The Family and Partisan Socialization in Red and Blue America

How do competing social influences shape individual partisanship over the course of the life cycle? People enter and exit a host of environments over the course of the lifespan, and these environments provide social pressures that can conflict or reinforce early socialized attitudes. Socialization could be an agent for either opinion change or opinion stability. Using the Youth‐Parent Socialization Study and constructing partisan environmental measures at the county level, I explore this question. The findings demonstrate that environments exert significant socializing influence over the lifespan, moderating the persistence of early forces. This helps us understand when early socialized pressures persist and when they do not. When environments throughout life provide reinforcing social pressures, parental influence endures over time. However, when early socialized influence is challenged over time by the political environment that citizens reside in, the influence of early parental socialization is offset and nullified.     

Effects of context expectation on prospective memory performance among older and younger adults

This experiment examined the impact of context expectation on prospective memory (PM) performance among older and younger adults. Participants responded to PM target words embedded in an ongoing lexical decision task (LDT). Older and younger adults performed similarly on the PM task. Regardless of age, PM was significantly better for participants in the correct context expectation condition and significantly worse in the incorrect context expectation condition relative to participants who held no expectations about the context in which targets would appear. Participants’ LDT response latencies were used to assess cost of the PM task to the ongoing task. Latencies were discernibly longer in the LDT block where the PM targets were expected compared to the block where they were not expected. The findings provide new information about how context can be used to support PM aging and suggest that contextual information can be equally beneficial for older and younger adults.     

Are All Kids Alike? The Magnitude of Individual Differences in Personality Characteristics Tends to Increase from Early Childhood to Early Adolescence

Do individual differences in personality traits become more or less pronounced over childhood and adolescence? The present research examined age differences in the variance of a range of personality traits, using parent reports of two large samples of children from predominantly the USA and Russia, respectively. Results indicate (i) that individual differences in most traits tend to increase with age from early childhood into early adolescence and then plateau, (ii) that this general pattern of greater personality variance at older childhood age is consistent across the two countries, and (iii) that this pattern is not an artefact of age differences in means or floor/ceiling effects. These findings are consistent with several (noncontradictory) developmental mechanisms, including youths' expanding behavioural capacities and person–environment transactions (corresponsive principle). However, these mechanisms may predominantly characterize periods before adolescence, or they may be offset by countervailing processes, such as socialization pressure towards a mature personality profile, in late adolescence and adulthood. Finally, the findings also suggest that interpreting age trajectories in mean trait scores as pertaining to age differences in a typical person may sometimes be misleading. Investigating variance should become an integral part of studying personality development. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Disjunction and conjunction fallacies in episodic memory

It has recently been found that episodic memory displays analogues of the well-known disjunction and conjunction fallacies of probability judgement. The aim of the present research was, for the first time, to study these memory fallacies together under the same conditions, and test theoretical predictions about the reasons for each. The focus was on predictions about the influence of semantic gist, target versus context recollection, and proactive versus retroactive interference. Disjunction and conjunction fallacies increased in conditions in which subjects were able to form semantic connections among list words. In addition, disjunction fallacies were increased by manipulations that minimised proactive interference, whereas conjunction fallacies were increased by manipulations that minimised retroactive interference. That pattern suggests that disjunction fallacies are more dependent on target recollection, whereas conjunction fallacies are more dependent on context recollection.     

因果信息在贝叶斯推理中的作用:问题情境的调节

以大学生为被试,考察因果信息在不同贝叶斯推理问题中的作用。结果表明:(1)问题情境的主效应显著(F(1,122)=16.33,p0.05,η~2=0.120),因果信息的主效应不显著((F(1,122)=1.161,p=0.283,η~2=0.01),但问题类型和因果信息的交互作用显著(F(1,122)=4.757,p0.05,η~2=0.038)。(2)不同类型的问题上因果信息的作用是不同的。具体表现为,在乳癌问题中,增加了因果信息,被试的正确率明显提高(χ~2(1)=6.759,p0.05,V=0.607),而在中彩问题中没有因果信息的推理成绩反而更好(χ~2(1)=1.864,p=0.221,V=0.167)。     

