Beliefs And Creative Performance: Relationships Across Three Tasks

Creative work occurs on novel, ill‐defined tasks. By virtue of their ambiguity and complexity, however, creative tasks allow the situation to be construed in a number of ways. Accordingly, one might argue that beliefs, as interpretive structures, would be related to performance on creative problem‐solving tasks. To test this proposition, a battery of measures was developed to assess people's beliefs. Subsequently, 195 undergraduates were asked to work on three creative problem‐solving tasks. When quality and originality ratings, reflecting performance on the creative problem‐solving tasks, were regressed on the beliefs, multiple correlations in the low .40s were obtained. It was found that beliefs consistent with the nature of the task were those most likely to be related to performance. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the role of beliefs in shaping people's creative problem‐solving activities.     

Emotional Reactions While Watching Graphic Medical Procedures: Vocational Differences in the Explicit Regulation of Emotions1

We examined the role of occupation in how people regulate emotional responses. Graduate nursing students were compared to undergraduate psychology students on self‐reported emotional reactions to videos depicting graphic medical procedures. Skin conductance was also recorded. Overall, nursing students reported less disgust and fear, but more sadness while watching the clips, compared to psychology students. The 2 groups did not differ in skin conductance activity when watching a video with no specific instructions. When instructed to suppress or reappraise their emotional reactions to the videos, however, the psychology students showed increases in skin conductance arousal, whereas the nursing students did not. The results are discussed within the context of research on strategies to regulate one's emotions in the workplace.     

NEWTON AND PROCLUS: GEOMETRY,IMAGINATION, AND KNOWING SPACE

I aim to clarify the argument for space that Newton presents in De Gravitatione (composed prior to 1687) by putting Newton's remarks into conversation with the account of geometrical knowledge found in Proclus's Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements (ca. 450). What I highlight is that both Newton and Proclus adopt an epistemic progression (or “order of knowing”) according to which geometrical knowledge necessarily precedes our knowledge of metaphysical truths concerning the ontological state of affairs. As I argue, Newton's commitment to this order of knowing clarifies the interplay of the imagination and understanding in geometrical inquiry and illuminates how geometrical knowledge of space can lead to knowledge that space depends on and is related to God. In general, appreciating the Proclean elements of Newton's argument brings added light to the significance of geometrical inquiry for his general natural philosophical program and grants us insight into the philosophical grounding for the notion of absolute space that is presented in the Principia mathematica (1687).     

Acquiring Resources from Intimates When Obligation Substitutes for Persuasion

The acquisition of needed resources is a necessary part of human activity. Persuasion is a tool that can be used to acquire commodities. However, because of obligations inherent in intimate relationships, the necessity of elaborated persuasive messages is lessened Furthermore, when an intimate's request is rejected, negative responses and counterpersuasion are likely. This article presents the results of a study in which three measures of intimacy are related to the obligation to grant requests for resources, the obligation to offer resources in a time of need, characteristics of requests for resources, and characteristics of responses to rejection. Although not all three measures yielded identical results, increasing intimacy with a potential helper increased obligations to grant requests for resources, and obligation to offer resources in a time of need. Moreover, increasing intimacy was negatively associated with request elaboration, frequency of explanations, and inducements. When responding to rejection, increasing intimacy was negatively related to forgiving statements and positively related to counterpersuasion. Finally, after rejection, intimates composed messages, judged to be less polite than those that contained their initial request. The politeness of postrejection messages created by nonintimates was not perceived to differ from that of their initial requests.