The strategies in past temporal discounting

对过去事件的加工涉及到对现在信息的加工,过去获得的价值能够为现在的生活带来的收益可能对过去事件的价值估计具有影响。本研究探讨了过去事件对现在生活的影响在过去时间贴现中的作用。采用延迟时间贴现范式任务,选取2周到50年共10个过去时间长度,要求被试在现在获得的奖金和过去获得的奖金之间进行偏好选择,并且完成对过去时间贴现决策策略的问题回答。采用曲线下的单位面积UAUr(t1,t1) 为过去时间贴现率,发现过去时间贴现率在过去2周和过去1个月之间[Z = 2.662,p = .008]、过去1年和过去3年之间[Z = 2.587, p = .010] 差异显著。对决策策略的回答进行内容分析(频次统计信度为0.875),发现过去事件能够为现在生活带来的收益影响了被试对过去事件的价值估计和偏好选择。从现在起到过去2周内,被试看重近的过去获得的奖金对现在的生活的帮助,偏好选择过去获得的奖金;在较远的过去,从过去2周起到过去1年内,奖金数量和获得奖金的时间之间的比例影响了被试的偏好选择;从过去1年起到过去50年内,远的过去获得的奖金对现在生活的影响微乎其微,被试偏好现在获得的奖金。本研究的结果支持了过去时间贴现和未来时间贴现具有不同的心理加工机制,并且有助于进一步了解过去时间的差别感受性的变化规律。     

The use of the past and the present in the clinical setting Pasts and presents

The author provides a brief summary of Latin American literature concerning temporality. She shows that a common theme throughout all these papers is that the analytical relationship is considered to be bipersonal and symmetrical, thus demonstrating a concern for establishing the basis by which social subjectivity can be reconsidered. This literature displaces the idea of linear time from its central position and introduces other measures of time. The analytical relationship takes place not only in the past but also in a newly created present. This is the ongoing present, of what is happening now, instantaneous and without a prior history attached to it. This leads the author to suggest that there is a present to one's history and a history to one's present. She then analyses the consequences of this proposition by examining some clinical material where she attempts to pinpoint those instances in which the analyst may have reacted defensively, tending to position himself in the analysand's past instead of being able to take action in the present. Clinical material from the IJP is used.     

Close Associations and Memory in Brainwriting Groups

The present experiment examined whether or not the type of associations (close (e.g. apple‐pear) and distant (e.g. apple‐fish) word associations) and memory instruction (paying attention to the ideas of others) had effects on the idea generation performances in the brainwriting paradigm in which all participants shared their ideas by using paper slips (Paulus & Yang, 2000). All participants were randomly subjected to exercising on either close or distant word associations ten minutes before the brainstorming session started. The findings showed that exercising on the close associations prior to the brainstorming session led to the generation of more unique ideas, category scanning, and depth of ideas than exercising on the distant ones in a subsequent brainstorming task. Memory instruction led to the generation of fewer ideas than no memory instruction. These findings were discussed from the aspect of the associative memory approach and cognitive stimulation approaches.     

Holocaust victims and perpetrators

The author presents here the results of 12 years of work with a group of psychotherapists in Germany on the subject of the after-effects of the Nazi period on people in psychotherapeutic treatment today. She identifies several typical complexes concerned with issues of identity, loyalty, relationship, authority and aggression. Case examples and references to texts from the Nazi period illustrate the phenomena. The author's concern is that psychotherapists be aware of their own collective (family, ethnic, national) past so that they can fully engage in their work without having to repress painful collective complexes. In training analysis this aspect of the work is especially important so that the following generations of analysts can experience the importance of this level of the collective unconscious.     

The temporal dimension of national identification: An empirical investigation in South Korea and Australia

We argue that national identification can be framed temporally, such that people may differently identify with their nation's past or present. Further, we argue that temporal national identification has important consequences for attitudes towards social changes. Within this new theoretical framing, we tested the empirical separability and predictive utility of past national identification and present national identification in South Korea and Australia. Results showed that, in both countries, past and present national identifications are correlated but empirically distinct constructs, which independently contribute to general national identification. Past and present national identifications were also shown to be grounded in distinct notions of national continuity. Most importantly, in both countries, present national identification positively predicted favourable attitudes towards social changes and globalization, whereas past national identification negatively predicted these attitudes. These findings suggest that temporally framed national identification is an important construct in the domain of social identification and in research on social changes and globalization.     

