Forgive them for I have sinned: The relationship between guilt and forgiveness of others' transgressions

We propose that guilt leads to forgiveness of others' transgressions. In Study 1, people prone to experience guilt (but not shame) were also prone to forgive others for past misdeeds. In Study 2, we manipulated harm‐ and inequity‐based guilt; both increased forgiveness of others' transgressions. Further, the effect of guilt on forgiveness was mediated by identification with the transgressor. In Study 3, we replicated the guilt–forgiveness relationship and examined three other plausible mediators: capability for similar wrongdoing, empathic understanding, and general identification; only identification with the transgressor satisfied the criteria for mediation. In Study 4, we induced guilt by asking participants to harm a friend or stranger. Guilt induced by harming a friend led to greater forgiveness of third‐party transgressors, and again, identification with the transgressor mediated the effect. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding how the prosocial effects of guilt extend beyond the boundaries of a single interpersonal relationship.     

Perceptions of Private Market Landlords Who Rent to Tenants of a Housing First Program

The rental of housing units by landlords to participants in Housing First (HF) programs is critical to the success of these programs. Therefore, it is important to understand the experiences of landlords with having these individuals as tenants. The paper presents findings of qualitative interviews with 23 landlords who rented to tenants from a HF program located in a small city and adjoining rural area in eastern Canada and in which approximately 75 % of tenants had been housed for at least six consecutive months at 2 years in the program. Findings showed that landlords are motivated to rent to HF tenants for financial and pro‐social reasons. They reported holding a range of positive, neutral, and negative perceptions of these tenants. They identified problems encountered with some HF tenants that included disruptive visitors, conflict with other tenants, constant presence in their apartments, and poor upkeep of units. On the other hand, landlords perceived HF tenants as being mostly good tenants who are similar to their other tenants. Implications for practice in the context of HF programs are discussed.     

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.     

Embodiment Effects and Language Comprehension in Alzheimer's Disease

It has been shown that when participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences that describe a transfer of an object toward or away from their body, they are faster to respond when the response requires a movement in the same direction as the transfer described in the sentence. This phenomenon is known as the action compatibility effect (ACE). This study investigates whether the ACE exists for volunteers with Alzheimer's disease (AD), whether the ACE can facilitate language comprehension, and also whether the ACE can still be produced if the order of the two events is inverted, that is, whether overt movement can prime comprehension of transfer sentences. In Study 1, participants with AD, younger, and older adults were tested on an adaptation of the ACE Paradigm. In Study 2, the same paradigm was modified to include an arm movement that participants had to perform prior to sentence exposure on screen. In Study 1, young, older adults, and individuals with AD were faster to respond when the direction of the response movement matched the directionality implied by the sentence (ACE). In Study 2, no traditional ACE was found; participants were faster when the direction of the movement immediately preceding the sentence matched the directionality of the sentence. It was found that compatibility effects generated a relative advantage, that transfer schemata are easier to process, and that an ACE‐like effect can be the result of mutual priming between language and movement. Results suggested preservation in AD of the neural systems for action engaged during language comprehension, and conditions under which comprehension in AD can be facilitated in real life may be identified.     

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.