Is the Self other to the self? Why does the numinosum feel like another? The relevance of Matte Blanco to our understanding of the unconscious

Using Ignacio Matte Blanco’s approach to the unconscious, this paper attempts to explain why the experience of the Self or the unconscious, for example in dreams, is difficult for the ego to understand. Matte Blanco believes that the logic of the unconscious is radically different from the logic of consciousness. The unconscious uses processes that Matte Blanco refers to as symmetry and generalization. Symmetry means that the converse of any relationship is identical to it, so that asymmetrical relationships are treated as if they were symmetrical. Generalization means that the unconscious treats any object as belonging to a larger class of objects that is a subset of an even larger class which is in turn a subset of a wider class ad infinitum. Hence Matte Blanco’s idea of the unconscious as infinite sets. These unconscious mechanisms, combined with the possibility that the unconscious has more dimensions than consciousness, contribute to the difficulty of understanding dreams, and help to explain why the Self is experienced as other to the ego.     

Double foot‐in‐the‐door,social representations,and environment: application for energy savings

This study aims to determine the most effective procedure to bring individuals to adopt pro‐environmental behaviors, specifically to make energy savings for several weeks. A link was established between two fields of research traditionally separated in social psychology literature: free will compliance and social representations theories. An experiment was carried out to test the effectiveness of several simple and double foot‐in‐the‐door procedures, activating central or peripheral cognitions of the social representation of energy savings. Basically, the results indicate that the most effective procedure is the double foot‐in‐the‐door, which activates central cognitions. Twice as many participants accepted the target request and three times as many actually performed the expected behavior with this procedure.     

Relative Effectiveness of Values Clarification and Symbolic Modeling in Enhancing the Moral Values of Adolescents in Selected Nigerian Schools

Using quasi-experiment, this study explored the effects of values clarification and symbolic modeling on moral intent to act in a sample of 120 high school students from Ogun State, Nigeria. Despite widespread disapproval and outright condemnation by the public, moral offences by the adolescent population have become increasingly frequent and grave in both the urban and rural areas of Nigeria. Believing that programs set by the government could impact the level of moral behavior among the youths of Nigeria, various leaders in Nigeria have attempted to make a difference in the moral life of the nation, such as “Ethical Revolution” by President Shehu Shagari in 1982; “War Against Indiscipline” by General Mohammed Buhari in 1985. In this study, both values clarification and symbolic modeling options demonstrated significant impacts on moral behavior as measured by the Moral Behavioral Inventory (MBI) and the Adolescent Personal Development Inventory (APDI).     

Emotional enhancement of immediate memory: Positive pictorial stimuli are better recognized than neutral or negative pictorial stimuli

We examined emotional memory enhancement (EEM) for negative and positive pictures while manipulating encoding and retrieval conditions. Two groups of 40 participants took part in this study. Both groups performed immediate implicit (categorization task) and explicit (recognition task) retrieval, but for one group the tasks were preceded by incidental encoding and for the other group by intentional encoding. As indicated by the sensitivity index (d'), after incidental encoding positive stimuli were easier to recognize than negative and neutral stimuli. Participants' response criterion was more liberal for negative stimuli than for both positive and neutral ones, independent of encoding condition. In the implicit retrieval task, participants were slower in categorizing positive than negative and neutral stimuli. However, the priming effect was larger for emotional than for neutral stimuli. These results are discussed in the context of the idea that the effect of emotion on immediate memory enhancement may depend on the intentionality to encode and retrieve information.     

Responses to Persons with AIDS: Fear of Contagion or Stigma?1

Recently it has been argued that responses to persons with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) are more a function of the association of AIDS with homosexuality than they are concerns about contagion. This research provided a further test of these arguments using an experimental design in which the target disease's contagiousness and association with homosexuality were manipulated. The results indicated that willingness to interact with a disease victim was strongly related to the contagiousness of the disease but only weakly related to its association with homosexuality. These findings are in line with recent research on lay conceptions of physical illness and argue that avoidance of disease victims, including persons with AIDS, primarily reflects concerns over contracting the disease. The implications of these findings for lay illness conceptions and how lay people respond to disease victims are discussed.     

Demand characteristics of music affect performance on the Wonderlic Personnel Test Of Intelligence

This study examined whether demand characteristics concerning music can change subjects' performance on the Wonderlic Personnel Test of intelligence. Participants (N= 60) were randomly assigned and informed either that Mozart's music typically enhances cognitive performance or diminishes it. They then completed the Wonderlic Personnel Test while listening to a Mozart piano sonata. The subjects with a positive set answered significantly more items correctly on the test (14%) than those with a negative set (p = .03). This result may hold implications for the study of the 'Mozart effect'.     

Moral judgment and conduct disorder intensity in adolescents involved in delinquency: matching controls by school grade

Most studies that have found associations between delinquency and moral judgment generally compare incarcerated juveniles with adolescents in normal schooling. However, this comparison is subject to two criticisms. First, a large number of adolescents in school who are not charged with any crime in the legal system are still involved in unlawful behaviour. Second, adolescents involved with delinquency often have difficulties at school. The aim of the present study was to measure this association by matching a sample of adolescents involved with delinquency (n=18, M age=15.8, SD=1.1) to adolescents not involved in delinquency (n=42, M age=15.8, SD=0.8) according to their school grade and Conduct Disorder Intensity as measured by a self-report index using DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. Participants who met four or more criteria were assigned to the High Conduct Disorder group (n=28), and the rest were assigned to the Low Conduct Disorder group (n=32). Their level of moral judgment was evaluated with the French version of the Sociomoral Reflection Measure-Short Form by Gibbs, Basinger, and Fuller, inspired by Kohlberg's model of moral development. Findings demonstrate that in both samples, adolescents in the High Conduct Disorder group presented moral judgment that was significantly less mature than that of adolescents in the Low Conduct Disorder group. However, the majority of participants in the Low Conduct Disorder group also scored low on the Sociomoral Reflection Measure-Short Form, suggesting more immature moral judgment. The bias introduced by the mode of recruitment in most comparisons of adolescents involved with delinquency to adolescents with no delinquency problems is discussed, and an argument is made for the importance of analysing moral judgment development within a framework of general cognitive development.