Flashbulb memories of the Pope's resignation: Explicit and implicit measures across differing religious groups

In the present paper, we aimed to provide evidence in support of the idea tested in a recent study by Lanciano and colleagues that flashbulb memories (FBMs) are a special class of autobiographical memories that can be assessed through the autobiographical implicit association test (aIAT). FBMs and event memories (EMs) for the news of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI were evaluated in three samples of churchgoer Catholic, non-churchgoer Catholic and Evangelical Italian participants through the traditional self-report measures (specificity/accuracy, confidence, consistency) and aIAT indices. Results confirmed the strength of the association between FBM and true information. The aIAT effect was stronger for FBMs than for EM details, and for Catholic respondents who were the group most concerned by the original event. Furthermore, the use of implicit measures for memory assessment concurs with the traditional self-report indices of FBMs. The present evidence supports the idea that FBMs are special autobiographical memories which remain detailed, certain and consistent over time.     

Learning the Ropes: The Protective Role of Mentoring in Correctional Police Officers’ Socialization Process

Formal mentoring is an individualized and contextualized socialization tactic to enhance newcomers’ learning—acknowledged as essential in the early career stage—that can be of particular value when entering a fairly unpredictable and stressful workplace. This research aims to understand the moderating role of formal mentoring in the relationship between organizational socialization and 2 adjustment indicators, a positive 1 (commitment) and a negative 1 (turnover intention). A questionnaire was administered to 117 correctional police officer newcomers, as prisons are especially critical work contexts for newcomers. The results show a direct effect from both socialization and mentoring on commitment and turnover, and an interaction between socialization and mentoring on turnover, although not on commitment. When the socialization process progresses steadily, both socialization and mentoring contribute to good adjustment, but when traditional tactics go wrong, a different learning source (formal mentoring) exerts a protective function, limiting newcomers’ intention to quit. These findings give support to the usefulness of mentoring in a law enforcement context and provide some insight into defining formal mentoring programs.     

Disobeying an Illegitimate Request in a Democratic or Authoritarian System

Crimes of obedience in the form of illegal or immoral acts committed in response to orders from authority occur in many contexts. In particular, under some circumstances of threats, people can easily accept restrictions upon democratic procedures. Recent studies have underlined the role of legitimacy in understanding the authority relationship and the importance of evaluating the legitimacy of the request rather than the legitimacy of the authority in preventing the rise of authoritarianism. The purpose of this study was to verify if people respond differently when an illegitimate request is put forward by a democratic or an authoritarian authority. The results on 224 subjects confirmed that people tend to be more obedient when they perceive authorities as democratic, notwithstanding the legitimacy of their requests.     

Motion-induced blindness measured objectively

During central fixation, a moving pattern of nontargets induces repeated temporary blindness to even salient peripheral targets: motion-induced blindness (MIB). Hitherto, behavioral measures of MIB have relied on subjective judgments. Here, we offer an objective alternative that builds on earlier findings regarding the effects of MIB on the detectability of physical target offsets. We propose a small modification of regular MIB displays: Following a variable duration (lead time), one of the targets is physically removed. Subjects are to respond immediately afterward. We hypothesize that illusory target offsets, caused by MIB, are mistaken for physical target offsets and that errors should thus increase with lead time. Indeed, for both nonsalient and salient targets, we found that detection accuracy for physical target offsets dramatically decreased with lead time. We conclude that target offset detection accuracy is a valid objective measure of MIB. With our method, effects of guessing are minimal, and the fitting of psychometric functions is straightforward. In principle, a staircase extension—for more efficient data collection—is also possible.     

Is obesity treated like a contagious disease?

The behavioral avoidance of people with obesity is well documented, but its psychological basis is poorly understood. Based upon a disease avoidance account of stigmatization, we tested whether a person with obesity triggers equivalent self-reported emotional and avoidant-based responses as a contagious disease (i.e., influenza). Two hundred and sixty-four participants rated images depicting real disease signs (i.e., person with influenza), false alarms (i.e., person with obesity), person with facial bruising (i.e., negative control), and a healthy control for induced emotion and willingness for contact along increasing levels of physical proximity. Consistent with our prediction, as the prospect for contact became more intimate, self-reported avoidance was equivalent in the influenza and obese target conditions, with both significantly exceeding reactions to the negative and healthy controls. In addition, participants reported greatest levels of disgust toward the obese and influenza target conditions. These results are consistent with an evolved predisposition to avoid individuals with disease signs. Implicit avoidance occurs even when participants know explicitly that such signs—here, obese body form—result from a noncontagious condition. Our findings provide important evidence for a disease avoidance explanation of the stigmatization of people with obesity.     

De Finetti’s No-Dutch-Book Criterion for Gödel logic

We extend de Finetti’s No-Dutch-Book Criterion to Gödel infinite-valued propositional logic.     

Minority influence: the role of ambivalence toward the source

According to literature on social influence, a minority source may indirectly influence group members by fostering ambivalent reactions. Two studies were carried out in order to provide empirical support for this theoretical assumption. In Study 1 participants (n = 133), were exposed to a counter‐attitudinal minority message and ambivalence was manipulated by facilitating the accessibility of either ambivalent (positive and negative) or univalent (positive or negative) thoughts toward the source. We predicted and found more indirect influence in ambivalent condition than in univalent conditions. No effect of ambivalence on direct influence was found. In Study 2 (n = 127), ambivalence was measured and two possible antecedents of ambivalence, consistency of the minority and personal relevance of the topic for participants, were taken into account. Findings suggest that ambivalence mediates the effects of the two factors on indirect influence. In sum, these studies provide evidence of the importance of ambivalence in minority influence context, an early assumption that was still lacking in strong empirical support. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intrapsychic-Interpsychic

The ‘interpsychic’ is an extended psychic dimension, regarding the joint functioning and reciprocal influences of two minds. The concepts of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘person’ can be included in the ‘interpsychic’. They can also overlap with each other, and sometimes all three can overlap together, but they do not necessarily coincide. In the different contemporary perspectives, how can we modify the intrapsychic ‘through’ (and ‘with’ and ‘by’) the interpsychic? Presenting four clinical vignettes, the author progressively moves from the theoretical positions that emphasise the exploration and the elaboration of the intrapsychic mainly through the intrapsychic, to the positions that emphasise the same operations mainly through the interpsychic. The last part of the paper deals with the technical use of the interpsychic dimension: the analytic dialogue, when interpsychically experienced (from inside), gains a new, more specific effectiveness, first in containing and then in symbolising. In an intense mental ‘cohabitation’ inside the analytic working pair, it is very often clearly experienced as ‘true’ (as in dreams).     

Facial Expressions and the Ability to Recognize Emotions from the Eyes or Mouth: A Comparison Between Children and Adults

The authors sought to contribute to the literature on the ability to recognize anger, happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, and neutral emotions from facial information. They aimed to investigate if—regardless of age—this pattern changes. More specifically, the present study aimed to compare the difference between the performance of adults and 6- to 7-year-old children in detecting emotions from the whole face and a specific face region, namely the eyes and mouth. The findings seem to indicate that, for both groups, recognizing disgust, happiness, and surprise is facilitated when pictures represent the whole face. However, with regard to a specific region, a prevalence for children was not found between the eyes and mouth. Meanwhile, for adults, would seem to detect a greater role of the eye region. Finally, regarding the differences in the performance of emotions recognition, adults are better only in a few cases, whereas children are better in recognizing anger from the mouth.