Recognition of facial expression and identity in part reflects a common ability,independent of general intelligence and visual short-term memory

Recognising identity and emotion conveyed by the face is important for successful social interactions and has thus been the focus of considerable research. Debate has surrounded the extent to which the mechanisms underpinning face emotion and face identity recognition are distinct or share common processes. Here we use an individual differences approach to address this issue. In a well-powered (N?=?605) and age-diverse sample we used structural equation modelling to assess the association between face emotion recognition and face identity recognition ability. We also sought to assess whether this association (if present) reflected visual short-term memory and/or general intelligence (g). We observed a strong positive correlation (r?=?.52) between face emotion recognition ability and face identity recognition ability. This association was reduced in magnitude but still moderate in size (r?=?.28) and highly significant when controlling for measures of g and visual short-term memory. These results indicate that face emotion and face identity recognition abilities in part share a common processing mechanism. We suggest that face processing ability involves multiple functional components and that modelling the sources of individual differences can offer an important perspective on the relationship between these components.     

身份交换对多身份追踪表现的影响

本研究探讨了身份交换对多身份追踪表现的影响。实验1和实验2分别考察了全部报告法和部分报告法下身份交换对多身份追踪表现的具体影响。结果均发现, 身份交换对身份−位置绑定干扰程度越大, 位置追踪和身份识别容量也均越低, 但位置容量始终高于身份容量, 并且这些特性在不同追踪负荷上相同。此外, 部分报告法比全部报告法更具有容量测量优势。实验3则进一步从听觉通道上控制了语音复述对当前任务的干扰, 所得结果仍支持实验1和实验2。这表明, 身份交换对多身份追踪的干扰机制是身份−位置绑定机制受到损害, 而非语音复述的作用。     

免费师范生的教师职业认同与学习动机及学业成就的关系研究

研究以714名免费师范生为被试,采用问卷测量法,考察了其教师职业认同状况、内部和外部学习动机特点,以及教师职业认同、学习动机和学业成就之间的关系。结果发现:(1)在教师职业认同上,免费师范生对教师职业的内在价值认同显著高于外在价值认同,外在价值认同显著高于意志行为认同,职业认同的总体情况略高于中等水平,还有一定的提升空间;(2)内部学习动机比较积极,且显著高于外部学习动机;(3)教师职业认同和学习动机、学习动机和学业成就之间均存在显著的正相关,且教师职业认同对学业成就有稳定的预测力;(4)外部学习动机在教师职业认同和学业成就之间起了部分中介的作用。     

Psychological threat and extrinsic goal striving

Although people generally endorse intrinsic goals for growth, intimacy, and community more than extrinsic goals for money, appearance, and popularity, people sometimes over-emphasize extrinsic goals, to the potential detriment of their well-being. When and why does this occur? Results from three experimental studies show that psychological threat increases the priority that people give to extrinsic compared to intrinsic goals. This was found in the case of existential threat (Study 1), economic threat (Studies 2), and interpersonal threat (Study 3). Discussion focuses on the possible reasons why threat breeds extrinsic orientations.     

Redeeming Apartheid's Legacy: Collective Guilt, Political Ideology, and Compensation

This paper reports two studies among white South African students on feelings of collective guilt about apartheid and attitudes to affirmative action. Study 1 reports on 21 in-depth interviews, Study 2 on results from 180 survey questionnaires. Substantial proportions of the participants in both studies displayed feelings of collective guilt. Among participants in both studies who identified strongly with white South Africans, some displayed strong feelings of collective guilt while others displayed no such feelings. Our survey data suggest that political ideology functions as a moderator. Strong feelings of guilt were found among students who identified strongly with white South Africans and defined themselves as liberals. If they defined themselves as conservatives then no feelings of collective guilt were observed. Strong feelings of collective guilt were accompanied by positive attitudes toward affirmative action. The influence of political ideology on attitudes toward affirmative action was mediated by collective guilt.     

