The Chinese Version of the Revised Creativity Domain Questionnaire (CDQ‐R): First Evidence for its Factorial Validity and Systematic Association with the Big Five

The present study examines the factor structure of a Chinese version of the Revised Creativity Domain Questionnaire (CDQ‐R; Kaufman, Waterstreet, Ailaouni, Whitcomb, Roe, & Riggs, 2009) as well as its relation to Big Five personality traits within a Chinese sample (N = 787). Analyses indicate the appropriateness of the Chinese version of the CDQ‐R in terms of internal consistency, factorial validity as well as convergent and divergent validity concerning the Big Five personality factors. Revealing some culture‐specific variation, confirmatory factor analysis indicated a slight superiority of a five‐factor model for this Chinese sample over the existing four‐factor model established with American samples. This higher level of differentiation in terms of one factor of the creativity domain could be explained on the basis of the specific characteristics of the Chinese culture.     

Seemings: still dispositions to believe

According to phenomenal conservatism, seemings can provide prima facie justification for beliefs. In order to fully assess phenomenal conservatism, it is important to understand the nature of seemings. Two views are that (SG) seemings are a sui generis propositional attitude, and that (D2B) seemings are nothing over and above dispositions to believe. Proponents of (SG) reject (D2B) in large part by providing four distinct objections against (D2B). First, seemings have a distinctive phenomenology, but dispositions to believe do not. Second, seemings can provide a non-trivial explanation for dispositions to believe, which wouldn’t be possible if seemings were dispositions to believe. Third, there are some dispositions to believe that are not seemings. Fourth, there are instances of seemings which are not dispositions to believe. I consider and reject each of these objections. The first and third objections rely on a misunderstanding of (D2B). The second objection fails because there are contexts in which an appeal to a previously unknown identity can provide an interesting explanation. The fourth objection overlooks the possibility of finkish and masked dispositions, phenomena which are widely accepted in the dispositions literature. I conclude that (D2B) escapes these common objections unscathed.     

How Emotional Media Reports Influence Attitude Formation and Change: The Interplay of Attitude Base,Attitude Certainty,and Persuasion

This study examined the influence of an emotionally arousing writing style on attitude formation and change. It has been proposed that different writing styles induce attitudes based on either affect or cognition and with either high or low certainty. Previous work indicates that the interplay of these attitude characteristics determines the persuasiveness of emotional and rational media appeals. To test the hypotheses, participants in an experimental study read articles from a magazine about a fictitious attitude object. In the first step, 4 different types of attitudes varying in base and level of certainty were induced through a respectively manipulated article. In the second step, these attitudes were challenged by an additional article, which presented either an emotional or rational persuasive appeal. The results supported hypotheses on attitude induction through media stimuli and 3 of 4 hypotheses regarding the persuasiveness of emotionally and rationally written articles.     

How to Come to Terms With the Shadows of the Past in the Treatment of Third-Generation Patients: A Commentary on Orna Guralnik’s Paper “The Dead Baby”

The peculiarity of Orna Guralnik’s case study lay in the fact that the German patient whose grandparents were Nazis and whose parents were in their ideas affected by Nazi ideology is being treated by a Jewish analyst. Both patient and analyst belong to the so-called third generation. In my commentary I emphasize the significance of processes of transgenerational identification, and I try to show how a countertransference enactment developed in this treatment. The burden of the traumatic history of the Germans and the Jews was, in this case, too heavy and preoccupied the analyst. Such countertransference enactments occur repeatedly during psychoanalytic treatment when the subject is about involvement in the Holocaust and Second World War and its consequences for subsequent generations.     

Cointegration methodology for psychological researchers: An introduction to the analysis of dynamic process systems

Longitudinal data analysis focused on internal characteristics of a single time series has attracted increasing interest among psychologists. The systemic psychological perspective suggests, however, that many long-term phenomena are mutually interconnected, forming a dynamic system. Hence, only multivariate methods can handle such human dynamics appropriately. Unlike the majority of time series methodologies, the cointegration approach allows interdependencies of integrated (i.e., extremely unstable) processes to be modelled. This advantage results from the fact that cointegrated series are connected by stationary long-run equilibrium relationships. Vector error-correction models are frequently used representations of cointegrated systems. They capture both this equilibrium and compensation mechanisms in the case of short-term deviations due to developmental changes. Thus, the past disequilibrium serves as explanatory variable in the dynamic behaviour of current variables. Employing empirical data from cognitive psychology, psychosomatics, and marital interaction research, this paper describes how to apply cointegration methods to dynamic process systems and how to interpret the parameters under investigation from a psychological perspective.     

Measuring the speed of recognising facially expressed emotions

Faces provide identity- and emotion-related information-basic cues for mastering social interactions. Traditional models of face recognition suggest that following a very first initial stage the processing streams for facial identity and expression depart. In the present study we extended our previous multivariate investigations of face identity processing abilities to the speed of recognising facially expressed emotions. Analyses are based on a sample of N=151 young adults. First, we established a measurement model with a higher order factor for the speed of recognising facially expressed emotions (SRE). This model has acceptable fit without specifying emotion-specific relations between indicators. Next, we assessed whether SRE can be reliably distinguished from the speed of recognising facial identity (SRI) and found latent factors for SRE and SRI to be perfectly correlated. In contrast, SRE and SRI were both only moderately related to a latent factor for the speed of recognising non-face stimuli (SRNF). We conclude that the processing of facial stimuli-and not the processing of facially expressed basic emotions-is the critical component of SRE. These findings are at variance with suggestions of separate routes for processing facial identity and emotional facial expressions and suggest much more communality between these streams as far as the aspect of processing speed is concerned.     

Implicit word learning benefits from semantic richness: electrophysiological and behavioral evidence

Words differ considerably in the amount of associated semantic information. Despite the crucial role of meaning in language, it is still unclear whether and how this variability modulates language learning. Here, we provide initial evidence demonstrating that implicit learning in repetition priming is influenced by the amount of semantic features associated with a given word. Electroencephalographic recordings were obtained while participants performed a visual lexical decision task; the complete stimulus set was repeated once. Repetition priming effects on performance accuracy and the N400 component of the event-related brain potential were enhanced for words with many semantic features. These findings suggest a novel and important impact of the richness of semantic representations on learning and plasticity within the lexical-conceptual system; they are discussed in their relevance for assumptions concerning basic mechanisms underlying word learning.     

Independence of data-driven and conceptually driven priming: the case of person recognition

A central tenet of current memory theories is the independence of data-driven and conceptually driven priming. Although these types of repetition priming have different functional properties, it has remained unclear whether they are independent and additive or interact with each other. Therefore, we orthogonally combined these priming types in two experiments requiring occupation judgments for celebrities, represented by their faces or names. In both experiments, the sum of the effects of separate data-driven priming and conceptually driven priming equaled the effect of the combination of these priming types. These findings demonstrate for the first time the independence of data-driven and conceptually driven priming and so confirm a central tenet of current memory theories. This independence may thus be an important element for the development of future overarching memory theories.