Working through: in-session processes that promote between-session thoughts and activities

This study examined whether clients' ratings of the working alliance as well as their perception of cognitive-behavioral (CB) and psychodynamic-interpersonal (PI) techniques (delivered by therapists who used both) were associated with clients' intersession processes (i.e., their thoughts about therapy and therapeutic activity between sessions). Seventy-five clients who were currently in therapy at a large university counseling center participated in the current study. Multilevel regression analyses demonstrated that alliance and clients' perceptions of their therapists' use of PI techniques were positively associated with clients' general thoughts about therapy between sessions. Also, stronger alliances were associated with more therapeutic activities between sessions and more positive (and less negative) thoughts about therapy between sessions. In addition, clients at later sessions who described their therapists as using more PI techniques also reported engaging in more therapeutic activities between sessions (after controlling for the variance in the other variables, such as use of CB techniques). Clients' perceptions of their therapists' use of CB techniques in the most recent session were not related to thinking about therapy or therapeutic activities after controlling for the variance in the other variables.     

Cleanliness and godliness: Mutual association between two kinds of personal purity

Purity rituals (such as baptism, mikvah, and ablution) are an important component of many religious practices. These practices not only help protect the faithful from physical contaminants, but also bestow symbolic purity and maintain the sanctity of sacred objects. The present work examines the association between religion and cleanliness, as two representations of personal purity. Religious primes were found to activate cleanliness concepts in a word-stem completion task (Study 1), and increased the subjective value of cleaning products (Study 2). In a final study, cleaning primes increased ratings of religious value. These studies suggest a mutual association between religiousness and cleanliness, and that each may activate the other as goals for personal purity.     

Stirring images: Fear, not happiness or arousal, makes art more sublime

Which emotions underlie our positive experiences of art? Although recent evidence from neuroscience suggests that emotions play a critical role in art perception, no research to date has explored the extent to which specific emotional states affect aesthetic experiences or whether general physiological arousal is sufficient. Participants were assigned to one of five conditions-sitting normally, engaging in 15 or 30 jumping jacks, or viewing a happy or scary video-prior to rating abstract works of art. Only the fear condition resulted in significantly more positive judgments about the art. These striking findings provide the first evidence that fear uniquely inspires positively valenced aesthetic judgments. The results are discussed in the context of embodied cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Chalmers on the objects of credence

Chalmers (Mind 120(479): 587–636, 2011a) presents an argument against “referentialism” (and for his own view) that employs Bayesianism. He aims to make progress in a debate over the objects of belief, which seems to be at a standstill between referentialists and non-referentialists. Chalmers’ argument, in sketch, is that Bayesianism is incompatible with referentialism, and natural attempts to salvage the theory, Chalmers contends, requires giving up referentialism. Given the power and success of Bayesianism, the incompatibility is prima facie evidence against referentialism. In this paper, I review Chalmers’ arguments and give some responses on behalf of the referentialist.     

Behavioral ethics for Homo economicus,Homo heuristicus,and Homo duplex

In this article we explore how assumptions about human nature may influence the ways one might try to promote ethical behavior in organizations. We summarize two common views of human nature in organizational research—Homo economicus and Homo heuristicus. We then extend these views by putting forward a third view of human nature initially proposed by Emile Durkheim—Homo duplex—which describes human beings as moving back and forth between a lower (individual) and higher (collective) level. We suggest that the Homo duplex view is uniquely equipped to account for variables of interest to organizational scholars because of its attention to a fundamental tension: People in organizations can be both selfish and groupish, and the balance between those tendencies influences the ethical profile of the organization in complex ways. We end with a discussion of the theoretical implications of the Homo duplex view for behavioral ethics researchers.     

The Simplest Axiom System for Hyperbolic Geometry Revisited,Again

Dependencies are identified in two recently proposed first-order axiom systems for plane hyperbolic geometry. Since the dependencies do not specifically concern hyperbolic geometry, our results yield two simpler axiom systems for absolute geometry.     

Online and On My Mind: Temporary and Chronic Accessibility Moderate the Influence of Media Figures

To investigate the influence of media figures on self-perception, online gamers reported how central their main videogame character (avatar) is to their own identity and answered questions about their avatar's body size either before or after questions about their own body size. When the avatar was not central to the gamer's identity, the avatar's body size influenced gamer's own body judgments only when the avatar was brought to mind by preceding questions. When the avatar was central to the gamer's identity, it influenced gamers' own body judgments independent of question order. In both cases, accessible avatars elicited assimilation effects on self-judgment. We conclude that media figures exert a chronic influence on self-judgment when they are central to the self.     

Distributive Justice Beliefs are Guided by Whether People Think the Ultimate Goal of Society is Well-Being or Power

Abstract

Disagreements about how resources should be distributed are often heated, perhaps because people suspect that distributive justice beliefs that clash with their own derive from nefarious motives. In this paper, we consider a less pessimistic explanation for diversity in distributive justice beliefs: such beliefs are influenced by what one considers the primary utility or value of their society in the first place. In five studies (N?=?21,515), we demonstrate the existence of two separable types of distributive justice beliefs, one (Equality/need) influenced by a focus on societal well-being, and the other (Equity/merit) by a focus on societal power. These findings lend insight into how growing tensions rooted in resource allocation might be defuzed.     

Social exchange from the supervisor’s perspective: Employee trustworthiness as a predictor of interpersonal and informational justice

Using social exchange theory, we argue that because supervisors tend to value employee trustworthiness, they will be more likely to adhere to interpersonal and informational justice rules with trustworthy employees. Given social exchange theory’s assumption that benefits are voluntary in nature, we propose that the benevolence and integrity facets of trustworthiness will be more likely to engender social exchange relationships than the ability facet. Specifically, we propose that employees seen as having high benevolence and integrity engender feelings of obligation and trust from their direct supervisors, increasing the likelihood that these supervisors will adhere to interpersonal and informational justice rules, which in turn influences employee perceptions of justice. We find partial support for our mediated model using a field sample.