Intended responses to romantic partners’ annoying behaviours vary with willpower beliefs

When a romantic partner behaves in an annoying way – for example, by leaving a mess – we might respond with frustration or understanding. Responses may vary with contextual factors, including whether the partner could be mentally fatigued or depleted. We hypothesized that limited willpower theorists – who believe self-control diminishes with use – might be especially likely to consider their partner’s preceding mental exertion. Two preregistered studies (combined N = 428) examined participants’ responses to four hypothetical scenarios. Limited theorists responded more compassionately to infractions performed after fatiguing days than to those performed after relaxing days; non-limited theorists responded more consistently, regardless of context. Beliefs about one’s own willpower, rather than beliefs about one’s partner’s willpower, can affect how people respond to their partner’s undesirable behaviours.     

Self-Compassion,Self-Esteem,and Irrational Beliefs

Assumptions associated with Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) suggest that self-compassion, but not self-esteem, should be incompatible with irrational beliefs and with the emotional disturbances that they produce. In this study, 184 university students responded to a self-compassion scale along with measures of irrational beliefs, self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. As expected, self-compassion correlated negatively with irrationality, predicted better mental health, and explained inverse connections of self-esteem with irrational beliefs. In support of REBT, the irrationality of low frustration tolerance also partially mediated the inverse self-compassion relationship with anxiety. Other findings for self-esteem and for the irrational belief of self-worth, nevertheless, suggested complexities for the REBT conceptual framework. These data most importantly confirmed self-compassion as part of what REBT would describe as an effective personal philosophy.     

The Perspectives and Challenges of Primacy and Synodality in the Orthodox Church Today

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church in 2016 should be perceived and received as a genuine manifestation of synodality at the beginning of the 21st century. It has reminded us that it is within the exercise of primacy and synodality at the universal level that the unity and the orthodoxy of the church is guaranteed. Its message referred to the proposal for the Holy and Great Council to become a regular institution to be convened every seven or ten years. By saying this, the Holy and Great Council has perhaps inaugurated a new era of synodality in the Orthodox Church on the universal level. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of the Holy and Great Council in an era of globalization, when the pastoral problems encountered by each local autocephalous church, due to a growing secularization of the world, are very similar and need a common synodal response.     

Show me your eyes: Evidence from Williams syndrome

The present paper reports two experiments that investigate the critical features of an object shape that automatically elicit recognition. Silhouettes of real objects (targets) and meaningless patterns (fillers) in both canonical and non-canonical formats were presented to subjects, in an attempt to test whether information about the global shape of an object was sufficient for automatic object identification. In Experiment 1, target-filler discriminability was evaluated by means of a reality-decision task. In Experiment 2, subjects had to perform an elongationdecision task, previously shown to be sensitive to the influence of automatically activated object identities (Dell'Acqua & Job, 1998). Contrary to the previous findings, the present study shows that, although silhouettes were identified with surprising good accuracy in the reality-decision task, effects of object identity on the elongation-decision task were negligible.     

Precis: the world philosophy made

Philosophical Studies -     

Assessing implicit motives with an online version of the picture story exercise

An online version of a Picture Story Exercise (PSE) was administered to 180 participants to assess implicit motives for achievement, affiliation, and power. First, data were analyzed with respect to different aspects of participant behavior (dropout, writing time, story length, setting). Second, online data were compared with data collected in the laboratory (n = 93). Results regarding motive density, internal consistency, picture profiles, and position effects were comparable among samples and consistent with previous research (Pang and Schultheiss in J Person Assess 85:280–294, 2005; Schultheiss and Brunstein in J Person Assess 77: 71–86, 2001). In addition, online participants completed self-report measures assessing explicit motives and the Big Five personality factors. Explicit motives showed no substantial overlap with PSE motive scores, replicating previous research. Personality factors revealed gender differences in correlates: men with a high implicit power motive reported less agreeableness and conscientiousness. Results suggest that administering the PSE online yields reliable and valid data.