THE GOLEM LEGEND AND THE ENIGMA OF FACEBOOK

We are easily misguided as to the true nature of Facebook, and tend to treat it simply as a powerful technological instrument in the service of human intentions. We can, however, gain a better picture of it through recourse to the Jewish tradition of the golem, an image of human beings, created by them in a re-enactment of their own creation by God. It turns into a magic servant in modernity with an inherent dynamic running between its human and its subhuman characteristics. This dynamic is the main cause behind its becoming uncontrollable. In like manner, what is subhuman in Facebook serves its masters and functions under their total control, but also empowers Facebook's increasingly human operation, an algorithm-based capability which raises growing doubts about what counts as human. Facebook implies the crisis of humanity which coincides with the “death of God,” that is, the obsolescence of the idea of a divine creator.     

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Consider My Options Cognition,Verbal Strategies,and the Escalation of Intimacy

Previous research has revealed that individuals have expectations for the development of romance based on personal experience and cultural images. A series of research questions and hypotheses was generated and a sequence of hierarchical log-linear analysis models axis developed to test (a) the effect of gender and knowledge of relational stage and relationship type on prediction of next-occurring actions in the development of a romance, (b) the use of compliance-gaining strategies intended to advance a relationship to the next stage, and (c) justification of secondary goals in which participants reported why they chose the strategies they did as opposed to other alternatives. The data revealed effects for relational stage progression on prediction of ensuing actions. Ingratiation, explanation, and direct requests were popular strategies for developing intimacy. Gender differences in terms of secondary goals were reported. Results are discussed in terms of relational memory structures for the development of intimacy.     

Context specificity of latent inhibition in taste aversion learning

In three experiments rats were given injections of LiCl after consuming distinctively flavoured water. The rats developed an aversion to the flavour and in all experiments the magnitude of the aversion was found to be reduced in subjects that had received pre-exposure to the flavour without aversive consequences. Experiment 1 demonstrated this pre-exposure effect to be a case of latent inhibition. The remaining experiments investigated the effects of pre-exposing the flavour in a context different from that used for conditioning. It was found (Experiment 2) diat latent inhibition transferred perfectly when the context change consisted of a move from one home cage to another. Context specificity of latent inhibition was found (Experiment 3) only when the subjects were given daily sessions in die experimental contexts, these being cages different from the home cage.     

Contextual conditional discriminations

Three experiments used a discriminated operant procedure to study conditional discrimination learning in rats. The first experiment showed that rats were capable of learning a biconditional discrimination in which two contexts served as conditional cues signalling the reinforcement contingencies associated with two discriminative stimuli. The discrimination was learned equally well when one discriminative stimulus signalled food, the other its absence, and when one stimulus signalled food, the other extinction plus mild footshock.

In Experiment 2 it was shown that prior training on such a conditional discrimination enhanced the subsequent context specificity of simple conditioning relative to control groups of animals for whom the prior training had not been conditional. Experiment 3 showed that a reversal of the significance of one pair of discriminative stimuli produced no spontaneous reversal in performance to a second, target, pair.

The pattern of results is best accounted for by an analysis of contextual conditional discrimination learning in terms of stimulus configurations and offers no support for the notion that rats may learn a general conditional rule or set.     

Stress, reactivity, and immune function in healthy men.

We examined the effects of acute psychological stress on lymphocyte proliferation and circulating levels of interleukin-1 and -2. Healthy men were exposed to two viewings of a gruesome surgery film and were asked to recall details of the film twice during a 30-min period. These subjects were compared to a nonstress control group. Lymphocyte proliferation to the mitogen concanavalin A (Con A; 5 micrograms/ml) was decreased during and after exposure to the stressor when compared to the control group. This decrease was more pronounced in subjects exhibiting greater blood pressure reactivity while viewing the film than in subjects showing smaller blood pressure responses. None of the other immunological measures was significantly affected by the stressor. Cortisol was not correlated with lymphocyte responsiveness. Possible explanations for these results and implications for further research are discussed.