Eye'm lovin' it! The role of gazing awareness in mimetic desires

Recent studies showed that people evaluate objects more favorably when these objects are gazed-at by others, an effect coined as “mimetic desire”. In two studies, we tested whether mimetic desire stems from an automatic form of learning by examining one dimension of automaticity, i.e., people's awareness of the object-gaze association. Participants saw 6 neutral art paintings associated with a female gazing toward two of the paintings, away from two of the paintings, and closing her eyes with respect to the last two paintings. After the exposition phase, participants evaluated the paintings and performed a contingency-awareness test. Importantly, participants' responses on this test were genuinely driven by memory and not by inferences from liking. Results show that participants preferred objects that were gazed-at but only when they were aware of the object-gaze association. Hence, despite the adaptive function of joint attention, its impact on valence acquisition does not seem to qualify as an implicit learning process.     

俞琰易学的义理思想探微

俞琰是宋末元初著名的易学家和杰出的道教学者。其学以《易》为本,他"首读朱子《本义》,次读《程传》",后又获道教异人传授,于《参同契》多有发挥。其易学可分为义理易、象数易、道教易三个方面,本文着重探讨其义理易学思想。俞琰易学的义理之学源于其深厚的儒学修养,又以程、朱易学为本,多有发微,形成其富有特色的义理思想。其内容具体包括天道观、人性论、修养论三个不可割裂的部分,其天道观援"气"入"理",秉承儒家"至诚无息"、"天道好谦"、"天道好生"、"福善祸淫"的义理传统,是其人性论与修养论的前提和基础;其人性论则是法天道以立人道的表现;修养论则是其实现回复天道、止于至善的重要途径。     

Sexual Abuse Litigation

Summary

Practicing psychologist Janet Sonne and attorney Julian Hubbard illuminate how the different aims and languages of psychotherapy and law can be either an asset or a liability in the emotionally-charged environment of sexual abuse litigation. Properly understood, these differences can optimize the ability of each professional to assist their common client, the sexual abuse survivor, in the litigation process and beyond. Dr. Sonne reviews the psychological and behavioral sequelae of childhood sexual abuse and identifies six elements of the client's psychological functioning key to the litigation process, as well as posing questions for the attorney's self-evaluation for the unique demands of sexual abuse litigation. Mr. Hubbard then addresses what survivors and therapists need to know about the litigation process, exploring dynamics of legal strategy that can exacerbate the client's psychological problems. In the final section, both offer tips to enhance professionals' focus on education and communication as a means to better serving the sexually abused client.     

Dialectic of Pornographic Enlightenment

Abstract

This article introduces a dialectic of pornographic enlightenment through a reading of diaries written by the German avant-garde poet R. D. Brinkmann, and unfolds this basic pattern of modernity both systematically and historically with reference to Adorno and Horkheimer and the history of pornography. The framing of societal negotiations of pornography as a ceaseless shifting between the promise of liberation of and through sexuality and the fear of desensitization and loss of intimacy results in some comments on everyday life in "on/scenity" (Williams) and young people's identity politics ("Generation Porno") in pornographied pop cultures.     

Cultural dimensions,socioeconomic development,climate, and emotional hedonic level

A research synthesis was conducted with four studies which correlated national mean self-ratings of affect balance (positive minus negative affect) and subjective well-being with the nations' cultural characteristics (individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and power-distance national scores on Hofstede's dimensions), socioeconomic development (Human Development Index), and climate (absolute latitude). A meta-analysis of these collective level cross-cultural studies shows that individualism correlates positively with affect balance and subjective well-being, controlling for socioeconomic development, cultural femininity, power-distance, uncertainty avoidance, and climate. Similar results were found for individual-level data. The meaning of collective-level or national means of individual self-reports of affect balance is discussed.     

Generalization of delayed matching to sample following training at different delays

Four groups of pigeons were trained to perform a delayed matching-to-sample task with a single delay of 0, 2, 4, or 6 s from the outset of training. The longer the training delay, the more sessions were required for all birds to reach the same level of response accuracy. Following initial training, five test sessions that included nonreinforced trials with delay intervals of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 s were interspersed between training sessions. Unlike typical forgetting functions in which accuracy decreases monotonically with increasing delay, the forgetting functions from test sessions resembled generalization gradients with the peak of the functions occurring at the training delay. Following additional training for all birds with a 0-s delay, forgetting functions decreased monotonically with increasing delay. The results suggested that remembering can be trained at a specific delay interval, and generalizes to similar delay intervals. Generalization along the temporal dimension of delay may contribute to typical forgetting functions in which accuracy decreases from 0-s delay.     

Enforced Disappearances and Torture Today: A View from Analytical Psychology

Enforced disappearance represents the quintessence of human rights violations with a strong psychological component. Bodies vanishing have a deterrent effect by terrorizing and paralyzing the entire society. However, the absence of those bodies is overly present in the inner experience of the families of the disappeared, who are victims in their turn. A state of severe psychological deterioration affects the relatives of the disappeared: depression, anxiety, powerlessness, guilt, post-traumatic stress disorder, inability to mourn, even suicide are the consequences of the unbearable uncertainty about the fate of the loved one. But the disappeared persons, notwithstanding the absence of their bodies, continue to be more present than ever in the inner experience of those who have loved them. For the families of the disappeared, to regain psychological equilibrium is a fine balance between the need to remember and the necessity to forget. The author affirms that, at a social and political level, to cultivate a collective memory of enforced disappearance is an ethical duty which validates the actual occurrence of the atrocities, helps prevent repetition and alleviates the transgenerational transmission of trauma.     

Characteristics of forgetting functions in delayed matching to sample

Performance of pigeons in delayed matching-to-sample procedures was measured in terms of an index of discriminability derived from the difference between logarithms of ratios of choice responses to comparison stimuli following the different sample stimuli. Forgetting functions that plotted discriminability as a function of delay-interval duration were well described by a simple negative exponential function with two parameters, one describing initial discriminability of sample stimuli at zero delay (log d₀) and the other describing rate of decrement in discriminability with increasing delay-interval duration (b). With the difference between wavelength values of the comparison stimuli held constant, a large difference between wavelengths of the sample stimuli resulted in a higher log d₀ value than that for a small difference between sample stimuli, without changing the rate of decrement in discriminability, b. An increase in the fixed-ratio requirement for sample-key responding produced an increase in log d₀ without affecting b, and interpolation of ambient illumination in the delay interval increased b without influencing log d₀. Both parameters changed when intertrial-interval duration was varied. The result of variation in the point of interpolation of ambient illumination in the delay interval indicated that levels of discriminability at longer delays were independent of discriminability levels at earlier delays, consistent with the properties of the exponential function. Functions relating performance to delay-interval duration were suggested to have two characteristics: discriminability of the sample stimuli in the absence of a delay between the stimuli and the behavior they occasion, and rate of attenuation in discriminability with increasing delay-interval duration.     

《周易》的心理学思想及其在先秦的发展

《周易》是我国的一部最古老的文献。我国古代的心理学思想可以追溯到这本著作。本文着重考察了它所蕴含的三个方面的心理学思想：１．基本观点：天人观,阴阳观,发展观;２．知、情、意的描述;３．理想人格。