Imagine no religion: Heretical disgust,anger and the symbolic purity of mind

Immoral actions, including physical/sexual (e.g., incest) and social (e.g., unfairness) taboos, are often described as disgusting. But what about immoral thoughts, more specifically, thoughts that violate religious beliefs? Do heretical thoughts taint the purity of mind? The present research examined heretical disgust using self-report measures and facial electromyography. Religious thought violations consistently elicited both self-reported disgust and anger. Feelings of disgust also predicted harsh moral judgement, independent of anger, and were mediated by feelings of “contamination”. However, religious thought violations were not associated with a disgust facial expression (i.e., levator labii muscle activity) that was elicited by physically disgusting stimuli. We conclude that people (especially more religious people) do feel disgust in response to heretical thoughts that is meaningfully distinct from anger as a moral emotion. However, heretical disgust is not embodied in a physical disgust response. Rather, disgust has a symbolic moral value that marks heretical thoughts as harmful and aversive.     

Stress, psychosocial resources, and depressive symptomatology during pregnancy in low-income, inner-city women.

The authors examined the prospective influence of stress, self-esteem, and social support on the postpartum depressive symptoms of 191 inner-city women (139 European Americans and 52 African Americans) over 3 waves of data collection. Depressive symptomatology was measured by multiple indicators, including self-report and clinical scales. Women became less depressed as they move from prenatal to postpartum stages and adjusted to their pregnancy and its consequences. LISREL and regression analyses indicated that stress was related to increased depression, whereas greater income and social support were related to decreased depression. Self-esteem was related to lower depression at the prenatal and postpartum periods but not to change in depression from the prenatal to the postpartum period. The results also indicated that self-esteem and social support did not have additional stress-buffering effects over and above their direct effects on depression. Finally, African American women did not differ from European American women terms of depression or in terms of how they were impacted by stress or psychosocial resources.     

Facilitating Creative Idea Selection: The Combined Effects of Self-Affirmation,Promotion Focus and Positive Affect

Generating creative ideas in a brainstorm session `is a crucial part of innovation. However, for actual implementation, the most creative ideas must be selected from a pool of ideas. To date, idea selection has remained relatively unexplored and validated instruments to measure idea selection performance are not systematically employed. This study aimed to improve creative idea selection performance in a field study. In this study, an idea pool of 18 ideas was used, and participants had to select the 5 most creative ideas from the idea pool. Right before participants performed the idea selection task, in the experimental condition, a promotion focus and positive affect was induced in combination with a self-affirmation task. Participants in the control condition performed corresponding filler tasks. The selection of the 5 most creative ideas from the idea pool of 18 ideas was performed individually. Participants in the experimental condition selected ideas that were more creative than did participants in the control condition. These findings provide first evidence that the selection of creative ideas can be enhanced through a combined induction of promotion-focus, positive mood and self-affirmation.     

Silence as the Voice of Trauma

Silence is a key to the unspoken world of the patient. Rather than interpreting silence as a defensive maneuver, the analyst may understand this disruption as a royal road to the patient’s traumatic experiences. The author proposes to recognize traumatic silences in the analytic process and the transference as a re-experiencing of past, unpredictable traumatic affective states and memories. Silences in this context are both a repeat of a disconnecting experience as well as a manifestation of a silencing identification with the original silencer. The clinical material illustrates effects of a German mother’s World War II (WWII) personal traumata and collective shame-based silence on her daughter’s self and good object development. In the daughter’s analysis, the patient and the analyst, who herself experienced similar WWII traumata, face the pain of trauma recovery and un-silencing. The author suggests that the deadening effect of past traumata may be reversed by an analytic process of re-membering and re-speaking for both the patient and analyst. This allows for a more transparent, subjective experience in the transference and a verbal integration of ego functions.     

Cognitive Tutor: Applied research in mathematics education

For 25 years, we have been working to build cognitive models of mathematics, which have become a basis for middle- and high-school curricula. We discuss the theoretical background of this approach and evidence that the resulting curricula are more effective than other approaches to instruction. We also discuss how embedding a well specified theory in our instructional software allows us to dynamically evaluate the effectiveness of our instruction at a more detailed level than was previously possible. The current widespread use of the software is allowing us to test hypotheses across large numbers of students. We believe that this will lead to new approaches both to understanding mathematical cognition and to improving instruction.     

Using the MMPI-2 to Predict Symptom Reduction During Psychotherapy in a Sample of Community Outpatients

In the present study, potential MMPI-2 predictors of psychotherapy outcome were examined in a community clinical sample of 51 patients seeking treatment at a university training clinic. Results indicated that particular MMPI-2 scales (L, F, Pd, Pa, Sc, Trt) were the most predictive of initial levels of patient distress, whereas three other clinical scales (Hs, D, Hy) were significantly associated with actual symptom reduction over time. The clinical implications of these data include the use of the MMPI-2 in clinical practice as a means to frame the provision of direct feedback to patients regarding the likelihood of treatment response, which in turn, might actually have therapeutic benefits. The limitations of the study are reviewed and suggestions for future research are offered, including the potential use of widely known and utilized instruments in helping to predict response to psychotherapy.     

The effects of method of measurement upon children''s performance on visual perceptual tasks

Sixty-four first-grade children of average or above intelligence who did not evidence visual perceptual dysfunction were administered a series of visual perceptual tasks. The tasks evaluated the skills of visual figure-ground perception and form discrimination and involved four methods of measurement of these abilities: tachistoscopic, untimed, naming, and recognition. Results indicated considerable method of measurement influence upon task performance. Implications of the results for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Evidence for visual persistence during saccadic eye movements

Summary 1. The persistence of visual perception was investigated under conditions of visual fixation as well as eye movement. The Ss' task was to discriminate brief double light impulses; their responses were recorded as a function of the duration of the interstimulus interval. Based on these data the critical interstimulus interval was calculated, which yielded equal response frequencies for the perception of one or two stimuli upon presentation of double light pulses.2. In the condition of visual fixation the two stimuli could not be discriminated until the mean value of interstimulus interval exceeded 73 msec. In the condition with eye movements, when the first stimulus was presented in the parafoveal region of the retina before the beginning of the saccade and the second stimulus in the foveal region just after termination of the eye movement, this duration was shown to be statistically of the same magnitude (76 msec).3. Possible alternative interpretations of this latter result, e.g., that it could be explained in terms of masking or saccadic suppression rather than visual persistence was discussed; it was attempted to invalidate such explanations by means of three control experiments.4. The main result, the persistence of visual perception during voluntary eye movements, was discussed in relation to the problem of spatial and temporal stability of visual perception.I thank Prof. Dr. H.W. Wendt for support in correcting the English translation.