Harm that does not hurt: Humour in coping with self-threat

We examined the affective and cognitive impact of humour on coping with self-threat. Research was based on an incongruity concept of humour that specifies humour as a state resulting from appraising an aversive incident as both harmful and as acceptable. An appraisal related procedural priming paradigm was used to induce humour. In Study 1 (N = 41 female students) the impact of humour on positive and negative affect following self-threat was examined. In Study 2 (N = 52 students; 94% women) we investigated the consequences of humour for a self-serving interpretation of failure, the awareness of harm, and subsequent performance. Relative to the control condition, humour increased positive affect, while not exclusively affecting negative affect, and increased the tendency for an external attribution of failure, while harm was clearly recognized. However, humour led to poorer subsequent performance, suggesting that humour may also have its costs.     

Assessing the merits and faults of holistic and disaggregated judgments

Three studies explored both the advantages of and subjects' preferences for a disaggregated judgment procedure and a holistic one. The task in our first two studies consisted of evaluating colleges; the third study asked participants to evaluate job applicants. Holistic ratings consisted of providing an overall evaluation while considering all of the characteristics of the evaluation objects; disaggregated ratings consisted of evaluating each cue independently. Participants also made paired comparisons of the evaluation objects. We constructed preference orders for the disaggregated method by aggregating these ratings (unweighted or weighted characteristics). To compare the holistic, disaggregated, and weighted‐disaggregated method we regressed the four cues on the participant's holistic rating, on the linearly aggregated disaggregated ratings, and on the average weighted disaggregated rating, using the participant's “importance points” for each cue as weights. Both types of combined disaggregated ratings related more closely to the cues in terms of proportion of variance accounted for in Experiments 1 and 2. In addition, the disaggregated ratings were more closely related to the paired‐comparison orderings, but Experiment 2 showed that this was true for a small set (10) but not a large set (60) of evaluation objects. Experiment 3 tested the “gamesmanship” hypothesis: People prefer holistic ratings because it is easier to incorporate illegitimate but appealing criteria into one's judgment. The results suggested that the disaggregated procedure generally produced sharper distinctions between the most relevant and least relevant cues. Participants in all three of these studies preferred the holistic ratings despite their statistical inferiority. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transition to young adulthood: A prospective study

In this paper, the authors report on the transition to young adulthood (18-25) in the highest functioning 18 individuals in our cohort (GAF 90) from a prospective longitudinal study of 76 lives followed from birth. These 18 individuals provide as clear a view as possible into the inner lives of people least distorted by psychopathology. This gives us a more crystalline photograph of psychic structure: the precipitant of family, society and psyche itself. Using a standard DSM IV criterion, Global Assessment Functioning (GAF), provides phenomenological homogeneity, but leaves us with heterogeneity of inner life. The 18 individuals had relatively rare drug or alcohol use and less sexual partners. Vocational functioning exceeded intimacy. Four had tumultuous pathways into adulthood. Nine were crossover cases, coming from sub-optimal mothering, with significant variation in gender distribution and intrapsychic structure. The paper discusses factors facilitating and inhibiting development and the nature of memories.     

Student teachers’ competence and career certainty: the effects of career anxiety and perceived control

In comparison to other professional faculties, student teachers are less certain about their career decisions. Consequently, examining the factors that influence their perceptions of career competence and certainty may be beneficial for their professional development. We examined how student teachers’ (n = 194) gender, grade of instruction, practicum, career anxiety, and perceived control affected their career competence and certainty. Anxiety had large and negative effects on competence and certainty. In contrast, primary control enhanced competence whereas secondary control enhanced certainty. High-practicum ratings were also associated with greater competence and certainty; however, these effects were mediated by anxiety and perceived control. These findings help us understand the transition that student teachers make from studentship to becoming professional teachers.     

