Emotion regulation,disgust sensitivity,and psychophysiological responses to a disgust-inducing film

Abstract

Using a disgust-inducing film, Gross (1998) showed that the instruction to suppress mimic expression (suppression) triggered physiological arousal, while the instruction to think about the film in order to adopt a detached and unemotional attitude (reappraisal) reduced affective strain compared to a condition instructing subjects simply to watch the film (watch). The present paper investigates, if disgust sensitivity has a moderating role in this context. Physiological, subjective, and behavior responses were recorded in 120 males divided according to high/low disgust sensitivity who were exposed to the disgust-inducing film used by Gross. The instruction effects reported by Gross could not be replicated. However, high disgust-sensitive subjects were more physiologically and emotionally aroused than low disgust-sensitive subjects. Interactions between disgust sensitivity and the three film instructions can possibly be traced back to a repressive coping style of subjects with low disgust sensitivity.     

One-trial learning and superior resistance to extinction of autonomic responses conditioned to potentially phobic stimuli.

Human subjects were exposed to pictures of potentially phobic (snakes) and supposedly neutral (houses) objects as conditioned stimuli (CSs) in a Pavlovian conditioning experiment with shock as unconditioned stimulus (US), and skin conductance and finger pulse volume as dependent variables. The skin conductance responses conditioned to phobic stimuli were acquired after one CS-US pairing, and showed practically no extinction, whereas the responses to neutral stimuli showed very little resistance to extinction after both 1 and 5 reinforcements. The superior resistance to extinction of the phobic condition was interpreted to be a specific associative effect. In general, the skin conductance acquisition data showed tendencies similar to those during extinction. For finger pulse volume responses, however, there were very weak conditioning effects, and no effect of stimulus.     

The Emotional Christ: Bonaventure and Deep Incarnation1

This article has the twofold aim of bringing the Christology of St. Bonaventure into dialogue with contemporary attempts to formulate an informational worldview, and with the recent theological proposal of deep incarnation. It is argued that even though Bonaventure is a pre‐modern theologian, he anticipates central aspects of a contemporary informational worldview based on differential information, structural information, and semantic information. Moreover, the article explores Bonaventure's unique combination of a “high” exemplarist Christology with a “low” Franciscan view of the humility of Christ. While Bonaventure shares seminal concerns of deep incarnation, his strong view of divine perfection prohibits him from assuming that the divinity of Christ embraces the full gamut of human emotions and anxieties related to the future.     

Algorithmic complexity for psychology: a user-friendly implementation of the coding theorem method

Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity has long been believed to be impossible to approximate when it comes to short sequences (e.g. of length 5-50). However, with the newly developed coding theorem method the complexity of strings of length 2-11 can now be numerically estimated. We present the theoretical basis of algorithmic complexity for short strings (ACSS) and describe an R-package providing functions based on ACSS that will cover psychologists’ needs and improve upon previous methods in three ways: (1) ACSS is now available not only for binary strings, but for strings based on up to 9 different symbols, (2) ACSS no longer requires time-consuming computing, and (3) a new approach based on ACSS gives access to an estimation of the complexity of strings of any length. Finally, three illustrative examples show how these tools can be applied to psychology.     

Metacognitive Therapy in Major Depression: An Open Trial of Comorbid Cases

This open trial investigated the transdiagnostic effects of metacognitive therapy (MCT) in patients with severe major depressive disorder and comorbid psychiatric disorder. Ten patients were treated with MCT over 10 sessions and were assessed with measures of depression, anxiety, rumination, and metacognitions at pre- and posttreatment and at 6 months follow-up. None of the patients were diagnosed as depressed at posttreatment, and of the initial 21 total diagnoses at pretreatment only 3 diagnoses remained at postintervention. The effect sizes were large for symptoms of depression, rumination, and worry. At 6 months follow-up standardized recovery criteria on the BDI showed that 70% were recovered, 20% improved, and 10% unchanged. The results indicate that MCT was associated with high rates of transdiagnostic improvement.     

Positive Loss and Tragic Memory: On the Preservation of Community

Theologies of disaster have to recognize exceptional disasters in the framework of a general human exposure to vulnerability, while engaging in the formation of human and religious resilience. Resilience is about “bouncing back and forward” in and through precautionary and self‐adaptive responses to disasters. Drawing up a distinction between personal tragedies and socially shared disasters, the basic argument is that the reconnection of disrupted communities lies at the center of both tragedy and disaster. This article describes a post‐secular theology of tragedy and disaster that mainly stays in a vernacular language, referring to basic assumptions of the gospel while refraining from using the heavier repertoires of Christian doctrine.     

Fried and Freud on the Acropolis; on duality in the base of psychoanalytic thinking

Freud was conflicted in relation to his religious background. On the one hand, he was very clear on his adherence to a scientific Weltanschauung. On the other, he was fascinated by the Moses figure and one may see a Judaist structure in his way of thinking. The aim of this paper is to reflect on this conflict and the question of faith in psychoanalysis. After looking at object and method in religion and psychoanalysis, the authors go into the concept of ‘psychic reality’ and its change in the history of psychoanalysis. Through an analysis of Freud’s A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis and the function of literature, it is claimed that faith may be seen as a condition for the sense of experiential reality.