The Antinomies of Collective Political Trauma: A Pre-Theory

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination has less of a lasting impact on the Israeli public's political values, beliefs and attitudes than might have been anticipated from the magnitude of the event and intensity of the immediate responses. Why did the assassination have such a short-lived effect? This article considers the puzzle as a specific case of the broader phenomenon of collective political trauma and its consequences for values, beliefs and attitudes held by the mass public toward issues that it associates with the traumatic event. The article offers six deductively inferred hypotheses that describe, explain and link affective, cognitive and behavioral aspects of collectively experienced trauma. These hypotheses form a pre-theory explaining the perseverence of core political cognitions, even in the face of a considerable challenge to their validity and relevance.     

Cortical maps for hearing and egocentric selection for self-organization

The auditory cortex of the mustached bat shows complex multiple frequency maps, because cortical neurons in several areas are tuned to particular combinations of signal elements. Different types of combination-sensitive neurons form computational maps in which information-bearing parameters for echolocation (biosonar) are represented systematically. Neuronal response properties and multiple-frequency and computational maps were considered to be created solely by divergent-convergent interactions of neurons in the 'ascending' system. However, we have found that the 'corticofugal' system also plays an important role. Neurons in an iso-best frequency (or echo delay) 'minicolumn' of the auditory cortex augment the auditory responses of subcortical neurons tuned to that frequency (or echo delay) and sharpen their tuning. At the same time, they reduce the response and shift the tuning of subcortical neurons tuned to other frequencies (or echo delays) away from the best frequency (or delay) of the cortical neurons. Cortical neurons mediate a highly focused positive feedback, incorporated with widespread lateral inhibition, via corticofugal projections. This 'egocentric selection' is expected to play an important role in self-organizing the central auditory system.     

The Belief in Good Luck Scale

The construction and properties of the Belief in Good Luck (BIGL) Scale are described. Three studies provide evidence that reliable individual differences exist with respect to beliefs about luck. Some individuals maintain an irrational view of luck as a somewhat stable force that tends to influence events in their own favor, while others seem to hold the more rational belief that luck is random and unreliable. Further, these beliefs showed a considerable amount of stability over time. The BIGL was significantly related to locus of control (primarily to a chance subscale), but other evidence suggested these constructs were distinct. Belief in good luck was not related to general optimism, academic pessimism, self-esteem, desire for control, or achievement motivation. There was also evidence that belief in good luck was distinct from feeling fortunate or generally satisfied with one's life. Ethnic group differences were observed for the BIGL scale, showing that Asian-Americans were more likely to endorse superstitious beliefs about luck than non-Asians. Finally, the BIGL scale was shown to predict positive expectations for the outcome of everyday situations that are typically associated with luck. This is generally in agreement with previous findings suggesting that people who believe in personal good luck react to lucky events by becoming more positive about the likelihood of future success (Darke & Freedman, 1997). In general, it is suggested that irrational beliefs about luck can serve as a source of positive expectations for the outcome of future events.     

Assessing Hypersensitive Narcissism: A Reexamination of Murray''s Narcism Scale

A new measure of hypersensitive narcissism was derived by correlating the items of H. A. Murray's (1938) Narcism Scale with an MMPI-based composite measure of covert narcissism. In three samples of college students (totalN= 403), 10 items formed a reliable measure: the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS). The new HSNS and the MMPI-based composite showed similar patterns of correlations with the Big Five Inventory, and both measures correlated near zero with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which assesses overt narcissism. Results support P. Wink's (1991) distinction between covert and overt narcissistic tendencies in the normal range of individual differences and suggest that it would be beneficial for personality researchers to measure both types of narcissism in future studies.     

Zhuangzi and relativistic scepticism

Chad Hansen is one of the strongest proponents of the view that the important second chapter of Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters (The Qi Wu Lun) reveals Zhuangzi to be a relativistic sceptidst. Hansen argues that Zhuangzi is a sceptic because he is first and foremost a relativist. Hansen's argument is essentially that Zhuangzi's perspectivism, his belief that one's linguistic and conceptual perspective determines what one claims to know, makes him a thorough going relativist and sceptic. I agree that Zhuangzi is a perspectivist, but disagree with Hansen's portrayal of him as a relativistic sceptic. I first show that there is an important ambiguity in Hansen's argument. I then proceed to argue that important passages in the Qi Wu Lun (in particular the butterfly dream passage,) reveal serious problems with Hansen's interpretation of Zhuangzi's philosophical stance, I maintain that Zhuangzi is neither a sceptic nor a perspectival relativist. He is rather a perspectival realist.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

Towards an Interactive Acculturation Model: A Social Psychological Approach

The first part of this paper proposes a continuum of ideological premises that seeks to account for the broad range of immigrant integration policies adopted by Western democratic states. In the second part, a review of Social Psychological models of immigrant acculturation strategies demonstrates the need to explain more clearly the interactive nature of immigrant and host community relations. The Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM) presented next proposes that relational outcomes are the product of the acculturation orientations of both the host majority and immigrant groups as influenced by state integration policies. The model makes predictions regarding the acculturation combinations most likely to produce consensual, problematic, and conflictual relational outcomes between immigrants and members of the host community. Social psychological research is needed to test the validity of the IAM model empirically.