A Letter to Mom During CPE

This article is a fictional letter. A seminarian writes to his mother during his Clinical Pastoral Education internship at a mental hospital, and the letter raises a number of issues, including the nature of the Bible, the essence of salvation (and Hell), the role of evangelism, and the sexual dynamics of the counseling relationship. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience is mentioned, and cultural questions regarding psychology are raised. There are other avenues to be explored, but the reader might start by reflecting on the issues noted.Nathan S. Carlin has been a graduate student at Princeton Seminary and has worked closely with Donald Capps and Robert Dykstra, leading scholars in the field of pastoral psychology. Carlin has published numerous articles as a Master of Divinity student. He is now a graduate student in Religious Studies at Rice University. Correspondence to Nathan Steven Carlin, 1515 Bissonnet Street, Unit 186, Houston, TX 77005-1629, USA; e-mail: Nathan.Carlin@rice.edu     

The Evolution of John Nash's Male Melancholia: From Honor to Hope to Humor

This article is a response to the psychoanalytic study of mathematical genius John Nash by Donald Capps, and I apply Capps's own theory of male melancholia to John Nash. Capps interpreted Nash's life by dividing it into three phases: 1) predelusional; 2) delusional; and 3) postdelusional. I correlate Capps's three forms of male religiousness (i.e., honor, hope, and humor) with these three phases, respectively. The explanatory value of this interpretation is that it locates Capps's psychobiography of Nash within Capps's larger writings, thus providing an understanding of Nash as a deeply (if unconventionally) religious man.     

Whitehead's onto-epistemology of perception and its significance for consciousness studies

The question of how “inner” states can be elucidated with reference to external phenomena receives, within Whitehead's coordinates, a twofold answer. First, a macro-analysis spelling out the characteristics of everyday perception and conceptualizing its conditions of possibility. Second, a micro-analysis questioning the ontological background of what is phenomenologically given. The conclusion underlines the main consequences of panexperientialism for Consciousness Studies.     

Positive versus negative face recognition decisions: confidence,accuracy, and response latency

A large amount of eyewitness identification and face recognition research has investigated the confidence–accuracy (CA) relationship. One consistent finding is that positive recognition decisions (or choosers) demonstrate superior CA calibration to negative recognition decisions (or non‐choosers). This experiment tested whether an explanation of this difference, based on the information available for confidence judgements, accounted for the pattern of CA calibration in positive and negative face recognition decisions. CA calibration for positive and negative decisions was compared for both item and associative recognition judgements. Significantly greater resolution was observed for positive decisions in both the item and associative conditions. Similarly, for both judgement types, positive decisions evidenced a stronger response latency–accuracy relationship than negative decisions. Implications for diagnosing the accuracy of eyewitness identification are discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceived legitimacy of intergroup status differences: its prediction by relative ingroup prototypicality

Research demonstrates that the perceived legitimacy of intergroup status differences has profound effects on intergroup attitudes, emotions and behavior. However, there has only been little intergroup research that predicts the perception of legitimacy. We hypothesize that the perception of legitimate or illegitime status relations depends upon the perceived relative prototypicality of the ingroup for the inclusive category. Since the prototype of the inclusive category provides a normative comparison standard for subgroup evaluation, similarity to this standard (i.e. prototypicality) should be positively evaluated and used to justify high status. A first study in a natural intergroup context (N = 67) offered correlational data in support of the predicted relationship. The second study (N = 60), using Germans as ingroup with Poles as outgroup and Europe as inclusive category, demonstrated that the link between prototypicality and legitimacy is contingent upon the valence of the inclusive category. In order to elucidate the causal direction, the third study manipulated relative prototypicality in an artificial intergroup context (N = 94) and introduced status as a moderator variable. Overall, we found strong support for the hypothesis that legitimacy is related to prototypicality and that this relation is moderated by ingroup status and valence of the inclusive category. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unification And Explanation

In this article we criticize two recent articles that examinethe relation between explanation and unification. Halonen and Hintikka (1999), on the one hand,claim that no unification is explanation. Schurz (1999), on the other hand, claims that all explanationis unification. We give counterexamples to both claims. We propose a pluralistic approach to the problem:explanation sometimes consists in unification, but in other cases different kinds of explanation(e.g., causal explanation) are required; and none of these kinds is more fundamental.