Building the Better Mental Training Mousetrap: Is Periodization a More Systematic Approach to Promoting Performance Excellence?

Over the past two decades, mental skills training (MST) has experienced a tremendous surge in popularity, yet MST is not without its critics, including some athletes and coaches. Additionally, a number of concerns have arisen about mental training effectiveness, and its ability to maximize athlete development, performance, and peaking. Periodization is a systematic program development and implementation strategy that holds promise for enhancing mental training effectiveness and combating some of the problems currently limiting MST interventions. Thus, the purpose of this conceptual paper was threefold. First, periodization concepts are introduced by demonstrating how they are utilized to systematically guide physical training. Second, strategies to adapt periodization concepts to enhance mental training programs are examined, along with techniques to integrate physical and mental training, including: mental training tool and skill periodization plans and mental training drill menus. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate how an integrated approach to periodized training that targets both physical and mental skill development can enhance the effectiveness of MST while minimizing implementation problems.     

Empathy,Embodiment and Interpersonal Understanding: From Lipps to Schutz

When it comes to understanding the nature of social cognition, we have—according to the standard view—a choice between the simulation theory, the theory-theory or some hybrid between the two. The aim of this paper is to argue that there are, in fact, other options available, and that one such option has been articulated by various thinkers belonging to the phenomenological tradition. More specifically, the paper will contrast Lipps' account of empathy—an account that has recently undergone something of a revival in the hands of contemporary simulationists—with various accounts of empathy found in the phenomenological tradition. I discuss the way Lipps was criticized by Scheler, Stein and Husserl, and outline some of the core features of their, at times divergent, alternatives. I then proceed by considering how their basic take on empathy and social cognition was taken up and modified by Schutz—a thinker whose contribution to the analysis of interpersonal understanding has been unjustly neglected in recent years.     

The Effect of Companion's Gender on Impulsive Purchasing: The Moderating Factor of Cohesiveness and Susceptibility to Interpersonal Influence

Most impulse purchasing research investigates individual‐level factors. This paper, however, examines the influence of shopping companion gender on impulse purchasing. The results of the three studies show that shoppers were more likely to exhibit impulse purchase behavior when shopping with an opposite gender companion. In addition, shoppers who were in the low‐cohesive condition and who shopped with an opposite gender companion were more likely to exhibit impulse purchase behavior than those who shopped with the same gender companion, and those who were susceptible to interpersonal influence were also more likely to exhibit impulse purchase behavior when shopping with an opposite gender companion. For shoppers who were not as susceptible to interpersonal influence, the influence of their companion's gender appeared to diminish on impulsive purchasing.     

Finding Creativity in an Artificial Artist

Creativity is an important component of human intelligence, and imbuing artificially intelligent systems with creativity is an interesting challenge. In particular, it is difficult to quantify (or even qualify) creativity. Recently, it has been suggested that conditions for attributing creativity to a system include: appreciation, imagination, and skill. We demonstrate and describe an original computer system (called DARCI) that is designed to produce images through creative means. We present methods for evaluating DARCI and other artificially creative systems with respect to appreciation, imagination, and skill, and use these methods to show that DARCI is arguably a creative system.     

Cultural influences on terror management: Independent and interdependent self-esteem as anxiety buffers

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that self-esteem serves as a defense against the fear of death. Previous research has suggested that independent self-esteem is more salient in individualist cultures, whereas interdependent self-esteem is more salient in collectivist cultures. Thus, we hypothesized that in collectivist cultures, independent self-esteem would play a lesser role and interdependent self-esteem a greater role in terror management, compared to individualist cultures. The results support this prediction. In Study 1, personal self-esteem was negatively associated with death anxiety in samples from a Western (Austria) and Eastern (China) culture. However, both self-liking and self-competence were negatively associated with death anxiety among Austrian participants, but only self-liking (and not self-competence) was so among Chinese participants. Surprisingly, collective self-esteem was not significantly correlated with death anxiety. Yet, Study 2 showed that among Chinese participants, relational self-esteem was negatively associated with death anxiety. Study 3 examined the roles of relational versus personal self-esteem in moderating the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. Among Chinese participants, relational rather than personal self-esteem increased the defense of worldviews centered on collectivist-Chinese values following mortality salience (Study 3a). In contrast, among Austrian participants, personal rather than relational self-esteem attenuated the effect of mortality salience on the defense of individualist-Austrian worldviews (Study 3b). Self-esteem serves a terror management function in both collectivist and individualist cultures; however, the differences between cultural worldviews determine the type of self-esteem that is more relevant to terror management processes.     

