Emotional agency appraisals influence responses to preference inconsistent information

Bringing together the literature on emotional appraisals and the literature on biased processing in judgment, two studies investigate how incidental emotions varying in valence and agency influence decision making after exposure to preference consistent vs. inconsistent information. We show that emotions differ in their response to preference inconsistent information due to their differences in self vs. other agency appraisals, whereas no emotional differences were found in response to preference consistent information. Negative emotions associated with other agency appraisals increase resistance to preference inconsistent information whereas negative emotions associated with self agency appraisals encourage acceptance of preference inconsistent information relative to neutral conditions. We show this pattern reverses for positive emotions. These effects were driven by changes in confidence after exposure to inconsistent information and reflected in evaluative judgments. We discuss the significance of these findings for the emotions, preference consistency, and decision-making literatures.     

Confidence in Religious Leaders in Korea: A Research Note

Korea may provide an important testing ground for assessing religious growth as a correlate of religious authority. In Korea from 1985 to 1995, all religious groups experienced growth, but from 1995 to 2005 only the Catholic population did so. Favorable images of Korean Catholicism compared to other Korean religions point to one factor that may account for this trend, namely, confidence in religious leaders. Up to now there has been no empirical test measuring confidence in religious leaders among different religious groups in Korea. Using the 2003–2007 Korean General Social Surveys cumulative data, we found a hierarchy of confidence in religious leaders ranging from highest to lowest as follows: Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, no religion. Our finding may suggest the continued vitality of Catholicism in Korea.     

What subjective experiences determine the perception of falling asleep during sleep onset period?

Sleep onset is associated with marked changes in behavioral, physiological, and subjective phenomena. In daily life though subjective experience is the main criterion in terms of which we identify it. But very few studies have focused on these experiences. This study seeks to identify the subjective variables that reflect sleep onset. Twenty young subjects took an afternoon nap in the laboratory while polysomnographic recordings were made. They were awakened four times in order to assess subjective experiences that correlate with the (1) appearance of slow eye movement, (2) initiation of stage 1 sleep, (3) initiation of stage 2 sleep, and (4) 5 min after the start of stage 2 sleep. A logistic regression identified control over and logic of thought as the two variables that predict the perception of having fallen asleep. For sleep perception, these two variables accurately classified 91.7% of the cases; for the waking state, 84.1%.     

小而灵通，老而顽固？年龄信息对创造性观念评价的影响及其机制

创作者的年龄作为重要的社会线索信息,可能会影响大众对其观点的创造性评价。本研究以物品非常规用途想法作为评价材料,考察了4类年龄信息对创造性观念评价的影响,以及相关刻板印象在其中的作用。结果发现,10岁左右年龄信息会提升被试的新颖性和适用性评分;30岁左右的信息提升了新颖性评分,但刻板印象强弱对评分变化不具有预测作用。这表明,对于领域一般性产品,有关创作者的刻板印象不易被激活并应用于创造性评价。     

The Role of Phonetic Similarity and Orthographic Information in Asymmetrical Lexical Encoding in Second Language

This study examined two possible sources of asymmetrical lexical access: phonetic proximity to the nearest L1 category and orthographic information. Three groups of native Korean speakers learned Arabic non-words with sound pairs with/without an L1-dominant category (/l-r/ vs. /χ-?/), and then their phonetic categorization and lexical encoding abilities were evaluated. One group was presented with the same letters for the target pair (e.g.,?<l>?for both /l/ and /r/), the second group, different letters (e.g.,?<l>?for /l/,?<r>?for /r/), and the third group, auditory input only. The results of discrimination did not show any effect of these two sources, whereas in lexical encoding, (1) a pair with an L1-dominant category was more accurately encoded; and (2) orthographic information hindered the lexical encoding. In the following spelling recall task, the scores from the learners with different letters for the target pair were similar to a ceiling. Thus, orthographic information might help them to have target-like representation, despite difficulties in online processing.     

Unitization mitigates interference by intrinsic negative emotion in familiarity and recollection of associative memory: Electrophysiological evidence

Emotion exerts varied influences on memory. While task-relevant item memory is often enhanced by emotion, associative memory is generally impaired. Unitization is known to improve associative memory, but its effects and mechanisms in protecting associative memory from emotional interference are rather obscure. The current study investigated associative memory by employing experimental manipulation of unitization (vs. nonunitization) encoding strategy and stimulus emotion (neutral, intrinsic negative, and extrinsic negative), combined with event-related potential (ERP) signatures of familiarity (FN400 old/new effects) and recollection (parietal late positive component/LPC old/new effects) in memory recognition. Both behavioral and ERP indices of associative recognition from the nonunitization group confirmed emotional interference in associative memory. Importantly, it was primarily intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) emotion that impeded associative memory. Unitization encoding improved memory performance in general, accompanied by enhanced recollection process and induction of familiarity process, which is typically not involved in associative memory recognition and was indeed absent in the nonunitization group. Importantly, unitization helped to preserve behavioral performance (specifically, response speed though not recognition strength) from interference by intrinsic emotion while largely reversed the detriment of intrinsic emotion on ERP indices of familiarity and recollection processes. Interestingly, a synergy between intrinsic emotion and unitization encoding was observed, which could underpin the facilitation of familiarity process in associative recognition of emotional pairs. Overall, current findings highlight interference by intrinsic emotion in associative memory, which is nonetheless responsive to mitigation by unitization encoding.     

Gender and neural substrates subserving implicit processing of death-related linguistic cues

Our recent functional magnetic resonance imaging study revealed decreased activities in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and bilateral insula for women during the implicit processing of death-related linguistic cues. Current work tested whether aforementioned activities are common for women and men and explored potential gender differences. We scanned twenty males while they performed a color-naming task on death-related, negative-valence, and neutral-valence words. Whole-brain analysis showed increased left frontal activity and decreased activities in the ACC and bilateral insula to death-related versus negative-valence words for both men and women. However, relative to women, men showed greater increased activity in the left middle frontal cortex and decreased activity in the right cerebellum to death-related versus negative-valence words. The results suggest, while implicit processing of death-related words is characterized with weakened sense of oneself for both women and men, men may recruit stronger cognitive regulation of emotion than women.     

吸毒者法律定位的伦理学基础——《禁毒法》引发的思考

全国人大常委会通过了酝酿已久的《禁毒法》,对吸毒者的身份采取了定位为违法者、病人和受害者的意见,但是社会各界的争论与思考仍没有停止。归纳了有关吸毒者法律定位的各种观点,并从应然角度讨论其背后的伦理学基础,以期为今后更好的救助吸毒者和不断完善禁毒法律体系提供理论依据。