Schizophrenia and B-lymphocyte alteration--a hypothesis

We studied the immunglobulin synthesis of peripheral blood lymphocytes of healthy blood donors and of patients suffering from acute schizophrenia and endogenous depression. The detection of cytoplasmic immunglobulins was performed by immunofluorescence. The schizophrenic patients showed an increased immunglobulin synthesis without cultivation of lymphocytes, after cultivation for 7 days and after pokeweed mitogen stimulation. This activation of B cells could be the result of disturbances in the prostaglandin formation and activation.     

The moral behavior of ethics professors: A replication-extension in German-speaking countries

What is the relation between ethical reflection and moral behavior? Does professional reflection on ethical issues positively impact moral behaviors? To address these questions, Schwitzgebel and Rust empirically investigated if philosophy professors engaged with ethics on a professional basis behave any morally better or, at least, more consistently with their expressed values than do non-ethicist professors. Findings from their original US-based sample indicated that neither is the case, suggesting that there is no positive influence of ethical reflection on moral action. In the study at hand, we attempted to cross-validate this pattern of results in the German-speaking countries and surveyed 417 professors using a replication-extension research design. Our results indicate a successful replication of the original effect that ethicists do not behave any morally better compared to other academics across the vast majority of normative issues. Yet, unlike the original study, we found mixed results on normative attitudes generally. On some issues, ethicists and philosophers even expressed more lenient attitudes. However, one issue on which ethicists not only held stronger normative attitudes but also reported better corresponding moral behaviors was vegetarianism.     

The processing of affectively valenced stimuli: The role of surprise

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the surprise mechanism activates a threat detection system that prioritises the processing of threat-related stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants responded to a dot that appeared during the presentation of two words. In the critical trial, one of the two words was either pleasant or unpleasant. In Experiment 2, depending on the condition, the participants had to decide whether at least one of two simultaneously presented pictures depicted either a pleasant or an unpleasant stimulus. In the critical trial, both a pleasant and an unpleasant picture appeared. In both experiments, the stimuli in the critical trial were presented either during routine behaviour or in the context of a surprising event. The results showed that during routine behaviour unpleasant stimuli received more attentive resources than pleasant stimuli only if the affective valence of the stimuli was action-relevant (Experiment 2). In contrast, in the context of surprise, unpleasant words engaged more attentive resources than pleasant words although they were action-irrelevant (Experiment 1). In addition, in the context of surprise, the decision time increase was more pronounced in the pleasant than in the unpleasant experimental group. This finding was interpreted as evidence that the threat detection system of the surprise mechanism initially searches for a threat-related stimulus.