Many faces of dogmatism: Prejudice as a way of protecting certainty against value violators among dogmatic believers and atheists

In this article, we suggest that dogmatic beliefs, manifested as strong beliefs that there is no God (i.e., dogmatic atheism) as well as strong beliefs in God (i.e., religious orthodoxy), can serve as a cognitive response to uncertainty. Moreover, we claim that people who dogmatically do not believe in religion and those who dogmatically believe in religion are equally prone to intolerance and prejudice towards groups that violate their important values. That is because prejudice towards these groups may be an efficient strategy to protect the certainty that strong beliefs provide. We tested these assumptions in two studies. In Study 1 and Study 2, we demonstrated that dogmatic beliefs mediate the relationship between intolerance to uncertainty and both, religious orthodoxy and dogmatic atheism. In addition, in Study 2 we showed that both the religiously orthodox and dogmatic atheists become prejudiced towards groups that violate their values and that these effects are especially strong under experimentally induced uncertainty. In this study, we focused on atheists and homosexuals as groups that pose a threat to Christian's religious worldviews, and Catholics and pro‐life supporters as groups that pose a threat to the values of atheists. The results are discussed in relation to past research on dogmatism and religion, as well as with reference to what this means for the study of prejudice.     

Is Sexism a Gender Issue? A Motivated Social Cognition Perspective on Men's and Women's Sexist Attitudes Toward Own and Other Gender

The present research investigated the antecedents of ambivalent sexism (i.e., hostile and benevolent forms) in both men and women toward own and other gender. In two heterogeneous adult samples (Study 1: N = 179 and Study 2: N = 222), it was revealed that gender itself was only a minor predictor of sexist attitudes compared with the substantial impact of individual differences in general motivated cognition (i.e., need for closure). Analyses further showed that the relationship between need for closure and sexism was mediated by social attitudes (i.e., right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation), which were differently related to benevolent and hostile forms of sexism. In the discussion, it is argued that sexism primarily stems from individual differences in motivated cognitive style, which relates to peoples' perspective on the social world, rather than from group differences between men and women. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

不确定感与从众：决断性与结构需求的中介作用

不确定感伴随从众的现象普遍存在,然而其内在加工过程及个体差异仍不明确。对804名大学生被试进行问卷调查,结果显示：（1）不确定感与从众正相关;（2）决断性与结构需求完全中介不确定感与从众的关系,且存在性别差异;二者关系上,女性更大程度上受决断性的中介,其次为结构需求;男性受决断性和结构需求的平行中介。结果支持不确定−认同理论和认知闭合两阶段模型观点,为不确定状态下不同性别人群从众行为的管理提供了理论依据。     

What is “Intervention”?

I begin by noting that several theologians and others object to special divine action (divine intervention and action beyond conservation and creation) on the grounds that it is incompatible with science. These theologians are thinking of classical Newtonian science; I argue that in fact classical science is in no way incompatible with special divine action, including miracle. What is incompatible with special divine action is the Laplacean picture, which involves the causal closure of the universe. I then note that contemporary, quantum mechanical science doesn't even initially appear to be incompatible with special divine action. Nevertheless, many who are well aware of the quantum mechanical revolution (including some members of the Special Divine Action Project) still find a problem with special divine action, hoping to find an understanding of it that doesn't involve divine intervention. I argue that their objections to intervention are not sound. Furthermore, it isn't even possible to say what intervention is, given the quantum mechanical framework. I conclude by offering an account of special divine action that isn't open to their objections to intervention.     

概率大小、损益结果和认知闭合需要对模糊规避的影响

模糊规避是指在相同奖赏的情况下,决策者会力图规避从主观上判断具有模糊概率的事件而偏好具有相同精确概率的事件。本研究探讨了概率大小、损益结果和认知闭合需要对模糊规避的影响。研究发现,在小概率受益的情况下,个体倾向于模糊寻求;在中概率受益的情况下,个体倾向于模糊规避;在高概率受益的情况下,个体倾向于模糊规避;在小概率损失的情况下,个体倾向于模糊规避;在中概率损失的情况下,个体倾向于模糊规避;在高概率损失的情况下,个体倾向于模糊寻求。但是,研究并未发现认知闭合需要对模糊规避有预测作用。     

Prosodic boundaries, comma rules, and brain responses: the closure positive shift in ERPs as a universal marker for prosodic phrasing in listeners and readers

