The Face of the Chameleon: The Experience of Facial Mimicry for the Mimicker and the Mimickee

This research addressed three questions concerning facial mimicry: (a) Does the relationship between mimicry and liking characterize all facial expressions, or is it limited to specific expressions? (b) Is the relationship between facial mimicry and liking symmetrical for the mimicker and the mimickee? (c) Does conscious mimicry have consequences for emotion recognition? A paradigm is introduced in which participants interact over a computer setup with a confederate whose prerecorded facial displays of emotion are synchronized with participants’ behavior to create the illusion of social interaction. In Experiment 1, the confederate did or did not mimic participants’ facial displays of various subsets of basic emotions. Mimicry promoted greater liking for the confederate regardless of which emotions were mimicked. Experiment 2 reversed these roles: participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the confederate’s facial displays. Mimicry did not affect liking for the confederate but it did impair emotion recognition.     

Towards a neo-configurational theory of intrinsic motivation

Motivation and Emotion - This research seeks to improve our understanding of how intrinsic motivation is instantiated. Three motivation theories, flow theory, self-determination theory, and...     

Disease-avoidant behaviour and its consequences

Medical conditions that are non-contagious, but that appear contagious, seem to result in the sufferer being avoided. Error management theory (EMT), suggests that such false alarms occur because the cost of infection poses a greater threat to ones fitness than avoidance. Study 1 attempted to demonstrate a disease-related false alarm effect by asking participants, to evaluate a series of vignettes, featuring people with infectious diseases, non-infectious diseases that looked infectious and non-infectious diseases that did not. Judgements of contracting infection under varying levels of contact, and desire to avoid were obtained. Consistent with EMT, a false alarm effect was evident. Study 2 examined the importance of the face as a key indicator of real and apparent infection, by determining whether facial symptoms result in a greater desire to avoid people with infectious and non-infectious diseases. Consistent with expectation, participants reported a greater desire to avoid people with facially displayed symptoms. Together, these results support the idea that humans have evolved a general tendency to avoid individuals with disease signs, especially if displayed upon the face. One consequence is that where a facially displayed disease sign persists, even if known to be benign, its bearer will experience chronic avoidance.     

Using Storytelling to Heal Trauma and Bridge the Cultural Divide Between Veterans and Civilians

There is a growing disconnect between the Veteran and civilian communities related to their understanding of war-related trauma, postdeployment reintegration difficulty, and the experience of Memorial Day. A therapeutic way to bridge this divide is through community storytelling. This paper describes a program development project at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center that was created to increase the connection between these communities. Using storytelling, six Veterans shared their personal experiences with a civilian audience in honor of Memorial Day. Qualitative data on the impact of the program is reported, and suggestions for future application and research are discussed.     

"Worthless female material": nursemaids and governesses in Freud's cases

The figure of the governess, central in Freud's own history, is present in most of his cases. Freud described his nursemaid as "the prime originator" of his neuroses. Well after Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory, female servants were consistently portrayed as seducing boys, while their relationship with girls consisted of identification and rivalry. The role of Freud's own surrogate mother in his life and writing is examined, and two cases, Lucy R. and Dora, are looked at through the lens of female caretaking. A review and integration of relevant literature is followed by an exploration of the perplexing adherence in Freud's writing to the reality of seduction by a governess, even after he had abandoned the seduction theory. It is argued that it is in the figure of the female maid that the "shadowy" early history of Freud's mothering experiences may actually be engaged, however indirectly and unconsciously. This figure, and Freud's powerful, problematic identification with her, is a thread that when pulled helps unravel struggles in Freud's early theoretical development around issues of female sexuality and analytic authority. Revisiting Lucy R. and Dora provides a new perspective on Freud's difficulty with maternal transferences, and restores to their original importance his "worthless" governesses, those first analysts.     

Individual differences in the capacity limitations of visuospatial short-term memory: Research on sighted and totally congenitally blind people

The study of visuospatial imagery processes in totally congenitally blind people makes it possible to understand the specific contribution of visual experience for imagery processes. We argue that blind people may have visuospatial imagery processes, but they suffer from some capacity limitations. Similar, although smaller, limitations and individual differences may be found in sighted people. Visuospatial imagery capacity was explored by asking people to follow an imaginary pathway through either two- or three-dimensional matrices of different complexity. The blind appear to use specific visuospatial processes in this task (Experiments 2 and 3), but they have difficulty with three-dimensional matrices; sighted people have no such difficulty with three-dimensional matrices (Experiment 1). On the other hand, when a three-dimensional pattern exceeded sighted capacity, the blind and sighted showed similar patterns of errors. Subsequent analyses suggested that both visuospatial processes and verbal mediation were used.     

Achievement behavior: A situational interpretation

A situational interpretation of achievement behavior is proposed. This interpretation assumes that the reward contingencies of the immediate situation determine whether performance will be high or low. The results of four experiments supported the prediction that women and men will improve their performance if high achievement is associated with external rewards and will only decrease their performance when low achievement is associated with external rewards. In four additional experiments it was shown that both women and men will describe themselves as high in intellectual ability or as low in ability as a direct function of external rewards contingencies. The differences between situational and personality interpretations of achievement behavior are discussed, as well as the viability of the concept of fear of success and internalized sex roles as explanatory constructs.     

Self-Report Measures of Intelligence: Are They Useful as Proxy IQ Tests?

Correlations between single-item self-reports of intelligence and IQ scores are rather low (.20–.25) in college samples. The literature suggested that self-reports could be improved by three strategies: (1) aggregation, (2)item weighting, and (3) use of indirect, rather than direct, questions. To evaluate these strategies, we compared the validity of aggregated and unaggregated versions of direct measures with four indirect measures (Gough's Intellectual efficiency scale, Hogan's Intellect composite scale, Sternberg's Behavior Check List, and Trapnell's Smart scale). All measures were administered to two large samples of undergraduates ( N s = 310, 326), who also took an IQ test. Although results showed some success for both direct and indirect measures, the failure of their validities to exceed .30 impugns their utility as IQ proxies in competitive college samples. The content of the most valid items referred to global mental abilities or reading involvement. Aggregation benefited indirect more than direct measures, but prototype-weighting contributed little.