Looking a gift horse in the mouth as a defense against increasing intimacy

The authors hypothesize that people who fear dependence evidence a particular defensive bias by perceiving benefits received to have been less voluntarily given, which justifies not depending upon their partner. In Study 1, both members of married couples completed daily diaries regarding benefits they gave and received and the extent to which each was given involuntarily versus voluntarily. Avoidant attachment measured before marriage predicted perceiving one’s spouse to have given benefits less voluntarily, controlling for that spouse’s reports of how voluntarily benefits had been given. In Study 2, participants identified three specific benefits received from a friend. Days later, participants were primed with avoidant feelings or not before reporting the extent to which the benefits identified earlier had been given voluntarily. Participants primed to feel avoidant perceived their friend to have given them benefits less voluntarily than did the remaining participants.     

Passive‐Submissive and Active‐Emotional Trait Dependency: Evidence for a Two‐Factor Model

ABSTRACT Dependency plays an important role in both normal and abnormal personality, but the construct remains loosely defined, both in clinical practice and the research literature. Moreover, although a number of measures purport to measure trait dependency, little agreement exists as to the structure of dependency within or across these instruments. Furthermore, what constitutes the low end of trait dependency remains unclear. Five hundred nine undergraduates completed a battery of 14 dependency scales and subscales, a subset of whom (n=322) also completed a broad measure of personality pathology (SNAP‐2). Exploratory factor analysis of the dependency measures yielded two correlated factors—Passive‐Submissive and Active‐Emotional dependency—as well as a third, unrelated factor, Detachment/Autonomy, all with differential correlates to the pathological personality traits of the SNAP‐2. Taken together, these data suggest a clear, 2‐factor model for trait dependency that is distinct from detachment/autonomy.     

Creating false memories for events that occurred before versus after the offset of childhood amnesia

We examined whether false images and memories for childhood events are more likely when the event supposedly took place during the period of childhood amnesia. Over three interviews, participants recalled six events: five true and one false. Some participants were told that the false event happened when they were 2 years old (Age 2 group), while others were told that it happened when they were 10 years old (Age 10 group). We compared participants’ reports of the false event to their reports of a true event from the same age. Consistent with prior research on childhood amnesia, participants in the Age 10 group were more likely than participants in the Age 2 group to remember their true event and they reported more information about it. Participants in the Age 2 group, on the other hand, were more likely to develop false images and memories than participants in the Age 10 group. Furthermore, once a false image or memory developed, there were no age-related differences in the amount of information participants reported about the false event. We conclude that childhood amnesia increases our susceptibility to false suggestion, thus our results have implications for court cases where early memories are at issue.     

Adults' memories of childhood: Affect,knowing, and remembering

Adult questionnaire respondents reported, for each of a number of events, if they had experienced that event during childhood and, if so, if they remembered the experience or merely knew it had happened. Respondents also rated the emotion of each event and judged whether they would remember more about each reportedly experienced event if they spent more time trying to do so. Study 1 respondents were 96 undergraduates, whereas Study 2 tested 93 community members ranging widely in age. Respondents often reported no recollections of reportedly experienced events. Reportedly experienced events rated as emotional were more often recollected than those rated as neutral, and those rated as positive were more often recollected than those rated as negative. Predicted ability to remember more was related to current memory. Claims of remembering reportedly experienced events increased with age, but predicted ability to remember more about them declined with age.     

Kant's Theory of Judgment,and Judgments of Taste: On Henry Allison's Kant's Theory of Taste

An examination of the currently fashionable thesis that scientists, and especially biologists in the wake of the Darwinian Revolution, can now solve the problems that traditional philosophers have only talked about. Past philosophers, for example during the Enlightenment, have themselves made use of contemporary, scientific techniques and theories. The present claim may only be another such move, to be welcomed by philosophers who would distinguish themselves from rhetoricians. Others may prefer to stake out the merely human or subjective world as their field, identifying 'truth' with 'what it's better to believe'. Both moderns and postmoderns must abandon the rational realism that actually sustained Enlightenment endeavours, and Darwinian explanation, on its own, must erode traditional ethical values and the meta-ethical assumptions that sustain them. Universal humanism is only one possible project among many - and Darwinian reasonings suggest that it is hypocritical. In this crisis there may after all be a rôle for traditional, Platonizing philosophers, believing that there is a truth, and that we can find it out. Such a theory is actually better able to explain our scientific successes, and our evolutionary past.     

Waking‐up: A neglected model for the afterlife

An inquiry into the possibility that life‐after‐death be understood as waking from a shared dream into the real world. Attempts to outlaw the possibility that ‘really’ we are, e.g., vat‐brains are shown to lead to unwelcome, anti‐realist conclusions about either the world or consciousness. The unsatisfactory nature of empirically observable (Humean) causal connections suggests that real causes may be found beyond the world of our present experience. Though such a story cannot now be proved to be true, we are entitled to entertain it as a serious possibility. An attempt is made to say what life is like in the ‘Real World’, whether this be a spatial world like our present one or not, and what moral it holds for our present life. I suggest (like Plato) that there are many levels of waking, and that our ‘Real Self should not be identified simply with our present egos.     

Adult Age and Gender Differences in Perceptions of Facial Attractiveness: Beauty is in the Eye of the Older Beholder

The authors examined ratings of facial attractiveness, rankings of faces, and reasons given by young, middle-aged, and older men and women for young, middle-aged, and older male and female face attractiveness. No support for predictions derived from similarity, interest, and cohort hypotheses was obtained. In support of the expertise hypothesis, young and middle-aged adults rated younger faces as more attractive than old faces, whereas older adults rated all aged faces equally. In support of the crone hypothesis, older female faces were rated the lowest of all faces. Theoretical implications and real-world applications are discussed.