Playing prosocial video games increases empathy and decreases schadenfreude

Past research provided abundant evidence that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive tendencies and decreases prosocial tendencies. In contrast, research on the effects of exposure to prosocial video games has been relatively sparse. The present research found support for the hypothesis that exposure to prosocial video games is positively related to prosocial affect and negatively related to antisocial affect. More specifically, two studies revealed that playing a prosocial (relative to a neutral) video game increased interpersonal empathy and decreased reported pleasure at another's misfortune (i.e., schadenfreude). These results lend further credence to the predictive validity of the General Learning Model (Buckley & Anderson, 2006) for the effects of media exposure on social tendencies.     

Privileged, Typical, or not even that? – Our Place in the World According to the Copernican and the Cosmological Principles

Summary  If we are to constrain our place in the world, two principles are often appealed to in science. According to the Copernican Principle, we do not occupy a privileged position within the Universe. The Cosmological Principle, on the other hand, says that our observations would roughly be the same, if we were located at any other place in the Universe. In our paper we analyze these principles from a logical and philosophical point of view. We show how they are related, how they can be supported and what use is made of them. Our main results are: 1. There is a logical gap between both principles insofar as the Cosmological Principle is significantly stronger than the Copernican Principle. 2. A step that is often taken for establishing the Cosmological Principle on the base of the Copernican Principle and observations is not incontestable as it stands, but can be supplemented with a different argument. 3. The Cosmological Principle might be crucial for cosmology to the extent it is not supported by empirical evidence.     

Verbatim and Semantic Imitation in Indexing Resources on the Web: A Fuzzy‐trace Account of Social Tagging

Social tagging is a widespread phenomenon on the Web allowing users to tag resources, such as photos, by freely chosen labels. Imitation of other users' tagging behavior is deemed to increase the inter‐individual consistency of tag assignments. Both verbatim and semantic mechanisms have been proposed where the first case suggests reuse of the exact words and the second reuse of the concept without necessarily the word form. Here, we present a multinomial model of assigning tags that integrates these perspectives. On the basis of the fuzzy‐trace theory, the model includes separate parameters for the retrieval of verbatim and gist traces of encountered tags. Results of two experiments demonstrate that both types of memory traces contribute substantially and independently to tag productions. We conclude that the imitation of tags may be explained within one fuzzy‐trace framework that contributes to our understanding of emergent phenomena in social information systems. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Transportation Scale–Short Form (TS–SF)

One popular concept to capture the experience of being immersed into the world of a story is that of transportation. This article examines the factorial validity of the Transportation Scale (TS) and introduces a short and psychometrically sound alternative for the assessment of transportation. Exploratory bifactor modeling in Study 1 (N = 179) provided support for the hypothesized factor structure of the original TS with three facets and a general transportation factor. Based on these analyses, a six-item short version of the scale, the Transportation Scale–Short Form (TS–SF), was developed. Study 2 (N = 131 and N = 246) as well as Study 3 (N = 301) corroborated the short form's factorial structure, reliability, and validity.     

The world's biggest salad bowl: Facebook connecting cultures

A correlational study on Facebook investigated the relationship between virtual intergroup contact and general attitudes toward diverse out‐groups. A so‐called Facebook application retrieved objective data about the intercultural composition of participants' Facebook networks. The exact percentage of out‐group friends correlated significantly with more favorable out‐group attitudes. This relationship was mediated by humanitarian‐egalitarian values, suggesting that having intercultural friends on Facebook is positively linked to value orientations, which in turn are associated with more favorable intergroup attitudes. In addition, identification with one's own national group and real‐life experience abroad did not moderate the results. Overall, although causation cannot be inferred because of the correlational design of our study, results suggest that virtual intergroup contact may positively affect attitudes.     

Measuring Spiritual Needs in a Secular Society: Validation and Clinimetric Properties of the Danish 20-Item Spiritual Needs Questionnaire

Journal of Religion and Health - In secular cultures, such as Denmark, tools to measure spiritual needs are warranted to guide existential and spiritual care. We examined the clinimetric properties...     

The Deductive-Nomological Account of Metaphysical Explanation

The paper explores a deductive-nomological account of metaphysical explanation: some truths metaphysically explain, or ground, another truth just in case the laws of metaphysics determine the latter truth on the basis of the former. I develop and motivate a specific conception of metaphysical laws, on which they are general rules that regulate the existence and features of derivative entities. I propose an analysis of the notion of ‘determination via the laws’, based on a restricted form of logical entailment. I argue that the DN-account of ground can be defended against the well-known objections to the DN-approach to scientific explanation. The goal of the paper is to show that the DN-account of metaphysical explanation is a well-motivated and defensible theory.     

Not my future? Core values and the neural representation of future events

Individuals with pronounced self-transcendence values have been shown to put greater weight on the long-term consequences of their actions when making decisions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the evaluation of events occurring several decades in the future as well as the role of core values in these processes. Thirty-six participants viewed a series of events, consisting of potential consequences of climate change, which could occur in the near future (around 2030), and thus would be experienced by the participants themselves, or in the far future (around 2080). We observed increased activation in anterior VMPFC (BA11), a region involved in encoding the personal significance of future events, when participants were envisioning far future events, demonstrating for the first time that the role of the VMPFC in future projection extends to the time scale of decades. Importantly, this activation increase was observed only in participants with pronounced self-transcendence values measured by self-report questionnaire, as shown by a statistically significant interaction of temporal distance and value structure. These findings suggest that future projection mechanisms are modulated by self-transcendence values to allow for a more extensive simulation of far future events. Consistent with this, these participants reported similar concern ratings for near and far future events, whereas participants with pronounced self-enhancement values were more concerned about near future events. Our findings provide a neural substrate for the tendency of individuals with pronounced self-transcendence values to consider the long-term consequences of their actions.