Cognitive and Emotional Processes in Individuals and Commercial Web sites

This research reports how banner ads are responded to in Web sites that emphasize either emotion or cognition. It also looks at the moderating effects of individuals’ own levels of need for cognition and need for emotion on banner responsiveness in the two kinds of Web sites. Recall and attitude toward banners are consistently better when their context is an emotion-based Web site. Need for cognition, but not need for emotion moderates this effect. For ad recall, it is better to be lower in need for cognition in a cognitive Web site, but higher in need for cognition on an emotional Web site. For attitude toward the banner and purchase intention, however, it is better to be higher in need for cognition in a cognitive Web site, but lower in need for cognition on an emotional Web site. The results are discussed in terms of advertising context theory that has been developed in applications to the traditional media like print and broadcast, but here is shown to be applicable to the Web.     

Casting weight goal as a function of weight status among a representative population-based sample of adolescents

This paper pursues two objectives: (1) to estimate proportions of adolescents with a weight goal that matched and mismatched weight status, and (2) to identify correlates of a mismatched weight goal. Data were from a representative population-based sample of adolescents (n = 2346, 51% female; 91.5% complete data). Results showed that 69% of adolescents had a weight goal that matched weight status whereas 31% had a weight goal that mismatched weight status. Body dissatisfaction was a significant predictor of having a mismatched weight goal for both sexes while elevated psychological distress was a predictor among girls. Being body dissatisfied mediated the association between psychological distress and having a mismatched weight goal among girls. Casting weight goal as a function of weight status may allow for a better understanding of overall weight management strategies.     

现代语境中的伦理学和伦理学家

Ethics in the modern context is under the dual pressure of scientific-technological rationality and market commercialization, which has led to breakthroughs in the original boundaries of knowledge and academic methodology. The gradual separation of the domain of public life and that of private life in modern society and the former’s increasing pressure on the latter, in addition to the above dual pressure on ethics, is causing a dramatic transformation of the structure of ethical knowledge itself. All of these raise new theoretical problems for ethics and ethicists in the modern context. Answering and solving these problems makes sense for the future development of ethics as one of the classic humanities, and tests modern ethicists’ ability to realize their moral and theoretical duties. Translated by Yan Xin from Daode yu wenming 道德与文明 (Morality and Civilization), 2007, (4): 4–9     

行为经济学中的损失规避

损失规避是指,人们总是强烈倾向于规避损失：一定数额的损失所引起的心理感受,其强烈程度约相当于两倍数额的获益感受。这种强烈的心理与行为倾向广泛存在于风险与非风险领域,在该两个领域中损失规避的研究范式也不同。损失规避常见于经济和消费等领域,可用于解释行为决策中有悖于规范化理论的诸多现象,如禀赋效应、现状偏差、股权溢价之迷和赢者的诅咒等。然而,损失规避的机制研究还存在许多尚未解决的问题,如损失规避的本质以及适用条件。今后的研究不仅要注重认知角度和情感依恋,还要结合认知过程来研究损失规避的性质和内在机制,以期帮助人们认识、预测及干预由损失规避造成的经济损失和非理性决策。     

句子语境中韵律作用的眼动特征

采用眼动记录的方法,考察了不同句子语境中,不同类型的动宾组合的加工过程。结果发现,韵律限制对句子阅读的认知加工过程起重要作用。符合韵律限制的[2+2]和[1+2]型动宾组合比不符合韵律限制的[2+1]型动宾组合加工更容易,更少地寻找支持信息。语境能引导读者更快地通达符合韵律限制的词汇的意义。在中性语境中,符合韵律限制的[2+2]和[1+2]型动宾组合比不符合韵律限制的[2+1]型动宾组合加工更容易,更少地需要语境的支持。在偏向语境中,同时符合韵律限制和语境信息的[2+2] 型动宾组合加工更容易,更少地需要语境的支持。     

Employability during unemployment: Adaptability, career identity and human and social capital

Recently, Fugate et al. [Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Ashforth, B. E. (2004). Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 14] defined employability as a psycho-social construct comprised of three dimensions: (i) adaptability; (ii) career identity; and (iii) human and social capital. The aim of the current paper was to empirically test Fugate et al.’s model in a sample of 416 unemployed Australians (n = 126 for longitudinal sample). Specifically, this research explored employability in relation to three aspects of unemployment: (1) self-esteem during unemployment; (2) job search during unemployment; and (3) re-employment (at a 6-month follow-up). Overall, the results of this longitudinal study provide broad support for the psycho-social construct of employability and demonstrate its applicability to the unemployment context.     

