For whom and why organizational dehumanization is linked to deviant behaviours

‘We are humans not robots!’ This protest slogan denounces a working reality in which employees perceive that they are reduced to a mere tool or instrument at the service of the organization. Such an experience refers to organizational dehumanization. Researchers have recently indicated that organizational dehumanization may shape employee work behaviours. However, why, and for whom, organizational dehumanization leads to maladaptive work behaviours remains unclear in this literature. Drawing upon social exchange theory, we first propose that employees who experience organizational dehumanization engage in a reciprocity process by first developing thoughts of revenge that, in turn, materialize into more organizational deviance. We further argue that compliance buffers the indirect effect of organizational dehumanization on deviant behaviours via thoughts of revenge. Overall, the combined results of two experimental studies, a cross-sectional study and two three-wave studies provide strong evidence for our hypothesized relationships. Our research suggests that when experiencing organizational dehumanization, compliant employees are less likely to engage in a homeomorphic reciprocity in the exchange relationship with their organization.     

The auditory motionaftereffect: Its tuning and specificity in the spatial and frequency domains

In this paper, the auditory motion aftereffect (aMAE) was studied, using real moving sound as both the adapting and the test stimulus. The sound was generated by a loudspeaker mounted on a robot arm that was able to move quietly in three-dimensional space. A total of 7 subjects with normal hearing were tested in three experiments. The results from Experiment 1 showed a robust and reliable negative aMAE in all the subjects. After listening to a sound source moving repeatedly to the right, a stationary sound source was perceived to move to the left. The magnitude of the aMAE tended to increase with adapting velocity up to the highest velocity tested (20°/sec). The aftereffect was largest when the adapting and the test stimuli had similar spatial location and frequency content. Offsetting the locations of the adapting and the test stimuli by 20° reduced the size of the effect by about 50%. A similar decline occurred when the frequency of the adapting and the test stimuli differed by one octave. Our results suggest that the human auditory system possesses specialized mechanisms for detecting auditory motion in the spatial domain.     

Septal damage in infant and adult rats: Effects on activity,emotionality, and muricide

Septal lesions produced signs of increased emotionality in the adult rat, the septal syndrome (hyperresponsiveness to handling; in the open field: decreased rearing and ambulation activity, increased defecation, deficient habituation) being more or less complete and more or less marked depending on the age at which the lesion was performed (7 days or 3 months), the extent of the lesion (restricted to the septum or extending to more ventrally located structures) and the environmental conditions in which the animals were reared (in groups or in isolation). All septal lesions provoked a similar and significant increase in the probability of occurrence of mouse-killing behavior, irrespective of age of operation, extent of lesion and kind of rearing environment. In a 24-hour actography starting at 11:30 a.m., the rats septalectomized at adult age were less active than controls during the initial period, while all septals were markedly more active than controls during the night period. Early septal lesions only transiently disrupted weight gain. The results obtained point to complex interactions between the effects of early brain damage and environmental conditions.     

Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals

Ritualized behavior, intuitively recognizable by its stereotypy, rigidity, repetition, and apparent lack of rational motivation, is found in a variety of life conditions, customs, and everyday practices: in cultural rituals, whether religious or non-religious; in many children's complicated routines; in the pathology of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD); in normal adults around certain stages of the life-cycle, birthing in particular. Combining evidence from evolutionary anthropology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging, we propose an explanation of ritualized behavior in terms of an evolved Precaution System geared to the detection of and reaction to inferred threats to fitness. This system, distinct from fear-systems geared to respond to manifest danger, includes a repertoire of clues for potential danger as well as a repertoire of species-typical precautions. In OCD pathology, this system does not supply a negative feedback to the appraisal of potential threats, resulting in doubts about the proper performance of precautions, and repetition of action. Also, anxiety levels focus the attention on low-level gestural units of behavior rather than on the goal-related higher-level units normally used in parsing the action-flow. Normally automatized actions are submitted to cognitive control. This "swamps" working memory, an effect of which is a temporary relief from intrusions but also their long-term strengthening. Normal activation of this Precaution System explains intrusions and ritual behaviors in normal adults. Gradual calibration of the system occurs through childhood rituals. Cultural mimicry of this system's normal input makes cultural rituals attention-grabbing and compelling. A number of empirical predictions follow from this synthetic model.     

