triad can best be conceptualized according to a three- factor analysis of variance model in which the p?o, p?x, and o?x bands are all factors. From this perspective the balance effect is the triple interaction, the positivity effect a main effect for the p?o factor, and the agreement effect a p?x by o?x interaction. Although the existence of the latter two effects has previously been regarded as damaging to balance theory, it was shown that these effects could be interpreted from a balance perspective and that balance theory could be used to generate supportable propositions regarding these effects. Thus in agreement with a unit-relation interpretation it was shown, in accordance with balance theory, that positivity effects are obtained when the subject, or p, assumes future contact with o, that reverse positivity effects are obtained when the subject anticipates breaking off contact with o, and that no positivity effect is obtained when there is absolutely no contact, past or future. It was also demonstrated in an experiment involving the p?o?q triad that, in accordance with balance theory, positivity effects may be produced by the assumption or inference of same-sign reciprocation in sentiment. Evidence for two balance processes underlying agreement effects was also found. One of these processes was based on the assumption that the subject would have or reveal psycho-logical reasons for the disagreement and thus produce imbalance. Consistent with this interpretation it was found that the agreement effect was significantly larger when future contact with discussion of x was assumed than when future contact without discussion of x was assumed. The other, or unit-relation interpretation was supported by evidence indicating that the breaking off of contact resulted in a reversed agreement effect. In general, it was argued that balance theory did quite well in such phenomenological investigations when attention was not narrowly restricted to the three-sign pattern but considered other potential cognitive bands.     

Retrieval of bindings between task-irrelevant stimuli and responses can facilitate behaviour under conditions of high response certainty

Repetition priming can be driven by the encoding and retrieval of stimulus–response (S–R) bindings. When a previously encoded S–R binding is retrieved, and is congruent with the response currently required, it can bias response-selection processes towards selecting the retrieved response, resulting in facilitation. Previous studies have used classification tasks at retrieval. Here, two (or more) response options are competing, and it is likely that any evidence (e.g., an S–R binding) in favour of one option will be utilized to effect a decision. Thus, S–R effects are likely to be seen when using such a task. It is unclear whether such effects can be seen under conditions of higher response certainty, when participants are explicitly cued to make a response. Across two experiments, evidence for a modulating influence of S–R bindings is seen despite using a response cueing method at retrieval to minimize response uncertainty and despite stimuli being task irrelevant. Finally, the results suggest that responses within these S–R bindings are coded at the level of left versus right hand, and not a more fine-grained within-hand thumb versus index finger. The results underline the resilience of S–R effects, suggesting that they are present even under conditions where no explicit object-oriented decision is required.     

Speeded multielement decision-making as diffusion in a hypersphere: Theory and application to double-target detection

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - We generalize the circular 2D diffusion model of Smith (Psychological Review, 123, 425–451: 2016) to provide a new model of speeded decision-making in...