CS as an effect: action-based evaluative conditioning depends on temporal contiguity

ABSTRACT

In this study, we analysed Evaluative Conditioning (EC) with a recently introduced S-R paradigm [Blask et al., 2016 Blask, K. , Frings, C. , & Walther, E. (2016). Doing is for feeling. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 145 (10), 1263–1268. https://doi.org/ 10.1037/xge0000211 [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. Doing is for feeling. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(10), 1263–1268], in which valence first transfers from an affective US to a response and then from this valence-laden response to a novel CS. Based on action control research, the CS in this procedure could be interpreted as an effect of the response. Hence, temporal contiguity of the valence-laden response and the CS should determine whether EC occurs. We tested this hypothesis in an experiment, in which we varied the time interval between the response and the subsequent CS. Results show that EC effects occurred only under conditions of high temporal contiguity thus supporting our assumptions. This finding sheds light on the processes underlying action-based EC in particular and evaluative learning in general.     

Depression impairs the ability to ignore the emotional aspects of facial expressions: Evidence from the Garner task

We assessed dysphoric and clinically distressed individuals' ability to ignore the emotional aspects of facial expressions using the Garner speeded‐classification task. Garner's paradigm tests the ability to selectively focus on a single relevant dimension while ignoring variations on other, irrelevant, ones. In the present task, the stimuli were faces of men and women expressing happy, angry, and neutral emotions. In Experiments 1 and 2, dysphoric and nondysphoric participants performed the Garner task, focusing on gender and ignoring emotion (Experiment 1) and focusing on emotion and ignoring gender (Experiment 2). Results suggest that dysphoric individuals exhibited more difficulty ignoring the emotional dimension of social stimuli even under specific instructions to do so than nondysphoric individuals. In Experiments 3 and 4, we replicated these results in clinically distressed and nondistressed individuals. The results of Experiment 3 further suggested that depression was more closely associated with the inability to selectively ignore emotion than was social anxiety. Experiment 4 confirmed that this failure of selective attention was specific to processing emotional, and not gender features. The implications of these findings for cognitive and interpersonal theories of depression are discussed.     

Hate (its vicissitudes and its relations) revisited: Part II - Groups and culture

Abstract

Part I of this paper discussed various dynamic aspects of hate in the individual developmental and clinical context. Part II, also an expansion of the author’s discussion of Harold Blum’s presentation on “Hate and its vicissitudes” in Prague in 2017, examines the theme of hate as a multidimensional dynamic group phenomenon. The paper uses various theoretical perspectives to focus on group unconscious processes and the group-specific dynamic of regression leading to an activation of primitive ego operations, unleashing destructive aggression as well as creative mobilization. Also considered are the implications in terms of destruction, adaptation, and creativity, in relation to group unconscious dynamic processes and intergenerationally trasmitted trauma and posttraumatic developments.     

Hate (its vicissitudes and its relations) revisited: Part I – Individual

Abstract

The present paper is an expansion of the author’s discussion of Harold Blum’s seminal presentation “Hate and its vicissitudes” in Prague in 2017. It aims at an elaboration of various aspects of hate and hatred as a complex dynamic intrapsychic and relational affective-cognitive state, alloyed, in different ways, with aggression and love. In this context, various theoretical perspectives concerning the multifaceted relation between hate, love, and sexuality, and hate and destructive aggression, and transformations between them, including the first study of neurobiological correlates of hate, will be raised and explored. Implication on destruction as well as psychic structuring, adaptation and creativity are also considered. The clinical vignettes illustrates the relevance of multiple theoretical conceptualizations in contemporary psychoanalytic practice.