Surrender,Transformation, and Transcendence

Integrating psychoanalysis, mysticism, and quantum physics, this paper explores different means of transformation through superconscious states that transcend space and time. Venturing into technique, the paper discusses ways these transcendent states of consciousness can be used clinically to come to know and experience the other more directly from the inside. A paradigm shift beyond intersubjectivity is implicated.     

Differences between traces of negative emotions in smile judgment

While a smile can reflect felt happiness, it can also be voluntarily produced, for instance, to mask negative emotions. Masking strategies are not always perfect and traces of the negative emotion can leak. The current study examined the role of traces of anger, sadness, fear and disgust in the judgment of authenticity of smiles. Participants judged the authenticity of the smiles while their eye movements were recorded. They were also asked if the stimuli comprised another emotion and, if so, what the emotion was. Results revealed that participants were sensitive to traces of negative emotions. Variations were observed between emotions with performance being best for traces of fear and lowest for traces of anger in the eyebrows in the judgment task. However, when the presence of a negative emotion was reported, participants were less accurate in identifying fear but more accurate in identifying anger. Furthermore, variations were observed as a function of the location of the trace whether in the mouth or eyes as a function of the emotion. Traces in the eyebrows were associated with better performance than traces in the mouth for sadness but the opposite was observed for anger. The performance at the judgment task was not linked to eye movement measures or explicit knowledge of the masked emotion. Future research should explore other explanation for the variations in performance in the judgments of authenticity of masking smiles such as emotional contagion.     

False Memories for an Analogue Trauma: Does Thought Suppression Help or Hinder Memory Accuracy?

In the current study, we investigated whether suppression can produce an amplified memory for a traumatic experience. Participants viewed a distressing film depicting a multi‐fatality car accident. We broke the film down into several short clips, some of which were removed. After viewing the film, we instructed participants to (i) suppress and monitor film‐related thoughts, (ii) think freely and monitor film‐related thoughts or (iii) just think freely. Twenty‐four hours later, participants completed a recognition test. Memory distortion was comparable across conditions; however, suppression and monitoring of trauma‐related thoughts removed the typical bias to falsely remember the most critical and traumatic clips of the film over the least critical clips. Our data suggest that suppression may be effective in reducing trauma‐related cognitions and, therefore, does not predict a more ‘amplified’ memory for trauma. Instead, suppression and thought monitoring encourage an unbiased, although inaccurate, memory for trauma.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clicking away at co-rumination: co-rumination correlates across different modalities of communication

Co-rumination is associated with positive friendship quality (thought to buffer against anxiety and depression) but paradoxically higher levels of anxiety and depression. With the increasing use of technology for communication among adults, there is little known about co-rumination effects across different modalities of communication. In the current study, we examined co-rumination through four methods (i.e. in person, phone calls, text messaging, and social media) in two separate samples - college students and participants from the community. Classic co-rumination effects were found for in-person communications, and we found that co-rumination by telephone as well as by texting, for a college student sample only, mirrors some of these findings for in-person co-rumination. In studies of co-rumination, evaluation of multiple modes of communication is warranted.     

Cognitive costs of encoding novel natural activities: Can “learning by doing” be distracting and deceptive?

Findings from action memory research suggest that the enactment of simple actions and naturalistic activities results in similar memory performance to that from their observation. However, little is known about potential differences between the conditions during the encoding of the to-be-studied actions and activities. We analysed the cognitive costs of encoding two novel naturalistic activities studied via enactment or via observation in four experiments. In addition to memory performance, we measured objective cognitive costs with a secondary task and subjective cognitive costs with repeated ratings of mental effort and estimates of general activity difficulty. Memory performance was comparable across study conditions throughout all experiments. The enactment of activities repeatedly resulted in slower reaction times in the secondary task than did observation, suggesting higher objective costs. In contrast, subjective costs were rated lower after enactment than after observation. Findings from a pantomimic enactment condition suggested that the low ratings of subjective costs after enactment represent a misinterpretation of task demands. Our findings imply that the widespread belief about “learning by doing” as an easy way of learning does not stem from an actual advantage in memory performance, but rather from continuous feedback about one's performance resulting from enactment.     

