The Effects of Accumulated Underaccommodation on Perceptions of Underaccommodative Communication and Speakers

This study examined the effects of repeated instances of underaccommodation (i.e., insufficiently adjusted communication) on people's perceptions and evaluations of communication and speakers. Participants (N = 179) completed a series of three map‐based tasks that required them to follow directions that contained insufficient information. Consistent with hypotheses, as underaccommodation accumulated across tasks, participants inferred less positive motives for the speaker's communication, and inferences about motive for each task contributed directly and indirectly to overall evaluations of both the speaker and their communication. These results indicate that accumulated underaccommodation is consequential, and underscore the theoretical importance of motive attributions to predicting reactions to underaccommodation.     

Opinion Climates in Social Media: Blending Mass and Interpersonal Communication

Social media's capacity for users to generate, comment on, and forward content (including mass media messages) to other users has created new forms of mass interpersonal communication. These systems render observable processes underlying the formation of opinion climates. Five attributes of contemporary electronic opinion environments can alter the way users gauge, form, and express opinions on topics of public interest: the juxtaposition of mass media and user‐generated content, ideological homogeneity and heterogeneity of online networks, technical ease with which to express opinions, the reach of messages, and networked audiences. These attributes facilitate analysis of theoretical and empirical works from different scholarly traditions, suggesting lines of inquiry that can enrich the analysis of (public) opinion formation via current communication technologies.     

Power and Effectiveness: Envisioning an Alternate Paradigm

SUMMARY

Relational-Cultural Theory provides a straightforward and elegant definition of power; it is the capacity to produce change. The implication of this framework is that power is the energy of competence in everyday living. However, in a culture stratified along multiple dimensions-race, class, and sexual orientation to name a few–power is associated with hyper-competitiveness and deterministic control. The article begins by examining the “protective illusions” of the power-over paradigm, where humanity is rank ordered according to perceived cultural value and is stratified into groups of greater than and less than. In addition to exposing the false dichotomies of power-over arrangements, the article examines the destructive consequences of cultural disconnection, on both the putative winners and the losers. Examples from organizational practice, clinical relationships, and socio-political contexts are used to illustrate the Relational-Cultural Model in action. Specifically, scenarios are presented from the standpoint of the politically disempowered to demonstrate the relational competencies of empathic attunement, authenticity, and accountability that foster healing, resilience, and mutual empowerment. This article was originally presented at the 2002 Spring Training Institute sponsored by the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College.     

Religious toleration and the limits of liberal secularism: The case of India

ABSTRACT

In recent years there has been a resurgence of public discourse about the role of tolerance as one of the key elements of the Western philosophical heritage. The fact that Western societies remain largely oblivious to the importance and benefits of diversity points to the pitfalls of the liberal model of religious toleration. Jakob De Roover’s monograph ‘Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism’ offers a new analysis of the deficiencies of secularism and demonstrates why its application to other societies, such as India, is a problematic enterprise. This article argues that Comparative Political Theory has the potential to help forge new conceptual categories and analytical tools that can be utilized to explore diverse modes of tackling religious diversity and fostering tolerance.     

达尔文学说的膨胀与收缩

达尔文学说不仅能解释物种为什么是今天这个样子，而且还能解释人类为什么不能摆脱某些疾病。这说明达尔文学说已经成功地进入了医学领域。但达尔文学说所解释的演化是无方向、无目标的，而生物的进化却显然是有方向的，所以，对这一根本的进化问题，达尔文学实际上没有做出回答。     

How Change Happens: Controlling Images,Mutuality, and Power

SUMMARY

Change is inevitable but it can go in a positive direction toward growth or in a negative direction. Extending Patricia Hill Collins' concept of controlling images (2000), we can see how these images interact with relational images and strategies of disconnection to obstruct growth on both the societal and the personal level. In therapy, change is defined as movement-in-relationship toward better connection; and increased connection leads to growth. Several aspects of therapy that lead to deeper and wider connection are explored, especially increasing the patient's power. Prior versions of parts of this article were presented at the Jean Baker Miller Summer Training Institutes in 2001 and 2002 and at the 2002 Learning from Women Conference sponsored by the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute and the Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

As therapists, we're “in the business” of change–change for the better. That's our goal. Another word for change for the better is growth. Change is the essence of life. It is most obvious in children but it is a necessity through all of life. Change will occur inevitably but it can go in a positive or a negative direction. Further, I believe change toward growth creates pleasure. We feel most alive and zestful when we are engaged in this expanding activity.     