Forgive and Forget? Antecedents and Consequences of Intergroup Forgiveness in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The present study examines the effects of contact and common-ingroup identification on intergroup forgiveness and outgroup behavioral tendencies. A sample of Bosnian Muslims (N  =  180) were asked to report their readiness to forgive the misdeeds committed by Bosnian Serbs during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A path analysis of the presumed antecedents and consequences of forgiveness revealed that frequent and good quality contact with members from the perpetrator group predicted forgiveness (positively) and desire for social distance (negatively). Moreover, the positive relationship between contact and forgiveness was mediated by empathy and trust towards the outgroup and by perceived outgroup heterogeneity. Common-ingroup identification was also found to be positively associated with forgiveness and negatively with social distance towards the outgroup. Finally, intergroup forgiveness also predicted social distance from the outgroup. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

Room for a view: on the metaphysical subject of personal identity

Sydney Shoemaker leads today’s “neo-Lockean” liberation of persons from the conservative animalist charge of “neo-Aristotelians” such as Eric Olson, according to whom persons are biological entities and who challenge all neo-Lockean views on grounds that abstracting from strictly physical, or bodily, criteria plays fast and loose with our identities. There is a fundamental mistake on both sides: a false dichotomy between bodily continuity versus psychological continuity theories of personal identity. Neo-Lockeans, like everyone else today who relies on Locke’s analysis of personal identity, including Derek Parfit, have either completely distorted or not understood Locke’s actual view. Shoemaker’s defense, which uses a “package deal” definition that relies on internal relations of synchronic and diachronic unity and employs the Ramsey–Lewis account to define personal identity, leaves far less room for psychological continuity views than for my own view, which, independently of its radical implications, is that (a) consciousness makes personal identity, and (b) in consciousness alone personal identity consists—which happens to be also Locke’s actual view. Moreover, the ubiquitous Fregean conception of borders and the so-called “ambiguity of is” collapse in the light of what Hintikka has called the “Frege trichotomy.” The Ramsey–Lewis account, due to the problematic way Shoemaker tries to bind the variables, makes it impossible for the neo-Lockean ala Shoemaker to fulfill the uniqueness clause required by all such Lewis style definitions; such attempts avoid circularity only at the expense of mistaking isomorphism with identity. Contrary to what virtually all philosophers writing on the topic assume, fission does not destroy personal identity. A proper analysis of public versus perspectival identification, derived using actual case studies from neuropsychiatry, provides the scientific, mathematical and logical frameworks for a new theory of self-reference, wherein “consciousness,” “self-consciousness,” and the “I,” can be precisely defined in terms of the subject and the subject-in-itself.     

Changing the subject: on the subject of subjectivity

In this paper I shall attempt to argue for the simple view of personal identity. I shall first argue that we often do have warrant for our beliefs that we exist as continuing subjects of experience, and that these beliefs are justified independently of any reductionist analysis of what it means to be a person. This has two important implications that are relevant to the ongoing debate concerning the number of persons that are in existence throughout any duration in time: (1) the lack of logically or metaphysically necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing one person from another should imply neither that there is only one person nor that personhood is not individuative; and (2) the lack of such universally applicable identity criteria should not imply that the term ‘person’ is a folk term with no real application. In other words, lack of reductionist analysis does not entail lack of existence.     

Diversity in unity: practical unity and personal boundaries

In the spirit of the discussion in Daniel Kolak’s I Am You: The Metaphysical Foundation for Global Ethics, I consider the way in which divisions that we usually think of as borders between distinct people occur within a single life. Starting with the dispute between constructionist and non-constructionist views of persons, I argue for a view that places the unity of persons in the dynamic generated by simultaneously taking a constructionist and non-constructionist view of oneself. In order to unify ourselves as agents we need to treat past and future selves as others, but to motivate this endeavor we need to think of ourselves as temporally extended agents, and so identify with past and future selves. Understanding this dynamic illuminates the structure of our agency and the unity of the self.     

Racial-ethnic self-schemas: Multidimensional identity-based motivation

Prior self-schema research focuses on benefits of being schematic vs. aschematic in stereotyped domains. The current studies build on this work, examining racial-ethnic self-schemas as multidimensional, containing multiple, conflicting, and non-integrated images. A multidimensional perspective captures complexity; examining net effects of dimensions predicts within-group differences in academic engagement and well-being. When racial-ethnicity self-schemas focus attention on membership in both in-group and broader society, engagement with school should increase since school is not seen as out-group defining. When racial-ethnicity self-schemas focus attention on inclusion (not obstacles to inclusion) in broader society, risk of depressive symptoms should decrease. Support for these hypotheses was found in two separate samples (8th graders, n = 213, 9th graders followed to 12th grade n = 141).