When to fire: anticipatory versus postevent reconstrual of uncontrollable events

These studies examined the conditions under which people engage in anticipatory construal before an evaluative event versus reconstrual after the event. Computer software informed college students that there was a 1.5%, 12%, 88%, or 98.5% chance that an opposite-sex student would pick them for a hypothetical date. When people had extreme expectations (1.5% or 98.5%), they changed their view of the student to be consistent with their expectations before learning the outcome (anticipatory reconstrual). When people had moderate expectations (12% or 88%), they formed relatively unbiased impressions before hand but reconstrued after learning the outcome of the dating game (postevent reconstrual). Either strategy can ameliorate the pain of a negative event in ways that people do not anticipate. Forecasters predicted that loosing would make them feel worse than it did and selected a higher dose of a drug to cope with an anticipated loss than did people who actually lost.     

Cognitive aspects of chronic depression

Previous research on chronic depression has focused on its link with other mood disorders and Axis II personality disorders. However, there are few data examining whether the cognitive perspective applies to this condition. In this cross-sectional study, 42 outpatients with chronic depression were compared with 27 outpatients with nonchronic major depressive disorder and 24 never psychiatrically ill controls on cognitive variables thought to be related to vulnerability to depression (e.g., dysfunctional attitudes, attributional style, a ruminative response style, and maladaptive core beliefs). Both depressed groups were more elevated than a never-ill comparison group. However, chronically depressed individuals were generally more elevated on measures of cognitive variables than those with major depressive disorders even after controlling for mood state and personality disorder symptoms.     

Gender and culture differences in touching behavior

The authors used gender and culture to examine the theory that touching behavior is an expression of dominance. Participants were 120 men and women from Italy, the Czech Republic, and the United States. The authors examined both hand touches and nonhand touches. For hand touches, there was a significant gender-by-culture interaction in that Czech men as a group touched more than any of the other groups. For nonhand touches, Czech and Italian women and Italian men as groups touched significantly more than any of the other groups. Taken in cultural context, these results seem to support the dominance theory for touches with the hand but not for nonhand touches. The authors discussed implications and future directions.     

IN THE BEGINNING: THE ROLE OF MYTH IN RELATING RELIGION,BRAIN SCIENCE,AND MENTAL WELL‐BEING

Building upon the insights of scholars attuned to story, narrative, and myth, this article explores the relationship between myth, science, and religion. After clarifying the interplay of the three terms—story, narrative, and myth—and the preference for the term myth, this article will argue that myth can serve as a medium through which religion, neuroscience, and mental well‐being interact. Such an exploration will cover the role of myths in religion, the neurological basis of myth, and the practices of narrative psychology and bibliotherapy. The article will conclude with suggestions for understanding and utilizing the relationship between myth and the scholarly study of the relationship between science and religion. This article ultimately suggests that myth can operate as a methodological aid to the science‐and‐religion field.     

The Interplay Between Meaning and Sacred Awareness in Everyday Life: Evidence From a Daily Smartphone Study

People experience meaning in various ways across different secular and sacred situations. However, scholars know relatively little about the situational contexts in which meaning occurs. In this article, we first explored the daily contexts of meaning using data collected by a unique, 2-week experience sampling method through participants’ smartphones. Meaning levels were highest during religious and spiritual practices, as well as during traditional work hours. They were also higher with some activities, such as talking to other people, than other activities, such as playing video games. Second, we examined how feelings of meaningfulness were related to sacred states, parsing out which preceded the other. Sacred states, in which people were aware of God or a higher being, tended to come before feelings of meaning rather than the reverse. From these analyses, meaning emerged as richly patterned in everyday life and closely associated with—and often a consequence of—sacred awareness.     

Generalized imitation of facial models by children with autism

Imitation is an essential skill in the acquisition of language and communication skills. An initial phase in teaching young children with autism to engage in appropriate affective responding may be to teach the imitation of facial models. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, imitation training (consisting of modeling, prompting, differential reinforcement, and error correction) was introduced successively across 3 participants. Low and inconsistent rates of imitation of facial models were observed in baseline. All of the participants learned to imitate some of the facial models presented during imitation training, but only 2 of the 3 participants demonstrated generalized responding across stimuli.     

Family Patterns of Gender Role Attitudes

Study goals were to identify family patterns of gender role attitudes, to examine the conditions under which these patterns emerged, and to assess the implications of gender attitude patterns for family conflict. Participants were mothers, fathers, and first- and second-born adolescents from 358 White, working and middle-class US families. Results of cluster analysis revealed three gender role attitude patterns: egalitarian parents and children, traditional parents and children, and a divergent pattern, with parents more traditional and children more egalitarian. Mixed-model ANOVAs indicated that these family patterns were related to socioeconomic status, parents’ time spent in gendered household tasks and with children, and the gender constellation of the sibling dyad. The traditional family group reported the most family conflict.     

Frontal brain asymmetry in restrained eaters

It is well known that the eating patterns that restrain chronic dieters (restrained eaters) can be disinhibited by anxiety, which in turn has been associated with relative right frontal brain activity in independent electroencephalographic (EEG) studies. Combining these two lines of evidence, the authors tested the hypothesis that chronic restrained eating is associated with relative right frontal asymmetry. Resting anterior brain asymmetry and self-reported measures of anxiety and depression were collected in 23 restrained and 32 unrestrained eaters. As hypothesized, groups differed in tonic frontal activity, with restrained eaters showing more relative right frontal activity. Furthermore, relative right frontal activity was associated with greater self-reported restraint. Right-sided prefrontal asymmetry may thus represent a diathesis associated with increased vulnerability toward restrained eating.     

The Reception of Dewey in the Hispanic World

The aim of this paper is to describe Dewey’s reception in the Spanish-speaking countries that constitute the Hispanic world. Without any doubt, it can be said that in the past century Spain and the countries of South America have been a world apart, lagging far behind the mainstream Western world. It includes a number of names and facts about the early translation of Dewey’s works in Spain, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Argentina in the first half of the century and a brief explanation of the decline of Dewey in the second half. To a great extent, Dewey’s conception of education was immersed in the international movement of reform that started at the turn of the century and would eventually slowly but surely, renovate the structure of the educational system throughout the entire century, including that of South America. But it is equally clear that the Spanish-speaking countries have displayed a general ignorance of Dewey and, by extension, of American pragmatism during most of the century. In spite of mutual incomprehension, a deep affinity between Dewey’s pragmatism and Hispanic philosophy is suggested in this paper, anticipating that the gradual process of democratization of Spain and the Hispanic countries of South America may be in some sense related to the rediscovery of Dewey and to the application of his key ideas in education. After decades of neglect of Dewey and of his contribution, there is a strong feeling not only that his conception of things is important to understand the last century but that Dewey – along with Peirce and other American classical pragmatists – may very well prove to be a key thinker for the XXIst century also in the Hispanic world. Along this vein, the recent resurgence of pragmatism can be understood not as the latest academic fashion but the occasion to start to close the gap between the two worlds.