How rejection of essences expresses despair

The Self and the ego in Jung's psychology are an instance of what Edmund Husserl called a 'double intentionality': one tending toward meaning is distinct from another tending toward meaning, yet they are reciprocally inseparable from each other. As perception in a present moment and memory of a past are impossible without each other, so an intending of ego and that of Self are impossible without each other. Accompanying the ego (mostly in the background) during each moment of time is a tending towards a particular Idea or essence. This reciprocity is expressed in a unique way over a lifetime and is like the relation of mother and child, and so it is important for all of us born of women to retain a sense of essences and the fullness of Self. 'Constructivism', however, is a current belief held by some feminists, and it influences both theorizing and practice in analytical psychology. It involves a rejection of essences, a revision of Jung's Idea of Self, and an attempt to conduct analysis without reference to an intentional subjective Self. Such constructivist revision expresses a despair both about essences as Ideas and about Self as intentional and subjective. It is despair over Self in a Kierkegaardian sense.     

社会身份重要性和社会认同对群体参照效应的影响

研究选取四个参照条件（国家、民族、性别、职业）,探讨个体内部的社会身份重要性、以及个体对其不同社会身份的社会认同度对群体参照效应的影响。结果表明,在个体内部,社会身份重要性越重要,相应的群体参照效应也越大,而社会认同的高低对群体参照效应的大小没有显著影响。这表明在个体的自我内部,不同的社会身份是按照重要性来排列,越重要身份越靠近个体自我概念的核心,而且这种重要性也影响着集体自我相关信息的认知加工。     

Distorted distance estimation induced by a self-relevant national boundary

Six experiments explored the possibility that the categorization of self versus not-self can distort visual estimations of distance. In Experiments 1-3, Americans overestimated the distance between a U.S. location and a foreign location relative to a visually equidistant U.S. location. In Experiment 4, Canadians overestimated foreign relative to Canadian locations. Experiment 5 showed that this effect occurs even when the domestic context is not physically contiguous. Experiment 6 showed that distance distortion occurs only when crossing one’s own border to a foreign location, not when crossing borders from one foreign location to another. Thus, crossing the psychological boundary between self and not-self creates a visual illusion that distorts on-line distance estimates.     

Body image disturbance and skin bleaching

This study looks at body image disturbance among Jamaicans who bleach their skin. The hypothesis states that there is a positive relationship between skin bleaching and body image disturbance. The study used a convenience sample of 160 participants with a skin bleaching group (n = 80) and a non‐bleaching comparison group (n = 80). The instrument included demographic questions, the body image disturbance questionnaire (BIDQ), and questions about skin bleaching. The results of a t‐test revealed that the skin bleaching group (M = 1.5255, SD = 0.42169) was not significantly different from the non‐bleaching group (M = 1.4938, SD = 0.74217) in terms of body image disturbance, t(158) = 0.333, p = .740. The participants who bleached did not suffer from body image disturbance. Self‐reports revealed that they bleached to acquire beauty, attract a partner, elude the police, and market skin bleaching products. The practice was fashionable and popular and it made some participants feel good, while others were fans of a popular musical artiste who bleached his skin. The majority of participants bleached because of the perceived personal, social, and entrepreneurial benefits of the practice and not because they suffered emotional distress, anxiety, and functional impairment because of their skin colour. However, there was some level of BID among the minority of participants who argued that they bleached because they wanted to be pretty so they were emotionally distressed about there body image and experienced functional impairment.     

Plurality of Self: Buddhist Anthropology and the Two Natures of Christ

The union of divine and human in Jesus Christ was codified at the Council of Chalcedon. However, while this position makes good theological sense, in terms of soteriology, it remains a conceptual problem. How do two distinct entities combine into a single entity without the loss of their respective distinctiveness? This article recommends a move from a Greek metaphysic of “substance” to a Buddhist understanding of selfhood as emptiness. By understanding the self as an interweaving of multiple energies, rather than a fixed substance, Chalcedonian Christology can retain its soteriological integrity with a more helpful conceptual understanding of how two may become one.     

Self‐expression and relationship formation in high relational mobility environments: A study of dual users of American and Japanese social networking sites

This study proposes that self‐expression motivation, an aspect of independent/individualistic psychological tendencies, aids in the formation of social relationships when social relationships are open and mobile. In societies characterised by high relational mobility (e.g., North America), which creates market‐like competition in social relationships, individuals must express their uniqueness and worthiness to form new social relationships. Self‐expression motivation has a relatively weak effect on relationship formation in low relational mobility societies (e.g., Japan), where social relationships are generally predetermined. This hypothesis was examined and supported through a study on dual users of two social networking sites—Facebook and Mixi (the “Facebook of Japan”). As expected, relational mobility was higher on Facebook than on Mixi. Moreover, the association between self‐expression motivation and the number of new friends met on Facebook/Mixi was more positive for Facebook than it was for Mixi. The social functionality of independent tendencies is then discussed.     

Using the regulation of accuracy to study performance when the correct answer is not known

We examined memory performance in multiple‐choice questions when correct answers were not always present. How do participants answer when they are aware that the correct alternative may not be present? To answer this question we allowed participants to decide on the number of alternatives in their final answer (the plurality option), and whether they wanted to report or withhold their answer (report option). We also studied the memory benefits when both the plurality and the report options were available. In two experiments participants watched a crime and then answered questions with five alternatives. Half of the questions were presented with the correct alternative and half were not. Participants selected one alternative and rated confidence, then selected three alternatives and again rated confidence, and finally indicated whether they preferred the answer with one or with three alternatives (plurality option). Lastly, they decided whether to report or withhold the answer (report option). Results showed that participants’ confidence in their selections was higher, that they chose more single answers, and that they preferred to report more often when the correct alternative was presented. We also attempted to classify a posteriori questions as either presented with or without the correct alternative from participants’ selection. Classification was better than chance, and encouraging, but the forensic application of the classification technique is still limited since there was a large percentage of responses that were incorrectly classified. Our results also showed that the memory benefits of both plurality and report options overlap.