When death thoughts lead to death fears: Mortality salience increases death anxiety for individuals who lack meaning in life

Research derived from terror management theory demonstrates that subtle reminders of mortality increase strivings for meaning. It is argued that such strivings reflect efforts to prevent the anxiety that death reminders may otherwise cause. However, no research has directly tested the assertions that subtle mortality primes increase death anxiety and perceptions of meaning in life moderate this effect. The current study examined these predictions. Meaning in life was measured, death cognition primed, and death anxiety assessed. A mortality prime increased death anxiety, but only for individuals who lack perceptions of meaning in life. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

Ritual without myth: The use of legal materials for the study of religions

This essay explores the role that Buddhist narrative literature plays in fostering the cultivation of ethically valorised emotions. The essay focuses on astonishment, as it figures in ārya ?ūra's Jātakamālā, a collection of Sanskrit narratives. The essay examines how and why ārya ?ura valorises astonishment and what this valorisation reveals about the significance of emotions in Buddhist ethical life. The key distinction implicit in ārya ?ura's work between natural and cultivated emotions is worked out.     

Methodological concerns in the psychology of religion: Continuities,losses and transforming perspectives

This article seeks solutions to what has recently been called the ‘crisis' in the psychology of religion by returning to the programs of its founding fathers. It explores some of the methodological debates that followed the translation of William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience into German. More was at stake than the commonly drawn distinction between empirical and hermeneutical approaches to religion, or between quantitative and qualitative methods. What was at stake was the need for another kind of psychology in general. This article pays special attention to Wilhelm Wundt's fundamental criticism of James and of others in the psychology of religion. Despite the problems inherent in both James' and Wundt's aborted general psychology programs, each nonetheless contains approaches that may yet serve as an impetus to contemporary research on religion. Contemporary developments in cultural psychology in particular complement current research in the psychology of religion.     

The role of psychological processes in estimates of stuttering severity

Purpose

To examine the associations of trait anxiety (STAI), social anxiety (SIAS), depression (BDI-II), and personality features (ADP-IV) with three measures of stuttering severity: %SS, Stuttering Severity, Instrument, and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering.

Method

Fifty adults with a history of stuttering served as participants. Participant scores on trait, anxiety, social anxiety, depression, and personality features were entered into a regression analysis, with the criterion variables (DVs) being: %SS, SSI-3, OASES total score. In order to explore the OASES, further, each of the four OASES subscales were also examined. A separate regression was conducted for, each dependent variable.

Results

The OASES total score model was significant (p < .0001) and revealed that social anxiety and, trait anxiety were the only significant predictors, with medium effect sizes noted for both variables. In contrast, percent syllables stuttered and the SSI were not significantly associated with psychological, variables, suggesting that anxiety may not always be related to overt indicators of stuttering. Depression and personality dysfunction were not significantly associated with any measure of, stuttering severity.

Conclusion

Anxiety in the form of social and trait anxiety are significantly associated with stuttering, severity as indicated by the OASES. Traditional procedures for assigning severity ratings to individuals, who stutter based on percent syllables stuttered and the Stuttering Severity Instrument are not, significantly related to psychological processes central to the stuttering experience. Depression and, personality characteristics do not meaningfully account for stuttering.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (a) differentiate forms of anxiety that are likely to be associated with stuttering (b) understand the importance of determining features of stuttering that go beyond the obvious, surface characteristics of stuttering frequency, and (c) discuss the important clinical and theoretical implications for understanding the degree of psychological dysfunction that is likely to be characteristic of those who stutter.     

