Ethical Judgments of Counselors: Results From a Turkish Sample

The present study examined the ethical judgements of Turkish counselors (N = 767) using a translation of the Gibson and Pope (1993) ethical judgements survey. Items predominantly judged as ethical and unethical, and group differences regarding gender, taking ethics as a course, professional affiliation, and level of academic degree, were investigated. Chi-square analysis, Fishers’s exact test, and Fisher–Freeman–Halton tests were used in statistical analysis. Results revealed that participants predominantly judged breach of confidentiality in cases of child abuse and potential harm toward oneself or others as ethical. Items concerning sexual dual relationships were predominantly perceived as unethical, and male participants were more likely to judge items regarding sexual and nonsexual dual relationships as ethical. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

The effect of stimulus variability on children's judgements of quantity

This study investigates the effect of stimulus variability on development of the ability to make quantity judgements related to area. Participants were 241 children (aged 4, 5, 6, 8, and 12 years) and 82 university students, who were asked to compare the quantities in 2 sets of 5 chocolate bars of constant width but variable length. Participants indicated which set contained more chocolate or that the amounts of chocolate were equal. Judgement accuracy of 12-year-olds and adults decreased monotonically as the variance of bar lengths increased. In younger children, performance was low when variance was very low or very high, but accuracy was higher for intermediate levels of variance, thus resulting in an inverted U-shaped effect. This pattern was confirmed in a second experiment in which we controlled for a possible age-related response bias against “equal” judgements. Findings suggest that judgements of quantity are based on a mixture of learned heuristics and comparisons of approximate quantity representations, both of which develop throughout childhood.     

Reasoning in moral conflicts

Following the assumptions of the mental model theory and its account of moral judgements, we argue for a main role of reasoning in moral judgements, especially in dealing with moral conflicts. In four experiments, we invited adult participants to evaluate scenarios describing moral or immoral actions. Our results confirm the predictions deriving from our assumptions: Given a moral or immoral scenario, the manipulation of the propositions which refer to norms and values results in a scenario eliciting a moral conflict (Experiment 1); when invited to create conflict versions from no-conflict versions of moral or immoral scenarios, individuals manipulate the propositions in the scenario which describe norms and values rather than emotional factors (Experiment 2); the evaluation of conflict scenarios takes longer than the evaluation of no-conflict scenarios (Experiment 3), and this is because conflict scenarios involve more deliberative reasoning (Experiment 4). We discuss our results in relation to competing theories of moral judgements.     

Dissimilarity cumulation theory in smoothly connected spaces

This is the third paper in the series introducing the Dissimilarity Cumulation theory and its main psychological application, Universal Fechnerian Scaling. The previously developed dissimilarity-based theory of path length is used to construct the notion of a smooth path, defined by the property that the ratio of the dissimilarity between its points to the length of the subtended fragment of the path tends to unity as the points get closer to each other. We consider a class of stimulus spaces in which for every path there is a series of piecewise smooth paths converging to it pointwise and in length; and a subclass of such spaces where any two sufficiently close points can be connected by a smooth “geodesic in the small”. These notions are used to construct a broadly understood Finslerian geometry of stimulus spaces representable by regions of Euclidean n-spaces. With an additional assumption of comeasurability in the small between the canonical psychometric increments of the first and second kind, this establishes a link between Universal Fechnerian Scaling and Multidimensional Fechnerian Scaling in Euclidean n-spaces. The latter was a starting point for our theoretical program generalizing Fechner’s idea that sensation magnitudes can be computed by integration of a local discriminability measure.     

不同类型美感体验的自主反应特点

不同美感体验类型有何特异的生理反应？美感的生理反应是否类似于积极情绪？本研究以音乐和图片两类材料为刺激,以心率、皮肤电为生理反应指标,测量了不同审美状态下的自主生理反应情况。结果发现：不论是听觉还是视觉通道,优美、壮美、悲剧、喜剧4种审美风格的刺激都使被试心率和皮肤电下降;不同的美感形态所引起的反应不同,喜剧和壮美风格刺激诱发的自主生理反应变化相对于其他两种风格显得更明显,喜剧风格效果尤为突出;不同美感体验类型特异生理反应具有跨通道的一致性;四种美感体验类型的生理反应都不同于消极情绪,而类似积极情绪,从生理反应视角证明了美感体验递属于积极情绪。     

‘Well‐being’ through reading: drawing upon literature and literacy in spiritual education

In this paper reading is conceived as a spiritual gift that can help readers towards an understanding of being. The image of the well and the act of drawing water is employed to illustrate the relation of the spiritual and the aesthetic. The term ‘well‐being’ in relation to reading is used here to draw attention to the importance of ontology in both reading and spiritual education. How readers can practice reading as a spiritual gift is explored with reference to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), reader‐response theory and selected biblical passages.     

