In Search of the Self's Grounding Power: Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death as Dogmatics for Unbelievers

Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death can be read as an attempt to present the Christian message in a way that makes sense for unbelievers without violating the integrity of the Christian faith. This is done by exploring the psychological implications of the lack of faith in a way that is supposed to make sense even for those who take offence at the Christian message and do not accept the anthropological implications of the story of the incarnation as their basic point of orientation. It is argued that this attempt is successful, and that this can be demonstrated both by the consistency of the argument and the breadth of its Wirkungsgeschichte.     

How Does Your Doctor Talk with You? Preliminary Validation of a Brief Patient Self-Report Questionnaire on the Quality of Physician–Patient Interaction

The quality of physician–patient interaction is increasingly being recognized as an essential component of effective treatment. The present article reports on the development and validation of a brief patient self-report questionnaire (QQPPI) that assesses the quality of physician–patient interactions. Data were gathered from 147 patients and 19 physicians immediately after consultations in a tertiary care outpatient setting. The QQPPI displayed good psychometric properties, with high internal consistency and good item characteristics. The QQPPI total score showed variability between different physicians and was independent of patients’ gender, age, and education. The QQPPI featured high correlations with other quality-related measures and was not influenced by social desirability, or patients’ clinical characteristics. The QQPPI is a brief patient self-report questionnaire that allows assessment of the quality of physician–patient interactions during routine ambulatory care. It can also be used to evaluate physician communication training programs or for educational purposes.     

Reduced timing variability during bimanual coupling: A role for sensory information

On a repetitive tapping task, the within-hand variability of intertap intervals is reduced when participants tap with two hands as compared to one-hand tapping. Because this bimanual advantage can be attributed to timer variance (Wing-Kristofferson model, 1973a, b), separate timers have been proposed for each hand, whose outputs are then averaged (Helmuth & Ivry, 1996). An alternative notion is that action timing is based on its sensory reafferences (Aschersleben & Prinz, 1995; Prinz, 1990). The bimanual advantage is then due to increased sensory reafference. We studied bimanual tapping with the continuation paradigm. Participants first synchronized their taps with a metronome and then continued without the pacing signal. Experiment 1 replicated the bimanual advantage. Experiment 2 examined the influence of additional sensory reafferences. Results showed a reduction of timer variance for both uni- and bimanual tapping when auditory feedback was added to each tap. Experiment 3 showed that the bimanual advantage decreased when auditory feedback was removed from taps with the left hand. Results indicate that the sensory reafferences of both hands are used and integrated into timing. This is consistent with the assumption that the bimanual advantage is at least partly due to the increase in sensory reafference. A reformulation of the Wing-Kristofferson model is proposed to explain these results, in which the timer provides action goals in terms of sensory reafferences.     

Gender stereotypes underlie child custody decisions

Using hypothetical divorce cases we examine the role of gender stereotypes in decisions about child custody. Good mothers received greater custody allocations than did good fathers across a tightly matched pair of vignettes in three culturally distinct samples: Argentina, Brazil, and the United States (Study 1). Two follow-up studies indicated that the warmth dimension of stereotype content partly accounted for the asymmetry in custody awards: The proportion of maternal-primary custody was predicted by the tendency to ascribe warmth-related traits—such as friendliness, generosity, or trustworthiness—to mothers (Study 2) and associate them with female over male nouns (Study 3). We also found that endorsing shared custody mitigated the asymmetry in custody awards documented in our studies. Together, these results highlight the interplay of stereotyped attitudes and egalitarian commitments in the context of judicial decisions about child custody.