Support for collective action against refugees: The role of national,European, and global identifications,and autochthony beliefs

To understand recent anti-refugee protests in Europe, we examined how different levels of inclusiveness of group identities (national, European, and global) are related to intentions to protest among native Europeans. We focused on the mediating role of autochthony (a belief that the first inhabitants of a territory are more entitled) and the moderating role of threat. Survey data from 11 European countries (N = 1,909) showed that national identification was positively associated with autochthony, and therefore, with the intention to protest against refugees. In contrast, global identification was related to lower protest intentions via lower autochthony. These paths were found only among Europeans who perceived refugees as a threat. European identification was not related to the endorsement of autochthony or to collective action. These findings indicate why and when majority members are willing to participate in collective action against refugees, and underscore the importance of global identification in the acceptance of refugees.     

Moral Utilitarianism and Attitudes Toward Animals

The majority of studies investigating attitudes toward animals have underscored the role of demographic and personality factors. The study of the role of general moral worldviews on attitudes toward animals represents an important complementary perspective. In the current study, we analyzed the relationship between moral utilitarianism toward humans and attitudes toward animals. In psychological and neuroscientific studies, moral utilitarianism has been shown to be related to empathy deficits. We expected that utilitarian decision making would be related to the endorsement of an instrumental representation of animals. We measured utilitarianism with the trolley problem, a hypothetical moral dilemma widely used in the psychological study of moral reasoning. A sample of 20,474 French adults answered an online survey measuring attitudes toward animals and moral decision making involving human beings. Results showed that irrespective of participants’ age and gender, there was a slight relationship between utilitarianism measured by the trolley dilemma and the endorsement of an instrumental representation of animal. Limitations and implications for future research are considered.     

Human technical enhancement: an introduction to the currents of the debate as well as their fracture lines

The main objective of this article is to suggest a panel of the different positions active in the human enhancement's debate, to analyze their arguments and to point out the dividing zones. The transhumanist movement is therefore presented in order to highlight the principal thematic of its philosophy, its means of action and the plurality of its subgroups. The purpose is to reassess its complexity in an introductory manner far from the usual, excessive simplifications. In a second time, the "bioconservative" movement is also examined in its foundations to emphasize the norms and principles that are undoubtedly shared by the opponents to the human being's modification. Then, the thinkers of the "liberal ethics" are exemplified as a more moderate alternative, although not flawless. Generally open-minded towards the application of enhancement technologies, they protect as an ultimate guardian, the harm principle, as well as the absolute respect of individual freedom. Once the protagonists are introduced, the true meaning of these positions is replaced in the context of the three main fracture lines: the human nature, the normality criterion and the equality principle. A complex debate indeed that we could summarize by a simple question: what will human do about the human in the 21st century?     

Reading action word affects the visual perception of biological motion

In the present study, we investigate whether reading an action-word can influence subsequent visual perception of biological motion. The participant's task was to perceptually judge whether a human action identifiable in the biological motion of a point-light display embedded in a high density mask was present or not in the visual sequence, which lasted for 633 ms on average. Prior to the judgement task, participants were exposed to an abstract verb or an action verb for 500 ms, which was related to the human action according to a congruent or incongruent semantic relation. Data analysis showed that correct judgements were not affected by action verbs, whereas a facilitation effect on response time (49 ms on average) was observed when a congruent action verb primed the judgement of biological movements. In relation with the existing literature, this finding suggests that the perception, the planning and the linguistic coding of motor action are subtended by common motor representations.     

Temporal precedence of emotion over attention modulations in the lateral amygdala: Intracranial ERP evidence from a patient with temporal lobe epilepsy

Previous fMRI studies have reported mixed evidence for the influence of selective attention on amygdala responses to emotional stimuli, with some studies showing “automatic” emotional effects to threat-related stimuli without attention (or even without awareness), but other studies showing a gating of amygdala activity by selective attention with no response to unattended stimuli. We recorded intracranial local field potentials from the intact left lateral amygdala in a human patient prior to surgery for epilepsy and tested, with a millisecond time resolution, for neural responses to fearful faces appearing at either task-relevant or task-irrelevant locations. Our results revealed an early emotional effect in the amygdala arising prior to, and independently of, attentional modulation. However, at a later latency, we found a significant modulation of the differential emotional response when attention was directed toward or away from fearful faces. These results suggest separate influences of emotion and attention on amygdala activation and may help reconcile previous discrepancies concerning the relative responsiveness of the human amygdala to emotional and attentional factors.     

Development of a fully automated system for delivering odors in an MRI environment

We describe the development and evaluation of a computer-controlled system for delivering odors in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment. The system allows a timely presentation of different odors in synchrony with MRI sequences and participant’s inspiration phase. The rise/fall time of odor deliverance has been optimized to generate prompt and strong stimulations. Equipped with a user-friendly programming interface, the system can be used reliably in a wide range of experimental paradigms. We have paid particular attention to developing a portable system that is relatively easy, rapid, and inexpensive to replicate. The equipment has been tested in a 3-Tesla MRI in a boxcar paradigm, in which stimulation conditions alternated with rest periods (no stimulation). The experiment demonstrated the good functioning of the device and its efficiency in producing the expected activation in the olfactory cortex; it also revealed some methodological and technical aspects to be improved.     

Prospective effects of interparental conflict on child attachment security and the moderating role of parents' romantic attachment.

This study investigated the impact of parents' observed conflict behavior on subsequent child attachment security, both as a main effect and as moderated by parents' romantic attachment. Participants were 80 heterosexual couples involving men from the Oregon Youth Study and their first-born children. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to predict child security with each parent. Interparental psychological aggression predicted lower child security with father, regardless of romantic attachment. If the father was insecure, interparental positive engagement predicted lower child security with him. If either the mother or father was avoidant, interparental withdrawal did not predict lower child security, though it did for more secure parents. Results are discussed in terms of implications of attachment-(in)congruent behavior for parents' emotional availability.     

Public events and flashbulb memories in Parkinson's disease

Public events and Flashbulb memories were investigated in 12 non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 12 controls. Knowledge of public events and flashbulbs memories were assessed using a Famous Events Test (EVE 30). Contributions of semantic, episodic, as well as executive functioning and anterograde memory were examined. Results primarily showed that the performances of patients with PD were lower than these of controls in 4 tasks: free recall, specific questions, dating events and date recognition. They also had difficulties in finding the temporal order of 8 events. In contrast, the PD group benefited from events recognition themselves to the same extent as the controls. Secondly, the recall of flashbulb memories (FBM) was lower in the PD group than in the controls. Finally, correlations appeared in PD between the detailed recall of the events with the "recall" abilities of the MATTIS scale, possibly reflect an impairment in rebuilding memories. A positive correlation is also observed with the initiation score of the MATTIS (executive component), suggesting that the difficulties of rebuilding can be related to a dysfunction in accessing information because of a certain degree of frontal amnesia.