Academic Dishonesty,Self-Control,and General Criminality: A Prospective and Retrospective Study of Academic Dishonesty in a New Zealand University

Academic dishonesty is an insidious problem that besets most tertiary institutions, where considerable resources are expended to prevent and manage students' dishonest actions within academia. Using a mixed retrospective and prospective design this research investigated Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory as a possible explanation for academic dishonesty in 264 university students. The relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was also examined. A significant but small to moderate relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was present, including correlations with general dishonesty, violent crime and drug offending subcategories. These findings suggested that a general criminological theory may be of use in explaining academic dishonesty, but the overall ability of self-control variables to explain academic dishonesty was not strong. Controlled logistic regressions indicated that a significant positive association with academic dishonesty was only present for one of 6 self-control subscales (self-centeredness), and even this association was only present in the prospective study component. A strong relationship between past and future academic dishonesty was present. Implications of the study for institutions are discussed.     

Sleep hygiene behaviours: An application of the theory of planned behaviour and the investigation of perceived autonomy support,past behaviour and response inhibition

This study investigated the sleep hygiene behaviour of university students within the framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB [Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211.]), and examined the predictive validity of additional variables including perceived autonomy support, past behaviour and response inhibition. A total of 257 undergraduate students from an Australian university were administered two online questionnaires at two time points. At time 1, participants completed the TPB questionnaire and the Go/NoGo task as a measure of response inhibition. A week later at time 2, participants completed a questionnaire measuring the performance of sleep hygiene behaviours. Multiple and hierarchical regression analyses showed that the TPB model significantly predicted intention and behaviour. Although intention and perceived behavioural control were statistically significant in predicting behaviour, past behaviour and response inhibition accounted for more variance when added to the TPB model. Subjective norm was found to be the strongest predictor of intention implying the importance of normative influences in sleep hygiene behaviours. Response inhibition was the strongest predictor of behaviour, reinforcing the argument that the performance of health protective behaviours requires self-regulatory ability. Therefore, interventions should be targeted at enhancing self-regulatory capacity.     

Semantic Externalism and Presentism

Abstract

In this paper I discuss an unconventional form of presentism which, I claim, captures better than all other versions of the doctrine the fundamental notion underpinning it, namely, the notion that ‘only what is present is real’. My proposal is to take this maxim as stating, not the rather uncontroversial view that past things are not real now, but the more radical idea that they never were. This rendition of presentism is, I argue, the only one that is neither trivial nor absurd. I examine this proposal by considering it against a sceptical hypothesis that bears similarities to it, viz., the hypothesis that the world was created five minutes ago. On this hypothesis, the past, all but five minutes of it, is unreal, in precisely the sense in which the presentism I discuss claims it is. I show that, assuming semantic externalism, this sceptical hypothesis cannot be sustained, but that a somewhat weaker hypothesis, the Creationist hypothesis that the world is 5,768 years old, cannot be refuted. Together, these conclusions enable a demarcation of those presentist intuitions that language and thought tolerate and those they do not.     

Identity,representations, religion,and apologizing for past wrongdoings: Muslim discourse about Indonesia's 1965–66 massacres of communists

Since 1965, in Indonesia, people labelled as communists and their descendants have been mistreated. Recently, there has been an issue to apologize to them, but up until now, no official apology has been offered by the Indonesian government. The present study aims to understand how communism is perceived in Indonesia and why communism attributes labelled to a person can lead to negative effects, such as social exclusions. We interviewed 23 Muslims living in Jakarta (i.e., majority group) and used a thematic analysis to organize and describe the data. We found that Muslims who see communists as non‐believers view communist members as dangerous and a threat for the unity of the Republic of Indonesia. Among participants with such beliefs, the past maltreatments to accused communists are justified and legitimate; any apology toward the victims is considered not needed. The findings are discussed in the context of collective blaming and group essentialization, and ways to solve the problems are suggested.     

Past Wrongs and Liberal Justice

Liberal theories of justice have often been unable to include the recognition of minority rights or of multiculturalism because of their emphasis on individuals. In contrast, recent theories of cultural recognition and minority rights have underestimated the tensions between group and individual rights. It is precisely the incorporation of past wrongs and their impact on present politics that can advance the liberal theory of justice for cultural minorities and their members.