Awe Enhances Creative Thinking: An Experimental Study

Awe is a complex emotion characterized by feelings of vastness and a need for accommodation. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the experience of awe impacts on peculiar dimensions of creative potential in terms of creative thinking. Fifty-two university students were exposed both to an awe-inducing 3D-video and to a neutral one in a within-subject design. After each video, participants reported the intensity and type of perceived emotion and completed two verbal tasks of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance, 1974). A direct causal relationship between awe and creative thinking was tested using generalized linear model. Results showed that awe affected key creative thinking components—fluency, flexibility and elaboration measured by the product improvement test—compared to the neutral stimulus. Implications of these findings for future research and limitations are discussed.     

The persistence of spiritual experience among churchgoing and non-churchgoing Italians: sociological and psychological perspectives

ABSTRACT

The study presented in this article draws on theories and methods developed within the psychology of religion to examine, from a fresh perspective, a problem established within the sociology of religion: the ‘oddity of the Italian situation’. The study employs the notion of openness to mystical experience as an indicator of the level of spiritual awareness among a sample of 1,155 Italians ranging in age from 14 to 80 years. The data demonstrated that, while levels of openness to mystical experience remain quite high among non-churchgoing Italians, these levels are significantly associated with sex, age, religious attendance, and personal prayer. Moreover, the differences between attenders and non-attenders are sensitive to the ways in which aspects of mystical experience are expressed. The dialogue between the psychology of religion and the sociology of religion generates fresh insight into the religious and spiritual landscape of Italy today.     

Use of the ten-point clock test to compare executive functioning across 24 months in patients with subcortical vascular dementia

The Ten-point Clock Test can be used to identify early forms of Alzheimer's disease because it is reliable, well accepted, and easily administered at the bedside. Nevertheless, its clinical role in the detection of early dementia and its correlations with other cognitive processes is still under investigation. Vascular dementia is an uncertain nosological entity, in which unevenly distributed patterns of cognitive deficits comprising slowing of cognitive processing and impairment of executive function occur. The present study assessed how the Clock Test scores correlated with a number of other neuropsychological and functional tests in a sample of 144 patients with vascular dementia, who were followed for a period of 24 mo. At baseline, at 12 mo. and at 24 mo. subjects were administered a battery of tests, including the Mini-Mental State Examination, word fluency, visuospatial skills, an evaluation of hetero- and autotopognosia (knowledge of self), the Proverbs Test, and the Ten-point Clock Test. For these patients scores on the Clock Test correlated significantly with semantic abilities, with abstract reasoning capacities, visuospatial perception, and with right and left recognition.     

Personality disorders in patients with burning mouth syndrome

Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS) presents high rates of comorbid Axis I disorders while no controlled studies have addressed the question of Axis II comorbidities. The aim of the present study was to examine DSM-IV (APA, 1994) Axis II comorbidity in BMS patients and to control for the specificity of this association. Seventy BMS patients were compared to a nonpsychiatric population sample and to patients with other Somatoform Disorders for the presence of personality disorders (assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders [SCID-II; First, Gibbon, Spitzer, & Williams, 1997). Prevalence rates were compared using the Pearson's chi square test. At least one personality disorder (PD) was found in 85.7%, 24.3%, and 88.6% of subjects in the three groups, respectively. When examining PD subgroups, significant differences emerged even between the BMS and the somatoform disorder group, with BMS patients showing more Cluster A and fewer Cluster B PDs. Our results suggest that BMS is associated with a specific pattern of Axis II comorbidity.     

Vicarious responses to pain in anterior cingulate cortex: Is empathy a multisensory issue?

