When gift-giving produces dissonance: Effects of subliminal affiliation priming on choices for one's self versus close others

Past research on cognitive dissonance indicated that people from independent (e.g. European-American) and interdependent (e.g. East-Asian) cultural backgrounds show different patterns of choice justification: whereas choice made for oneself affirms the independent view of the self, choice made for close others affirms the interdependent view of the self. We hypothesized that interpersonal choice considerations may be temporally accessible even among habitually independent European-Americans. The present research provides the first experimental evidence that choice justification varies as a function of both subliminal affiliation priming and the target of choice (self vs. close others). Results from three studies indicate that subliminal priming of affiliation increases justification of a choice European-Americans made for a close other, while decreasing justification of a choice made for the self. Implications for theories related to cognitive dissonance, subliminal processing and cultural meaning systems are discussed.     

Place and the self: An autobiographical memory synthesis

In this article, I argue that the relationship between place and self can be accounted for by recent theoretical work on autobiographical memory. The link between place and self is conceptualized as a transitory mental representation that emerges as a “place of mine” (personal autobiographical experience) from a “place” (declarative knowledge). The function of “place of mine” is to guide personal memory and self-knowing consciousness of periods of our lives. I combine inquiries of memory, self, and place in a triadic relationship, a synthesis, suggesting a conceptual model for the phenomenon of place-related self as a sub-system of the self. This is formed by a causal progression from a physical place across time via emotional and cognitive bonds, components of the autobiographical information grounding the self, apportioned across declarative memory. Finally, using the methods of factor analysis and structural equation modeling, I show that the proposed model accounts for previous and new data on place-related identity.     

Chasin’ choppers: using unpredictable trajectories to test theories of object interception

Three theories of the informational basis for object interception strategies were tested in an experiment where participants pursued toy helicopters. Helicopters were used as targets because their unpredictable trajectories have different effects on the optical variables that have been proposed as the basis of object interception, providing a basis for determining the variables that best explain this behavior. Participants pursued helicopters while the positions of both pursuer and helicopter were continuously monitored. Using models to predict the observed optical trajectories of the helicopter and ground positions of the pursuer, optical acceleration was eliminated as a basis of object interception. A model based on control of optical velocity (COV) provided the best match to pursuer ground movements, while one based on segments of linear optical trajectories (SLOT) provided the best match to the observed optical trajectories. We describe suggestions for further research to distinguish the COV and SLOT models.     

Autobiographical memories for places

The purpose of the present exploratory study was to investigate operations and contents of a naturally occurring reminiscence for physical places in 26 Swedish participants. Using Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) model of autobiographical memory as a framework, two main questions were examined. First, in what sense are physical places ingredients of our selves—that is, of our self-knowledge—and, if so, how are they and their characteristics organised in the autobiographical knowledge base? Second, what form do personal memories for places take and what kinds of meanings and emotional contents do we bind to this type of reminiscence? The results showed that the Swedish participants' most important places in their lives were mainly childhood- and cottage-related rural types of milieus, and mostly categorised as summarised events; that is, frequently revisited. The personal recollections of the place-related event-specific knowledge were mostly of the generic imagery type, comprising semantic, perceptual, and emotional contents related to the “self”, “others”, and the “environment”. The memories mainly reflected on the participants' growth period and feelings of activation and pleasantness. This was more pronounced in older (M = 59) than in younger (M = 35) participants. All this indicates that physical places can serve as thematic pathways guiding reminiscence and self-knowing consciousness as we recollect details of perceptual, semantic, and emotional characters of periods in our lives.     

Vagueness: A Conceptual Spaces Approach

The conceptual spaces approach has recently emerged as a novel account of concepts. Its guiding idea is that concepts can be represented geometrically, by means of metrical spaces. While it is generally recognized that many of our concepts are vague, the question of how to model vagueness in the conceptual spaces approach has not been addressed so far, even though the answer is far from straightforward. The present paper aims to fill this lacuna.     

Identity and similarity

The standard approach to the so-called paradoxes of identity has been to argue that these paradoxes do not essentially concern the notion of identity but rather betray misconceptions on our part regarding other metaphysical notions, like that of an object or a property. This paper proposes a different approach by pointing to an ambiguity in the identity predicate and arguing that the concept of identity that figures in many ordinary identity claims, including those that appear in the paradoxes, is not the traditional philosophical concept but one that can be defined in terms of relevant similarity. This approach to the paradoxes will be argued to be superior to the standard one.     

The role of testimony in young children's solution of a gravity-driven invisible displacement task

Previous research has shown that young children make a perseverative, gravity-oriented, error when asked to predict the final location of a ball dropped down an S-shaped opaque tube (Hood, 1995). We asked if providing children with verbal information concerning the role that the tubes play, in determining the ball's trajectory would improve their performance. Experiment 1 showed that performance of 3.5-year-olds improved after hearing testimony about the movement of the ball. Experiment 2 showed that the specific content of the testimony – rather than any accompanying non-verbal cues – helped children improve. These findings suggest that other people's testimony can be a valuable source of information when young children learn about the physical world. Indeed, under some circumstances children seem to benefit more from verbal than visual information. An educational implication is that it may sometimes be ineffective to focus on the impact of first-hand experience while marginalizing the role of verbal information.     

Book review

Abstract

Volition and personality. Action versus state orientation By Julius Kuhl&;Jürgen Beckmann (Eds.) Seattle/Toronto/Bern/Göttingen: Hogrefe&;Huber; 1994; 498 pp.