Suicidal–Homicidal Ideation in Mass Killers and Transcendence

This article examines the role that suicidal–homicidal ideation plays in influencing mass killers and draws on the author’s concept of transcendent fantasy theory. Although numerous researchers touch on the fact that 50% of mass killers commit suicide, few have traced and compared the suicidal person’s fantasy process with that of the suicidal–homicidal killer’s fantasy process. Suicidal individuals tend to be intropunitive. They internalize the blame for real or imagined failures, and they seek to escape from such failures, or to inflict punishment on him- or herself for the same reasons. Mass killers externalize the blame for their real or imagined losses. Due to their mordant bitterness toward self and others, these suicidal–homicidal individuals often fantasize not only about escaping, but transcending their feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and worthlessness by having society see them as powerful, clever, and superior for pulling off a massacre and making (in their view) oppressive people pay.     

Hunts,Heinz, and Fries Priming ‘Ketchup’: The Effects of Lexicality on Brand Name–Product Associations and Brand Memory

Brand names should be memorable and easy to associate with the product. The present study investigated how brand name lexicality affects accessibility in memory. In Experiment 1, participants completed a primed lexical decision task (LDT) in which primes were real‐word brands (RWB; e.g., SATURN), nonword brands (NWB; e.g., KIA), or semantic associates (e.g., TIRE) and targets were product categories (e.g., car). NWB primes resulted in equivalent priming as semantic primes and were recalled more than RWBs in a free‐recall task. In Experiment 2, participants completed an unprimed LDT or brand decision task (BDT). In LDT, high NWB error rates reflected greater familiarity. In BDT, many RWBs were not recognized as brands. In Experiment 3, a primed BDT with brand names as targets indicated that NWBs and RWBs are equally primed by a related category label. Overall, NWBs appear to be more familiar and memorable, possibly because of distinctiveness. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.