Anxiety's role in aids prevention

Abstract

Anxiety's role in AIDS risk reduction is discussed. We argue that behavioral techniques will be critical tools for alerting people to the threat of AIDS and their own vulnerability. Informational models have not been found to be sufficient for convincing people of the extent of the threat of AIDS to them. We suggest that techniques aimed at raising people's anxiety over their vulnerability will be necessary to raise their motivation to attend to AIDS messages, and we present techniques aimed at increasing anxiety over vulnerability. Following acknowledgment of vulnerability, people will need to adopt or continue safer sex practices that are viewed as undesirable in contrast to unsafe sex practices that are viewed as less costly and less anxiety provoking. Given a clearer practical and theoretical understanding of the anxiety-producing costs of adopting safer sex behaviors, we present methods for reducing this anxiety. We also discuss the necessity for considering ethnic, minority, and other cultural nuances in social and sexual anxiety and how these might be addressed in efforts to increase safer sex practices.     

Visitor Self-Report Behavior Mapping as a Tool for Recording Exhibition Circulation

ABSTRACT

The evaluation of visitor flow within a museum or exhibition has been a topic of interest for decades with several research approaches taken over the years. Direct observation or visitor tracking during museum occupancy is the most popular technique, but it generally requires substantial amounts of time and financial resources. An alternative approach to direct observation—visitor self-mapping—is presented using data obtained from 2 short-term, small-budget evaluations of a world-class collection museum. Results show that self-mapping provides usable data with more than 90% of maps having tracking data for the entire museum. Maps varied in the amount of detail, but more than 60% of visitors provided details beyond what was required. In Study 1, movement patterns, sweep rate indices, and timing data suggest that the mapping data accurately reflected the visitor experience. Study 2 directly paired the self-mapping method used in Study 1 with unobtrusive behavioral observations to address the reliability and validity of the new approach. A discussion compares the relative costs and benefits of the new approach with more conventional direct observation techniques and provides directions for future research.     

Tracking the first two seconds: three stages of visual information processing?

We compared visual priming and comparison tasks to assess information processing of a stimulus during the first 2 s after its onset. In both tasks, a 13-ms prime was followed at varying SOAs by a 40-ms probe. In the priming task, observers identified the probe as rapidly and accurately as possible; in the comparison task, observers determined as rapidly and accurately as possible whether or not the probe and prime were identical. Priming effects attained a maximum at an SOA of 133 ms and then declined monotonically to zero by 700 ms, indicating reliance on relatively brief visuosensory (iconic) memory. In contrast, the comparison effects yielded a multiphasic function, showing a maximum at 0 ms followed by a minimum at 133 ms, followed in turn by a maximum at 240 ms and another minimum at 720 ms, and finally a third maximum at 1,200 ms before declining thereafter. The results indicate three stages of prime processing that we take to correspond to iconic visible persistence, iconic informational persistence, and visual working memory, with the first two used in the priming task and all three in the comparison task. These stages are related to stages presumed to underlie stimulus processing in other tasks, such as those giving rise to the attentional blink.     

Attention shifts or volatile representations: What causes binding deficits in visual working memory?

The current study tested two hypotheses of feature binding memory: The attention hypothesis, which suggests that attention is needed to maintain feature bindings in visual working memory (VWM) and the volatile representation hypothesis, which suggests that feature bindings in memory are volatile and easily overwritten, but do not require sustained attention. Experiment 1 tested the attention hypothesis by measuring shifts of overt attention during the study array of a change detection task; serial shifts of attention did not disrupt feature bindings. Experiments 2 and 3 encouraged encoding of more volatile (Experiment 2) or durable (Experiment 3) representations during the study array. Binding change detection performance was impaired in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 3, suggesting that binding performance is impaired when encoding supports a less durable memory representation. Together, these results suggest that although feature bindings may be volatile and easily overwritten, attention is not required to maintain feature bindings in VWM.     

Relating developments in children's counterfactual thinking and executive functions

The performance of 93 children aged 3 and 4 years on a battery of different counterfactual tasks was assessed. Three measures: short causal chains, location change counterfactual conditionals, and false syllogisms—but not a fourth, long causal chains—were correlated, even after controlling for age and receptive vocabulary. Children's performance on our counterfactual thinking measure was predicted by receptive vocabulary ability and inhibitory control. The role that domain general executive functions may play in 3- to 4-year olds' counterfactual thinking development is discussed.