Integrating experiential-phenomenological methods and neuroscience to study neural mechanisms of pain and consciousness

Understanding the nature of pain at least partly depends on recognizing its inherent first person epistemology and on using a first person experiential and third person experimental approach to study it. This approach may help to understand some of the neural mechanisms of pain and consciousness by integrating experiential-phenomenological methods with those of neuroscience. Examples that approximate this strategy include studies of second pain summation and its relationship to neural activities and brain imaging-psychophysical studies wherein sensory and affective qualities of pain are correlated with cerebral cortical activity. The experiential paradigm of offers the possibility of improved designs and methods for investigating neural mechanisms underlying pain and consciousness.     

Implicit motor learning through observational training in adults and children

Although evidence of implicit motor learning on the basis of observation alone has been reported, there is some data to suggest that the phenomenon could be contaminated by the intentional exploitation of explicit knowledge. In the present experiment, a special procedure was adapted to study observational learning in a situation involving the acquisition of a new drawing behavior. The participants consisted of adults and children 6-10 years of age. The results provide support for the view that overt motor practice is not strictly necessary for implicit motor learning. They demonstrate that children display capacities similar to those of adults in this form of learning. Some suggestions are made to account for the contradictory results present in this area of research.     

Blinded by headlights.

Target identification is impaired when targets are presented during the planning or execution of a compatible response (e.g., right-pointing arrow during a right keypress) relative to an incompatible response (Müsseler & Hommel, 1997 a, b). Examinations of this blindness to response-compatible stimuli have typically used arrowheads as targets ("<" and ">"). The importance of the target symbol was examined by manipulating subjects' interpretation of that symbol (i.e., ">" interpreted as a right-pointing arrow or as a headlight shining to the left). Targets were presented at varying times during the planning or execution of a response in order to examine the time-course of the effect. Results showed that the interpretation, and not the physical identity, of the target was important for the blindness effect. Although the blindness effect was largest during the planning and execution of a response, it was not always confined to that temporal interval.     

The motor theory of social cognition: a critique

Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of action have considerably enlarged our understanding of human motor cognition. In particular, the activity of the mirror system, first discovered in the brain of non-human primates, provides an observer with the understanding of a perceived action by means of the motor simulation of the agent's observed movements. This discovery has raised the prospects of a motor theory of social cognition. In humans, social cognition includes the ability to mindread, and many motor theorists of social cognition try to bridge the gap between motor cognition and mindreading by endorsing a simulation account of mindreading. Here, we question the motor theory of social cognition and give reasons for our skepticism.     

Body sensations associated with emotions in Rarámuri Indians, rural Javanese, and three student samples

Cultural variations in the associations of 12 body sensations with 7 emotions were studied in 2 rural samples from northern Mexico (n = 61) and Java, Indonesia (n = 99), with low exposure to Western influences and in 3 university student samples from Belgium (n = 75), Indonesia (n = 85), and Mexico (n = 123). Both parametric and nonparametric analyses suggest that findings from previous studies with only student samples (K. R. Scherer & H. G. Wallbott, 1994) were generalizable to the 2 rural samples. Some notable cultural deviations from common profiles were also identified. Implications of the findings for explanations of body sensations experienced with emotions and the cross-cultural study of emotions are discussed.     

Non-invasive estimation of local field potentials for neuroprosthesis control

Recent experiments have shown the possibility of using the brain electrical activity to directly control the movement of robots or prosthetic devices in real time. Such neuroprostheses can be invasive or non-invasive, depending on how the brain signals are recorded. In principle, invasive approaches will provide a more natural and flexible control of neuroprostheses, but their use in humans is debatable given the inherent medical risks. Non-invasive approaches mainly use scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) signals and their main disadvantage is that these signals represent the noisy spatiotemporal overlapping of activity arising from very diverse brain regions, i.e., a single scalp electrode picks up and mixes the temporal activity of myriads of neurons at very different brain areas. In order to combine the benefits of both approaches, we propose to rely on the non-invasive estimation of local field potentials (LFP) in the whole human brain from the scalp measured EEG data using a recently developed inverse solution (ELECTRA) to the EEG inverse problem. The goal of a linear inverse procedure is to de-convolve or un-mix the scalp signals attributing to each brain area its own temporal activity. To illustrate the advantage of this approach we compare, using an identical set of spectral features, classification of rapid voluntary finger self-tapping with left and right hands based on scalp EEG and non-invasively estimated LFP on two subjects using a different number of electrodes.