Responses of the human motor system to observing actions across species: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study

Ample evidence suggests that the role of the mirror neuron system (MNS) in monkeys is to represent the meaning of actions. The MNS becomes active in monkeys during execution, observation, and auditory experience of meaningful, object-oriented actions, suggesting that these cells represent the same action based on a variety of cues. The present study sought to determine whether the human motor system, part of the putative human MNS, similarly represents and reflects the meaning of actions rather than simply the mechanics of the actions. To this end, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of primary motor cortex was used to generate motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) from muscles involved in grasping while participants viewed object-oriented grasping actions performed by either a human, an elephant, a rat, or a body-less robotic arm. The analysis of MEP amplitudes suggested that activity in primary motor cortex during action observation was greatest during observation of the grasping actions of the rat and elephant, and smallest for the human and robotic arm. Based on these data, we conclude that the human action observation system can represent actions executed by non-human animals and shows sensitivity to species-specific differences in action mechanics.     

Interpersonal effects of parents and adolescents on each other’s health behaviours: a dyadic extension of the theory of planned behaviour

Objective: Interpersonal relationships are important predictors of health outcomes and interpersonal influences on behaviours may be key mechanisms underlying such effects. Most health behaviour theories focus on intrapersonal factors and may not adequately account for interpersonal influences. We evaluate a dyadic extension of the Theory of Planned Behaviour by examining whether parent and adolescent characteristics (attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and intentions) are associated with not only their own but also each other’s intentions/behaviours.

Design: Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, we analyse responses from 1717 parent-adolescent dyads from the Family Life, Activity, Sun, Health, and Eating study.

Main Outcome Measures: Adolescents/parents completed self-reports of their fruit and vegetable consumption, junk food and sugary drinks consumption, engagement in physical activity, and engagement in screen time sedentary behaviours.

Results: Parent/adolescent characteristics are associated with each other’s health-relevant intentions/behaviours above the effects of individuals’ own characteristics on their own behaviours. Parent/adolescent characteristics covary with each other’s outcomes with similar strength, but parent characteristics more strongly relate to adolescent intentions, whereas adolescent characteristics more strongly relate to parent behaviours.

Conclusions: Parents and adolescents may bidirectionally influence each other’s health intentions/behaviours. This highlights the importance of dyadic models of health behaviour and suggests intervention targets.     

Mental Rotation in False Belief Understanding

This study examines the spontaneous use of embodied egocentric transformation (EET) in understanding false beliefs in the minds of others. EET involves the participants mentally transforming or rotating themselves into the orientation of an agent when trying to adopt his or her visuospatial perspective. We argue that psychological perspective taking such as false belief reasoning may also involve EET because of what has been widely reported in the embodied cognition literature, showing that our processing of abstract, propositional information is often grounded in concrete bodily sensations which are not apparently linked to higher cognition. In Experiment 1, an agent placed a ball into one of two boxes and left. The ball then rolled out and moved either into the other box (new box) or back into the original one (old box). The participants were to decide from which box they themselves or the agent would try to recover the ball. Results showed that false belief performance was affected by increased orientation disparity between the participants and the agent, suggesting involvement of embodied transformation. In Experiment 2, false belief was similarly induced and the participants were to decide if the agent would try to recover the ball in one specific box. Orientation disparity was again found to affect false belief performance. The present results extend previous findings on EET in visuospatial perspective taking and suggest that false belief reasoning, which is a kind of psychological perspective taking, can also involve embodied rotation, consistent with the embodied cognition view.     

Does it always feel good to get what you want? Young children differentiate between material and wicked desires

One line of research on children's attributions of guilt suggests that 3‐year‐olds attribute negative emotion to self‐serving victimizers, slightly older children attribute happiness, and with increasing age, attributions become negative again (i.e., a three‐step model; Yuill et al., 1996, Br. J. Dev. Psychol., 14, 457). Another line of research provides reason to expect that 3‐year‐olds may be predisposed to view self‐serving moral transgression as leading to positive emotion; this is a linear developmental model in which emotion attributions to transgressors become increasingly negative over the course of childhood (e.g., Nunner‐Winkler & Sodian, 1988, Child Dev., 59, 1323). However, key differences in methodology make it difficult to compare across these findings. The present study was designed to address this problem. We asked how 3‐ to 9‐year‐old children (n = 111) reason about transgression scenarios that involve satisfying wicked desires (wanting to cause harm and doing so successfully) versus material desires (wanting an object and getting it successfully via harmful behaviour). Three‐year‐old children reasoned differently about desire and emotion across these two types of transgressions, attributing negative emotion in the case of wicked desires and positive emotion in the case of material desires. This pattern of emotion attribution by young children provides new information about how young children process information about desires and emotions in the moral domain, and it bridges a gap in the existing literature on this topic.