Fundamentalism and the masculine body: The case of Jewish Ultra-Orthodox men in Israel

The predominant model in the literature on fundamentalism focuses on the tense relationship between contemporary radical religious movements and their environment. The characteristic violence that has made fundamentalism notorious is conventionally explained in terms of defensive or offensive reactions to the challenge of the modern secular society. In light of recent developments in the fundamentalist world, we propose to employ a novel analytic framework to update and revise the current conceptualization. Our argumentation is based on extensive fieldwork in a particular case of Jewish fundamentalism. We introduce into the agenda of fundamentalism research a category conspicuously absent thus far: the body. Results of ethnographic study of Ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel throw light on the very existence of fundamentalist body, and emphasize its implications for better understanding the fundamentalist predicament. The body poses a major problem to fundamentalists and plays a key role in their typical behavior and particularly in their violence. Discussing fundamentalism in terms of the body allows us to see its militancy as a solution to intra-fundamentalist problems that emerge in advanced stages of the movements' life, on the one hand, and paradoxically as a means towards reconciliation with the movements' environment normally regarded as its enemy, on the other hand. In the case presented here the fundamentalist violence is manifested in various hitherto unexplored ways including an enthusiastic service in the military of the nation-state. Such peculiar violence indicates present-day fundamentalist experimentation in an attempt to establish new possibilities of coming to terms with ever changing social and political reality, while at the same time to pursue revolutionary options of radical religious experience.     

Indirect assessment of visual working memory for simple and complex objects

Previous research has shown that visual search performance is modulated by the current contents in visual working memory (VWM), even when the contents of VWM are irrelevant to the search task. For example, visual search is faster when the target--rather than a distractor--is surrounded by a shape currently held in VWM. This study uses the modulation of visual search by VWM to investigate properties of VWM. Participants wereasked to remember the color or the shape of novel polygons whose "goodness" of figure varied according to Garner's (1962) rotation and reflection transformation principle. During the memory retention interval, participants searched for a tilted line among vertical lines embedded inside colored polygons. Search was faster when the target--rather than a distractor--was enclosed by the remembered polygons. The congruity effect diminished with increasing memory load and decreasing figure goodness. We conclude that congruity effects in visual search can indirectly assess VWM representation strength.     

Loss aversion,diminishing sensitivity,and the effect of experience on repeated decisions

Three experiments are presented that explore the assertion that loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity drive the effect of experience on choice behavior. The experiments are focused on repeated choice tasks where decision makers choose repeatedly between alternatives and get feedback after each choice. Experiments 1a and 1b show that behavioral tendencies that were previously interpreted as indications of loss aversion in decisions from experience are better described as products of diminishing sensitivity to absolute payoffs. Experiment 2 highlights a nominal magnitude effect: A decrease in the magnitude of the nominal payoffs eliminates the evidence for diminishing sensitivity. These and related previous results can be captured with a model that assumes reliance on small samples of subjective experiences, and an increase in diminishing sensitivity with payoff variability. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The dominance of fear over hope in the life of individuals and collectives

We address the question why fear dominates hope in the life of individuals and collectives on the basis of the accumulated knowledge in the psychology, neurology and sociology of emotions. This knowledge suggests that fear, as primary emotion, is grounded in the experienced present and based on the memorized past, processed both consciously and unconsciously, causes freezing and conservatism, and sometimes leads to pre‐emptive aggression. Hope, in contrast, as a secondary emotion, involves cognitive activity, which requires anticipation and the search for new ideas and thus is based on complex processes of creativity and flexibility. Therefore, hope is often preceded and inhibited by spontaneous, automatically activated and faster fear. Fear and hope can each become a collective emotional orientation, and as such organize society's views and direct its actions. Societies involved in intractable conflict are dominated by a collective fear orientation. This orientation is functional for society's coping with the stressful and demanding situation—but it may serve as a psychological obstacle to any peace process, once it starts. The case of the collective fear orientation in the Jewish Israeli society is presented as an example. The article ends with a presentation of a particular approach, suggesting that individuals and collectives can overcome their fear with much determination, and establish an orientation of hope which allows change in situations dominated by fear. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stimulus exposure and gaze bias: A further test of the gaze cascade model

We tested predictions derived from the gaze cascade model of preference decision making (Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, & Scheier, 2003; Simion & Shimojo, 2006, 2007). In each trial, participants’ eye movements were monitored while they performed an eight-alternative decision task in which four of the items in the array were preexposed prior to the trial. Replicating previous findings, we found a gaze bias toward the chosen item prior to the response. However, contrary to the prediction of the gaze cascade model, preexposure of stimuli decreased, rather than increased, the magnitude of the gaze bias in preference decisions. Furthermore, unlike the prediction of the model, preexposure did not affect the likelihood of an item being chosen, and the pattern of looking behavior in preference decisions and on a nonpreference control task was remarkably similar. Implications of the present findings in multistage models of decision making are discussed.     