情境对共情的影响

共情指的是个体在与人交往的过程中共享并理解他人的情绪状态的倾向, 包括认知共情和情绪共情两种成分。现实生活中的共情总是发生在一定的具体情境中, 受到情境因素的影响。其中, 情境的公开性或私密性、意义性等均在不同程度上影响了共情的产生或共情反应的强烈程度。共情对象在特定情境中与共情主体之间的群际关系、人际关系等也是重要的情境因素, 共情主体对于和自己属于同一群体或拥有较亲密人际关系的他人更容易产生共情。情境对共情的影响通过自上而下和自下而上两种方式实现。有关情境对共情的影响研究虽然取得了一定的成果, 但仍然有进一步拓展的空间, 未来的研究需要在情境因素的内涵上进行深入挖掘, 从认知加工的角度对情境影响共情的机制做更为细致、微观地解析, 还可以从共情主体的视角明确个体差异如何调节了情境对共情的影响作用。     

行动语义、客体背景和判断任务对客体动作承载性的影响

客体动作承载性指人们知觉客体时同时激活的针对客体的行动。当Gibson最初提出动作承载性概念时, 他认为客体的这种属性是可以自动激活的。然而近年来越来越多的证据显示, 在知觉和行动的关系中, 行动语义知识和客体所处背景对客体动作承载性具有调节作用, 表现在人们可以根据这些自上而下的信息选择针对客体的适当的行动。此外, 不同的判断任务在引发客体动作承载性效应上具有特异性, 表现在若判断任务仅需知觉客体表层属性时, 不能激活对客体的动作, 进而不能产生客体动作承载性; 若判断任务需要对客体进行深层加工时, 才会激活对客体的动作。未来研究还需要进一步探究行动语义知识和客体所处背景影响客体动作承载性发生的原因和机制, 以及不同判断任务中出现结果特异性的原因。     

On Toleration,Charity, and Epistemic Fallibilism

In this paper I examine some presuppositions of toleration and pluralism and explore two models, viz., a deontological and a consequentialist model, respectively, which could support the view that rational agents should act in a tolerant way. Against the background which is offered by the first model, I give two arguments in favor of the view that people are better off and more rational if they act in a tolerant way. The first argument draws upon a principle of charity which is usually applied in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, but which could, equally well, work with regard to foundational issues in ethics and philosophy of action. The second argument is built upon the epistemic principle of fallibilism and it is meant to show that acting in a tolerant way is the rational thing to do from this perspective.     

Traumatic effects of political repression in Chile: A clinical experience1

The author examines psychic trauma resulting from human rights violations in Chile. Starting from trauma theories developed by authors such as Ferenczi, Winnicott and Stolorow, she posits the relevance of the subject's emotionally signifi cant environment in the production of the traumatic experience. She describes the characteristics of the therapeutic process on the basis of a clinical case. She emphasizes the need to recognize the damage that may be produced within the reliable link between patient and analyst, pointing out the risk of retraumatization if analysts distance themselves and apply ‘technique’ rigorously, leaving out their own subjective assessments. Therapists must maintain their focus on the conjunction of the patient's intersubjective context and inner psychic world both when exploring the origin of the trauma and when insight is produced. The author posits repetition in the transference as an attempt at reparation, at fi nding the expected response from the analyst that will help patients assemble the fragments of their history and achieve, as Winnicott would put it, a feeling of continuity in the experience of being.     

Variations on the concept of traumatism: Traumatism,traumatic, trauma1

In this paper, the author outlines Freud's fundamental hypotheses concerning the concept of traumatism, then goes on to differentiate three notions (French being a particularly apposite language for such a venture): ‘traumatism’, ‘traumatic’ (in a substantive sense) and ‘trauma’. These three terms correspond to the three turning points in Freud's theory with respect to the concept of traumatism (1895‐97, 1920, 1938). The author evokes also the developments that are due to Ferenczi, particularly in his later writings (1928‐33), where he defi ned and discussed the question of ‘trauma’ in contemporary clinical practice; the author goes on to explore the different variations on this theme as regards mental functioning. He then defi nes, from a metapsychological point of view, the differences between ‘traumatisms’ that have been ‘worked over by secondary processes’, organised and governed by the pleasure‐unpleasure principle (‘traumatism’) and ‘early’ or ‘primary traumatisms’, which interfere with the process of binding the instinctual drives (‘trauma’); states of mind infl uenced by a traumatic imprint (‘traumatic’) are looked upon as belonging to both categories of the above mentioned traumatisms. The author illustrates his hypotheses with a clinical example.