Universal stories: How narratives satisfy core motives

Abstract

For millennia, narratives have been a primary mode of oral discourse. Narrative presentation of information has been shown to facilitate interpersonal and group communication. However, research indicates that narratives are more than merely an adaptive mode of communication. Narrative is a fundamental – and perhaps foundational – element of social and cultural life. The present article posits that the centrality of narrative in social life is due to narrative’s ability to help satisfy the five core social motives, as identified by Fiske belonging, understanding, control, self-enhancement, and trust. In so doing, this article reviews empirical and theoretical work examining basic narrative processes, autobiographical narratives, and entertainment narrative consumption to illustrate how narrative thought helps to satisfies core human motives and in turn, how the narrative construction process informs self and identity formation.     

手近效应：研究内容、影响因素与神经机制

把手放在刺激旁边,会对知觉、记忆、语义和执行控制等认知加工产生影响,这类现象被称为手近效应。手近效应反映了身体与环境的互动对认知的塑造作用,为具身认知提供了新证据。本文从手近效应的内容,影响因素,及其认知、神经机制等方面对相关研究进行梳理。并从手近效应的神经机制,应用研究,以及动作意图和人际社会因素的调节作用等方面探讨当前手近效应还未解决的问题。     

吸烟利弊权衡对戒烟计划的预测作用：一个有调节的中介模型

考察吸烟利弊权衡对戒烟计划的预测,以及戒烟意愿的中介作用和未来取向的调节作用。对340名吸烟者进行问卷调查结果的统计分析发现：（1）吸烟利弊权衡显著正向预测戒烟计划;（2）戒烟意愿对吸烟利弊权衡和戒烟计划的关系起完全中介作用;（3）未来取向负向调节吸烟利弊权衡和戒烟计划的关系,但对吸烟利弊权衡和戒烟意愿关系的调节不显著。这些结果说明,吸烟者戒烟计划发展经历前决策和前行动阶段,且该过程受未来取向的调节。     

材料生态性和性别因素对理解友好与敌对意图的影响

为考察材料生态性、被试性别和角色性别对理解友好与敌对意图的影响,分析了100名被试观察由2名男性或2名女性表演的三类互动意图的照片或卡通时的正确率和反应时。结果：理解真实人物的正确率高于虚拟角色;女性被试理解虚拟角色的反应时长于真实人物,而男性被试却未出现材料生态性差异;理解男性角色敌对意图的反应时短于女性角色的,而理解友好意图时却未出现角色性别差异。研究为负性偏向等理论提供实证证据,揭示材料生态性、角色性别对理解友好和敌对意图的影响机制。     

身体动作与语义加工:具身隐喻的视角

概念隐喻理论认为个体建立基于身体经验的具体概念和抽象概念之间的隐喻联结是人类特有的认知方式。不管是具体概念还是抽象概念,只要有具身隐喻联结的概念,其语义的理解便会受到具身启动效应的影响。大脑在加工动词或者含动词的句子时,不仅激活了语言中枢和运动皮层,且大脑随着个体是否执行与语义相应的动作、抽象概念的熟悉程度和其文本背景是否符合等因素而激活不同的神经回路。本文将对以上研究进行梳理与分析,旨在从具身隐喻的视角为身体动作影响语义加工的神经机制模型提供初步的思路。     

When Intertemporal Rewards Are Hedonic,Larger Units of Wait Time Boost Patience

In intertemporal choices between smaller‐sooner (SS) and larger‐later (LL) rewards, five studies reveal that patience for the LL option is influenced by an interactive effect of the measurement units used to express wait time (large vs. small) and the type of the reward (hedonic vs. utilitarian). Specifically, larger time units boost patience, but more so when rewards are hedonic rather than utilitarian. In line with the numerosity heuristic, the effect of time units on patience is mediated by larger time units shrinking wait time perception. This effect arises because hedonic (vs. utilitarian) rewards promote a reliance on heuristics rather than systematic calculations. Therefore, a more calculative mindset diminishes the effect of units even for hedonic rewards and eliminates the hedonic‐utilitarian asymmetry. These results contribute to research on numerosity, intertemporal choice, and hedonic‐utilitarian differences, and offer a simple tool for practitioners to influence patience.     

Counter‐intuitive moral judgement following traumatic brain injury

Several neurological patient populations, including traumatic brain injury (TBI), appear to produce an abnormally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements to moral dilemmas; they tend to make judgements that maximize the welfare of the majority, rather than deontological judgements based on the following of moral rules (e.g., do not harm others). However, this patient research has always used extreme dilemmas with highly valued moral rules (e.g., do not kill). Data from healthy participants, however, suggest that when a wider range of dilemmas are employed, involving less valued moral rules (e.g., do not lie), moral judgements demonstrate sensitivity to the psychological intuitiveness of the judgements, rather than their deontological or utilitarian content (Kahane et al., Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7, 2011, 393). We sought the moral judgements of 30 TBI participants and 30 controls on moral dilemmas where content (utilitarian/deontological) and intuition (intuitive/counter‐intuitive) were measured concurrently. Overall TBI participants made utilitarian judgements in equal proportions to controls; disproportionately favouring utilitarian judgements only when they were counter‐intuitive, and deontological judgements only when they were counter‐intuitive. These results speak against the view that TBI causes a specific utilitarian bias, suggesting instead that moral intuition is broadly disrupted following TBI.     

Frequency of finger looking during finger counting is related to children's working memory capacities

Finger counting can be useful in solving arithmetic problems, noticeably because it reduces the working memory demand of mental calculations. However, proprioceptive information might not be sufficient to keep track of the number of fingers raised during problem solving, and visual input may play an important role in this process. The present study was designed to address this question and shows that 8-year-old children look at their fingers in 60% of the trials during finger counting when solving additive problems. Moreover, our results reveal that the frequency of finger looking is negatively correlated with working memory capacities and is higher for more difficult problems. These findings suggest that finger looking is recruited in managing the cognitive demand of the arithmetic task, probably by providing additional external cues to monitor the number of steps that have to be incremented during finger counting.     

In which direction to move? Facilitative and interference effects of gestures on problem solver's thinking

Recent research shows that co-speech gestures can influence gesturers’ thought. This line of research suggests that the influence of gestures is so strong, that it can wash out and reverse an effect of learning. We argue that these findings need a more robust and ecologically valid test, which we provide in this article. Our results support the claim that gestures not only reflect information in our mental representations, but can also influence gesturer's thought by adding action information to one's mental representation during problem solving (Tower of Hanoi). We show, however, that the effect of gestures on subsequent performance is not as strong as previously suggested. As opposed to what previous research indicates, gestures' facilitative effect through learning was not nullified by the potentially interfering effect on subsequent problem-solving performance of incompatible gestures. To conclude, using gestures during problem solving seems to provide more benefits than costs for task performance.