Reappraising the Moral Nature of Emotions in Decision Making: The Case of Shame and Guilt

Emotions play a crucial role in moral behavior. The present paper does not contest this point but argues that qualifications of certain feelings such as shame and guilt as moral emotions should not exclusively be based on a proximal analysis of their function. A proximal analysis details how moral emotions produce moral behavior. Emotions are qualified as moral when they are elicited by concerns for others rather than the self and produce prosocial action tendencies. Although researchers have acknowledged that moral emotions may also have an ultimate function that details why it is in the individual interest that these moral effects occur, they have neglected to translate such ideas into testable hypotheses. Using guilt and shame as an example, we show how an analysis of ultimate functions accommodates recent findings, which contest the view that guilt is more moral than shame and provides new insights as to when and why moral emotions will produce moral effects.     

Editorial to the special issue Neuronus

Did you visit the Neuronus conferences in the years 2012 and 2013 in Kraków? If not, then you certainly should have a close examination of this special issue including this introduction to at least have a glimpse of an idea of the highly interesting topics in the field of cognitive neuroscience that were presented at these conferences. If you were there, it is for sure a good choice to focus on this special issue as well, first to refresh your minds (we know our memories are far from perfect), but especially to see what happened with research of the presenters at these conferences.     

Humor in the Eye Tracker: Attention Capture and Distraction from Context Cues

The humor effect refers to a robust finding in memory research that humorous information is easily recalled, at the expense of recall of nonhumorous information that was encoded in close temporal proximity. Previous research suggests that memory retrieval processes underlie this effect. That is, free recall is biased toward humorous information, which interferes with the retrieval of nonhumorous information. The present research tested an additional explanation that has not been specifically addressed before: Humor receives enhanced attention during information encoding, which decreases attention for context information. Participants observed humorous, nonhumorous positive, and nonhumorous neutral texts paired with novel consumer brands, while their eye movements were recorded using eye-tracker technology. The results confirmed that humor receives prolonged attention relative to both positive and neutral nonhumorous information. This enhanced attention correlated with impaired brand recognition.     

Statistical guidelines for studies of the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behaviour

Abstract

We identify potential problems in the statistical analysis of social cognition model data, with special emphasis on the theories of reasoned action (TRA) and planned behaviour (TPB). Some statistical guidelines are presented for empirical studies of the TRA and the TPB based upon multiple linear regression and structural equation modelling (SEM). If the model is tested using multiple regression, the assumptions of this technique must be considered and variables transformed if necessary. Adjusted R² (not R²) should be used as a measure of explained variance and semipartial correlations are useful in assessing each component's unique contribution to explained variance. R² is not an indicator of model adequacy and residuals should be examined. Expectancy-value variables that are the product of expectancy and value measures represent the interaction term in a multiple regression and should not be used. SEM approaches make explicit the assumptions of unidimensionality of constructs in the TRA/TPB, assumptions that might usefully be challenged by competing models with multidimensional constructs. Finally, statistical power and sample size should be considered for both approaches. Inattention to any of these aspects of analysis threatens the validity of TRA/TPB research.     

Crowd Effects in Unfamiliar Face Matching

Psychological research shows that humans can not reliably match unfamiliar faces. This presents a practical problem, because identity verification processes in a variety of occupational settings depend on people to perform these tasks reliably. In this context, it is surprising that very few studies have attempted to improve human performance. Here, we investigate whether distributing face matching tasks across groups of individuals might help to solve this problem. Across four studies, we measure the accuracy of the ‘crowd’ on a standard test of face matching ability and find that aggregating individual responses produces substantial gains in matching accuracy. We discuss the practical implications of this result and also suggest ways in which this approach might be used to improve our understanding of face perception more generally. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relationship between emotion awareness and somatic complaints in children and adolescents: Investigating the mediating role of anxiety and depression

The objective of this study was to examine if emotion awareness in children and adolescents (age 7–18 years old) is directly related to somatic complaints, and if this relationship holds when considering symptoms of anxiety and depression as mediating factors. A number of questionnaires measuring emotion awareness, symptoms of anxiety and depression and somatic complaints were administered to Dutch schoolchildren (N?=?617). A path model was constructed, with the use of structural equation modelling. The results showed that two aspects of emotion awareness (bodily awareness and differentiating between emotions) contributed to the prediction of somatic complaints. However, this was no longer the case when controlling for symptoms of anxiety and depression. Thus, in this study, no direct relation was found between emotion awareness and somatic complaints. Instead, the relation was perfectly mediated by symptoms of anxiety and depression. The results suggest that focusing only on the relation between emotion awareness and somatic complaints is an oversimplified perspective that falls short as a starting point to find therapeutic solutions for children who suffer from somatic complaints.     

Religious and Political Violence: Globalising Syncretism and the Governance State*

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the conjunctions of religion and politics through eruptions of violence are codetermined and codependent through syncretic manifestations rather than a result of some kind of basic clash between different, self-contained systems of ideas and values. The vicissitudes of religious fervour are linked to issues of development and social change in which long-cherished traditions are confronted by seemingly inexorable forces beyond the control of those being affected by them. Religious violence is a political movement which should be understood as not being outside modernisation in the sense of being opposed to it; it is in fact part of the development of modernisation. Resistance arises from the experience of being excluded from the fruits of modernity while at the same time being enmeshed within the multiple social relations underpinning the production and distribution of those ‘fruits’. Whether from a postmodern or from a more conventional perspective a totalising analysis organised around master concepts like ‘globalisation’ or ‘civilisation’ is often developed to explain the intersections of religion and violence. We reject these approaches in favour of one predicated on the idea of the ‘governance state’. It is our argument that this better captures the core axis of analysis – namely the changing nature of the state and its management of populations and the concomitant forms of resistance by those subjected to it in an era in which such ‘modernities’ are played out.     

Are space and time automatically integrated in episodic memory?

The aim of the present study was to determine to what extent spatial and temporal features are automatically integrated during encoding in episodic memory. Both nameable and non-nameable stimuli were presented sequentially at different locations on a computer screen. Mixed and pure blocks of trials were used. In the mixed blocks participants were instructed to focus either on the spatial or the temporal order of the objects, as on the majority of the trials recall of this feature was tested (expected trials). However, on a few trials participants had to reproduce the other feature (unexpected trials). In the pure blocks either the spatial or the temporal order of the objects was tested on all trials. More errors were made on unexpected than on expected trials of the mixed blocks. Moreover, no primacy or recency effects were found when performance on the spatial task was plotted as a function of the temporal position. These results suggest that spatial information and temporal order information rely on separate encoding processes.     

Career management: The issue of the millennium

Abstract

The last decade has seen immense changes in the business environment. The globalization of business, its deregulation and the consequent opening up of new markets, the advances in information technology, and the growth of consumerism have all added to the competitive pressures which commercial organizations face (Hamel & Prahalad, 1994). At the same time, changes in social attitudes, especially regarding societal institutions such as government, education, and health, have increased the pressures on the public sector to provide value for taxpayers' money.     

Fitting decisions: Mood and intuitive versus deliberative decision strategies

We investigated the influence of the compatibility between mood and decision strategies on the subjective value of a decision outcome. Several studies have provided evidence for the idea that a sad mood induces people to analyse information carefully, probably fitting well with a deliberative decision strategy. In a happy mood, people tend to act more strongly on their feelings, probably fitting well with an intuitive decision strategy. However, sometimes the situation demands the use of decision strategies that seem incompatible with mood states. We expected that decision makers would value a decision outcome higher in the case of a fit between mood and decision strategy than in the case of a non-fit. After a mood manipulation, participants were instructed to decide either based on their first affective reaction or after deliberation. Results confirmed our expectations: fitting decisions enhanced the subjective value of a decision outcome.