Traumatization of group leaders in their work with displaced persons

Displaced persons are a special, threatened group of people, participants in this war, who were suddenly forced to abandon their homes. The majority of them were, overnight, left without anything they had, some even without their closest family. They all have one thing in common: they have all lost so much. Work with such people is directed toward overcoming their feelings of loss and abandonment and preventing psychical decompensation. Groups of displaced persons temporarily sheltered in the Rijeka region have been observed to be markedly regressed, with increased sensitivity, a low degree of tolerance, great demands on society and strongly expressed projective tendencies. Therapists suffer personal traumatization in working with displaced persons. This paper describes the reactions and feelings of group leaders caused by manifestations of group dynamics in different phases of exile.     

The effect of prose context on visual search for letters

Subjects were given a simplified proofreading task in which they were instructed to circle every occurrence of a target letter in a prose passage or in a scrambled prose passage. It was found that the presence of a prose context enhanced the subjects ability to find a target letter when the target letter was in a content word, but impaired the subjects ability to find a target letter when it was in a function word. This interaction sheds light on a number of conflicting reports in the literature.     

SELECTIVE ASSOCIATIONS PRODUCED SOLELY WITH APPETITIVE CONTINGENCIES: THE STIMULUS-REINFORCER INTERACTION REVISITED

In studies reporting stimulus-reinforcer interactions in traditional conditioning paradigms, when a tone-light compound was associated with food the light gained stimulus control, but when the compound was paired with shock avoidance the tone gained control. However, the physical nature of the reinforcerrelated events (food vs. shock) presented in the presence of the tone-light compound was always confounded with the conditioned hedonic value of the compound's presence relative to its absence. When the compound was paired with shock, its presence was negative relative to its absence (which was shock-free). In contrast, when the compound was paired with food, its presence was positive relative to its absence (which was food-free). The present experiment dealt with this confounding effect by conditioning a tone-light compound to be positive or negative, relative to its absence, solely with food reinforcement. One group of rats received food for responding in the presence of the tone-light compound and no food in its absence. The other group also responded in the presence of the compound, but received food only in its absence. These rats were trained on a chained schedule in which responding in the presence of the tone-light compound produced a terminal link signaled by the absence of the compound; responding ceased in the terminal link because it delayed food delivery. In a test session to assess stimulus control by the elements of the compound, tone and light were presented separately under extinction conditions. Rats that had been exposed to a positive correlation between food and the compound emitted almost double the responses in the presence of the light as in the presence of the tone. In comparison, rats that had been exposed to a negative correlation emitted only two thirds as many responses in the presence of the light as in the presence of the tone. Because this selective association was produced using only food, it appears that the contingencies under which a reinforcer is presented, rather than (or as well as) its physical properties, can generate the selective associations previously attributed to “stimulus-reinforcer interactions.” This could mean that regardless of the class of reinforcer that ultimately maintains responding (appetitive or aversive), the contingency-generated hedonic value of the compound stimulus may influence the dominant modality of stimulus control.     

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Religiosity: Evidence from Germany

How does a major external shock that potentially threatens the community and the individual impact religiosity in the context of ongoing secularization? Do individuals in a rich and secularized society such as Germany react to potential community-level (sociotropic) and individual-level (egotropic) threat with heightened religiosity? We estimate multilevel regression models to investigate the impact of sociotropic and egotropic existential security threats associated with the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals’ religiosity. Our data come from a rolling cross-sectional online survey conducted in Germany among 7,500 respondents across 13 waves in 2020. Our findings suggest that a global health pandemic such as COVID-19 increases individuals’ perception of existential and economic threat, which, in turn, leads to an increase in religiosity. However, this relationship is only true for egotropic existential security threat but not for sociotropic threat. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings.     

