Measuring Narrative Engagement

Research indicates that the extent to which one becomes engaged, transported, or immersed in a narrative influences the narrative's potential to affect subsequent story-related attitudes and beliefs. Explaining narrative effects and understanding the mechanisms responsible depends on our ability to measure narrative engagement in a theoretically meaningful way. This article develops a scale for measuring narrative engagement that is based on a mental models approach to narrative processing. It distinguishes among four dimensions of experiential engagement in narratives: narrative understanding, attentional focus, emotional engagement, and narrative presence. The scale is developed and validated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with data from viewers of feature film and television, in different viewing situations, and from two different countries. The scale's ability to predict enjoyment and story-consistent attitudes across different programs is presented. Implications for conceptualizing engagement with narratives as well as narrative persuasion and media effects are discussed.     

Frame-differencing methods for measuring bodily synchrony in conversation

The study of interpersonal synchrony examines how interacting individuals grow to have similar behavior, cognition, and emotion in time. Many of the established methods of analyzing interpersonal synchrony are costly and time-consuming; the study of bodily synchrony has been especially laborious, traditionally requiring researchers to hand-code movement frame by frame. Because of this, researchers have been searching for more efficient alternatives for decades. Recently, some researchers (e.g., Nagaoka & Komori (IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, 91(6), 1634–1640, 2008); Ramseyer & Tschacher, 2008) have applied computer science and computer vision techniques to create frame-differencing methods (FDMs) to simplify analyses. In this article, we provide a detailed presentation of one such FDM, created by modifying and adding to existing FDMs. The FDM that we present requires little programming experience or specialized equipment: Only a few lines of MATLAB code are required to execute an automated analysis of interpersonal synchrony. We provide sample code and demonstrate its use with an analysis of brief, friendly conversations; using linear mixed-effects models, the measure of interpersonal synchrony was found to be significantly predicted by time lag (p < .001) and by the interaction between time lag and measures of interpersonal liking (p < .001). This pattern of results fits with existing literature on synchrony. We discuss the current limitations and future directions for FDMs, including their use as part of a larger methodology for capturing and analyzing multimodal interaction.     

Mental health attitudes among Middle Eastern/North African individuals in the United States

ABSTRACT

Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) individuals may have heightened risk for developing mental health problems due to unique cultural stressors. However, traditional cultural and religious practices and beliefs socialised within the family environment may reduce the likelihood of seeking mental health services. This qualitative study aimed to better understand the intersection of cultural, religious, and mental health attitudes among MENA individuals. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with MENA adults who had received therapy services (N?=?13) and were analysed for emergent themes. Respondents reported lack of understanding of mental illness within their communities, and prominent levels of perceived and self-stigma. Families and religious practices/beliefs played an important role in responding to mental illness. Results suggest that incorporating psychoeducation and community awareness campaigns alongside religious services may help to reduce barriers to receiving mental health treatment.     

Emotion,the bodily,and the cognitive

In both psychology and philosophy, cognitive theories of emotion have met with increasing opposition in recent years. However, this apparent controversy is not so much a gridlock between antithetical stances as a critical debate in which each side is being forced to qualify its position in order to accommodate the other side of the story. Here, I attempt to sort out some of the disagreements between cognitivism and its rivals, adjudicating some disputes while showing that others are merely superficial. Looking at evidence from neuroscience and social psychology, as well as thought experiments and theoretical arguments, I conclude that it is necessary to acknowledge both that emotions have intentional content and that they involve somatic agitation. I also point out some of the more promising directions for future research in this area.     

Thinking big: The effect of sexually objectifying music videos on bodily self-perception in young women

The present study investigated the effect of sexually objectifying music video exposure on young women's implicit bodily self-perception and the moderating role of self-esteem. Fifty-six college women of normal weight were either exposed to three sexually objectifying music videos or three neutral music videos. Perceived and ideal body size were measured both before and after video exposure, using horizontally stretched and compressed photographs of the participant's own body in swimming garment. As expected, only women low (but not high) in self-esteem were negatively affected by the sexually objectifying content of the music videos: they perceived themselves as bigger and showed an increased discrepancy between their perceived and ideal body size after video exposure. The neutral music videos did not influence women's bodily self-perceptions. These findings suggest that body image is a flexible construct, and that high self-esteem can protect women against the adverse effects of sexually objectifying media.     

Representational parts

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences -     

The Ubiquity of Self-Deception

My paper is a discussion of Bas van Fraassen’s important, but neglected, paper on self-deception, “The Peculiar Effects of Love and Desire.” Paradoxes of self-deception are widely thought to follow from the ease with which we know ourselves. For example, if self-deception were intentional, how could we fail to know as target of our own deception just those things necessary to undermine the deception? Van Fraassen stands that reasoning on its head, arguing that is the ease with which we accuse ourselves of self-deception that undermines our confidence in our claims to know ourselves. I unpack and modify his argument, attempting to show that it makes a powerful case for scepticism about self-knowledge. I argue, contra van Fraassen, that local scepticism about self-knowledge threatens our claims to know ourselves in a way that global scepticism does not threaten our claims about the external world. I support this claim by showing that the Wittgensteinian response to the sceptic in On Certainty—that we don’t know what to do with the sceptic’s doubts, that we don’t know how to incorporate those doubts into our practices—does not succeed in deflecting scepticism about self-knowledge because the local sceptic’s doubts—about whether we can distinguish genuine claims to know ourselves from self-deceived claims—are integral to language game of self-knowledge. The local sceptic’s doubts are our doubts because it is natural to ask whether we are deceiving ourselves when we claim to know ourselves. However, because, we have no way of distinguishing genuine claims to know ourselves from self-deceived claims, our claims to self-knowledge are systematically undermined.     

Evaluating Gender Biases on Actual Job Performance of Real People: A Meta‐Analysis1

This study examined gender bias on job performance in work settings where confounding variables (e. g., organizational level, experience, education) were cautiously taken into consideration to ensure fair comparisons. Although previous meta‐analyses examined gender biases on evaluations, findings in tightly controlled laboratory environments may differ from those in highly complicated field studies. We found little evidence of overall gender bias in performance appraisals in nonconfounded field studies. However, there were significant pro‐male biases when only men served as raters. Measure‐specific gender stereotypicality, instead of genera! stereotypicality about the job, produced gender bias in performance appraisal. Masculine measures produced pro‐male bias, and feminine measures produced pro‐female bias.