THE PROBLEM OF “GOD” IN PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION: LONERGAN'S “COMMON SENSE” (RELIGION) VERSUS “THEORY” (THEOLOGY)

The emphasis on God in American psychology of religion generates the problem of explaining divine‐versus‐natural causality in “spiritual experiences.” Especially “theistic psychology” champions divine involvement. However, its argument exposes a methodological error: to pit popular religious opinions against technical scientific conclusions. Countering such homogenizing “postmodern agnosticism,” Bernard Lonergan explained these two as different modes of thinking: “common sense” and “theory”—which resolves the problem: When theoretical science is matched with theoretical theology, “the God‐hypothesis” explains the existence of things whereas science explains their natures; and, barring miracles, God is irrelevant to natural science. A review of the field shows that the problem is pervasive; attention to “miracles”—popularly so‐named versus technically—focuses the claims of divine‐versus‐natural causality; and specifications of the meaning of spiritual, spirituality, science, worldview, and meaning itself (suffering that same ambiguity: personal import versus cognitive content) offer further clarity. The problem is not naturalism versus theism, but commonsensical versus theoretical thinking. This solution demands “hard” social science.     

先前知识经验对远距离水平映射规则内隐学习的限制

先前研究发现远距离规则能够被内隐地习得和迁移,表明内隐学习获得的知识是底层的抽象规则,那么这一抽象规则的习得和迁移是否会受到先前知识经验的限制?研究采用汉语声调的远距离水平映射规则为材料,通过创设不符合平仄知识经验的任意声调水平映射规则,在控制组块和重复结构等表面特征的条件下,探讨先前知识经验是否限制了远距离水平映射规则的内隐学习和迁移。结果发现相对于符合平仄知识经验的汉语声调水平映射规则,被试不能够内隐地习得和迁移任意声调的水平映射规则,表明先前知识经验在远距离水平映射规则内隐学习过程中发挥着重要作用。     

心理学对经济学的涉入——从理性自利到社会偏好的决策框架

理性认知能力与社会偏好存在紧密的关联。文章简要回顾了经济决策理论从理性模型到有限理性模型和社会偏好模型的发展进程,论述了人们理性的局限性及其根源,并进一步探讨理性认知能力与社会偏好的关系。对人类以及灵长目动物的研究显示,有限理性可能是由根源于演化的适应性机制所导致。人类不公平厌恶的起源、个体公平能力的发展规律和表征公平的大脑结构上的证据表明,理性认知能力能让人更好地抑制自私性,实现更高层次的公平。     

Object representations are biased toward each other through statistical learning

The visual system is remarkably efficient at extracting regularities from the environment through statistical learning. While such extraction has extensive consequences on cognition, it is unclear how statistical learning shapes the representations of the individual objects that comprise the regularities. Here we examine how statistical learning alters object representations. In three experiments, participants were exposed to either random arrays containing objects in a random order, or structured arrays containing object pairs where two objects appeared next to each other in fixed spatial or temporal configurations. After exposure, one object in each pair was briefly presented and participants judged the location or the orientation of the object without seeing the other object in the pair. We found that when an object reliably appeared next to another object in space, it was judged as being closer to the other object in space even though the other object was never presented (Experiments 1 and 2). Likewise, when an object reliably preceded another object in time, its orientation was biased toward the orientation of the other object even though the other object was never presented (Experiment 3). These results demonstrated that statistical learning fundamentally shapes how individual objects are represented in visual memory, by biasing the representation of one object toward its co-occurring partner. Importantly, participants in all experiments were not explicitly aware of the regularities. Thus, the bias in object representations was implicit. The current study reveals a novel impact of statistical learning on object representation: spatially co-occurring objects are represented as being closer in space, and temporally co-occurring objects are represented as having more similar features.     

