TWO PSYCHOTIC PLAYWRIGHTS AT WORK: THE LATE PLAYS OF AUGUST STRINDBERG AND TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

August Strindberg and Tennessee Williams both became severely deranged during their playwriting careers. Both emerged from the most intense form of their derangement and wrote plays afterward. Strindberg, however, wrote his greatest plays after his psychosis; Williams, before his. Strindberg's psychosis spurred his creativity; that of Williams severely damaged his. This paper proposes that Strindberg mastered his psychosis and that in his late plays he dramatically symbolized psychotic processes. Williams, on the other hand, could neither access nor master his, and his late plays embody the repeated, unsymbolized acting out of his psychosis within an aesthetic context. These differences between the two playwrights become clear not through analysis of dramatic characters, but through changes that each playwright made to the dramatic medium itself.     

Too hot to help! Exploring the impact of ambient temperature on helping

Building on the conservation of resources model, we conducted three studies to explore the link between ambient temperature and individual prosocial behavior. In study 1, analyzing the two‐wave field data from a chain of retail stores in Eastern Europe, we find that, in hot, as opposed to normal temperatures, employees are less likely to act in a prosocial manner. In study 2, we replicate and extend these findings in a randomized controlled experiment by identifying mechanisms underlying the relationship between hot ambient temperature and helping behavior. Specifically, we find that heat increases fatigue that leads to reduction in positive affect and subsequently reduces individual helping. Finally, in study 3, we replicate these findings in a field experiment. Taken together, our study helps to explain how and through what mechanisms ambient temperature influences individual helping. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.     

Three-way interaction of neuroticism,extraversion, and conscientiousness in the internalizing disorders: Evidence of disorder specificity in a psychiatric sample

It is well-established that neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness are individually associated with internalizing disorders, but research suggests that these main effects may be qualified by a three-way interaction when predicting depression. The current study was the first to examine this three-way interaction in a psychiatric sample (N = 463) with a range of internalizing symptoms as the outcomes. Using two omnibus personality inventories and a diagnostic interview, the expected three-way interaction emerged most consistently for symptoms of major depression, and there was also evidence of synergistic effects for post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Findings indicate that, even in a clinically-distressed and currently-disordered sample, high levels of extraversion and conscientiousness protect against distress disorders for those with high levels of neuroticism.     

Adolescent risk-taking is predicted by individual differences in cognitive control over emotional,but not non-emotional,response conflict

While much research on adolescent risk behaviour has focused on the development of prefrontal self-regulatory mechanisms, prior studies have elicited mixed evidence of a relationship between individual differences in the capacity for self-regulation and individual differences in risk taking. To explain these inconsistent findings, it has been suggested that the capacity for self-regulation may be, for most adolescents, adequately mature to produce adaptive behaviour in non-affective, “cold” circumstances, but that adolescents have a more difficult time exerting control in affective, “hot” contexts. To further explore this claim, the present study examined individual differences in self-control in the face of affective and non-affective response conflict, and examined whether differences in the functioning of cognitive control processes under these different conditions was related to risk taking. Participants completed a cognitive Stroop task, an emotional Stroop task, and a risky driving task known as the Stoplight game. Regression analyses showed that performance on the emotional Stroop task predicted laboratory risk-taking in the driving task, whereas performance on the cognitive Stroop task did not exhibit the same trend. This pattern of results is consistent with theories of adolescent risk-taking that emphasise the impacts of affective contextual influences on the ability to enact effective cognitive control.     

The role of pain behaviour and family caregiver responses in the link between pain catastrophising and pain intensity: A moderated mediation model

Objectives: This study investigated the mediating role of pain behaviours in the association between pain catastrophising and pain intensity and explored the moderating role of family caregivers’ responses to pain in the link between pain behaviours and pain intensity.

Methods: The sample consisted of 154 chronic pain patients and their family caregivers. Patients completed questionnaires regarding pain intensity, pain catastrophising, pain behaviours and their caregivers’ responses to their pain. Family caregivers reported their responses to the patients’ pain.

Results: Pain catastrophising was associated with pain intensity (r = 0.37) and pain behaviours partly mediated this association. The positive association between pain behaviours and pain intensity was significant only if patients reported that their family caregivers showed high levels of solicitous (effect = .49) and distracting responses (effect = .58), and if caregivers reported to show high levels of solicitous responses (effect = .51). No support was found for negative responses as a moderator neither based on patients’ perception of negative responses nor based on caregivers’ perception of negative responses.

Conclusions: The findings are in line with the idea that family caregivers’ solicitous and distracting responses convey to patients that their condition is serious, which may reinforce patients’ pain and pain behaviours, especially in those who catastrophise.     

内、外部情绪标注对情绪作用的ERPs研究

以往情绪标注的研究发现描述情绪面孔的情绪（外部情绪标注）可以降低被试的情绪。但是描述自己的情绪（内部情绪标注）结果如何尚存争议。研究采用了ERPs技术,以愉快和悲伤情绪面孔为实验材料,选择18名大学本科生为被试,比较了内部情绪标注、外部情绪标注及性别标注之间的差异。结果发现：外部情绪标注和性别标注相比,其LPP波幅均小于性别标注下LPP波幅,并且这种差异在Pz、CPz、Cz、FCz、Fz五个电极点均类似;而内部情绪标注和性别标注相比,其LPP波幅均小于性别标注下LPP波幅,但仅表现在Pz、CPz、Cz三个点上。这说明：无论内部情绪标注还是外部情绪标注,在命名后均能抑制情绪。研究结果支持阻断理论。     

The Emotional Foundation of Political Cognition: The Impact of Extrinsic Anxiety on the Formation of Political Tolerance Judgments

Common sense recognizes emotion's ability to influence judgments. We argue that affective processes, in addition to generating feeling states, also influence how political cognition is manifested. Drawing on the theory of affective intelligence, we examine the role that anxiety plays in how and when people rely on predispositions and when they rely on contemporaneous information in making political tolerance judgments. We report on two experimental studies to test our arguments. In the first study we find that extrinsic anxiety generates a resistance response among subjects who hold a strong predisposition and a receptive response among those who do not. In the second study we present subjects with explicit "frames" exposing them to a pro- or anti-free speech message. We find that extrinsic anxiety enhances responsiveness to frames while an absence of anxiety diminishes the impact of these frames. Taken together these results show that affective processes shape how people make political judgments.     

The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis

We report the results of three experimental tests of the "hot cognition" hypothesis, which posits that all sociopolitical concepts that have been evaluated in the past are affectively charged and that this affective charge is automatically activated within milliseconds on mere exposure to the concept, appreciably faster than conscious appraisal of the object.
We find support for the automaticity of affect toward political leaders, groups, and issues; specifically:

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  Most Ss show significantly faster reaction times to affectively congruent political concepts and significantly slower response times to affectively incongruent concepts;

       

When Is More Better?

Abstract— We examine three determinants of the relationship between the magnitude of a stimulus and a person's subjective "value" of that stimulus: the process by which value is assessed (either by feeling or by calculation), the evaluability of the relevant magnitude variable (whether the desirability of a given level of that variable can be evaluated independently), and the mode of evaluation (whether stimuli are encountered and evaluated jointly or separately). Reliance on feeling, lack of evaluability, and separate evaluation lead to insensitivity to magnitude. An analysis invoking these factors provides a novel account for why people typically become less sensitive to changes in the magnitude of a stimulus as magnitude increases.