The Donor's Dilemma: Recipient's Reactions to Aid from Friend or Foe1

Subjects participating as decision-makers in the Tactical and Negotiations Game experimental simulation encountered a programed emergency and then received an offer of aid from either an ally or an enemy donor. Findings indicate that recipients of aid from an ally donor perceived the donor to be more positively motivated and perceived the aid to reflect greater effort and to be of greater value than recipients of an equal amount of aid from an enemy donor. In addition, aid from an ally precipitated a positive shift in recipient perceptions of the donor and a negative shift in recipient perceptions of the enemy nondonor, while aid from an enemy had essentially no effects. The applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

Information search and the effects of failure: A test of complexity theory

The effects of increasing failure and the structural complexity of decision-making teams on four aspects of information search and utilization were examined. Twenty-four structurally homogeneous dyads and 12 unselected control dyads served as Ss in a complex experimental simulation running for six 30-min periods. Information load was held constant at 7 inputs per period. The proportion of failure inputs was sequentially increased from 1:7 in period 1 through 6:7 in period 6. Dyads in the control condition were not exposed to failure. It was found that structurally simple Ss engaged in more delegated information search than complex Ss. Self-initiated information search initially increased, then remained fairly constant at higher proportions of failure. Contrary to expectations, no differences were found between simple and complex Ss in self-initiated search. Complex dyads exceeded simple dyads on two measures of information utilization. The number of search moves used in integrative decisions produced an inverted U-shaped curve with optimal levels at moderate proportions of failure. Efficiency of information utilization showed a general decrease as failure increased. The data produced limited support for complexity theory and did support, where applicable, the information search theories of Lanzetta and Feather.     

Analgesia induced by exposure to a novel environment in rats: effect of concurrent and post-training stressful stimulation

Exposure of rats for 2 min to a new environment (a 50 X 25 X 25-cm box) induced a mild analgesia measured by the tail-flick method. Additional stressful stimuli (0.5 mA, 1.5-s footshocks, light flashes, or tones) presented during the 2-min exposure did not alter the analgesia. However, the postexposure presentation of light flashes or tones, for either 10 s or 2 min, while the animals were alone in a waiting cage, prevented the analgesic response. Similarly, placing the subjects with their conspecifics in the home cage for 2 min after the exposure prevented the analgesic response. The data suggest that the analgesia may represent a physiological correlate of novelty and that the response can be impaired by post-training treatments.     

Hungry for money: the desire for caloric resources increases the desire for financial resources and vice versa

This report attempts to provide an evolutionary explanation for humans' motivation to strive for money in present-day societies. We propose that people's desire for money is a modern derivate of their desire for food. In three studies, we show the reciprocal association between the incentive value of food and of money. In Study 1, hungry participants were less likely than satiated participants to donate to charity. In Study 2, participants in a room with an olfactory food cue, known to increase the desire to eat, offered less money in a give-some game compared with participants in a room free of scent. In Study 3, participants' desire for money affected the amount of M&M's they ate in a subsequent taste test, but only among participants who were not restricting their food intake in order to manage their weight.     

Effects of load stressors, cognitive complexity and type A coronary prone behavior on visual-motor task performance

In two separate experiments, 25 and 42 adult working males participated in a visual-motor task modeled on a video game. The game was designed to permit measurement of strategy, risk taking, errors committed, and overall task performance. Predictions of complexity theory for task performance were supported. In the second experiment, participants were divided into four subgroups on the basis of Type A versus Type B coronary-prone behavior (measured on the structured interview) and on the basis of unidimensional versus multidimensional responding (measured by a complexity interview with stems of the sentence completion test). Type A coronary-prone behavior did not contribute to differences in visual-motor performance. More multidimensional persons exceeded their unidimensional counterparts, especially in the application of strategy. The extension of complexity theory approaches to simpler tasks is discussed. It is noted that the frequently voiced assumptions of Type A individuals-that their behavior style tends to lead to higher performance levels-is not supported.     