A Goal‐Priming Approach to Cognitive Consistency: Applications to Judgment

A fundamental criterion of judgment is consistency among beliefs. To augment traditional methods for studying cognitive consistency, we treat it as a goal and present a priming method for increasing its activation. Three studies use three criteria to validate the method: an increase in the biased evaluation of incoming information, speed in a lexical decision task, and participants' direct reports of greater goal activation. The method is then used to verify the role of the consistency goal in three diverse judgment phenomena. Priming cognitive consistency increases the search for postdecisional supporting information (selective exposure to information), the agreement between preference and prediction (the desirability bias or wishful thinking), and the adjustment of a socially unacceptable implicit attitude to conform to the corresponding explicit attitude. One conclusion is that the cause of these phenomena is not only motivated reasoning (driven directionally by a desired outcome) but also the purely cognitive and nondirectional process of simply making beliefs more consistent. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

汉语声调水平映射规则的内隐学习及其长度迁移效应

内隐学习领域关注的重要问题是被试能够习得何种结构及其相应的学习机制。远距离规则的研究为澄清这一问题提供了新的视角。现有研究已证实被试能够内隐地习得并迁移固定长度的远距离规则。按照内隐学习抽象性的观点,如果被试习得的是远距离的抽象规则本身,那么迁移也同时会发生在不同长度的材料上。因此,研究以独特的汉语声调水平映射规则为材料,通过对表面特征与底层规则之间的分离操作,探讨声调水平映射规则的内隐习得和长度迁移,结果表明被试不仅能够习得这一规则,还能够将该规则灵活迁移到不同长度的材料上,进一步为内隐学习的抽象性特点和无限性的学习机制提供强有力的新证据。     

Predicting Self‐Confident Behaviour with Implicit and Explicit Self‐Esteem Measures

The present research compared the validity of popular direct and indirect measures of self‐esteem in predicting self‐confident behaviour in different social situations. In line with behavioural dual‐process models, both implicit and explicit self‐esteem were hypothesized to be related to appearing self‐confident to unacquainted others. A total of 127 participants responded to the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale, the Multidimensional Self‐Esteem Scale, and an adjective scale for measuring explicit self‐esteem (ESE). Participants' implicit self‐esteem (ISE) was assessed with four indirect measures: the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the name‐letter task (NLT), and two variants of an affective priming task, the reaction‐time affective priming task (RT‐APT) and the error‐based affective priming task (EB‐APT). Self‐confident behaviour was observed in four different social situations: (i) self‐introduction to a group; (ii) an ostracism experience; (iii) an interview about the ostracism experience; and (iv) an interview about one's personal life. In general, appearing self‐confident to unknown others was independently predicted by ESE and ISE. The indirect measures of self‐esteem were, as expected, not correlated, and only the self‐esteem APTs—but not the self‐esteem IAT or the NLT—predicted self‐confident behaviours. It is important to note that in particular the predictive power of the self‐esteem EB‐APT pertained to all four criteria and was incremental to the ESE measures. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

When death is not a problem: Regulating implicit negative affect under mortality salience

Terror management theory assumes that death arouses existential anxiety in humans which is suppressed in focal attention. Whereas most studies provide indirect evidence for negative affect under mortality salience by showing cultural worldview defenses and self‐esteem strivings, there is only little direct evidence for implicit negative affect under mortality salience. In the present study, we assume that this implicit affective reaction towards death depends on people's ability to self‐regulate negative affect as assessed by the personality dimension of action versus state orientation. Consistent with our expectations, action‐oriented participants judged artificial words to express less negative affect under mortality salience compared to control conditions whereas state‐oriented participants showed the reversed pattern.     

Simulation of Preference Information in an Interactive Reference Point‐Based Method for the Bi‐Objective Inventory Routing Problem

In the research area of multiple criteria decision making, very few publications exist that explicitly design the simulation of a decision maker (DM) in an interactive approach. For this reason, we outline some methods widely used in the literature to identify common assumptions of simulating the DM's responses and the required input preference information. Our paper aims at covering the identified gap by introducing experimental concepts. Such concepts are used for theoretical analyses of a combined search‐and‐decision‐making procedure. Simulating the DM is a fruitful idea because the algorithm can be tested without integrating a human decision maker. Finally, we conduct experiments based on the proposed settings for a multiobjective inventory routing problem, which is a relevant and challenging logistic problem. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.