Emotional Stroop task: effect of word arousal and subject anxiety on emotional interference

Inconsistent findings regarding the emotional Stroop effect in healthy subjects may be explained by confounding effects of stimulus valence and arousal, as well as individual differences in anxiety. We examined reaction time data in a healthy sample using the emotional Stroop task while carefully matching arousal level of positive and negative words. Independent of valence, emotional relative to neutral words elicited emotional interference, indicating that arousal determines emotional interference. Independent of valence, emotional words were better re-called and recognized than neutral words. Individual differences in state anxiety were associated with emotional interference, that is, emotional interference was enhanced in subjects with high state anxiety. There was no influence of trait anxiety. These findings indicate that word arousal produces emotional interference independent of valence. State anxiety exacerbates interference of emotional words by further biasing attention towards emotionally salient stimuli. Thomas Dresler and Katja Mériau have contributed equally.     

The Neurobiological Underpinnings of Coping With Pain

ABSTRACT— The biopsychosocial model treats pain as resulting from a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors. Individual differences in approaches to coping with pain-related symptoms are important determinants of pain-related outcomes, and are often classified under the "psychological" category within the biopsychosocial model. However, engagement in various cognitive, affective, and behavioral pain-coping strategies appears to exert biological effects, which we review here. Pain-coping activities such as catastrophizing, distracting oneself from pain sensations, or reappraisal of pain may exert effects on activity in a variety of pain-processing and pain-modulatory circuits within the brain, as well affect the functioning of neuromuscular, immune, and neuroendocrine systems. The interface between pain-related neurobiology and the use of specific pain-coping techniques represents an important avenue for future pain research.     

A tool for thought! When comparative thinking reduces stereotyping effects

Stereotypes have pervasive, robust, and often unwanted effects on how people see and behave towards others. Undoing these effects has proven to be a daunting task. Two studies demonstrate that procedurally priming participants to engage in comparative thinking with a generalized focus on differences reduces behavioral and judgmental stereotyping effects. In Study 1, participants who were procedurally primed to focus on differences sat closer to a skinhead - a member of a negatively stereotyped group. In Study 2, participants primed on differences ascribed less gender stereotypic characteristics to a male and female target person. This suggests that comparative thinking with a focus on differences may be a simple cognitive tool to reduce the behavioral and judgmental effects of stereotyping.     

Cross-lagged relations between kindergarten teachers’ causal attributions, and children’s interest value and performance in mathematics

The present study investigated mathematics performance and related interest value as the antecedents and consequences of teachers?? causal attributions concerning children??s academic outcomes during their kindergarten year. Sixty-nine children (5?C6?years old at the baseline) and their teachers were examined twice during the kindergarten year. Children were tested in mathematics performance and interviewed about their interest value. Teachers rated their causal attributions in the fall and spring. The results showed that the higher the interest value in mathematics children showed, the more the teacher attributed their success to ability and effort. Teachers?? ability attributions for success, in turn, contributed to an increase in children??s interest value in mathematics. Moreover, attributing children??s success and failure to external causes decreased children??s mathematics-related interest value.     

The person in narrative therapy: a post-structural,Foucauldian account

Having a facial anomaly is more than likely to cause some degree of psychological discomfort. Prior to establishing the most appropriate psychological intervention, there is a need to determine how having an atypical appearance manifests in day-to-day life. Counselling/psychotherapy provides people with the opportunity to talk about their experience - to tell their story. the aim of this heuristic investigation is to determine the lived experience of having a cleft lip and the potential need for counselling/psychotherapy. A heuristic approach was selected as the most appropriate method and one which would enable participants to talk about their experience. It also requires the researcher to have personal experience of the phenomenon. This study highlights the lack of opportunity to talk about how the presence of a facial disfigurement impacts upon life. Even within the family, it seems, the norm was that ‘it' was there, yet not spoken about. Counselling/psychotherapy could therefore provide a form of education. Provision of such a service would give people a choice. A discussion on the limitations of heuristics indicates the importance of the researchers' awareness, of their own experience, in relation to the phenomena being investigated. In conclusion, a counsellor/ therapist is considered to be an essential member of the multi-disciplinary cleft team, caring for persons with clefts from birth to maturity.     

Turning a Blind Eye: A Study of Peer Reporting in a Business School Setting

This article examines student peer reporting by extending the findings from the business ethics and higher education literature. In the conceptual model we propose that reflective moral attentiveness, subjective knowledge of the code of ethics, and academic dishonesty beliefs antecede ethical judgment of peer reporting, which impacts intentions to report peers’ unethical behavior. The relationships are tested using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that moral attentiveness significantly influences ethical judgment, which in turn affects intention. The relationship between beliefs about academic dishonesty and ethical judgment is partially supported. Based on these results, suggestions for higher education institutions are provided.     

Understanding others,reciprocity, and self-consciousness

The article explores the basic conceptual relationship between social cognition, intersubjectivity and self-consciousness. A much-debated recent approach to social cognition, the so-called interaction theory, is the view that the ability to perceive, understand and interpret the behavior of others relies on interaction in the sense of mutual coordination of the embodied agents involved. It will be shown that this notion of reciprocity is too weak in order to fully account for social understanding. It will be argued that the idea of reciprocity should at least in some cases be conceived of as a stance persons adopt towards each other, which in turn presupposes that they acknowledge each other as self-conscious agents. This view is inspired by an argument originally introduced by Johann Gottlieb Fichte.     

The Orthodox Churches of the Russian tradition in twenty-first-century Japan: negotiating an identity between Tokyo and Moscow?

In this paper I compare the identities of the Japanese Orthodox Church (JOC), which is an autonomous part of the Moscow Patriarchate in Russia, and the Embassy Church (EC) of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Japan, which is an integral part of the ROC. I argue that, at the moment, the JOC is a more Japanese organisation than the EC in terms of culture, attitude towards Russia, the ROC and the Japanese state. There is, however, evidence that this is slowly changing as a result of the policy of the Moscow Patriarchate towards its structures in Japan, but also as a result of the difficulties the JOC is facing in adapting to the Japanese cultural context.