Understanding consumer purchase of free‐of cosmetics: A value‐driven TRA approach

This study concerns the free‐of trend on the cosmetics market as expressed by a tendency among consumers to prefer cosmetics that are free of certain ingredients. Combining the Theory of Reasoned Action with a value‐driven approach, this study empirically investigates the association between consumers' personal values and their attitude and behaviour associated with purchasing free‐of cosmetics. A quantitative online survey of 250 Danish female consumers was conducted using self‐administering questionnaires. The findings indicate that consumers' willingness to purchase free‐of cosmetics (R² = .48) is both influenced by attitude (β = .65) and perceived subjective norm (β = .21) with attitude having the largest predictive power. Moreover, consumers' attitude towards willingness to purchase free‐of cosmetics seems to be value driven. Our results indicate that two values, self‐transcendence (β = .28) and self‐enhancement (β = ?.21), significantly influence attitude towards free‐of cosmetics purchase (R² = .10). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting intergroup bias: the interactive effects of implicit theory and social identity

This research sought to integrate the implicit theory approach and the social identity approach to understanding biases in intergroup judgment. The authors hypothesized that a belief in fixed human character would be associated with negative bias and prejudice against a maligned group regardless of the perceiver's social identity. By contrast, a belief in malleable human character would allow the perceiver's social identity to guide intergroup perception, such that a common ingroup identity that includes the maligned group would be associated with less negative bias and prejudice against the maligned group than would an exclusive identity. To test these hypotheses, a correlational study was conducted in the context of the Hong Kong 1997 political transition to examine Hong Kong Chinese's perceptions of Chinese Mainlanders, and an experimental study was conducted in the United States to examine Asian Americans' perception of African Americans. Results from both studies supported the authors' predictions.     

Thoughts on Knowing: Epistemic Implications of Counseling Practice

There are various ways to conceptualize the process of knowing, or epistemology, as it applies to the counseling situation. However, the essential elements of the epistemic literature are often difficult to grasp. The author reviews various epistemic systems, clarifies the ways they enrich the understanding of counseling processes, and proposes a meta‐epistemic system that integrates the elements of the competing systems. He discusses implications of this system for the practice of counseling and provides illustrative case examples.     

Petitioning the King: The Case of Provincial Printers in Eighteenth-Century France

This essay studies an argumentative practice in eighteenth-century France by exploring the persuasiveness of some petitions to obtain printer licences. Those who wanted to enter the printing business in eighteenth-century France had to obtain licences from the King to do so. The French government had established limits to the number of printers it would permit to operate in the realm; hence, there was competition for any vacancy that became open. Thus, the context is that of trained printers in provincial towns, most of them with their own printing equipment, applying to the government in Paris for the highly valued licences to run printing businesses. We examine a small number of the original petitions and give an account of their persuasive capacity by (a) noticing the narrative character of the letters and (b) distinguishing between propositional and affective attitudes. Our view is that a reconstruction of the petitions as reasonable persuasive discourse is possible when it is noticed how the two kinds of attitudes can be combined to promote the same end.     

Down the Garden Path: The Role of Conditional Inference Processes in Self‐Persuasion

In a controlled experiment, information format and prior knowledge of risk‐related decision attributes altered the response to decision conflict produced by negatively correlated attributes (NCA) in choice under uncertainty. When dominated choice alternatives were presented in a format in which the displayed attributes were not negatively correlated, decision makers used a simple choice process based on the displayed information. This allowed them to detect the dominated alternatives, regardless of their prior knowledge. However, when the same alternatives were presented in a format in which the displayed attributes were negatively correlated, the more‐knowledgeable decision makers used a compensatory choice process based on the displayed attributes and, consequently, missed the dominated alternatives. The less‐knowledgeable participants, who were unable to use the displayed attributes because of their lack of expertise, calculated the nondisplayed attributes and detected the dominated alternatives. With NCA, the more‐knowledgeable participants followed a conflict‐resolution strategy using the displayed NCAs, whereas the less‐knowledgeable individuals followed a conflict‐avoidance strategy using the uncorrelated, nondisplayed attributes that inadvertently revealed the dominance structure of the decision. The implications of person factors for the effects of NCA and in other types of decisions with NCA are discussed.     

The associations in our heads belong to us: Searching for attitudes and knowledge in implicit evaluation

Explicitly, humans can distinguish their own attitudes from evaluations possessed by others. Implicitly, the viability of a distinction between attitudes and evaluative knowledge is less clear. We investigated relations between explicit attitudes, cultural knowledge and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In seven studies (158 samples, N=107,709), the IAT was reliably and variably related to explicit attitudes, and explicit attitudes accounted for the relationship between the IAT and cultural knowledge. We suggest that people do not have introspective access to the associations formed via experience in a culture. Ownership of mental associations is established by presence in mind and influence on thinking, feeling and doing. Regardless of origin, associations are influential depending on their availability, accessibility, salience, and applicability. Distinguishing associations as “not mine” is a self-regulatory act and contributes to the distinction between explicit evaluation, where such acts are routine, and implicit evaluation, where they are not.     

Psychodynamic milieu-therapy and changes in personality – what is the connection? 1

This article refers to the results of a prospective effect evaluation study of three psychodynamic milieu-therapeutic institutions for children, which included cognitive and projective testing. After introducing milieu-therapy and explaining its roots in psychoanalytic and developmental thinking, the specific results of the research evaluation are outlined. It is found that environmental therapy is very efficient on the level of ego-functioning, but concern is expressed in regards to the relational abilities of the children. These findings are discussed in relation to the practical, organisational and theoretical principles of the actual treatment in order to find ways to improve our understanding of how milieu-therapy works and how it can be improved. Finally, we discuss the ways in which recent theoretical and empiric research emphasising the importance of the affect regulation and mentalisation can contribute to the psychoanalytic theories in the milieu-therapy.     

EVOKING THE SACRED: VISUAL HOLOCAUST NARRATIVES IN NATIONAL MUSEUMS

This essay examines how Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem and The Jewish Museum in Berlin move beyond the usual informative and communicative functions of museum exhibits to visually evoke sacred feelings in regard to Holocaust memory. Ideas and images of the sacred vary in the two museums, reflecting two very different memorial cultures and commemorative goals, and these contrasting contexts frame the analysis. Theoretically informed by religious and ritual studies, both sacred time and space are considered through close readings of museum architecture, visual exhibits and the movement of the visitor through the museums.