WHO NEEDS ARAB-JEWISH IDENTITY? FRAGMENTED CONSCIOUSNESS, “INESSENTIAL SOLIDARITY,” AND THE “COMING COMMUNITY”1 (PART 1)

The title, as the study itself, has been inspired by four theoretical contributions: first, Stuart Hall's essay “Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’” (in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay. London: Sage, 1996); second, Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, which opens with the sentence: “Striving to be both European and black requires some specific forms of double consciousness. But saying this, I do not mean to suggest taking on either or both unfinished identities necessarily exhausts subjective resources of any particular individual” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, 1). Third, Diane Davis's question: “Is there a way to activate a sense of solidarity among singularities – a way to say ‘we’ – that doesn't automatically exclude, that doesn't just ask for trouble by simultaneously feeding this craving for … Gemeinschaft (in the name of which any number of ‘we's have committed the most horrific atrocities in recorded history)?” (“‘Addicted to Love’; Or, Toward an Inessential Solidarity,” in Jac: A Journal of Composition Theory 19.3 (1999), 639); and fourth, Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community (Minneapolis: Minnesota Press, 1993). The article consists of four sections, the first is a short theoretical background to the notion of identity. The second section is an examination of four major collective processes, two of them collective exclusionary operations and erasure, which Arabized Jews have undergone. The third section deals with the globalization and the search for inessential solidarities among Arabized Jews. The fourth section is the conclusion to the study, in which the notion of Arab-Jewish identity is revisited.     

The role of personality traits,core self‐evaluation,and emotional intelligence in career decision‐making difficulties

This study examines the role of personality traits, core self‐evaluation, and emotional intelligence (EI) in career decision‐making difficulties. Italian university students (N= 232) responded to questions on the Big Five Questionnaire, Core Self‐Evaluation Scale, Bar‐On Emotional Quotient Inventory, and Career Decision‐Making Difficulties Questionnaire. It was found that EI adds significant incremental variance compared with personality traits and core self‐evaluation in predicting career decision‐making difficulties. The results draw attention to the unique role of EI in career decision‐making difficulties, offering new research opportunities and intervention possibilities.     

Motivation to Lead: Research on the Motives for Undertaking Leadership Roles in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Sustained flight operations are likely to produce fatigue and performance decrement in aviators. We assessed changes in cognitive performance using a workhest schedule modeled on successive long-range attack missions. Twelve subjects performed several subtests of the Unified Tri-Service Cognitive Performance Assessment Battery and the Walter Reed Performance Assess- ment Battery 18 times during a simulated sustained operation. The scenario consisted of a 9-hr planning session followed by a 4-hr rest period and a 14-hr daytime mission. After 6 hr of rest, subjects repeated this schedule with a nighttime mission. For two spatial tests, subjects showed linear increases in response rate and one of its components, error rate. Subjects appeared to change strategy as the study progressed, possibly exchanging a higher failure rate for a savings in time. Any tendency to take chances when fatigued may have serious implications for aircrew in sustained operations.     

Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients display enhanced latent inhibition on a visual search task

Latent inhibition (LI) is a phenomenon that reflects the ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli. LI is attenuated in some schizophrenic patient groups and in high schizotypal normal participants. One study has found enhanced LI in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD [Swerdlow, N. R., Hartston, H. J., & Hartman, P. L., 1999. Enhanced visual latent inhibition in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 45, 482-488]). The present experiment replicated this finding using a within-subject visual search LI task, with OCD patients displaying more LI than healthy controls. The contrasting LI effects in schizophrenia and OCD are discussed in terms of how these groups differentially process relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and how that outcome affects subsequent behavior.     

The Effect of Food on Test Anxiety

Proceeding from the literature on eating behavior and anxiety reduction, this study introduces food offering as a mode of intervention aimed at reducing anxiety. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) in an anxiety evoking test situation students will tend to consume more food than in a nonanxiety inducing situation such as a regular lecture; (2) eating food (i.e., peanut butter sandwiches) will result in a reduction of subjects' initial levels of test anxiety. Both hypotheses were confirmed. It also became apparent that the mere offering of food is conducive to some anxiety reduction, presumably due to the effect on the classroom atmosphere.     

Washing away your sins will set your mind free: physical cleansing modulates the effect of threatened morality on executive control

The effect of threatened morality on negative emotions and on altruistic behaviour has been shown to diminish following physical cleansing (hand-washing). We hypothesised that threatened morality will broadly impair the executive control system, and that physical cleansing will moderate this detrimental effect. Thirty-seven participants were asked to write about an immoral deed they had committed, whereupon half of them were allowed to wipe their hands. Three executive control tasks—Stroop, stop-signal, and object interference—were then administered to all participants. Participants who had not wiped their hands, but not those who did, demonstrated impaired performance, compared to hand-washing controls, in all three tasks. We conclude that threatened morality has a detrimental effect on executive control, specifically on conflict monitoring and response inhibition, and that physical cleansing “frees” this system, counteracting the detrimental effects of morality threats. We discuss possible implications for obsessive–compulsive disorder, which is characterised by deficient executive control and in which both threatened morality and physical cleansing are central concerns.     

Illusion of control and behavioral control attempts in obsessive-compulsive disorder

The present research used the illusion-of-control paradigm to examine the relationships among obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, behavioral control attempts, and illusory sense of control. Participants were presented with a preprogrammed sequence of aversive and neutral visual stimuli and were encouraged to attempt to control the sequence with keyboard presses. Participants rated their perceived level of control 3 times during the task. In addition, the authors used the repetitiveness of keyboard presses as a measure of rigid, compulsive-like behavior. In Study 1, this procedure was administered to a sample of 55 students who also completed measures of OCD and depression. In Study 2, the task was administered to 22 participants with OCD and 22 matched participants without OCD. In line with predictions, OCD symptoms were correlated with higher illusory sense of control and with more repetitive behavioral control attempts. The authors discuss the central role of control in OCD and specifically the relationships between need for control and compulsive rituals, which may be conceptualized as means for achieving an illusory sense of control over stressful life events.     

An ironic effect of monitoring closeness

Most theories of goal pursuit underscore the beneficial consequences of monitoring progress towards goals. However, effects of affect labelling and dissociations between experience and meta-consciousness suggest that monitoring may not always facilitate goal pursuit. We predicted that in the case of pursuing interpersonal closeness, intense monitoring of progress would have a detrimental effect. We tested this hypothesis with the intimate conversation procedure, adapted from Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, and Bator (1997). Participants in the closeness-monitoring condition asked themselves every five minutes in the course of a 45-minute interaction with a partner whether they felt any closer to their partner, whereas participants in the control condition monitored the room temperature. As predicted, intense monitoring interfered with achieving a feeling of closeness, as measured by sitting distance between pair members following the intimate conversation procedure. We discuss the possibility that monitoring would also be detrimental for achieving other goals that are internal states.