Results obtained with functional magnetic resonance imaging show that both feeling a moderately painful pinprick stimulus to the fingertips and witnessing another person’s hand undergo similar stimulation are associated with common activity in a pain-related area in the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Common activity in response to noxious tactile and visual stimulation was restricted to the right inferior Brodmann’s area 24b. These results suggest a shared neural substrate for felt and seen pain for aversive ecological events happening to strangers and in the absence of overt symbolic cues. In contrast to ACC 24b, the primary somatosensory cortex showed significant activations in response to both noxious and innocuous tactile, but not visual, stimuli. The different response patterns in the two areas are consistent with the ACC’s role in coding the motivational-affective dimension of pain, which is associated with the preparation of behavioral responses to aversive events.     

The dual path of the rejection (dis)identification model: A study on adolescents with a migrant background

Ethnic-based rejection, especially when prolonged over time, can result in withdrawal (e.g., resignation) and antisocial (e.g., delinquent) behaviors. Rejection (dis)identification literature suggests that identification with the minority (ethnic) group and disidentification with the majority (national) group mediate the relationship between rejection and different dimensions of well-being. Through secondary analyses of survey data from an international sample of adolescents with a migrant background (N = 1,163) we tested the predictions that, following chronic experiences of rejection, disidentification from the national (rejecting) group will increase withdrawal and feelings of resignation whereas identification with the ethic (rejected) group will have a protective role toward delinquent behaviors. Results of the path analysis were consistent with these hypotheses without significant differences between immigrant generations. The study sheds light on the multifaceted nature of identification processes following social rejection and contributes to the integration of the rejection-identification model with classical theorizations of social exclusion.     

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Successes and Failures: Eight Personal Perspectives

Eight experts in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) provided personal examples of their own successes and failures in applying REBT to themselves. The experts actively talked to themselves both rationally and irrationally. Understandably, there were far more shoulds, oughts, musts, and have to's in the narratives in which the experts described when they failed to use REBT than when they succeeded in using REBT. Rational self‐talk was more prevalent in the examples of how REBT was successfully used by the experts.     

Relationships between Gender Role Attitudes, Role Division, and Perception of Equity among Heterosexual, Gay and Lesbian Couples

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationships between gender role attitudes, household tasks, and the perception of equity among heterosexual, gay and lesbian couples. One hundred and twenty-four participants (54 heterosexuals, 30 gay men and 40 lesbians) were tested. It was found that same-sex couples had more liberal attitudes toward gender roles than did heterosexual couples. In addition, significant differences were found between the spouses in their responses regarding role division in housekeeping in each group. The responses of heterosexual spouses correlate more closely with each other regarding the role of each of the spouses than was the case for same-sex couples. However, the role division among lesbian couples was more egalitarian than that of heterosexual couples. In addition, heterosexual women consider their married life less equitable than heterosexual men do. Similarly, one of the gay spouses considers the relationship less equitable than the other spouse does. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to theories of social perception and cultural backgrounds.     

Bion and the sublime: The origins of an aesthetic paradigm

In constructing his theory Bion drew on a number of symbolic matrices: psychoanalysis, philosophy, mathematics, literature, aesthetics. The least investigated of these is the last. True, we know that Bion cites many authors of the Romantic period, such as Coleridge, Keats, Blake and Wordsworth, as well as others who were held in high esteem in the Romantic period, such as Milton. However, less is known about the influence exerted on him by the aesthetics of the sublime, which while chronologically preceding Romanticism is in fact one of its components. My working hypothesis is that tracing a number of Bion's concepts back to this secret model can serve several purposes: firstly, it contributes to the study of the sources, and, secondly, it makes these concepts appear much less occasional and idiosyncratic than we might believe, being as they are mostly those less immediately understandable but not less important (O, negative capability, nameless dread, the infinite, the language of achievement, unison etc.). Finally, connecting these notions to a matrix, that is, disclosing the meaning of elements that are not simply juxtaposed but dynamically interrelated, in my view significantly increases not only their theoretical intelligibility but also their usefulness in clinical practice. In conclusion, one could legitimately argue that Bion gradually subsumed all the other paradigms he drew on within the aesthetic paradigm.