“Change my selfie”: Relationships between self-objectification and selfie-behavior in young Italian women

Self-objectification is a pervasive phenomenon, related to specific socio-cultural context, that can lead to many psychological and interpersonal consequences. With the present study, we investigated the correlates of self-objectification in young Italian women analyzing both its traditional antecedents and its consequences for self-presentation on social network sites (SNS). A total of 676 Italian university female students completed a self-reported questionnaire on self-objectification, internalization of a thin-ideal and related influences, internalized sexism, self-esteem, SNS use, selfie-posting on SNS and selfies’ manipulation. Results indicated that media and peers, but not family pressures, were positively associated with thin-ideal internalization, which, in turn, was positively associated with self-objectification. Moreover, both sexism and self-esteem were significantly associated with self-objectification. Regarding self-objectification consequences for SNS usage, results revealed that self-objectification was positively associated with time spent on SNS, frequency of selfie-posting and selfie-editing. It was concluded that objectification theory can be extended into the context of image-related behaviors on SNS. Results suggest that young women with low self-esteem, traditional attitudes toward gender roles and high levels of internalization of thin-ideal may report high levels of self-objectification which, in turn, may be related to specific self-promotion behaviors on social media. The limitations of the present study, particularly in terms of sampling and implications for future research on selfie-behavior are discussed.     

Does the body talk to the body? The relationship between different body representations while observing others’ body parts

The way human bodies are represented is central in everyday activities. The cognitive system must combine internal, visceral, and somatosensory, signals to external, visually driven information generated from the spatial placement of others’ bodies and the own body in the space. However, how different body representations covertly interact among them when observing human body parts is still unclear. Therefore, we investigated the implicit processing of body parts by manipulating either the body part stimuli’ posture (conditions a and b) or the participants’ response body posture (conditions c, d, and e) in healthy participants (N = 70) using a spatial compatibility task called Sidedness task. The task requires participants to judge the colour of a circle superimposed on a task-irrelevant body part picture. Responses are facilitated when the spatial side of the responding hand corresponds to the spatial code generated by the hand stimulus's position with respect to a body of reference. Results showed that the observation of the task-irrelevant body parts oriented participants’ attention and facilitated responses that were spatial compatible with the spatial position such body parts have within a configural representation of the body structure (i.e., Body Structural Representation) in all the five experimental conditions. Notably, the body part stimuli were mentally attached to the body according to the most comfortable and less awkward postures, following the anatomo-physiological constraints. Moreover, the pattern of the results was not influenced by manipulating the participants’ response postures, suggesting that the automatic and implicit coding of the body part stimuli does not rely on proprioceptive information about one's body (i.e., Body Schema). We propose that the human body's morphometry knowledge is enriched by biomechanical and anatomo-physiological information about the real body movement possibilities. Moreover, we discuss the importance of the automatic orienting of attention based on the sidedness within the context of imitational learning.     

Hinge Contextualisma

The paper explores a possible connection between epistemic contextualism and hinge epistemology. My basic idea is that Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions play a possibility-governing role, in the sense that they govern our knowledge attributions by determining which possibilities count as relevant alternatives. This is a novel proposal with several theoretical advantages for both hinge epistemology and epistemic contextualism. On the one hand, in order to offer a substantial account of the way in which knowledge attributions work, the contextualist needs more than mere formal tools. She needs to tell us what goes inside the contexts that govern our conversations. On the other hand, the hinge epistemologist cannot be satisfied by mere metaphors (like the hinge metaphor). She needs to tell us how hinges can effectively govern our conversations. I take hinge contextualism to be the answer. With the help of hinges, we can furnish contexts; and with the help of contexts, we can put hinges to work.     

Transdiagnostic assessment of temporal experience (TATE) a tool for assessing abnormal time experiences

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - Currently, anomalous lived temporality is not included in the main diagnostic criteria or standard symptom checklists. In this article, we present the...     

A step too far? Leader racism inhibits transgression credit

Prior research established that when in‐group leaders commit serious transgressions, such as breaking enforceable rules or engaging in bribery, people treat them leniently compared with similarly transgressive regular group members or out‐group leaders (‘transgression credit’). The present studies test a boundary condition of this phenomenon, specifically the hypothesis that transgression credit will be lost if a leader's action implies racist motivation. In study 1, in a corporate scenario, a transgressive in‐group leader did or did not express racism. In study 2, in a sports scenario, an in‐group or out‐group leader or member transgressed rules with or without a racist connotation. Both studies showed that in‐group transgressive leaders lost their transgression credit if their transgression included a racial connotation. Wider implications for constraining leaders' transgressions are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking Medical Humanities

This paper questions different conceptions of Medical Humanities in order to provide a clearer understanding of what they are and why they matter. Building upon former attempts, we defend a conception of Medical Humanities as a humanistic problem-based approach to medicine aiming at influencing its nature and practice. In particular, we discuss three main conceptual issues regarding the overall nature of this discipline: (i) a problem-driven approach to Medical Humanities; (ii) the need for an integration of Medical Humanities into medicine; (iii) the methodological requirements that could render Medical Humanities an effective framework for medical decision-making.     

Action simulation in the human brain: Twelve questions

Although the idea of action simulation is nowadays popular in cognitive science, neuroscience and robotics, many aspects of the simulative processes remain unclear from empirical, computational, and neural perspectives. In the first part of the article, we provide a critical review and assessment of action simulation theories advanced so far in the wider literature of embodied and motor cognition. We focus our analysis on twelve key questions, and discuss them in the context of human and (occasionally) primate studies. In the second part of the article, we describe an integrative neuro-computational account of action simulation, which links the neural substrate (as revealed in neuroimaging studies of action simulation) to the components of a computational architecture that includes internal modeling, action monitoring and inhibition mechanisms.     

Visuo-haptic transfer for object recognition in children with periventricular leukomalacia and bilateral cerebral palsy

Object recognition is a complex adaptive process that can be impaired in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Recently, we found a significant effect of time on the development of unimodal and crossmodal recognition skills for common objects in typical children and this was a starting point for the study of visuo-haptic object recognition skills in impaired populations. In this study, we investigated unimodal visual information, unimodal haptic information and visuo-haptic information transfer in 30 children, from 4.0 to 10.11 years of age, with bilateral Periventricular Leukomalacia (PVL) and bilateral cerebral palsy. Results were matched with those of 116 controls. Participants were tested using a clinical protocol, adopted in the previous study, involving visual exploration of black-and-white photographs of common objects, haptic exploration of real objects and visuo-haptic transfer of these two types of information. Results show that in the PVL group as in controls, there is an age-dependent development of object recognition abilities for visual, haptic and visuo-haptic modalities, even if PVL children perform worse in all the three conditions, in comparison with the typical group. Furthermore, PVL children have a specific deficit both in visual and haptic information processing, that improves with age, probably thanks to everyday experience, but the visual modality shows a better and more rapid maturation, remaining more salient compared to the haptic one. However, multisensory processes partially facilitate recognition of common objects also in PVL children and this finding could be useful for planning early intervention in children with brain lesion.     

New approaches to understanding unconscious processes: Implicit and explicit memory systems

Abstract

Freud viewed the unconscious as being roughly equivalent to dynamically repressed wishes, needs, and motivations. Findings from developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience over the past 40 years have dramatically changed our views of unconscious processes and the human mind. It is now clear that Freud's dynamic unconscious is only a minor segment of information that is processed at subsymbolic, implicit, and automatic levels. Only a fraction of this information is further processed at explicit conscious levels. Moreover, the vast majority of the information that remains nonconscious is adaptive and has major consequences for development. We examine some clinical implications of these views.