Rationalization,Evidence, and Pretense

In this paper I distinguish the category of “rationalization” from various forms of epistemic irrationality. I maintain that only if we model rationalizers as pretenders can we make sense of the rationalizer's distinctive relationship to the evidence in her possession. I contrast the cognitive attitude of the rationalizer with that of believers whose relationship to the evidence I describe as “waffling” or “intransigent”. In the final section of the paper, I compare the rationalizer to the Frankfurtian bullshitter.     

Nature Gives Us Strength: Exposure to Nature Counteracts Ego-Depletion

Previous research rarely investigated the role of physical environment in counteracting ego-depletion. In the present research, we hypothesized that exposure to natural environment counteracts ego-depletion. Three experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, initially depleted participants who viewed pictures of nature scenes showed greater persistence on a subsequent anagram task than those who were given a rest period. Experiment 2 expanded upon this finding by showing that natural environment enhanced logical reasoning performance after ego-depleting task. Experiment 3 adopted a two- (depletion vs. no-depletion) -by-two (nature exposure vs. urban exposure) factorial design. We found that nature exposure moderated the effect of depletion on anagram task performance. Taken together, the present studies offer a viable and novel strategy to mitigate the negative impacts of ego-depletion.     

Central load reduces peripheral processing: Evidence from incidental memory of background speech

Is there a trade‐off between central (working memory) load and peripheral (perceptual) processing? To address this question, participants were requested to undertake an n‐back task in one of two levels of central/cognitive load (i.e., 1‐back or 2‐back) in the presence of a to‐be‐ignored story presented via headphones. Participants were told to ignore the background story, but they were given a surprise memory test of what had been said in the background story, immediately after the n‐back task was completed. Memory was poorer in the high central load (2‐back) condition in comparison with the low central load (1‐back) condition. Hence, when people compensate for higher central load, by increasing attentional engagement, peripheral processing is constrained. Moreover, participants with high working memory capacity (WMC) – with a superior ability for attentional engagement – remembered less of the background story, but only in the low central load condition. Taken together, peripheral processing – as indexed by incidental memory of background speech – is constrained when task engagement is high.     

Property and prejudice: How racial attitudes and social‐evaluative concerns shape property appraisals

Property evaluations rarely occur in the absence of social context. However, no research has investigated how intergroup processes related to prejudice extend to concepts of property. In the present research, we propose that factors such as group status, prejudice and pressure to mask prejudiced attitudes affect how people value the property of racial ingroup and outgroup members. In Study 1, White American and Asian American participants were asked to appraise a hand‐painted mug that was ostensibly created by either a White or an Asian person. Asian participants demonstrated an ingroup bias. White participants showed an outgroup bias, but this effect was qualified. Specifically, among White participants, higher racism towards Asian Americans predicted higher valuations of mugs created by Asian people. Study 2 revealed that White Americans' prejudice towards Asian Americans predicted higher valuations of the mug created by an Asian person only when participants were highly concerned about conveying a non‐prejudiced personal image. Our results suggest that, ironically, prejudiced majority group members evaluate the property of minority group members whom they dislike more favourably. The current findings provide a foundation for melding intergroup relations research with research on property and ownership.     

Social Ecological Context of Conversing

The purpose of this article is to provide some groundwork about ecological social psychology as a starting point for researchers tackling neglected issues of language ecologically. I review basic principles of the ecological approach to perceiving and acting and discuss how the ecological approach has been applied beyond solo actors in an ecological niche to multiple actors acting in a niche explicitly conceptualized as social. In the last decade, researchers were inspired by tool-use research and solo action-based research on affordances (e.g., stair climbing) to take an affordance-based approach to understanding cooperation in a more embodied approach than was previously used in social psychology. Beginning at least a decade prior to that, researchers were inspired to wonder whether the dynamics of the coordinative structures of a solo actor's body movements, spontaneously emerging when different limbs engaged in rhythmic movement, might cross the bodily divide to yield similar collective dynamics when multiple actors are incidentally engaged in rhythmic movement (e.g., different people swinging their legs together). One insight from the affordance research emphasizes the role of meaning as emerging in dynamic interaction between multiple actors confronted by demands and resources of an environment: language's potential contribution to this is discussed in the context of the newest advances in theorizing about values and about the sociocultural grounding of affordances. Finally, the potential role of language for facilitating being pulled into “social eddies” of coordinated orbits of motion, as well as its potential role in joint action, is discussed.     

Models of recognition: A review of arguments in favor of a dual-process account

The majority of computationally specified models of recognition memory have been based on a single-process interpretation, claiming that familiarity is the only influence on recognition. There is increasing evidence that recognition is, in fact, based on two processes: recollection and familiarity. This article reviews the current state of the evidence for dual-process models, including the usefulness of the remember/know paradigm, and interprets the relevant results in terms of the source of activation confusion (SAC) model of memory. We argue that the evidence from each of the areas we discuss, when combined, presents a strong case that inclusion of a recollection process is necessary. Given this conclusion, we also argue that the dual-process claim that the recollection process is always available is, in fact, more parsimonious than the single-process claim that the recollection process is used only in certain paradigms. The value of a well-specified process model such as the SAC model is discussed with regard to other types of dual-process models.     

Competence in everyday activities as a predictor of cognitive risk and mortality

This study examined the association of a performance-based measure of everyday functioning with clinically meaningful outcomes. Elderly participants in a prospective study of dementia were assessed at two occasions on the Everyday Problems Test for Cognitively Challenged Elderly (EPCCE), a performance-based measure of everyday functioning. Older adults who remained cognitively intact performed approximately 0.66 SD units higher on the EPCCE at both occasions than elders rated as impaired, when covarying on age, education, gender, and cognitive status. Relative to the nonimpaired participants, decline in EPCCE performance over a 2-year interval was significantly greater for impaired participants and those participants who transitioned from nonimpaired to impaired over the course of the study. Increased risk of mortality was associated with lower baseline scores and decline in EPCCE performance even after controlling for demographic variables and performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination. Given the clinical importance of identifying "at risk" elders for impairment, the findings from this study provide initial evidence for the predictive utility of performance-based measures of everyday functioning.     

Ethics, biotechnology, and global health: the development of vaccines in transgenic plants

As compared with conventional vaccine production systems, plant-made vaccines (PMVs) are said to enjoy a range of advantages including cost of production and ease of storage for distribution in developing countries. In this article, we introduce the science of PMV production, and address ethical issues associated with development and clinical testing of PMVs within three interrelated domains: PMVs as transgenic plants; PMVs as clinical research materials; and PMVs as agents of global health. We present three conclusions: first, while many of the ethical issues raised by PMVs are familiar, PMVs add a new dimension to old issues, and raise some novel issues for ethicists and policy-makers; secondly, it is premature to promise broad applicability of PMVs across the developing world without having demonstrated their feasibility; thirdly, in particular, proponents of PMVs as a solution to global health problems must, as a condition of the ethical conduct of their research, define the commercial feasibility of PMVs for distribution in the developing world.