"I help because I want to, not because you tell me to": empathy increases autonomously motivated helping

Empathetic arousal has been found to be a strong predictor of helping behavior. However, research has neglected the motivational mechanisms whereby empathetic concern elicits help giving. Three studies examined the extent to which autonomous and controlled motives for helping mediated the relationship between empathy and helping. Study 1 found that state empathy predicted willingness to offer time and money to help a person in need, with this relationship mediated by autonomous motivation for helping. Study 2 demonstrated that dispositional, empathetic concern predicted prosocial intentions and behavior via the mediation of autonomous motivation. Study 3 revealed that participants who focused on the emotions of another person in distress reported greater willingness to help than did participants who remained emotionally detached, with this effect mediated by autonomous motivation to help. Controlled motivation had no positive effects on helping in any of the studies. The results suggest that empathy encourages prosocial behavior by increasing autonomous motivation to help.     

Victim sensitivity and the accuracy of social judgments

Recent theorizing on the relation between victim sensitivity and unethical behavior predicts that victim sensitivity is related to an asymmetrical focus on cues associated with untrustworthiness compared to cues associated with trustworthiness. This hypothesis and its consequences for the accuracy of social predictions are investigated in this article. In Study 1, participants rated the trustworthiness of 35 computer-animated faces that differed in their emotional expression. People high in victim sensitivity rated neutral and hostile faces more untrustworthy than people low in victim sensitivity, whereas no such effect was found for friendly faces. In Study 2, participants predicted the cooperativeness of 56 targets on the basis of minimal information. The accuracy of predictions was negatively related to victim sensitivity, and people high in victim sensitivity systematically underestimated targets' cooperativeness. Thus, the asymmetrical focus on untrustworthiness cues among victim-sensitive individuals seems to impair rather than improve their social judgments.     

The effect of exposure duration on visual character identification in single, whole, and partial report

The psychometric function of single-letter identification is typically described as a function of stimulus intensity. However, the effect of stimulus exposure duration on letter identification remains poorly described. This is surprising because the effect of exposure duration has played a central role in modeling performance in whole and partial report (Shibuya & Bundesen, 1988). Therefore, we experimentally investigated visual letter identification as a function of exposure duration. We compared the exponential, the gamma, and the Weibull psychometric functions, all with a temporal offset included, as well as the ex-Gaussian, the log-logistic, and finally the squared-logistic, which is a psychometric function that to our knowledge has not been described before. The log-logistic and the squared-logistic psychometric function fit well to experimental data. Also, we conducted an experiment to test the ability of the psychometric functions to fit single-letter identification data, at different stimulus contrast levels; also here the same psychometric functions prevailed. Finally, after insertion into Bundesen's Theory of Visual Attention (Bundesen, 1990), the same psychometric functions enable closer fits to data from a previous whole and partial report experiment.     

Dreyfus and Haugeland on Heidegger and Authenticity

This paper tries to read some structure into the perplexing diversity of the literature on Heidegger’s concept of authenticity. It argues that many of the interpretations available rely on views that are false and cannot be Heidegger’s. It also shows that the only correct interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of authenticity emerges from a synthesis of Dreyfus’ later interpretation and Haugeland’s interpretation of this concept. A synthesis of these interpretations yields an interpretation, according to which Dasein’s being is authentic only if it is capable of using tools or language in radically new ways.     

Using the variability of continuous relative phase as a measure to discriminate between healthy and injured runners

Several studies have used variability of continuous relative phase (CRP) to investigate overuse injuries, since low variability is thought to be related to running injuries. This study investigates whether the analysis of CRP variability leads to additional information about possible differences or similarities between healthy and injured runners. Further, a decision about future applications of CRP variability should be based on the ability to implement and interpret data. 18 healthy female runners (CO) and 18 female runners who suffered from iliotibial band syndrome (ITBS) were evaluated by calculating CRP variability for 4 coupling pairs. Besides analyzing continuous variability of CRP, we also averaged it for the whole stance phase and for four predefined stance phase intervals. Confidence intervals were displayed and independent t-tests for comparing the two groups were conducted. During initial and terminal stance phase as well as after heel-off an increase in CRP variability was detected for both groups of runners. In contrast, the foot flat period was characterized by stable joint coordination and a decrease in variability. This paper presents possible interpretations of CRP variability but no statistically significant differences in CRP variability were found between the two groups of runners. Despite the missing statistical significance, a relationship between high CRP variability and injury seems to be conceivable, since the injured runners demonstrated an increased variability for all couplings in the first half of the stance phase. Further application of CRP variability in biomechanical research is essential to determine whether a relationship exists between injury and coordination variability.     

Posttraumatic growth: why do people grow from their trauma?

In two experimental studies we found that participants who recalled a highly traumatic autobiographical event (trauma recall) compared with a lesser traumatic event (stress recall) reported having increasingly grown (posttraumatic growth, PTG). Moreover, participants who recalled a traumatic (vs. stressful) event perceived more death-related thoughts (Study 1) and reported coping with this event in a more emotion-focused and in a less problem-focused way (Study 2). Mediation analyzes revealed that the effect of trauma versus stress recall on PTG was mediated by emphasizing the positive, a subscale of emotion-focused coping. These results imply that growth resulting from traumatic events can be traced back to an illusion. No evidence was found that real PTG took place or that the effects shown resulted from death-related thoughts (terror management theory).     

The processing of inter-item relations as a moderating factor of retrieval-induced forgetting

We investigated influences of item generation and emotional valence on retrieval-induced forgetting. Drawing on postulates of the three-factor theory of generation effects, generation tasks differentially affecting the processing of inter-item relations were applied. Whereas retrieval-induced forgetting of freely generated items was moderated by the emotional valence as well as retrieval-induced forgetting of read items, even though in the reverse direction (Experiment 1), fragment completion eliminated the moderation of retrieval-induced forgetting by emotional valence (Experiment 2). The results corroborate the assumption that the processing of inter-item relations is crucial for the immunization against retrieval-induced forgetting. Moreover, differential processing of inter-item relations may clarify the mixed results on moderating factors of retrieval-induced forgetting that have been reported.