Memory suppression can help people “unlearn” behavioral responses—but only for nonemotional memories

When encountering reminders of memories that we prefer not to think about, we often try to exclude those memories from awareness. Past studies have revealed that such suppression attempts can reduce the subsequent recollection of unwanted memories. In the present study, we examined whether the inhibitory effects extend even to associated behavioral responses. Participants learned cue–target pairs for emotional and nonemotional targets and were additionally trained in behavioral responses for each cue. Afterward, they were shown the cues and instructed either to think or to avoid thinking about the targets without performing any behaviors. In a final test phase, behavioral performance was tested for all of the cues. When the targets were neutral, participants’ attempts to avoid retrieval reduced accuracy and increased reaction times in generating behavioral responses associated with cues. By contrast, behavioral performance was not affected by suppression attempts when the targets were emotional. These results indicate that controlling unwanted recollection is powerful enough to inhibit associated behavioral responses—but only for nonemotional memories.     

Two qubits for C.G. Jung’s theory of personality

We propose a formalization of C.G. Jung’s theory of personality using a four-dimensional Hilbert-space for the representation of two qubits. The first qubit relates to Jung’s four psychological functions: Thinking, Feeling, Sensing and iNtuition, which are represented by two groups of projection operators, {T, F} and {S, N}. The operators in each group are commuting but operators of different groups are not. The second qubit represents Jung’s two perspectives of extraversion and introversion. It is shown that this system gives a natural explanation of the 16 psychological types that are defined in the Jungian tradition. Further, the system accounts for the restriction posed by Jung concerning the possible combination of psychological functions and perspectives. The empirical consequences of the present theory are discussed, and the results of a pilot study are reported with the aim to check some basic predictions of the theory. In addition, it is shown why the present praxis of personality diagnostics based on classical statistics is insufficient.     

Priming the trait category “hostility”: The moderating role of trait anxiety

Recent studies on affective priming with the naming task have revealed an influence of trait anxiety on the direction of affective priming effects (e.g., Berner & Maier, 2004 Berner, M. P. and Maier, M. A. 2004. The direction of affective priming as a function of trait anxiety when naming target words with regular and irregular pronunciation. Experimental Psychology, 51: 180–190. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This moderating role of trait anxiety was further investigated in a study employing a conceptual priming task. After masked presentation of either hostile or neutral primes, participants performed a person judgment task. As expected, the direction of the hostility rating difference score, defined as the difference between hostility ratings of a target person in the hostility priming condition and in the neutral priming condition, changed from positive to negative with increasing levels of self-reported trait anxiety. The findings are interpreted in terms of salience-dependent overcorrection processes (Glaser & Banaji, 1999 Glaser, J. and Banaji, M. R. 1999. When fair is foul and foul is fair: Reverse priming in automatic evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77: 669–687. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Implications for our understanding of the cognitive functioning in high trait anxiety are discussed.     

Direct contact as a moderator of extended contact effects: cross-sectional and longitudinal impact on outgroup attitudes, behavioral intentions, and attitude certainty

Cross-group friendships (the most effective form of direct contact) and extended contact (i.e., knowing ingroup members who have outgroup friends) constitute two of the most important means of improving outgroup attitudes. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal samples from different intergroup contexts, this research demonstrates that extended contact is most effective when individuals live in segregated neighborhoods having only few, or no, direct friendships with outgroup members. Moreover, by including measures of attitudes and behavioral intentions the authors showed the broader impact of these forms of contact, and, by assessing attitude certainty as one dimension of attitude strength, they tested whether extended contact can lead not only to more positive but also to stronger outgroup orientations. Cross-sectional data showed that direct contact was more strongly related to attitude certainty than was extended contact, but longitudinal data showed both forms of contact affected attitude certainty in the long run.     

Flexible cortical gamma-band correlations suggest neural principles of visual processing

We summarize recent studies of our group from the primary visual cortex V1 of behaving monkeys referring to the hypothesis of spatial feature binding by γ-synchronization (30-90 Hz). In agreement with this hypothesis the data demonstrates decoupling of γ-activities among neural groups representing figure and ground. As γ-synchronization in V1 is restricted to cortical ranges of few millimeters, feature binding may equivalently be restricted in visual space. Closer inspection shows that the restriction in synchrony is due to far-reaching travelling γ-waves with changing phase coupling. Based on this observation we extend the initial binding-by-synchronization hypothesis and suggest object continuity to be coded by phase continuity. It is further argued that the spatial phase changes of the V1 γ-waves in general will also limit lateral phase coupling to higher levels of processing. Instead of phase-locked γ-coupling, corticocortical cooperation among γ-processes may be mediated by mutual amplitude modulations that are more reliable than phase synchrony over larger distances. The relevance of this concept of corticocortical binding is demonstrated with subdural recordings from human subjects performing cognitive tasks. The experimental results are discussed on the basis of network models with spiking neurons.     

It's not what you are,it's what you know: experience,beliefs, and the detection of deception in employment interviews

This study investigated the ability of more or less experienced employment interviewers and laypersons to detect deception in employment interviews. Although correct beliefs about indicators of deception led to higher deception detection accuracy, more experienced employment interviewers did not show more accurate beliefs about indicators of deception and did not perform better at detecting deception than less experienced interviewers and laypersons. Furthermore, more experienced interviewers showed a less‐pronounced tendency of judging messages as true irrespective of their actual truthfulness (truth bias) than less experienced interviewers and laypersons. It is suggested that experience in employment interviewing does not automatically lead to higher deception detection abilities in employment interviews, but that correcting people's beliefs about indicators of deception can do so.