Decomposing sources of response slowing in the PRP paradigm

The mechanism underlying the reaction time (RT2) slowing to the 2nd of 2 successively presented stimuli (S1 and S2) in the psychological refractory period paradigm was investigated. Stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) between S1 and S2, contrast of S2, and Task 2 set-level compatibility was manipulated. Specifically, the authors used a psychophysiological approach to examine RT2 slowing in trials in which the reaction time to S1 (RT1) was shorter than the SOA. For trials with RT1 < SOA, the clear decrease in RT2 with increasing SOA was underadditive with the S2 contrast effect, but additive with compatibility. Electrophysiological measures revealed an exclusively premotoric locus of RT2 slowing. These findings indicate that a central bottleneck stage is occupied for some period after response to S1 execution, consistent with an extended response selection bottleneck account.     

Intentional control of attention: action planning primes action-related stimulus dimensions

Neurophysiological observations suggest that attending to a particular perceptual dimension, such as location or shape, engages dimension-related action, such as reaching and prehension networks. Here we reversed the perspective and hypothesized that activating action systems may prime the processing of stimuli defined on perceptual dimensions related to these actions. Subjects prepared for a reaching or grasping action and, before carrying it out, were presented with location- or size-defined stimulus events. As predicted, performance on the stimulus event varied with action preparation: planning a reaching action facilitated detecting deviants in location sequences whereas planning a grasping action facilitated detecting deviants in size sequences. These findings support the theory of event coding, which claims that perceptual codes and action plans share a common representational medium, which presumably involves the human premotor cortex.     

Explanatory fictions—for real?

In this article I assess Alisa Bokulich’s idea that explanatory model fictions can be genuinely explanatory. I draw attention to a tension in her account between the claim that model fictions are explanatorily autonomous, and the demand that model fictions be justified in order for them to be genuinely explanatory. I also explore the consequences that arise from Bokulich’s use of Woodward’s account of counterfactual explanation and her abandonment of Woodward’s notion of an intervention. As it stands, Bokulich’s account must be deemed unworkable.     

Understanding the Dark Side of Costly Punishment: The Impact of Individual Differences in Everyday Sadism and Existential Threat

In public goods situations, a specific destructive behaviour reliably emerges when individuals face the possibility of costly punishing others: antisocial punishment, that is, costly punishing cooperative individuals. So far, however, little is known about the individual differences and situational factors that are associated with the dark side of costly punishment. This research deals with this shortcoming. We argue that antisocial punishment reflects the basic characteristics of sadism, namely, aggressive behaviour to dominate and to harm other individuals. We further argue that antisocial punishment may reflect a type of behaviour that allows for the maintenance of self‐esteem (through aggressively dominating others). Therefore, we expect that individuals who report a disposition for everyday sadism are particularly likely to engage in antisocial punishment when their self has been threatened (by thinking about one's own death). In a study (N = 99), we found empirical support for this assumption. The present research contributes to a better understanding of antisocial punishment and suggests that sadistic tendencies play a crucial role, especially when the self is (existentially) threatened. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Self‐Compassion as a Facet of Neuroticism? A Reply to the Comments of Neff,Tóth‐Király,and Colosimo (2018)

In this paper, we respond to comments by Neff et al. (2018) made about our finding that the negative dimensions of self‐compassion were redundant with facets of neuroticism (rs ≥ 0.85; Pfattheicher et al., 2017) and not incrementally valid. We first provide epistemological guidance for establishing psychological constructs, namely, three hurdles that new constructs must pass: theoretically and empirically sound measurement, discriminant validity, and incremental validity—and then apply these guidelines to the self‐compassion scale. We then outline that the critique of Neff et al. (2018) is contestable. We question their decisions concerning data‐analytic methods that help them to circumvent instead of passing the outlined hurdles. In a reanalysis of the data provided by Neff et al. (2018), we point to several conceptual and psychometric problems and conclude that self‐compassion does not overcome the outlined hurdles. Instead, we show that our initial critique of the self‐compassion scale holds and that its dimensions are best considered facets of neuroticism. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology