Observers' benefit finding for victims: Consequences for perceived moral obligations

In three studies we examined how observers making meaning of victimization by finding benefits for the victim leads to the perception that victims are morally obligated to help others and not do harm. In Experiment 1, participants perceived a victim as having greater moral obligations when the meaning of victimization was considered for the victim rather than the perpetrator. This effect on moral obligations was mediated by the extent to which participants believed victims should have found benefits. Experiments 2 and 3 examined the consequences when victims fail or fulfill their moral obligations. Greater social distance from a victim who did harm was sought when participants focused on the meaning of victimization for the victim as compared to the perpetrator. Less social distance from a victim who helped was sought when participants focused on the meaning of victimization for the victim as compared to the perpetrator or when they made no meaning. These studies show that how observers make meaning of victimization has implications for subsequent responses to victims. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Linking self and ingroup: Self‐anchoring as distinctive cognitive route to social identification

The present paper investigates how cognitive projection processes instigate social identification. We complement the classical self‐stereotyping approach (i.e., conforming to prototypical group norms) by investigating self‐anchoring (i.e., projection from self to group) as a distinct cognitive route to social identification. Self‐anchoring has mainly been investigated as predictor of intergroup differentiation. Surprisingly, no reliable link has been provided yet between self‐anchoring and social identification. In Study 1, we provide first evidence for this positive link. In Study 2, we add self‐stereotyping to our model and show that self‐anchoring is still positively related to social identification when controlling for self‐stereotyping. Additionally, we show that self‐anchoring is positively related to affective components of identification, while self‐stereotyping is positively related to cognitive components. Moreover, we examined the impact of self‐concept stability on self‐anchoring. Self‐concept stability was positively related to self‐anchoring, and hence to social identification (Study 1), independently from self‐stereotyping (Study 2). In the discussion, we argue that disentangling self‐anchoring from self‐stereotyping is important as it increases our insight in how people identify, and how this may vary depending on self‐concept and group context. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A solution to the discursive dilemma

An impossibility result pertaining to the aggregation of individual judgements is thought by many to have significant implications for political theory, social epistemology and metaphysics. When members of a group hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, the theorem shows, it isn’t always (logically) possible for them to aggregate their judgements into a collective one in conformity with seemingly very plausible constraints. I reject one of the constraints which engender the dilemma. The analogy with the lottery paradox, I argue, shows that rational belief needn’t be consistent. So the alleged implications of the dilemma are dispelled.     

The expression and regulation of anger in toddlers: relations to maternal behavior and mental representations

Anger is an intense and adaptive approach emotion that undergoes significant development during the toddler years. We assessed the expression of anger and the strategies toddlers use to regulate it in relation to maternal behavior and mental representations. Seventy-four toddlers were observed in three anger-eliciting paradigms: toy removal (TR), still-face (SF), and delayed gratification (DG). Anger expression and three clusters of regulatory behaviors were micro-coded: putative regulatory behaviors, attention manipulation, and play behaviors. Maternal relational style was coded for sensitivity and intrusiveness, and mental representations of the mother-child relationship were assessed for joy and anger. Children expressed the most anger during the TR, less during the SF, and minimally during the DG. Use of putative regulatory behaviors was highest during the SF, whereas during the TR children employed newly acquired skills, such as focused attention and substitutive play, in the service of anger regulation. Anger expression and regulation were differentially related to the negative and positive components in the mother's behavior and representations, and maternal intrusiveness moderated the relations between angry representations and the degree of child anger during the SF. Results are consistent with dynamic models of emotions and accord with perspectives that emphasize the role of sensitive parenting in facilitating emotion regulation.     

Erich Fromm als Psychotherapeut

Erich Fromm (1900?C1980) was a co-founder of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute and the William Alanson White Institute in New York and finally he founded a training institute of his own in Mexico. However, he never intended to create a therapeutic school of his own. Furthermore, he published hardly anything about the so-called psychoanalytic techniques. All the more informative is the report of Ruth Lesser about her supervisions with Fromm. She describes how Fromm reacted to the presented cases, what kind of a role repression, resistance, transference and countertransference play in the therapeutic relationship and how strongly interested he was in the socially shaped unconscious intentions of the patient. The straightforwardness of the intervention style of Fromm is impressively described both in his empathy and in his confrontation with the unconscious reality. In the last part of the article Fromm??s understanding of the psychoanalytic situation is reflected and the characteristics of his psychoanalytic treatment method are outlined.     