Working through the end of civilization

This is an account of how a civilization works through the problems it faces when it is threatened with destruction. It focuses on the example of the Crow Nation, an Indian tribe of the northwest plains of North America, and their last great chief Plenty Coups. Psychoanalytic ideas play a crucial role in explaining how a creative response was possible. In particular, their collective use of dream-visions and dream-interpretation made possible the creation of a new ego ideal for the tribe. This allowed for the transformation of traditional allocations of shame and humiliation. It also allowed for the possibility of transformation of psychological structure. And it opened up new possibilities for what might count as flourishing as a Crow. Conversely, the threat of civilizational collapse allows us to see new possibilities for the conceptual development of psychoanalysis. In particular, psychoanalysis needs to recognize that destruction can occur at the level of the culture while the individuals are not physically harmed. The psychological states of these individuals can be various and complex and cannot be neatly summed up under the category of trauma. A culture can be devastated, while there is no one-to-one relation to the psychological states of the individuals who participate in that culture. It is also true that a collapse of a way of life makes a variety of psychological states impossible. Coming to understand these phenomena is essential to understanding how a culture works through threats to its very existence.     

Helping and proactive extra-role behaviors: The influence of motives, goal orientation, and social context

We explore how two motivational orientations (communion and status striving) influence three extra-role organizational behaviors: proactive engagement, providing help, and seeking help. We propose and confirm intervening mechanisms, in the form of (a) goal orientations and (b) attitudes toward coworkers. Proactive behaviors are predicted by status striving, through the intervening mechanisms of both learning and performance proving goal orientations. Providing help is, in turn, motivated by communion striving, and the relationship is mediated by goal orientations (learning and performance avoiding) and by satisfaction with and commitment to coworkers. Finally, seeking help is a function of communion striving, which influences the outcome through learning goal orientation and satisfaction with and confidence in coworkers.     

The return of the erased: Memory and forgetfulness in Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (2004)

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is a film about remembering and forgetting loss. This essay reads the film as an examination of mourning and melancholia, which are distinct ways of remembering and forgetting both a love object and its loss. Freud distinguished mourning from its pathological counterpart, melancholia, claiming that there is a normal way to grieve, mourning, and its degeneration into an abnormal pattern, melancholia. The author aims to make two points: firstly, that both processes are characterized by ambivalence and identification and therefore have some commonalities; secondly, that there is a difference between the two processes that is less apparent than the ones discussed by Freud. This is the difference between remembering a good and a bad object. Following Klein the author argues that this is a crucial qualitative difference between mourning and melancholia. She concludes that a central issue in grieving is not forgetting but remembering well.     

Effects of normal aging on memory for multiple contextual features

Twenty-four younger (18-35 years) and 24 older adult participants (65 or older) were exposed to three experimental conditions involving the memorization words and their associated contextual features, with contextual feature complexity increasing from Conditions 1 to 3. In Condition 1, words presented varied only on one binary feature (color, size, or character), while in Conditions 2 and 3, words presented varied on two and three binary features, respectively. Each condition was carried out as follows: (1) learning of a word list; (2) encoding of words and their contextual features; (3) delay; and (4) memory for contextual features through a discrimination task. Results indicated that young adults discriminated more features than older adults on all conditions. In both age groups, contextual feature discrimination accuracy decreased as the number of features increased. Moreover, older adults demonstrated near floor performance when tested with two or more binary features. We conclude that increasing context complexity strains attentional resources.