Postaggression footshock inhibits aggressive behavior in dominant but not in isolated mice

Aggressive behavior of dominant and isolated mice was assessed in intermale encounters with nonaggressive intruder mice. After an attack period of 90 s, the aggressor was exposed to a footshock punishment and retested the next day. The shock treatment, independent of the intensity and duration, failed to inhibit spontaneous aggression in isolated DBA/2 mice, while it significantly suppressed spontaneous aggression in dominant C57BL/6 mice. The different effects of post-trial shock punishment were not due to a different shock sensitivity and did not depend on the type of opponent used. Strain differences have been ruled out by the use of dominant and isolated ICR mice. Again, shock punishment was ineffective in isolates, while it reduced aggression in dominant animals. The findings were discussed with reference to the impaired learning performance reported for isolated animals, and suggest a difference between the aggression of isolated and that of dominant mice.     

Do subjective measures of attention and memory predict actual performance? Metacognition in older couples

Older individuals who recognize their cognitive difficulties are more likely to adjust their everyday life to their actual cognitive functioning, particularly when they are able to estimate their abilities accurately. We assessed self- and spouse-ratings of memory and attention difficulties in everyday life of healthy, older individuals and compared them with the respective test performance. Eighty-four older individuals (women's age, M = 67.4 years, SD = 5.2; men's age, M = 68.5 years, SD = 4.9) completed both the self and the spouse versions of the Attention Deficit Questionnaire and the Everyday Memory Questionnaire and completed two neuropsychological tests. Using the residual score approach, subjective metacognitive measures of memory and attention were created and compared with actual test performance. Significant associations between subjective and objective scores were found only for men and only for episodic memory measures. Men who underreported memory difficulties performed more poorly; men who overreported memory difficulties performed better. Men's recognition performance was best predicted by subjective measures (R2 = .25), followed by delayed recall (R2 = .14) and forgetting rate (R2 = .13). The results indicate gender-specific differences in metacognitive accuracy and predictive validity of subjective ratings.     

Metacognitive monitoring of attention performance and its influencing factors

Metacognitive monitoring is a central element of metacognitive processing exerting widespread influences on information processing. Albeit being subject to numerous empirical investigations referring to memory performance, there is little research investigating metacognitive monitoring in other cognitive domains. The present study investigated in 45 healthy students whether factors that are known to influence monitoring of memory performance, i.e. task difficulty, time of assessment, and practice, also exhibit a significant impact on monitoring of attention performance. A multivariate analysis of variance with three within-subject repeated measures factors on two dependent variables (monitoring of (a) time, and (b) errors in an attention task) was conducted. Results showed that monitoring ability significantly decreased with increasing task difficulty, was significantly better for post than for pre-assessment, and significantly increased with practice. Therefore, results suggest that the examined factors influenced monitoring of attention performance equivalent to the influence of these factors found in metamemory research.     

A Feminist Lutheran Substantive Christology: Method and Methodology

Abstract : From a Euro‐American feminist perspective, not only the methods of North American ‘mainstream’ Christology but also of much feminist Christology needs refinement. The former must take into account the context of feminist consciousness, with particular attention to experience. The latter must reclaim kerygma and dogma. Drawn from history, kerygma, dogma, and experience, feminist Lutheran Christology is substantive, meaning that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine and sufficient for salvation.     

Wilhelm Reich – Ein blinder Seher?

The authors examine the extent to which the development of Wilhelm Reich’s ideas that led from Freud’s understanding of libido through marxism to sex-economy, from character-analysis to vegeto-therapy, from the orgasm reflex to the cosmic life energy “orgone”, might possibly be supported by a logic other than the one that Reich understood as "scientific". In so doing the authors differentiate the latent content from its manifest version and argue that if one focuses on the manifest content of Reich’s ideas, it is obvious that Reich ideologically falls back on the position of the “true socialists”, that his orgone theory ultimately re-vitalised the “new, true religion” Feuerbach’s (Engels 1888, p. 34) and that even Reich’s fetishization of genital love as a natural binding agent of human society finds its counterpart in Feuerbach. However, if one adds the latent content of Reich’s considerations, the unfolding of Reich’s ideas also presents the increasing reification of the human subject in its natural disguise as it emerged – in the light of historical materialism – under the social circumstances within which Reich developed his ideas. The authors develop the thesis that Reich’s misunderstanding of social processes as natural laws was not by coincidence but was due to the natural veil those processes were deceptively encircled. For as long as people keep the inner structure of their society beyond their social consciousness, they do not know what they are doing, so that the results of their social activity take on the appearance of being brought about by practical constraints caused by natural laws.