Social representations of history,cultural values,and willingness to fight in a war: A collective‐level analysis in 40 nations

This study explores at the national level beliefs about world history and their relationship with cultural values and attitudes towards a national war. A country‐level analysis of university samples from 40 nations involving 7279 students showed that beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and lawful processes were positively associated with lower human development, and materialistic and power distance values, as well as with willingness to fight in a future national war. Further, beliefs about history as a superior plan, as social progress, and as lawful process were positively related with a stronger disposition to fight, even after controlling for cultural values and human development. Results are discussed in the framework of conceptualizing social representations of history as part of national political cultures.     

ROC in animals: Uncovering the neural substrates of recollection and familiarity in episodic recognition memory

It is a consensus that familiarity and recollection contribute to episodic recognition memory. However, it remains controversial whether familiarity and recollection are qualitatively distinct processes supported by different brain regions, or whether they reflect different strengths of the same process and share the same support. In this review, I discuss how adapting standard human recognition memory paradigms to rats, performing circumscribed brain lesions and using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) methods contributed to solve this controversy. First, I describe the validation of the animal ROC paradigms and report evidence that familiarity and recollection are distinct processes in intact rats. Second, I report results from rats with hippocampal dysfunction which confirm this finding and lead to the conclusion that the hippocampus supports recollection but not familiarity. Finally, I describe a recent study focusing on the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) that investigates the contribution of areas upstream of the hippocampus to recollection and familiarity.     

Scared to death or scared to love? Terror management theory and close relationships seeking

To cope with paralyzing terror awakened by thoughts of their own death people usually use two defense mechanisms: cultural worldview and self‐esteem. Recent studies suggest that also close relationships may function as a death anxiety buffer. The present research explores this phenomenon in an experimental paradigm. One hundred sixteen undergraduates completed a self‐esteem scale, attachment scale, and a scale tapping ideal mate characteristics. After experimental manipulation each participant talked shortly with six unknown students of the opposite sex and rated their attractiveness. The results showed no effect of self‐esteem either in the experimental or control condition. As for the attachment styles, we obtained significant interaction of avoidance and condition (non‐avoidant participants were more favorable under mortality salience), and simple effect of anxiety (anxious participants increased the assessments regardless of the condition). Both effects were short‐term and affected only the assessments of the first date. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Processing emotion information from both the face and body: An eye-movement study

This study examined the perception of emotional expressions, focusing on the face and the body. Photographs of four actors expressing happiness, sadness, anger, and fear were presented in congruent (e.g., happy face with happy body) and incongruent (e.g., happy face with fearful body) combinations. Participants selected an emotional label using a four-option categorisation task. Reaction times and accuracy for the categorisation judgement, and eye movements were the dependent variables. Two regions of interest were examined: face and body. Results showed better accuracy and faster reaction times for congruent images compared to incongruent images. Eye movements showed an interaction in which there were more fixations and longer dwell times to the face and fewer fixations and shorter dwell times to the body with incongruent images. Thus, conflicting information produced a marked effect on information processing in which participants focused to a greater extent on the face compared to the body.     

Not moved,still lonely: the negative relation between loneliness and being moved

Motivation and Emotion - Three studies (total N?=?501) showed a negative association between loneliness and the emotion of being moved. People who were lonelier than others consistently...     

Husserl bibliography

International Academy of Philosophy Principality of Liechtenstein