Facial first impressions from another angle: How social judgements are influenced by changeable and invariant facial properties

First impressions made to photographs of faces can depend as much on momentary characteristics of the photographed image (within‐person variability) as on consistent properties of the face of the person depicted (between‐person variability). Here, we examine two important sources of within‐person variability: emotional expression and viewpoint. We find more within‐person variability than between‐person variability for social impressions of key traits of trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness, which index the main dimensions in theoretical models of facial impressions. The most important source of this variability is the emotional expression of the face, but the viewpoint of the photograph also affects impressions and modulates the effects of expression. For example, faces look most trustworthy with a happy expression when they are facing the perceiver, compared to when they are facing elsewhere, whereas the opposite is true for anger and disgust. Our findings highlight the integration of these different sources of variability in social impression formation.     

Can Sadness Be Good for You?

The subtle relationship between feeling and thinking, affect and cognition has fascinated philosophers and writers since time immemorial, yet, empirical research on this topic was relatively neglected by psychologists until recently. There have been many claims emphasising the beneficial cognitive and behavioural consequences of positive affect. Many recent works suggest that negative affect may also facilitate optimal performance in many situations, consistent with evolutionary theories suggesting the adaptive signalling function of various affective states. This paper reviews traditional and current psychological theories linking affect to social thinking and behaviour. A variety of empirical studies from our laboratory will also be presented, demonstrating that in many situations, negative affect promotes optimal performance in cognitive and social tasks, including tasks such as memory, social judgements, motivation, and strategic interpersonal behaviours. These results will be interpreted in terms of a dual‐process theory that predicts that negative affect promotes a more accommodative, vigilant, and externally focused thinking strategy. The relevance of these findings for recent affect–cognition theories will be discussed, and the practical implications of negative affect promoting improved social thinking and performance in a number of applied fields will be considered.     

Beauty,the social network1

Aesthetic values give agents reasons to perform not only acts of contemplation, but also acts like editing, collecting, and conserving. Moreover, aesthetic agents rarely operate solo: they conduct their business as integral members of networks of other aesthetic agents. The consensus theory of aesthetic value, namely that an item’s aesthetic value is its power to evoke a finally valuable experience in a suitable spectator, can explain neither the range of acts performed by aesthetic agents nor the social contexts in which they operate. This paper proposes a new theory of aesthetic value specifically to explain facts about the sociality of aesthetic agents.     

Caffeine cravings impair memory and metacognition

Cravings for food and other substances can impair cognition. We extended previous research by testing the effects of caffeine cravings on cued-recall and recognition memory tasks, and on the accuracy of judgements of learning (JOLs; predicted future recall) and feeling-of-knowing (FOK; predicted future recognition for items that cannot be recalled). Participants (N?=?55) studied word pairs (POND-BOOK) and completed a cued-recall test and a recognition test. Participants made JOLs prior to the cued-recall test and FOK judgements prior to the recognition test. Participants were randomly allocated to a craving or control condition; we manipulated caffeine cravings via a combination of abstinence, cue exposure, and imagery. Cravings impaired memory performance on the cued-recall and recognition tasks. Cravings also impaired resolution (the ability to distinguish items that would be remembered from those that would not) for FOK judgements but not JOLs, and reduced calibration (correspondence between predicted and actual accuracy) for JOLs but not FOK judgements. Additional analysis of the cued-recall data suggested that cravings also reduced participants’ ability to monitor the likely accuracy of answers during the cued-recall test. These findings add to prior research demonstrating that memory strength manipulations have systematically different effects on different types of metacognitive judgements.