Affective mediators of intergroup contact: a three-wave longitudinal study in South Africa

Intergroup contact (especially cross-group friendship) is firmly established as a powerful strategy for combating group-based prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Great advances have been made in understanding how contact reduces prejudice (Brown & Hewstone, 2005), highlighting the importance of affective mediators (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008). The present study, a 3-wave longitudinal study undertaken among minority-status Colored high school children in South Africa (N = 465), explored the full mediation of the effects of cross-group friendships on positive outgroup attitudes, perceived outgroup variability, and negative action tendencies via positive (affective empathy) and negative (intergroup anxiety) affective mediators simultaneously. The target group was the majority-status White South African outgroup. As predicted, a bidirectional model described the relationship between contact, mediators, and prejudice significantly better over time than either autoregressive or unidirectional longitudinal models. However, full longitudinal mediation was only found in the direction from Time 1 contact to Time 3 prejudice (via Time 2 mediators), supporting the underlying tenet of the contact hypothesis. Specifically, cross-group friendships were positively associated with positive outgroup attitudes (via affective empathy) and perceived outgroup variability (via intergroup anxiety and affective empathy) and were negatively associated with negative action tendencies (via affective empathy). Following Pettigrew and Tropp (2008), we compared two alternative hypotheses regarding the relationship between intergroup anxiety and affective empathy over time. Time 1 intergroup anxiety was indirectly negatively associated with Time 3 affective empathy, via Time 2 cross-group friendships. We discuss the theoretical and empirical contributions of this study and make suggestions for future research.     

Mutuality: Clinical and Metapsychological Potentials of a Failed Experiment

Ferenczi's experiments with mutual analysis are often dismissed, without acknowledging the results obtained from them and his own cautionary remarks about their limits. Though ultimately failed, Ferenczi's experiments with mutual analysis were a source of clinical and metapsychological knowledge, despite the fact that he was unable to elaborate them in his lifetime. In this paper I connect mutuality to the development of the psyche, especially to the constitutive core of the intrapsychic. To understand the latter, it is necessary to take into account, among others, issues such as the common attribute, the mutual flux between the unconsciouses, the dialogue of unconsciouses, the maternal profundity, the primal relationship with the mother, and, above all, the primal unity between mother and child, which are fundamental for the emergence and development of the primary psychic forces. Incidences of rupture, distortion of the core of mutuality in the psychic life, its loss and disadjustment, by means of external traumatizing forces, and some clinical implications are described.     

Comparative Study Between the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Value–Belief–Norm Model Regarding the Environment,on Spanish Housewives' Recycling Behavior

Environmental behaviors have been analyzed from different theoretical models. The theory of planned behavior emphasizes the attitudinal aspects associated with behavior, while the value–belief–norm model regarding the environment focuses on the importance of moral components when setting environmental behaviors in motion. The objective of this study was to analyze both models, comparing both their degree of fit and their predictive power regarding recycling behavior. To do so, we used a sample made up of 154 Spanish housewives. The results indicated that despite the fact that the theory of planned behavior is a general model for predicting and explaining behavior, it has a greater degree of fit and greater capacity to predict recycling behavior than the value–belief–norm model regarding the environment.     

Cut elimination for a logic with induction and co-induction

Proof search has been used to specify a wide range of computation systems. In order to build a framework for reasoning about such specifications, we make use of a sequent calculus involving induction and co-induction. These proof principles are based on a proof-theoretic (rather than set-theoretic) notion of definition (Hallnäs, 1991 [18], Eriksson, 1991 [11], Schroeder-Heister, 1993 [38], McDowell and Miller, 2000 [22]). Definitions are akin to logic programs, where the left and right rules for defined atoms allow one to view theories as “closed” or defining fixed points. The use of definitions and free equality makes it possible to reason intensionally about syntax. We add in a consistent way rules for pre- and post-fixed points, thus allowing the user to reason inductively and co-inductively about properties of computational system making full use of higher-order abstract syntax. Consistency is guaranteed via cut-elimination, where we give a direct cut-elimination procedure in the presence of general inductive and co-inductive definitions via the parametric reducibility technique.     

Grounding compositional symbols: no composition without discrimination

The classical computational conception of meaning has been challenged by the idea that symbols must be grounded on sensorimotor processes. A difficult question arises from the fact that grounding representations cannot be symbolic themselves but, in order to support compositionality, should work as primitives. This implies that they should be precisely identifiable and strictly connected with discriminable perceptual features. Ideally, each representation should correspond to a single discriminable feature. The present study was aimed at exploring whether feature discrimination is a fundamental requisite for grounding compositional symbols. We studied this problem by using Integral stimuli, composed of two interacting and not separable features. Such stimuli were selected in Experiment 1 as pictures whose component features are easily or barely discriminable (Separable or Integral) on the basis of psychological distance metrics (City-block or Euclidean) computed from similarity judgments. In Experiment 2, either each feature was associated with one word of a two-word expression, or the whole stimulus with a single word. In Experiment 3, the procedure was reversed and words or expressions were associated with whole pictures or separate features. Results support the hypothesis that single words are best grounded by Integral stimuli and composite expressions by Separable stimuli, where a strict association of single words with discriminated features is possible.     

Mark,Image, Sign: A Semiotic Approach to Spinoza

Instead of reading Spinoza's account of the imagination in an anthropocentric way, as dependent on the traditional doctrine of human faculties, the author considers it as a consequence of his physics and cosmology. Knowledge by signs, as Spinoza calls imagination, has to be rooted in his theory of marks and images, and concerns all beings (human and non human) that are capable of marking and being marked by other bodies in the infinite semiosis of nature.     

Culture,art and artifice: theatre as a laboratory for identity / Cultura,arte y artificio: el teatro como laboratorio de identidades

Abstract

This paper approaches theatre performance as a laboratory for the simulation of behaviour. The preparation of the professional production of a theatre play was observed and videotaped with the purpose of studying (a) the process of production of artefacts for giving sense to the play and each of its scenes, (b) shaping the identity of the characters, and (c) how these artefacts were reshaped and readjusted in successive rehearsals. Results support the thesis that the process of production of a scenic text can act as a simulation model for how cultural artefacts, conscious processes and behaviour get articulated when developing a character’s identity.     

Early vigilance and late avoidance of threat processing: Repressive coping versus low/high anxiety

The time course of a bias in predicting danger as a function of a repressive coping style was examined. The participants belonged to repressor, low - anxious, or high - anxious groups. They read context sentences predictive of threat or nonthreat event outcomes, followed by target words for rapid naming representing the outcomes. The interval between context and target word was 50 ms (Experiment 1), 550 ms (Experiment 2), or 1050 ms (Experiments 3 and 4). There was bias for naming words confirming threatening outcomes: (a) for repressors in the 550-ms delay condition; and (b) for high - anxiety participants in the 1050-ms delay condition. Repressive coping facilitated early processing of threat, but inhibited late processing, whereas high anxiety was characterised by sustained vigilance for threat. There were clear differences in threat processing by repressors and the low - anxious participants