When the half-full glass is appraised as half empty and memorised as completely empty: mood-congruent true and false recognition in depression is modulated by salience

Since the 1980s a large body of empirical effort has been devoted to mood-congruent memory (MCM) biases in clinical depression. Whereas there is broad, albeit not unequivocal, evidence that depressive patients retain negative-valenced memory items better than neutral material, few studies have investigated false memories in depression. In a pilot study we gathered support for both enhanced true and false memory for emotional material in depression. The present study aimed to extend these preliminary findings. In view of investigations suggesting that arousing and meaningful stimuli have facilitated access to memory, personal salience was considered a moderator for MCM. In the present study 21 depressed and 22 healthy participants were presented six false memory lists dealing with neutral, negative, and positive themes. At recognition, each item had to be appraised for its degree of valence subsequent to an old-new judgement. Pre-categorised and subjective valence did not discriminate groups. However, relative to controls depressed patients showed both more veridical as well as false recognition for items that concurrently elicited higher salience ratings in patients. In contrast, group differences in recognition performance did not significantly affect salience ratings. Results indicate that salience modulates MCM and may account for discrepancies in the literature.     

Attitudes towards people with AIDS and avoidance behavior: Automatic and reflective bases of behavior

We tested the assumption that implicit attitude measures are related to automatic behavior, while explicit attitude measures are related to reflective behavioral intentions. In our study, attitudes towards persons with AIDS were assessed with both the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and an explicit attitude measure. Behavioral intentions were measured through a questionnaire. Automatic approach and avoidance predispositions were operationalized as the speed with which a computer mouse was either pulled towards (approach) or pushed away from the body (avoidance). Consistent with our expectations, the IAT was related to the automatic approach and avoidance behaviors, while the explicit attitude measure was related to behavioral intentions. These findings support the idea that automatic and reflective processes exert independent effects on behavior.     

Body language reading of emotion in schizophrenia: Associations with symptoms and functional outcome

Our aim was to explore how body language reading of emotion relates to neurocognition, symptoms and functional outcome in schizophrenia. Fifty‐four individuals with schizophrenia and eighty‐four healthy controls participated in the study. Emotion perception was assessed with a point‐light display (PLD) task, the Emotion in Biological Motion (EmoBio) test, neurocognition was measured with the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB), and functioning was indexed by one measure of functional capacity and by one self‐report questionnaire. Clinical symptoms were assessed with a five factor Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) symptoms model. Participants with schizophrenia had impaired body language reading of emotions compared to healthy controls (Cohen's d = 0.69). In participants with schizophrenia, emotion perception was associated with neurocognition (r = 0.42), functional capacity (r = 0.27) and disorganization symptoms (r = –0.27). Mediation analyses showed that disorganization symptoms mediated the effects of emotion perception and neurocognition, respectively, on social functional capacity. These results suggest that in individuals with schizophrenia, reduced emotion perception from body movements has negative consequences for functional outcome, but that the effect is mediated through disorganization symptoms.     

To be or Not to be Authentic. In Defence of Authenticity as an Ethical Ideal

It has recently been pointed out that the cloudiness of the concept of authenticity as well as inflated ideologies of the ‘true self’ provide good reasons to criticize theories and ideals of authenticity. Nevertheless, there are also good reasons to defend an ethical ideal of authenticity, not least because of its critical and oppositional force, which is directed against experiences of self-abandonment and self-alienation. I will argue for an elaborated ethical ideal of authenticity: the ambitious ideal of a continuous self-reflective process of ‘self-authentication’. For this purpose, the ideal of being authentic in expressing and unfolding one’s individual personality and characteristics will be combined with the ideal of being ‘an authentic person’ - whereby ‘a person’ is to be understood in a Kantian sense as an autonomous person who is (at least potentially) reasonable and morally responsible.     

Modulatory effects of happy mood on performance monitoring: Insights from error-related brain potentials

Goal-adaptive behavior requires the rapid detection of conflicts between actions and intentions or goals. Although many studies have focused in the past on the influence of negative affect on this cognitive control process (and more specifically, on error monitoring), little is known about the possible modulatory effects of positive affect on it. To address this question, we used a standard (positive) mood induction procedure (based on guided imagery) and asked participants to carry out a speeded go/no-go task while high-density electroencephalography was recorded concurrently. As a control condition, we used a group with neutral mood. Event-related potential results showed that the error-related negativity (ERN) component, reflecting early error detection within the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, was not influenced by happy mood. In contrast, the subsequent error positivity (Pe) component, related to the appraisal of the motivational significance of errors, was reliably smaller in the happy than in the neutral mood group. Complementing source localization analyses showed that this effect was explained by decreased activation within the posterior cingulate and insular cortices. These results were obtained in the absence of group differences regarding behavioral performance and tonic arousal. These findings suggest that happy mood likely decreases and changes the motivational significance of worse-than-expected events (Pe), while leaving their earlier automatic detection (ERN) unaltered. We discuss these new results in terms of dynamic changes in the complex interplay of performance monitoring with motivation.     

The Roles We Make Others Take: Thoughts on the Ethics of Arguing

Feminist argumentation theorists have criticized the Dominant Adversarial Model in argumentation, according to which arguers should take proponent and opponent roles and argue against one another. The model is deficient because it creates disadvantages for feminine gendered persons in a way that causes significant epistemic and practical harms. In this paper, I argue that the problem that these critics have pointed out can be generalized: whenever an arguer is given a role in the argument the associated tasks and norms of which she cannot fulfill, she is liable to suffer morally significant harms. One way to react to this problem is by requiring arguers to set up argument structures and allocate roles so that the argument will be reasons-reflective in as balanced a way as possible. However, I argue that this would create to heavy a burden. Arguers would then habitually have to take on roles that require them to divert time and energy away from the goals that they started arguing for and instead serve the goal of ideal reasons-reflectiveness. At least prima facie arguers should be able to legitimately devote their time and energy towards their own goals. This creates a problem: On the one hand, structures that create morally significant harms for some arguers should be avoided—on the other hand, arguers should be able to take argument-roles that allow them to devote themselves to their own argumentative goals. Fulfilling the second requirement for some arguers will often create the morally significant harms for their interlocutors. There are two possible solutions for this problem: first, arguers might be required to reach free, consensual agreements on the structure they will adopt for their argument and the way they will distribute argumentative roles. I reject this option as both fundamentally unfeasible and practically unrealistic, based on arguments developed by theorists like Krabbe and Jacobs. I argue that instead, we should take a liberal view on argument ethics. Arguers should abide by moral side constraints to their role taking. They should feel free to take roles that will allow them to concentrate on their argumentative goals, but only if this does not create a situation in which their interlocutors are pushed into a role that that they cannot effectively play.

     

Do salespeople matter in competitive tenders?

Abstract

Organizational buyers are increasingly employing competitive tenders with objective buying criteria to mitigate the influence of personal relationships with suppliers and reduce the overall cost of buying. This paper investigates the role of salespeople’s relationships with buyers (i.e., purchasing managers) and how they affect supplier selection in such contexts. Drawing on data from 428 tenders across different buying organizations, this study shows that the quality of the salesperson’s relationship with the buyer influences the buyer’s evaluation of the tender proposal, which, in turn, affects supplier selection. Thus, the results support an indirect effect of salesperson relationship on supplier selection even in a tender context. In addition, the results indicate that the effect of a salesperson’s relationship on buyer’s proposal evaluation is contingent on the comprehensibility of suppliers’ proposals and buyer’s product knowledge. These results have significant theoretical and managerial implications for both buyers and suppliers in business-to-business (B2B) tender contexts.