Contemporary Neuroscience Humanizes: A Look at Cortical Bilateral Asymmetry and How It Got That Way

Exciting research that has surfaced from a host of neuroscience laboratories is presented, and the assumption that they have little to offer human science considered. This includes the sensory substitution work of Bach-y-Rita (1967 Bach-y-Rita , P. ( 1967 ). Sensory plasticity: Applications to a vision substitution system . Acta Neurologica Scandinavia , 43 , 417 – 426 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), as well as the phantom pain hypothesis of Ramachandran (2011 Ramachandran ( 2011 ). The tell-tale brain . New York , NY : Norton . [Google Scholar]). These studies are considered atop the theoretical and meta-analytical work in the field of neuropsychiatry by McGilchrist (2009 McGilchrist , I. ( 2009 ). The master and his emissary . New Haven , CT : Yale University Press . [Google Scholar]). McGilchrist's inquiry into split-brain patients has resuscitated the once-dubious debate regarding hemispheric differences in the brain. By considering the latter in light of the evidence of neuroplasticity, global differences in right- or left-brain preference may be understood as analogous and reciprocally influential to patterns of thinking. This dynamic relationship between experience and the brain requires a reconsideration of the status of neuroscience as an exclusively reductive enterprise. Indeed, the laboratories seem to be producing results that have become increasingly difficult to reconcile with their biologically reductive commitments. While the neuroscientists are busy sorting out their results, those who do not share said commitments are free to enjoy the implications these results suggest.     

When message tailoring backfires: The role of initial attitudes in affect–cognition matching

This research explores when and how tailoring messages to attitudinal bases backfires. Study 1 demonstrated that for attitudes (toward education subsidies) that were based more on beliefs than emotions, recipients whose initial attitudes were incongruent with the message position (i.e., message opponents) showed mismatching effects, such that the affective message was more persuasive than the cognitive message. Study 2 replicated these mismatching effects among message opponents for attitudes (toward a rival university) that were primarily affective. Study 3 controlled for effects of initial attitude certainty and replicated the mismatching effects of Study 2 for affective attitudes toward an increase in tuition. Finally, Study 4 suggested a potential mechanism for mismatching effects, revealing that for attitudes (toward an online course management system) that were based more on beliefs than emotions, message opponents counter‐argued with the cognitive appeal more intensely than the affective appeal. Contrary to the notion in the extant literature that mismatching effects are relatively rare compared with matching effects, the current research suggests that mismatching effects occur for both primarily affective and cognitive attitudes when the recipient is highly opposed to the message position. The present findings also demonstrate the utility of examining attitudinal bases at the object level in the context of message tailoring. Implications for message tailoring and for affective versus cognitive attitudes are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Later Mohists and Logic

This article is a study of the Later Mohists' ‘Lesser Selection (Xiǎoq )’, which, more than any other early Chinese text, seems to engage in the study of logic. I focus on a procedure that the Mohists called móu . Arguments by móu are grounded in linguistic parallelism, implying perhaps that the Mohists were on the way to a formal analysis of argumentation. However, their main aim was to head off arguments by móu that targeted their own doctrines, and if their argument succeeds then it entails that linguistic parallelism can never ground a cogent argument. In a way, this committed them to the view that formal logic cannot work, but the fact that they did not pursue this line of investigation was by no means inevitable. One consequence of this study is that the Later Mohists conducted their logical work by studying the behaviour of terms and verb phrases, and did not identify the sentence as a significant linguistic unit. This tends to confirm Chad Hansen's generalisation that early Chinese philosophers did not posit sentences or other sentence-like entities such as propositions, beliefs, or laws. Focusing on subsentential expressions did not stop the Mohists from addressing genuinely logical issues, but it may help explain the fact that they never developed a conception of logical structure. This study includes the complete Chinese text of the ‘Lesser Selection’ and a translation in English.     

Emancipatory Research: Then and Now

This discussion piece reflects on menstrual cycle research since the founding of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research in the context of contemporary research presented in this special issue of Sex Roles. Although women researchers in the 19th century began documenting that normal menstruation is neither disabling nor dangerous, taboos, concealment and avoidance of menstruation persist. Feminist researchers have worked to find ways to support women’s health and wellbeing within a sociocultural milieu still reflecting largely negative views of menstrual cycle phenomena. The present collection of current menstrual cycle research offers useful contextual approaches to understanding why menstruation remains in the shadows, and how to resist negative characterizations, as well as encourage curiosity and body awareness. Alternatives to mainstream corporate and medical views of menstrual phenomena are discussed. Fruitful theoretical and methodological directions for research are identified to support advocacy, educational, and therapeutic interventions for menstrual health.