Mood as a resource in dealing with health recommendations: How mood affects information processing and acceptance of quit-smoking messages

Objective: An experimental study tested the effects of positive and negative mood on the processing and acceptance of health recommendations about smoking in an online experiment. It was hypothesised that positive mood would provide smokers with the resources to systematically process self-relevant health recommendations.

Design: One hundred and twenty-seven participants (smokers and non-smokers) read a message in which a quit smoking programme was recommended. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: positive versus negative mood, and strong versus weak arguments for the recommended action.

Main outcome measures: Systematic message processing was inferred when participants were able to distinguish between high- and low-quality arguments, and by congruence between attitudes and behavioural intentions. Persuasion was measured by participant's attitudes towards smoking and the recommended action, and by their intentions to follow the action recommendation.

Results: As predicted, smokers systematically processed the health message only under positive mood conditions; non-smokers systematically processed the health message only under negative mood conditions. Moreover, smokers’ attitudes towards the health message predicted intentions to quit smoking only under positive mood conditions.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that positive mood may decrease defensive processing of self-relevant health information.     

Evolution of grain-boundary character distribution during iterative processing of an austenitic stainless steel

The present article deals with the analysis of grain-boundary character distribution (GBCD) and microstructural characteristics after iterative processing of austenitic stainless steel, AISI 316L. The steel was subjected to iterative cold reduction and subsequent annealings. After an initial decrease in the fraction of Σ3 boundaries, the number of these increases in subsequent steps. The results relate the importance of iterative processing and the mechanism of obtaining a higher fraction of Σ3 boundaries.     

On the enhancement of wear resistance of tool steels by cryogenic treatment

The present article aims to resolve the debate on the degree of benefit of processing tool or die steels by cryogenic treatment. This has been done by measuring transition loads for quenched and tempered die steel with and without cryogenic treatment. The wide range of reported degrees of improvement of wear resistance by cryotreatment is explained by the operative modes and mechanisms of sliding wear considering the wear rate ratio of conventionally treated to cryotreated steels on a two-dimensional map.     

Connection between deformation-induced dislocation substructures and martensite formation in stainless steel

We report a quantitative connection between the strain amplitude dependencies of the organisation of dislocation cell substructures with the formation of deformation-induced martensite during cyclic plasticity of austenitic stainless steel at ambient temperature.     

The gift of the world: A note on political theology

This paper reads Carl Schmitt and the responses to Schmitt by his interlocutors and critics such as Erik Peterson, Jacob Taubes, Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida in order to argue that the concept of political theology cannot be exhausted in the sense of the term determined by Carl Schmitt. Taking up to analyse Schmitt's politico-theological appropriation of Søren Kierkegaard and reading Kierkegaard in the light of Jacob Taubes and Jacques Derrida anew, the paper hints at the possibility of reading Kierkegaard more radically than Schmittean reading. Such radical possibility of Kierkegaard for us would lie, not so much in the legitimisation of the profane order of the world-historical politics in the name of a theological foundation, but more radically in the delegitimation of any earthly sovereignty as such. Such radical possibility, passing through a deconstruction of sovereignty, must open itself to a new eschatology or a new messianic thought of justice that defers and differs the execution of judgement by any earthly power, opening thereby to the gift of the world in the spacing that separates the political from the theological.     

Culture and the role of choice in agency

Three cross-cultural studies conducted among U.S. and Indian adults compared perceptions of helping friends in strongly versus weakly expected cases, views of helping family versus strangers, and responses to a self-determination motivation scale. Expectations to help family and friends were positively correlated with satisfaction and choice only among Indians and not among Americans. Also, whereas U.S. respondents associated lesser satisfaction and choice with strongly versus weakly socially expected helping, Indian respondents associated equal satisfaction and choice with the 2 types of cases. Providing evidence of the importance of choice in collectivist cultures, the results indicate that social expectations to meet the needs of family and friends tend to be more fully internalized among Indians than among Americans. Methodologically, the results also highlight the need to incorporate items that tap more internalized meanings of role-related social expectations on measures of motivation in the tradition of self-determination theory.     

Neural correlates of deficient response inhibition in mentally disordered violent individuals

In this study, response inhibition and associated neural activation during a motor inhibition paradigm were investigated in (i) men with antisocial personality disorder (APD) with a history of violence (n = 14), (ii) men with schizophrenia with a history of violence (n = 12), (iii) men with schizophrenia without a history of violence (n = 12), and (iv) healthy control subjects (n = 14) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). At the behavioural level, individuals with schizophrenia showed impaired performance across all conditions, whereas an increased error rate was seen in the APD group only during the conditions requiring inhibition. At the neural level, both violent groups showed reduced thalamic activity, compared with controls, in association with modulation of inhibition by task demands. In addition, the violent schizophrenia group, compared with controls, showed reduced activity in the caudate nucleus during the condition requiring inhibition. It is concluded that violence may not be specifically associated with impaired voluntary inhibition in schizophrenia but this is likely in APD. Reduced thalamic function, perhaps due to its known association with sensorimotor disturbances, is implicated in violent behaviour across both disorders. In addition, caudate dysfunction may contribute, given its role in timing and temporal processing as well as suppression of motor actions, to deficient inhibition and violent behaviour in schizophrenia.