Exploring the relationships among age,spiritual struggles,and health

The purpose of this study is to address two issues. First, an effort is made to see if there are age differences in the prevalence of spiritual struggles. Second, tests are performed to see if age differences exist in the relationship between spiritual struggles and physical health. Data from a recent nationwide survey reveal that younger adults report that they encounter more spiritual struggles than either middle-aged or older adults. The findings further indicate that the negative relationship between spiritual struggles and health tends to become more pronounced at successively older ages.     

Investigating ToM in aging with the MASC: from accuracy to error type

Growing evidence indicates that Theory of Mind (ToM) declines in normal aging. However, the majority of this research has used classic and static verbal tasks that present scenarios, which are very different from real life. The present study was designed to fill this gap by administering the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) to young and older participants. It allows one to analyze not only the accuracy, but also the typology of error in mental states attribution distinguishing between iper-ToM (over-mentalization), ipo-ToM (insufficient mentalization), and no-ToM (lack of mentalization). We recruited 30 young (20–29 years), 39 young-old (65–74 years), and 31 old-old (75–86 years) participants. Along with the MASC, we administered a classic ToM task, the Strange Stories, and several measures of cognitive functioning. Results showed that older adults were less accurate in mental state attribution than young adults in the MASC, but not in the Strange Stories. In addition, compared to young adults, older adults committed more errors of both ipo- and no-ToM, while young adults committed more often iper-ToM errors. Additionally, older adults, but not young adults, did not show a difference between iper-ToM and ipo-ToM errors, which were equally frequent in this age group. Globally, results indicated that older adults’ failure in classic ToM tasks may be due to both ipo- and iper-ToM and provide needed evidence for the MASC as a suitable measure of ToM in aging.     

Capturing attention when attention blinks

Four experiments addressed the question of whether attention may be captured when the visual system is in the midst of an attentional blink (AB). Participants identified 2 target letters embedded among distractor letters in a rapid serial visual presentation sequence. In some trials, a square frame was inserted between the targets; as the only geometric object in the sequence, it constituted a singleton. Capture effects obtained when the AB was most severe and when it was over were compared. There were 3 main results. First, capture occurred even when the AB was crippling, suggesting that a singleton exogenously engaged attention even when processing of a previous target was continuing apace. Second, when the singleton contained the key target feature, capture effects were clearly manifest. Third, even when the singleton did not possess the key target feature, it still succeeded in capturing attention, although the effects were both feeble and fleeting.     

The relational self: an interpersonal social-cognitive theory

The authors propose an interpersonal social-cognitive theory of the self and personality, the relational self, in which knowledge about the self is linked with knowledge about significant others, and each linkage embodies a self-other relationship. Mental representations of significant others are activated and used in interpersonal encounters in the social-cognitive phenomenon of transference (S. M. Andersen & N. S. Glassman, 1996), and this evokes the relational self. Variability in relational selves depends on interpersonal contextual cues, whereas stability derives from the chronic accessibility of significant-other representations. Relational selves function in if-then terms (W. Mischel & Y. Shoda, 1995), in which ifs are situations triggering transference, and thens are relational selves. An individual's repertoire of relational selves is a source of interpersonal patterns involving affect, motivation, self-evaluation, and self-regulation.     

Self-verification motives at the collective level of self-definition

Three studies examined self-verification motives in relation to collective aspects of the self. Several moderators of collective self-verification were also examined--namely, the certainty with which collective self-views are held, the nature of one's ties to a source of self-verification, the salience of the collective self, and the importance of group identification. Evidence for collective self-verification emerged across all studies, particularly when collective self-views were held with high certainty (Studies 1 and 2), perceivers were somehow tied to the source of self-verification (Study 1), the collective self was salient (Study 2), and group identification was important (Study 3). To the authors' knowledge, these studies are the first to examine self-verification at the collective level of self-definition. The parallel and distinct ways in which self-verification processes may operate at different levels of self-definition are discussed.     

Magnitude and Order are Both Relevant in SNARC and SNARC-like Effects: A Commentary on Casasanto and Pitt (2019)

In a recent paper by Casasanto and Pitt (2019), the authors addressed a debate regarding the role of order and magnitude in SNARC and SNARC-like effects. Their position is that all these effects can be explained by order, while magnitude could only account for a subset of evidence. Although we agree that order can probably explain the majority of these effects, in this commentary we argue that magnitude is still relevant, since there is evidence that cannot be explained based on ordinality alone. We argue that SNARC-like effects can occur for magnitudes not clearly characterized by overlearned ordinality and that magnitude can prevail on order, when the two are pitted against each other. Finally, we propose that different interpretations of the role of order and magnitude depend on the interaction of stimulus properties and task demands.     

Prophetic performatives: the New Age’s pending efficacy through self-prophecy

This paper broadens the limited area of scholarship on New Age spiritualism by providing and explanation for the suasive force of one of its main themes, the ‘Law of Attraction’. Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, is utilised as emblematic of the doctrine, where the individual is seen to engage in a dynamic similar to that of classical predictive prophecy, with the role of prophet being internalised. Three elements discussed are the positioning of the prophet, prophecy’s temporal ambiguity, and its linguistic tense. This paper suggests that the Law of Attraction re-imagines and employs the predictive prophetic structure and suggests that such a belief can act as a fetish.     

Assessing Dimensions of Pathological Narcissism: Psychometric Properties of the Short Form of the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory in a Sample of Italian University Students

To evaluate the psychometric properties of the Italian translation of the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory–Short Form (FFNI–SF), 1,063 Italian university students were administered the scale, along with the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) and the Measure of Disordered Personality Functioning (MDPF). In general, the FFNI–SF scales showed good internal consistency (median α = .76; median interitem r = .44) and structural analyses suggested a 3-component model of FFNI–SF scales that was similar to that reported by Sherman et al. (2015). FFNI–SF second-order scales yielded meaningful convergent and discriminant correlations with PNI second-order grandiose and vulnerable dimensions. Finally, FFNI–SF second-order scales correlated in expected ways with 2 dimensions of personality dysfunction.     

Do Attitudes Affect Memory? Tests of the Congeniality Hypothesis

Social psychologists have usually hypothesized that attitudinal selectivity biases people's memory in favor of information that is congenial to their attitudes, because they are motivated to defend their attitudes against uncongenial information. However, our meta-analysis found that such effects have been only inconsistently obtained. One reason for these inconsistencies is that the defense of attitudes against attacks does not necessarily entail avoiding the uncongenial information. As shown by our experiments, people often expose themselves to attitudinally uncongenial information, attend to it, scrutinize it carefully, encode it accurately, and remember it fairly well, even though they dislike the information and are not persuaded by it. Given sufficient motivation and capacity, people mount an active defense that enhances memory for the information.