Use of process and turning point in psychotherapy--significance of the theatrical aspect as a cooperative mode of behavior

The paper presents observations respecting the contrast of playful and grim attitudes in the behavior of patients undergoing psychotherapeutic treatment. Playful correspondence to Erikson's Cooperative Stage of development and Freud's mature Genitality, while grim corresponds to Erikson's Autonomous and Assertive Stages and Freud's Anal and Phallic Stages. To be effective, theatrical performances have to be produced in a cooperative way; psychotherapy too must assist the patient to achieve a greater degree of cooperativeness and mature Genitality. Identifying with the therapist and adapting his style can enable the patient to acquire self-composure through playful behavior, and to overcome protracted grimnes. Play-matured Genitality Cooperative signifies that the patient incorporates his partner or opponent's intentions into his appreciation of events, enabling him to act more in accordance with the reality around him.     

Playing hard-to-get: A two-determinant model

Walster, Walster, Piliavin, and Schmidt (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 26, 113–121) found that a hard-to-get woman was liked only if she was hard-to-get for other men but easy-to-get for the subject. They suggested that the subjects liked this type of woman because of the socially desirable personality characteristics they attributed to her. A second determinant of liking is proposed in the present study. It concerns the effect of a person's evaluation of a subject on the subject's self-esteem. It was predicted that there would be a positive relationship between changes in the subject's self-esteem and liking for the evaluator. The results demonstrated that this determinant, as well as the one that Walster et al. suggested, is important in understanding the type of opposite-sex person that men and women find most attractive. These results, and the differences between the Walster et al. and the present studies, were discussed in terms of the relative impact of the two determinants in laboratory and real-life situations.     

Dissociating perceptual and representation-based contributions to priming of face recognition

Repetition priming of object identification refers to the phenomenon whereby experience with an object induces systematic changes in subsequent processing of that same object. This data-driven form of priming is distinct from conceptually-driven priming. To date, considerable controversy exists about whether data-driven priming reflects facilitation in perceptual processing or mediation by preexisting object representations. The present study concerned priming of recognizing familiar and unfamiliar faces and how this priming is influenced by face inversion, which interferes with perceptual face processing. Perceptual and representation-based loci conjointly contributed to priming; the perceptual locus was operative similarly for familiar and unfamiliar faces, whereas the representation-based locus was only invoked for familiar faces and resulted in a response-time reduction triple the magnitude of that from the perceptual locus. The results constrain theoretical accounts of data-driven priming by indicating that improved identification can result from the combination of perceptual and representation-based facilitation.     

Differential subjective and psychophysiological responses to socially and nonsocially generated emotional stimuli

Sociality may determine the subjective experience and physiological response to emotional stimuli. Film segments induced socially and nonsocially generated emotions. Comedy (social positive), bereavement (social negative), pizza scenes (nonsocial positive), and wounded bodies (nonsocial negative) elicited four distinct emotional patterns. Per subjective report, joy, sadness, appetite, and disgust were elicited by the targeted stimulus condition. The social/nonsocial dimension influenced which emotional valence(s) elicited a skin conductance response, a finding that could not be explained by differences in subjective arousal. Heart rate deceleration was more responsive to nonsocially generated emotions. Taken together, these findings suggest that sociality affects the physiological profile of responses to emotional valence.     

Implicit policies about relations between personality traits and behavioral effectiveness in situational judgment items

This paper develops the concept of implicit trait policy (ITP), which is a variant of the accentuation effect described by Tajfel (1957). ITPs are implicit beliefs about causal relations between personality traits and behavioral effectiveness. Studies reported here tested the hypotheses (a) that personality traits affect ITPs so that agreeable people, for instance, believe the relation between agreeableness and effectiveness is more strongly positive than disagreeable people do and (b) that ITPs can predict behavior that expresses associated personality traits. Two studies with undergraduate research participants supported the first hypothesis for traits of agreeableness and extraversion (the average correlation between traits and associated ITPs was .31 for agreeableness and .37 for extraversion) but not for conscientiousness. A 3rd study with student participants found that individual differences in ITPs for agreeableness predicted agreeable behavior (the average correlation was .33) in simulated work settings. These results suggest that ITPs may be useful for predicting work behavior that expresses personality traits even though ITPs may not be strongly correlated with the personality traits themselves.     

Audience-tuning effects on memory: the role of shared reality

After tuning to an audience, communicators' own memories for the topic often reflect the biased view expressed in their messages. Three studies examined explanations for this bias. Memories for a target person were biased when feedback signaled the audience's successful identification of the target but not after failed identification (Experiment 1). Whereas communicators tuning to an in-group audience exhibited the bias, communicators tuning to an out-group audience did not (Experiment 2). These differences did not depend on communicators' mood but were mediated by communicators' trust in their audience's judgment about other people (Experiments 2 and 3). Message and memory were more closely associated for high than for low trusters. Apparently, audience-tuning effects depend on the communicators' experience of a shared reality.     

The role of vividness of imagery in metaphor generation

Pointing to novel links between mental representation and social communication, we examine the association between vividness of imagery and use of metaphors. In a study on individual differences and three experiments, we demonstrate that vivid imagery is linked to greater use of metaphors and that this relationship is bi-directional. We also show that this relationship is stronger in the context of negative valence. We demonstrate that vivid imagery results in greater generation of metaphors (in particular, for negative concepts). In examining the reverse direction of influence, we show that in the negative (rather than positive) context, use of metaphors results in greater perceptions of vividness. We suggest that vividness can be signified and produced by using metaphors that play an important role in meaning making and communication.     

Interactive processes during interlimb coordination: Combining movement patterns with different frequency ratios

The present study examined the formation of a movement pattern that was added to an ongoing coordinative regime across different limb combinations. It was hypothesized that the addition of the secondary mode would perturb the ongoing primary mode by adding rhythmic complexity to the task requirements. Furthermore, the formation of the secondary mode was predicted to be affected by the ongoing coordination pattern. In Exp. 1, a primary multifrequency mode (2:1 ratio) was performed while a secondary isofrequency mode (1:1 ratio) was initiated midway into the trials, whereas the reversed dual-pattern conditions were examined in Exp. 2. The results from both experiments showed that the multifrequency mode deteriorated across limb combination under dual-pattern as compared to single-pattern conditions. The isofrequency mode was also affected under combined pattern conditions, but its degradation was a function of the limb combination under consideration. In particular, the non-homologous limbs, which demonstrated less stable behavior than the homologous limbs under single-pattern conditions, were affected most strongly when confronted with the simultaneous production of the multifrequency mode. In addition, anti-phase movements deteriorated more than in-phase movements, supporting indirectly the contention that afferent feedback monitoring complexity differs for the two movement configurations. The findings of this study suggest that manipulation of task requirements can be used to examine pattern durability and formation in view of dynamical perturbations. Received: 15 October 1997 / Accepted: 6 January 1998     

Emotional Reactions to Interracial Achievement Outcomes1

Students interacted with a White or a Black partner on an achievement task. It was predicted that the anxiety elicited by interacting with an outgroup member would lead to amplified emotional reactions to achievement outcomes. Consistent with this prediction, emotional reactions to success were more positive with a Black partner than with a White partner, whereas emotional reactions to failure were more negative with a Black partner than with a White partner. In addition, under conditions of low public self-awareness, Black partners were given less credit for success and blamed more for failure than White partners. This prejudicial pattern of attributions disappeared under conditions of high public self-awareness.