Associations between parental educational/occupational levels and cognitive performance in Spanish adolescents: the AVENA study

We examined the associations between parental educational/occupational levels and cognitive performance in Spanish adolescents. Cognitive performance was measured by a validated Scholar Aptitudes test in 2,162 participants. Parental educational and occupational levels were positively associated with all specific cognitive abilities and the overall score (p<001 to .04). The odds ratios of having a high cognitive performance (top quartile) in adolescents with high parental educational level were 1.6 to 1.7 times higher than for those with a low parental educational level. Similarly, the odds ratios were 1.9 to 2.4 times higher for adolescents with high parental occupational level. These findings suggest an association between parental educational/occupational levels and cognitive performance in Spanish adolescents and support the parents' role in the creation of a stimulating intellectual environment.     

Distributed attentional deficits in chronic methamphetamine abusers: evidence from the Attentional Network Task (ANT)

Objective

The goal of the present study was to examine distributed attentional functions in long-term but currently abstinent methamphetamine (MA) abusers using a task that measures attentional alertness, orienting, and conflict resolution.

Methods

Thirty currently abstinent MA abusers (1 month-5 years) and 22 healthy non-substance using adults were administered a multimodal version of the Attentional Network Task (ANT-I). In this task subjects identified the direction of a centrally presented arrow using a key press. Analyses examined the interaction between alerting tones, location cueing and congruency between the target arrows and flanking distractor stimuli.

Results

All participants were faster when an auditory tone preceded the trial onset (p < 0.001), on trials in which a valid cue preceded the location of the target arrow (p < 0.001), and on congruent trials (i.e., when all display arrows faced in the same direction) (p < 0.001). Of primary interest was the finding that MA abusers were more influenced by the conflict between the peripheral arrows and the central target arrow (p = 0.009). There were also correlations between length of drug sobriety and executive function as well as between drug-induced psychiatric symptoms and alertness.

Conclusions

These results suggest that chronic MA abusers display cognitive deficits that may reflect a specific vulnerability to distraction on a task of executive function. These findings are consistent with other studies that have reported deficits in anterior attentional systems and top-down cognitive control.     

Cancer Risk Assessment Using Genetic Panel Testing: Considerations for Clinical Application

With the completion of the Human Genome Project and the development of high throughput technologies, such as next-generation sequencing, the use of multiplex genetic testing, in which multiple genes are sequenced simultaneously to test for one or more conditions, is growing rapidly. Reflecting underlying heterogeneity where a broad range of genes confer risks for one or more cancers, the development of genetic cancer panels to assess these risks represents just one example of how multiplex testing is being applied clinically. There are a number of issues and challenges to consider when conducting genetic testing for cancer risk assessment, and these issues become exceedingly more complex when moving from the traditional single-gene approach to panel testing. Here, we address the practical considerations for clinical use of panel testing for breast, ovarian, and colon cancers, including the benefits, limitations and challenges, genetic counseling issues, and management guidelines.     

If I imagine it,then it happened: The Implicit Truth Value of imaginary representations

Imagination sometimes leads people to behave, feel, and think as though imagined events were real even when they know they were not. In this paper, we suggest that some understanding of these phenomena can be achieved by differentiating between Implicit Truth Value (ITV), a spontaneous truth evaluation, and Explicit Truth Value (ETV), a self-reported truth judgment. In three experiments, we measure ITV using the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (Sartori, Agosta, Zogmaister, Ferrara, & Castiello, 2008), which has been used to assess which of two autobiographical events is true. Our findings demonstrate that imagining an event, like experiencing an event, increases its ITV, even when people explicitly acknowledge the imagined event as false (Experiments 1a and 1b). Furthermore, we show that imagined representations generated from a first-person perspective have higher ITV than imagined representations generated from a third-person perspective (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that implicit and explicit measures of truth differ in their sensitivity to properties underlying truth judgment. We discuss the contribution of characterizing events according to both ITV and ETV to the understanding of various psychological phenomena, such as lying and self-deception.