Just as the false comma in this sentence, shows punctuation can influence sentence processing considerably. Pauses and other prosodic cues in spoken language serve the same function of structuring the sentence in smaller phrases. However, surprisingly little effort has been spent on the question as to whether both phenomena rest on the same mechanism and whether they are equally efficient in guiding parsing decisions. In a recent study, we showed that auditory speech boundaries evoke a specific positive shift in the listeners' event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that indicates the sentence segmentation and resulting changes in the understanding of the utterance (Steinhauer et al., 1999a). Here, we present three ERP reading experiments demonstrating that the human brain processes commas in a similar manner and that comma perception depends crucially on the reader's individual punctuation habits. Main results of the study are: (1) Commas can determine initial parsing as efficiently as speech boundaries because they trigger the same prosodic phrasing covertly, although phonological representations seem to be activated to a lesser extent. (2) Independent of the input modality, this phrasing is reflected online by the same ERP component, namely the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). (3) Both behavioral and ERP data suggest that comma processing varies with the readers' idiosyncratic punctuation habits. (4) A combined auditory and visual ERP experiment shows that the CPS is also elicited both by delexicalized prosody and while subjects replicate prosodic boundaries during silent reading. (5) A comma-induced reversed garden path turned out to be much more difficult than the classical garden path. Implications for psycholinguistic models and future ERP research are discussed.     

Differences in Mathematical Performance,Creativity Potential,and Need for Cognitive Closure between Chinese and Australian Students

Research has shown that Chinese students outperform students from several Western countries on mathematics performance while some evidence has suggested that Western students perform more strongly on tests of creativity. One potential mechanism for these differences may be a higher need for cognitive closure among Chinese students. The current research compared performance on tests of mathematics and creativity among 50 students of Chinese background and 49 Australian students of Anglo‐Saxon background. As predicted, Chinese students performed better on mathematics while Australian students performed better on the measure of creativity. Australian students also had a lower score on one subscale of the need for cognitive closure, preference for predictability. Across the sample, preference for predictability showed small but significant negative correlations with several measures of creativity and positive correlations with several measures of mathematics. These findings were interpreted with respect to characteristic educational practices in both nations.     

Easy Knowledge,Closure Failure,or Skepticism: A Trilemma

This article aims to provide a structural analysis of the problems related to the easy knowledge problem. The easy knowledge problem is well known. If we accept that we can have basic knowledge via a source without having any prior knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source, then we can acquire knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source too easily via information delivered by the source. Rejecting any kind of basic knowledge, however, leads into an infinite regress and, plausibly, to skepticism. The article argues that the third alternative, accepting basic knowledge but rejecting easy knowledge, entails closure failure. This is obviously the case for deductive bootstrapping, but, notably, the problem also arises for inductive bootstrapping. Hence, the set of problems related to the easy knowledge problem has the structure of a trilemma. We are forced to accept easy knowledge, closure failure, or skepticism.     

Motivational determinants of reasoning about social relations: The role of need for cognitive closure

The role of need for cognitive closure (NFCC) in reasoning about social relations was investigated. Participants learned pairwise liking/disliking relations between people who could also be categorised on the basis of nationality and then had to group them into social cliques. The social clique structures were either consistent or inconsistent with the nationality categorisation, and the diagnostic information that was necessary to determine the number of cliques appeared either early or late in the information sequence. We expected participants under conditions of high (vs low) NFCC to rely more on heuristic processing. As predicted, high (vs low) NFCC participants were less accurate in their representations of cliques when the clique structure was inconsistent with the nationality category (Study 1 and 2) and when the diagnostic information was presented late (Study 1). The implications regarding the influence of NFCC on reasoning and the role of specific NFCC manipulations are discussed.     

认知闭合需要研究评述

认知闭合需要是个体稳定的认知特征,描述了个体在面对模糊情境时是否愿意系统处理信息的动机。已有研究表明,认知闭合需要对个体的信息处理过程和决策结果有显著的预测能力。总体上说,高认知闭合需要的个体更容易利用启发式进行思考,因此此类个体更容易受到过度归因、首因效应等的影响。虽然大多数的研究表明认知闭合需要是个体稳定的认知特质,但也有研究者发现环境因素如噪音等可以在一定程度上、在短时期内改变个体的认知闭合需要的水平。因此,在相关研究中,认知闭合需要既可以通过量表测量,也可以通过在实验中改变环境噪音和时间压力等方法来操纵。已有的关于认知闭合需要的研究也有不足之处。首先,如何引导高认知闭合者克服匆忙做出决策的动机并采用分析式的方式处理信息和进行决策,目前的相关研究还很少;其次,已有的关于认知闭合的研究大都为实验室研究,因此这些研究的外部效度较低;第三,认知闭合需要在冲突研究领域的应用被忽略了。未来有必要针对这些不足之处进行相应研究