ASSESSING WOMEN'S FEMINIST IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT Studies of Convergent, Discriminant, and Structural Validity

Researchers have called for increasing sophistication in the assessment of women's feminist identity development (Enns & Hackett, 1990; Hackett, Enns, & Zetzer, 1992) to understand important psychological processes. This series of studies examined recent efforts to operationalize Downing and Roush's (1985) model of feminist identity development. Specifically, the psychometric properties of two existing measures—the Feminist Identity Development Scale (Bargad & Hyde, 1991) and the Feminist Identity Scale (Rickard, 1987)—were examined in two studies with separate samples of women (total N = 486). Results of Study 1 indicated the strengths and significant limitations associated with each scale (e.g., low internal consistency for some subscales, item-subscale inconsistency). A composite measure (derived from these scales) with better overall psychometric properties is described. In Study 2, we found good support for the composite instrument's internal consistency, as well as convergent, discriminant, and factorial validity in a sample that included a wide age range and nonstudent community residents.     

Self-relevance enhances susceptibility to false memory

Eyewitness testimony serves as important evidence in the legal system. Eyewitnesses of a crime can be either the victims themselves—for whom the experience is highly self-referential—or can be bystanders who witness and thus encode the crime in relation to others. There is a gap in past research investigating whether processing information in relation to oneself versus others would later impact people's suggestibility to misleading information. In two experiments (Ns = 68 and 122) with Dutch and Chinese samples, we assessed whether self-reference of a crime event (i.e., victim vs. bystander) affected their susceptibility to false memory creation. Using a misinformation procedure, we photoshopped half of the participants' photographs into a crime slideshow so that they saw themselves as victims of a nonviolent crime, while others watched the slideshow as mock bystander witnesses. In both experiments, participants displayed a self-enhanced suggestibility effect: Participants who viewed themselves as victims created more false memories after receiving misinformation than those who witnessed the same crime as bystanders. These findings suggest that self-reference might constitute a hitherto new risk factor in the formation of false memories when evaluating eyewitness memory reports.     

Emotion work and job stressors and their effects on burnout

Abstract

This article reports research on emotion work, organizational as well as social variables as predictors of job burnout. In burnout research, high emotional demands resulting from interactions with clients are seen as a core characteristic of service jobs. However, these emotional demands were seldom measured in a direct manner. It was only recently that emotional demands were included in studies on burnout referring to the concept of emotion work (emotional labor). Emotion work is defined as the requirement to display organizationally desired emotions. A multi-dimensional concept of emotion work was used to analyze the relations of emotion work variables with organizational and social variables and their joint effect on burnout in five samples including employees working in children's homes, kindergartens, hotels, banks and call centers. Emotion work variables correlated with organizational stressors and resources. However, hierarchical multiple regression showed a unique contribution of emotion work variables in the prediction of burnout. Moreover, the analysis of interaction effects of emotional dissonance and organizational and social stressors showed that for service professionals, the coincidence of these stressors led to exaggerated levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.     

The Relationship Between Parent and Child Religiosity: Moderation by Perceived Parental Antisocial Problems

ABSTRACT

Parents influence their children’s religiosity through many factors including parenting practices, parental religiosity, and parental psychopathology. Little research, however, has been conducted on how different parental psychopathologies, such as antisocial problems, affect the relationship between parent and child religiosity. The current study used the Stearns-McKinney Assessment of Religious Traits to measure personal religiosity in emerging adults and asked them to report on the religiosity of their mothers and fathers. Participants reported the antisocial problems of their parents via the Adult Behavior Checklist. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to measure whether perceived parental antisocial problems, parent gender, and participant gender would moderate the relationship between perceived parental and emerging adult religiosity. Results indicated that maternal but not paternal interactions were significant, and gender analyses revealed that the interaction was significant only for females. Specifically, parental antisocial problems were associated with a weaker relationship between parent and child religiosity in the mother–daughter dyad only. Implications are discussed.