And deplete us not into temptation: Automatic attitudes, dietary restraint, and self-regulatory resources as determinants of eating behavior

Linking contemporary models of self-regulation to recent research on automatic attitudes, the present study investigated the impact of automatic candy attitudes, dietary restraint standards, and self-regulation resources on eating behavior. Participants were assigned to either an emotion suppression task (low self-regulation resources) or an emotion flow task (high self-regulation resources), and were then given an opportunity to taste candies. When self-regulation resources were high, candy consumption was uniquely related to dietary restraint standards (but not automatic candy attitudes). In contrast, when self-regulation resources were low, candy consumption was primarily predicted by automatic candy attitudes, with dietary restraint standards showing a tendency for counterintentional effects. These results indicate that the behavioral impact of automatic attitudes and personal standards depends on available control resources. Implications for research on automatic attitudes and self-regulation are discussed.     

Russische Philosophen und Rousseau in derFilosofskaja Enciklopedija

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Transdiagnostische Fertigkeiten in Abhängigkeit vom Behandlungssetting

Transdiagnostic skills (e.g. skills such as emotion regulation or social competence) are an important part of psychotherapy in outpatient as well as inpatient settings. To date there are no studies that answer the question whether both patient groups are comparable regarding several skills or if they differ. In the present study 102 outpatients were compared to 183 inpatients in 7 different skills. The difference between the two groups was smaller than a priori assumed. At the beginning of treatment inpatients had a lower ability to manage stress (mainly in the management of exhaustion). This could be interpreted as an indication that inpatients have more difficulties in coping with daily hassles which leads to greater exhaustion. To conclude, the improvement of skills should attract interest in both settings. Furthermore, a special focus on interventions to decrease deficits in stress management should be considered for in-patient treatment.     

NON‐CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE

The paper is an investigation into the prospects of an epistemology of non‐conceptual knowledge. According to the orthodox view, knowledge requires concepts and belief. I present several arguments to the effect that there is non‐conceptual, non‐doxastic knowledge, the obvious candidate for such knowledge being non‐conceptual perception. Non‐conceptual perception seems to be allowed for by cognitive scientists and it exhibits the central role features of knowledge—it plays the knowledge role: it respects an anti‐luck condition, it is an achievement, it enables one to act for a reason, and it provides justification. Furthermore, it makes a straightforward and elegant explanation of (doxastic) perceptual knowledge possible: doxastic perceptual knowledge builds on non‐conceptual perception as non‐conceptual knowledge. Three objections that might naturally arise will be discussed and answered. Thus, the prospects of an epistemology without belief seem to be much better than the orthodoxy wants to have it. We can extend knowledge into the non‐conceptual realm.     

LQTS Parents’ Reflections About Genetic Risk Knowledge and their Need to Know or Not to Know their Children’s Carrier Status

Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a contributor to unexplained deaths in infants (SIDS), children, teenagers and young adults. A gene test result may allow for individual tailored treatment, but also pose a burden of knowing one’s carrier status, with no treatment recommendation. Genetic risk knowledge in the case of LQTS can promote adjustment and coping, but also fear anxiety, ambivalence and moral dilemmas. This makes it challenging to respect both the right to know and the right not to know. The purpose of this study was to explore LQTS parents’ perception of genetic knowledge, and their need to know or not to know about their children’s carrier status. Qualitative, semi structured interviews were conducted with thirteen parents of LQTS-children. Results show that parents found it important to know the result of a gene test for LQTS including their children’s carrier status. The risk was framed and incorporated into their everyday life and their life perspectives. Pertinent moral dilemmas concerned information disclosure to children and relatives. Parents thought that early and gradual disclosure to children would promote coping. Parents’ moral dilemmas were rarely addressed during encounters with healthcare providers. The participants had several suggestions for improvement in that regard.     

Avoid violence,rioting, and outrage; approach celebration,delight, and strength: Using large text corpora to compute valence,arousal, and the basic emotions

Ever since Aristotle discussed the issue in Book II of his Rhetoric, humans have attempted to identify a set of “basic emotion labels”. In this paper we propose an algorithmic method for evaluating sets of basic emotion labels that relies upon computed co-occurrence distances between words in a 12.7-billion-word corpus of unselected text from USENET discussion groups. Our method uses the relationship between human arousal and valence ratings collected for a large list of words, and the co-occurrence similarity between each word and emotion labels. We assess how well the words in each of 12 emotion label sets—proposed by various researchers over the past 118 years—predict the arousal and valence ratings on a test and validation dataset, each consisting of over 5970 items. We also assess how well these emotion labels predict lexical decision residuals (LDRTs), after co-varying out the effects attributable to basic lexical predictors. We then demonstrate a generalization of our method to determine the most predictive “basic” emotion labels from among all of the putative models of basic emotion that we considered. As well as contributing empirical data towards the development of a more rigorous definition of basic emotions, our method makes it possible to derive principled computational estimates of emotionality—specifically, of arousal and valence—for all words in the language.     

Psychologische Analysen hirnpathologischer Fälle

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

From Unemployment to Employment and Back: Professional Trajectories and Well-Being

Applied Research in Quality of Life - So far, only few studies have considered different aspects of well-being in studying losing or gaining employment. We examined life satisfaction, mental...