Effect of Framing on Applicants' Reactions to Personnel Selection Methods

This research demonstrates the effect of framing on applicants' reactions to two personnel selection methods: undergraduate grade point average and personnel interview scores. Presenting a selection situation framed positively (to accept applicants) caused applicants to rate both selection methods more favorably relative to presenting them with an identical selection situation framed negatively (to reject the remaining applicants). Framing affected reactions that emphasized distributive justice aspects of the selection situation and procedural justice aspects. The results are consistent with Prospect theory and with Fairness Heuristic theory. The paper offers a theoretical explanation for the effect of framing on applicants' reactions to personnel selection methods, discusses the implications of this effect, and suggests directions for future research.     

The effect of a major event on stereotyping: terrorist attacks in Israel and Israeli adolescents' perceptions of Palestinians,Jordanians and Arabs

This study examines the effect of a major event (terrorist attacks) on the stereotypic perceptions, attitudes and affects of 119 Israeli adolescents (56 males and 63 females of 5th and 8th grades) toward three target groups: (a) Palestinians, who still have conflictive relations with the Israelis (Palestinian extremists carried out the attacks), (b) Jordanians, who have peaceful relations with the Israelis and (c) Arabs, in general, who are considered a subcategory including Arabs of all nations. The questionnaires were administered to the same adolescents three times: during a relatively peaceful spell in Israeli–Palestinian relations; one day following two terrorist attacks, and three months thereafter. In the last administration adolescents' need for closure was also measured. Adolescents' perceptions, attitudes and affect toward the three target group were differentiated—relating to Palestinians most negatively and to Jordanians most positively. Also, following the terrorist attacks, stereotypic perceptions and attitudes changed in a negative direction, in relation to all the three groups; again with expressed differentiation among the three groups. In the third measurement, some measures remained negative, but some changed to be more positive. Only few effects of age were detected and several significant correlation with need for closure were found. These results indicate that stereotypes and attitudes toward outgroups are context‐dependent, influenced by events; thus they serve as ‘a seismograph’ to the quality of intergroup relations at any given time. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visual search asymmetry: The influence of stimulus familiarity and low-level features

Wang, Cavanagh, and Green (1994) demonstrated a pop-out effect in searching for an unfamiliar target among familiar distractors (U—F search) and argued for the importance of a familiarity difference between the target and the distractors in determining search efficiency. In four experiments, we explored the generality of that finding. Experiment 1 compared search efficiency across a variety of target-distractor pairs. In Experiments 2, 3, and 4, we used Chinese characters and their transforms as targets and distractors and compared search performance between Chinese and non-Chinese participants. We demonstrated that search asymmetry and search efficiency in the U—F condition are influenced by the presence of low-level feature differences between the familiar and the unfamiliar stimuli. Our findings suggest that the familiarity of the distractors, rather than the familiarity difference between the target and the distractors, determines search efficiency. We also documented a counterintuitive familiarity-inferiority effect, suggesting that knowledge of search stimuli may, sometimes, be detrimental to search performance.     

Recognition memory performance as a function of reported subjective awareness

Three experiments introduced a recognition memory paradigm designed to investigate reported subjective awareness during retrieval. At study, in Experiments 1A and 2, words were either generated or read (generation), while modality of presentation (auditory versus visual) was manipulated in Experiment 1B. Word pairs (old/new or new/new) were presented during test trials, and participants indicated if they contained an old word by responding "remember", "know" or "new" in Experiments 1A and 1B, and by responding "strong no", "weak no", "weak yes", or "strong yes" in Experiment 2. Participants were then required to decide which of the 2 words was old. We demonstrated that the proportion measures used in the Remember Know paradigm substantially underestimated the influence of generation on familiarity resulting in an artificial dissociation between indices of knowing (familiarity) and remembering (recollection). We also found a qualitatively different pattern of forced-choice recognition performance as a function of claimed awareness.