A cognitively-gated place? The role of need for closure in a biased perception of the place’s past

Biased memory of the past is often a starting point for intergroup conflicts. In three correlational studies, we examined the relationship between need for closure (NFC) and historical ethnocentric bias, a tendency to overestimate the role of one’s ethnic group in the multicultural history of the city of residence. In addition, we checked whether this relationship would be mediated by an individual preference for essentialist places. We found that higher NFC was related to increased historical ethnocentric bias. Moreover, this relation was mediated by preference for an essentialist type of a place. Our results may contribute to understanding the role of individual differences and preferred type of place in shaping a biased representation of the past. Furthermore, our research findings point to the importance of raising awareness of the multicultural past among high NFC individuals.

     

Would you be happier if you moved more? Physical activity focusing illusion

Current Psychology - Research shows that individuals who are more physically active also report greater happiness. However, subjective well-being is prone to cognitive biases. For instance, people...     

Shades of Awareness on the Mechanisms Underlying the Quality of Conscious Representations: A Commentary to Fazekas and Overgaard ()

Fazekas and Overgaard ( 2018 ) present a novel, multidimensional model that explains different ways in which conscious representations can be degraded. Moreover, the authors discuss possible mechanisms that underlie different kinds of degradation, primarily those related to attentional processing. In this letter, we argue that the proposed mechanisms are not sufficient. We propose that (1) attentional mechanisms work differently at various processing stages; and (2) factors that are independent of attentional ones, such as expectation, previous experience, and context, should be accounted for if we are aiming to construct a comprehensive model of conscious visual perception.     

Left–right ideological differences in system justification following exposure to complementary versus noncomplementary stereotype exemplars

The capacity for victim‐derogating stereotypes and attributions to justify social inequality and maintain the status quo is well known among social scientists and other observers. Research conducted from the perspective of system justification theory suggests that an alternative to derogation is to justify inequality through the use of complementary stereotypes that ascribe compensating benefits and burdens to disadvantaged and advantaged groups, respectively. In two experimental studies conducted in Poland we investigated the hypothesis that preferences for these two routes to system justification would depend upon one's political orientation. That is, we predicted that the system‐justifying potential of complementary versus noncomplementary stereotype exemplars would be moderated by individual differences in left–right ideology, such that left‐wingers would exhibit stronger support for the societal status quo following exposure to complementary (e.g., “poor but happy,” “rich but miserable”) representations, whereas right‐wingers would exhibit stronger support for the status quo following exposure to noncomplementary (e.g., “poor and dishonest,” “rich and honest”) representations. Results were supportive of these predictions. Implications for theory and practice concerning stereotyping, ideology, and system justification are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social status and shaming experiences related to adolescent overt aggression at school

Feelings of rejection and humiliation in interpersonal interaction are strongly related to aggressive behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between social status, shaming experiences, gender and adolescent aggressive behavior by using a status-shaming model. A population-based sample of 5,396 adolescents aged from 15 to 18 completed a questionnaire that asked questions regarding psychosocial background, shaming experiences, social status of family, peer group and school and involvement in physical or verbal aggression at school. Shaming experiences, i.e. being ridiculed or humiliated by others, were strongly related to aggressive behavior. Social status and shaming were related in the prediction of aggressive behavior, suggesting that a person's social status may influence the risk for taking aggressive action when subjected to shaming experiences. Medium social status seemed to have a protective function in the association between shaming experiences and aggression. This study confirms the importance of further evaluation of the role of perceived social status and shaming experiences in the understanding of aggressive behavior. Moreover, the results indicate the need for different kinds of status measures when investigating the associations between status and behavior in adolescent populations. The results may have important implications for the prevention of bullying at school as well as other deviant aggressive behavior among adolescents.     

Defining traits differently for self and others

Identical trait labels may be understood differently in thinking about self and in thinking about others. Specifically, when making self-judgments, individuals define traits primarily in terms of unobservable manifestations, e.g., how one feels. However, in making other-judgments, particularly in making judgments about relatively unfamiliar others, individuals define traits primarily in terms of observable manifestations, e.g., how one looks. This prediction was tested in three experiments (Exp. 1: N = 96, Polish undergraduates including 19 men, 77 women; Exp. 2: N = 96, U.S. undergraduates including 18 men, 78 women; Exp. 3: N = 74, Polish undergraduates including 18 men, 56 women). Participants were asked to perform a generic trait judgment task followed by a specific trait judgment task in which the same traits were preceded by a qualifier "feels" or "looks". As expected, in the case of self-judgments, generic judgments predicted feels judgments better than looks judgments. This pattern did not occur for judgments of others and was reversed for judgments about others who were relatively unfamiliar.     

The Method of Socratic Proofs for Modal Propositional Logics: K5, S4.2, S4.3, S4F,S4R,S4M and G

The aim of this paper is to present the method of Socratic proofs for seven modal propositional logics: K5, S4.2, S4.3, S4M, S4F, S4R and G. This work is an extension of [10] where the method was presented for the most common modal propositional logics: K, D, T, KB, K4, S4 and S5. Presented by Jacek Malinowski