The grim reasoner: Analytical reasoning under mortality salience

The human species enjoys uniquely developed capacities for analytical reasoning and rational decision making, but these capacities come with a price: They make us aware of our inevitable physical death. Drawing on terror management theory and dual-process theories of cognition, we investigate the impact of mortality awareness on analytical reasoning. Two experiments show that experimentally induced thoughts of death impair analytical reasoning performance, just as cognitive load would. When made aware of their own mortality, reasoners allocate their executive resources to the suppression of this disturbing thought, therefore impairing their performance on syllogisms that require analytic thought. This finding has consequences for all aspects of rational thinking that draw on executive resources, and calls for an integrated approach to existential psychology and the psychology of rational thought.     

The Portuguese version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination–Revised (ACE-R) in the diagnosis of subcortical vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

The aim of this study was to investigate the accuracy of the Portuguese version of Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination–Revised (ACE-R) in detecting and differentiating early stage subcortical vascular dementia (SVD) from early stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Ninety-two subjects (18 SVD patients, 36 AD patients, and 38 healthy controls) were assessed using the ACE-R. Between-group’s differences were evaluated using the Quade’s rank analysis of covariance. The diagnostic accuracy and discriminatory ability of the ACE-R were examined via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The ACE-R was able to successfully discriminate between patients and healthy subjects. The mean ACE-R total scores differed between SVD and AD patients; there were also significant differences in attention and orientation and in memory measures between the groups. An optimal cut-off of 72/73 was found for the detection of AD (sensitivity: 97%; specificity: 92%) and SVD (sensitivity: 100%; specificity: 92%).     

Jan Patočka’s sacrifice: philosophy as dissent

This article attempts to bring together the life, situation, and philosophical work of the Czech phenomenologist Jan Pato?ka in order to present his conception of philosophy and sacrifice and to understand his action of dissent and his own sacrifice as spokesman for Charter 77 in light of these concepts. Pato?ka philosophized despite being barred from teaching under the German occupation and under the communist regime, even after he was forced to retire and banned from publication. He also refused the official philosophical categories of communism and, what is more, criticized the very manner in which its ideology allowed it to function. Against the destruction of moral and political life by communist and liberal regimes alike, he outlined the necessity of a “life in the idea” that would be responsive to the notion of sacrifice. Such a position of distance from the things of the world which remains anchored among them is meant to respond to dissatisfaction with the world as it is found and is the very movement of human freedom. Taken together, these three aspects of his philosophical practice made him a dissident, a role he took on more completely when, as part of the Charter 77 movement, he publicly opposed the state, in a course of action that led to his death.     

Object and action picture naming in English and Greek

When two orthographically similar words are displayed using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the repeated letters in the second critical word (W2) are not detected, leading to a deficit in reporting this word known as repetition blindness (RB). In Turkish, letters containing diacritic markings (e.g., y, ö) are considered separate letters, yet are visually highly similar to their non-diacritic analogues (s,o). Two experiments used the phenomenon of RB to investigate whether diacritic letters are represented as more similar to their non-diacritic analogues than are two unrelated letters. In Experiment 1, substantially more RB was found for words differing in just a diacritic (i y im-isim) compared to orthographic neighbours (words differing in a visually non-similar letter, such as ilim-isim). In Experiment 2, the amount of RB for identical words (isim-isim) was comparable to words that differed by a single diacritic marking (i y im-isim). We conclude that diacritic letters are mentally represented as variants of their non-diacritic analogue. Letter / word recognition researchers may be interested in pursuing these findings using standard techniques such as backward masking and orthographic priming.     

Film Review

Tell Me Who Is Haunting You and I'll Tell You Who You Are. A Reading of the film Sixth Sense dir. M. Night Shyamalan (1999)     

Logical and memory processes in a unidimensional concept identification task by children and adults

Behavior of 12-year-old children and of adults was studied in a unidimensional concept identification task. Data have been analyzed within the framework of a hypothesis testing model involving a testing process and a memory process. The data show that testing strategy, as it is described in the model, is very close in children and adults. In children, however, who exhibit lesser retention of information preceding the last trial, the memory process suffers from more limitations than in adults.     

Perceived risk: an experimental investigation of consumer behavior when buying wine

The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in expressed attitude as a function of the manner in which information on perceived risk is communicated. The experiments are conducted through a choice‐based questionnaire to reflect the consumer‐oriented decision of the purchase of a bottle of wine based on posted prices. The experiments reported in this paper are based on questionnaires distributed to 323 participants in multiple samples and examine the behavior of people when faced with different information on the probability of loss. The present study demonstrates that changes in the manner in which information is presented, without any underlying change in problem structure, affects observed preferences when buying wine. The impact of perceived risk and character on the willingness to buy and to pay for a bottle is analyzed and show that price habits and perceived risk are the main factors affecting the willingness to pay for a bottle of wine. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of the Effects of Telephone Suicide Prevention Help by Volunteers and Professional Paid Staff: Results from Studies in the USA and Quebec,Canada

Research since the 1960s has consistently found that lay volunteers are better at helping suicidal callers than professionals. Yet, professional degrees are increasingly becoming requirements for helpline workers. In our first study, we conducted post hoc comparisons of U.S. helplines with all professional paid staff, all lay volunteers, and a mix of both, using silent monitoring and standardized assessments of 1,431 calls. The volunteer centers more often conducted risk assessments, had more empathy, were more respectful of callers, and had significantly better call outcome ratings. A second study of five Quebec suicide prevention centers used silent monitoring to compare telephone help in 1,206 calls answered by 90 volunteers and 39 paid staff. Results indicate no significant differences between the volunteers and paid employees on outcome variables. However, volunteers and paid staff with over 140 hours of call experience had significantly better outcomes. Unlike the United States, Quebec paid employees were not required to have advanced professional degrees. We conclude from these results and previous research that there is no justification for requiring that suicide prevention helpline workers be mental health professionals. In fact, the evidence to date indicates that professionals may be less effective in providing telephone help to suicidal individuals when compared to trained lay volunteers.     

B2B commitment building in emerging markets: the case of Brazil

The research examines the suitability of relationship marketing paradigms to emerging markets (EMs) through the lens of communication, relationship benefits and commitment. Using the U.S. as a developed nation sample and Brazil as a proxy for EM countries like the BRIC nations, a B2B buyer–supplier commitment-building model is conceptualized and tested for context-specific boundaries. The study compares communication behaviors and relationship benefits along functional, psychological and social dimensions to discern the evaluation process and governance mechanisms influenced by an EM buyer’s institutional environment. Results showed that buyers from relation-based EMs like Brazil base their relationship commitment more on the psychological attributes of the partnership, while a buyer’s commitment-building process in rule-based, developed nations like the US is largely influenced by functional attributes.