Familiar eyes are smiling: on the role of familiarity in the perception of facial affect

Quickly and accurately perceiving others' facial affect is paramount for successful social interaction. This work investigates the role of familiarity in helping us to interpret others' facial emotions. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants viewed several faces, some familiar and some novel, and judged how happy each face appeared. As predicted, results showed that familiar faces were perceived as happier than were novel faces. In Experiment 3, participants again viewed several faces, some familiar and some not, and rated the perceived anger or happiness of these faces. As expected, familiar faces were perceived as happier and less angry than were novel faces. Thus, these results suggest that familiarity is one cue we use to interpret the facial affect of others. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The cross-category effect: mere social categorization is sufficient to elicit an own-group bias in face recognition

Although the cross-race effect (CRE) is a well-established phenomenon, both perceptual-expertise and social-categorization models have been proposed to explain the effect. The two studies reported here investigated the extent to which categorizing other people as in-group versus out-group members is sufficient to elicit a pattern of face recognition analogous to that of the CRE, even when perceptual expertise with the stimuli is held constant. In Study 1, targets were categorized as members of real-life in-groups and out-groups (based on university affiliation), whereas in Study 2, targets were categorized into experimentally created minimal groups. In both studies, recognition performance was better for targets categorized as in-group members, despite the fact that perceptual expertise was equivalent for in-group and out-group faces. These results suggest that social-cognitive mechanisms of in-group and out-group categorization are sufficient to elicit performance differences for in-group and out-group face recognition.     

Harm concerns predict moral judgments of suicide: Comment on Rottman,Kelemen and Young (2014)

Two prominent theories offer different perspectives on the role of harm in moral cognition. Dyadic morality suggests that harm-related concerns are pervasive, whereas moral pluralism suggests that these concerns apply only to canonically harmful violations (e.g., murder), and not impure violations (e.g., suicide). Rottman et al. (2014) contrast these two theories by examining moral judgments of suicide. They conclude that suicide wrongness is independent of harm, therefore arguing against dyadic morality and for moral pluralism. However, these conclusions may be overstated; across all these studies, a meta-analysis reveals that harm is a significant predictor of suicide judgments. Moreover, the association between harm and suicide wrongness may be suppressed in individual studies by insufficient power, restrictive exclusion criteria, a single bivariate outlier, and reliance upon the conventional significance threshold of p < .05. In revised analyses harm is robustly associated with suicide wrongness, consistent with dyadic morality.     

Overgeneralizing Belonging: Limited Exposure to Baby-Faced Targets Increases the Feeling of Social Belonging

We tested the hypothesis that exposure to babyish faces can serve a social surrogacy function, such that even limited exposure to babyish faces can fulfill social belongingness needs. We manipulated the sex and facial maturity of a target face seen in an imagined social interaction, on a between-participants basis. Regardless of target sex, individuals indicated greater satisfaction of social belongingness needs following an imagined interaction with a babyish face, compared to a mature adult face. These results indicate that brief exposure to babyish (relative to mature) faces, even without an extensive interaction, can lead to the satisfaction of social belongingness needs.     

Actual and Counterfactual Attitudes: Reply to Brueckner and Fischer

In a recent article, I criticized Anthony L. Brueckner and John Martin Fischer’s influential argument—appealing to the rationality of our asymmetric attitudes towards past and future pleasures—against the Lucretian claim that death and prenatal non-existence are relevantly similar. Brueckner and Fischer have replied, however, that my critique involves an unjustified shift in temporal perspectives. In this paper, I respond to this charge and also argue that even if it were correct, it would fail to defend Brueckner and Fischer’s proposal against my critique.     

Letter From Stockholm

Some of the ideas of Sigmund Freud were preceded in a literary form by the Swedish writer August Strindberg in the late 19th century. Psychoanalysis itself was introduced in Sweden about a decade into the 20th century by two rivalling pioneers, the doctors Emanuel af Geijerstam and Poul Bjerre. After a slow start, the Danish‐Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society and the Finnish‐Swedish Psychoanalytical Society were formed in 1934 in Stockholm. The same year, Ericastiftelsen [The Erica Foundation], a psychotherapeutic clinic for children, was founded by Hanna Bratt. Five years later, in 1939, also in Stockholm, the organization that was to become St. Lukasstiftelsen [The Saint Luke's Foundation] was founded. It has been, and still is, an association that has trained psychodynamic psychotherapists, with a focus on existential, religious and philosophical questions. Today, St. Luke's tries to be up‐dated from an academic standpoint. During the Second World War, several important psychoanalysts came to Sweden, for example René de Monchy, Lajos and Edith Székely, and Stefi Pedersen. Ola Andersson's doctoral dissertation (“Studies in the Prehistory of Psychoanalysis”, 1962) and the historian Gunnar Brandell's essay (“Freud, a Man of His Century”, 1961) have had an international impact. In the last two decades, an authorized and carefully edited translation of Freud's collected works has been published by Natur och Kultur, and the history of psychoanalysis in Sweden has been written at the University of Gothenburg. As a result of a recent interest in the work of Jacques Lacan, and French psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature, the journal Psykoanalytisk Tid/Skrift was founded in 2002, in Gothenburg. Since 2011 the journal is called Arche. The largest organized group of psychoanalysts in Sweden today is the Swedish Psychoanalytical Association (SPAF), which has around 225 members. Since 2008, it no longer has the right to license psychotherapists, a situation which reflects the position of psychoanalysis outside the mainstream of psychiatric health services and academic psychology. Despite the criticism of Freud's thinking from biologically and cognitively oriented theoretical standpoints, the interest in psychoanalysis endures.