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.     

Prevention-focused self-regulation and aggressiveness

The present research examined the relationship between individual differences in self-regulatory mechanisms as outlined in regulatory focus theory (promotion- and prevention-focused self-regulation) and aggressiveness. Two studies revealed that the more individuals’ habitual self-regulatory orientation is dominated by a prevention-focus, the more likely they are to score high on measures of cynical hostility, reciprocity norm endorsement, and aggressiveness. An additional study involving the manipulation of perceived violation of a reciprocity norm showed that predominantly prevention-focused participants were particularly sensitive to the experience of a norm violation and reacted in a hostile and aggressive manner following the norm violation experience. Findings indicate that a prevention-focused style of self-regulation is associated with aggressiveness and suggest that endorsement of (negative) reciprocity norms and sensitivity to norm violations are relevant factors that help explain the differences in aggressiveness observed among individuals with a predominantly prevention-focused style of self-regulation.     

The Six-Sided Vision of Said Nursi: Towards a Spiritual Architecture of the Risale-i Nur

Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, the eponymous progenitor of the contemporary Nurculuk movement, was arguably the most influential, if woefully under-researched, Turkish Muslim thinker of the twentieth century. Nurculuk, a faith-based movement consisting of an estimated seven million followers worldwide, stands out from other contemporary Muslim religious and ideological groupings not only for its uncompromising focus on the renewal of individual rather than collective faith, but also for its eschewal of any kind of religiously legitimized violence or militancy for the sake of politico-ideological ends. This article is an attempt at an overview of Nursi's idiosyncratically irenic approach to the highly contentious issue of jihad, itself key to our understanding of the staunch apoliticism he espoused in later life.     

Automatic evaluation of body-related images

An affective priming task was used to determine whether females automatically evaluate body-related images, and to establish whether this is moderated by appearance schematicity, thin internalisation, body dissatisfaction, and dietary restraint. In a within participants design, the valence congruence of the prime and target pairs was manipulated, as was the interval between them. Undergraduate females (N=87, Experiment 1 and N=72, Experiment 2) individually selected colour images as the primes. Each prime was presented briefly, followed by a target word which the participant judged as "good" or "bad". The dependent variable was response latency to the target word. Automatic evaluation was evident; responding to congruent pairs was faster than responding to incongruent pairs. The individual difference variables were not related to automaticity. The findings suggest that brief encounters with body-related images are likely to produce automatic affective responses in young women irrespective of body-related concerns.     

Can a Pacifist Have a Conversation with Augustine? A Response to Alain Epp Weaver

Christians have historically differed as to whether the wrongness of an act is to be located in the objective character of the act or in the intention of the agent. By blurring this distinction, Alain Epp Weaver fails to see the real principle of consistency that unites Augustine's analyses of warfare and lying. Likewise, by not appreciating the fact that Augustine analyzes the wrongness of the act in terms of intention whereas Yoder analyzes its wrongness in terms of its objective character, Weaver proposes a conversation between two figures who lack the framework of shared assumptions that makes engagement in conversation possible.     

Women, piety and practice: A study of women and religious practice in Malaysia

While the definition of religion in sociology has been highly contentious, we define religion in this article as simply the acts of piety that are conducted within the religious sphere. The point of this definition is to draw attention to practice and away from belief. This approach to religion appears to be especially useful in the case of contemporary Islam, where female piety has become a significant aspect of religious renewal. The idea of a religious sphere is taken from the work of Luc Boltanski and his colleagues who have coined the expression ‘the inspirational city’. Religion thus consists of acts of piety within the inspirational city, where this space is seen to be in tension with the secular city. The measurement of piety in everyday life sharply differentiates the profane world from religion. These ideas are explored in this article through qualitative data that are drawn from a small sample of pious women in contemporary Malaysia. We explore three aspects of female piety: veiling, polygamy and child-rearing. The article attempts to understand the terms in which piety is measured within the broader context of the Islamization of public life in Malaysia.