A rational look at the emotional stroop phenomenon: a generic slowdown, not a stroop effect

The role of Stroop processes in the emotional Stroop effect was subjected to a conceptual scrutiny augmented by a series of experiments entailing reading or lexical decision as well as color naming. The analysis showed that the Stroop effect is not defined in the emotional Stroop task. The experiments showed that reading, lexical decision, and color naming all are slower with emotional words and that this delay is immune to task-irrelevant variation and to changes in the relative salience of the words and the colors. The delay was absent when emotional and neutral words appeared in a single block. A threat-driven generic slowdown is implicated, not a selective attention mechanism associated with the classic Stroop effect.     

Explaining Normative Versus Nonnormative Action: The Role of Implicit Theories

The current research investigates what motivates people to engage in normative versus nonnormative action. Prior research has shown that different emotions lead to different types of action. We argue that these differing emotions are determined by a more basic characteristic, namely, implicit theories about whether groups and the world in general can change. We hypothesized that incremental theories (beliefs that groups/the world can change) would predict normative action, and entity theories (beliefs that groups/the world cannot change) as well as group identification would predict nonnormative action. We conducted a pilot in the context of protests against a government plan to relocate Bedouin villages in Israel and a main study during the Israeli social protests of the middle class. Results revealed three distinct pathways to collective action. First, incremental theories about the world predicted hope, which predicted normative action. Second, incremental theories about groups and group identification predicted anger, which also predicted normative collective action. Lastly, entity theories about groups predicted nonnormative collective action through hatred, but only for participants who were highly identified with the group. In sum, people who believed in the possibility of change supported normative action, whereas those who believed change was not possible supported nonnormative action.     

Physiological Reactions to a Suicide Film: Suicide Attempters,Suicide Ideators,and Nonsuicidal Patients

A film about two teenagers who commit suicide was shown to three groups of psychiatric inpatients: 17 who had attempted suicide, 20 who had expressed suicidal thoughts, and 10 who were not suicidal. Anxiety before and after the film was evaluated with psychometric (anxiety rating scale) and physiological tools (heart and respiration rate, blood pressure, electromyogram). Values noted before and after screening, and the degree of change in these values, were compared. In addition, psychomotor agitation was rated at several points during the film. Most results were negative. The suicide attempters had significantly lower postscreening heart rates and a significantly lesser change in heart and respiration rates than the other two groups. The suicide attempters revealed an increase in psychomotor agitation until the discovery of the suicide and a decrease thereafter, whereas the agitation of the nonsuicidal patients continued to increase from the start to the end of the film. The study suggests that on some parameters, suicide attempters reveal less anxiety than nonsuicidal psychiatric patients following exposure to a simulated suicide. The reaction of suicide ideators falls somewhere between the two groups.     

Individuating quantities

Philosophical Studies - When discrepancies are discovered between the outcomes of different measurement procedures, two sorts of explanation are open to scientists. Either (i) some of the outcomes...