动机的目标理论

章对动机的目标研究领域的发展脉络、研究方法以及所取得的新近成果进行综述,总结各种目标理论的共同点和分歧,并对这一领域的未来发展方向做出了展望。作认为,目标理论将导致行为的情感因素、动机力量与认知过程有机结合,这体现了一种整合趋势;同时,目标理论强调目标对于人格功能、情绪以及健康的重要性,使得该领域的研究与社会生活密切相联。而这一研究领域的未来方向则是,探查动机倾向与个人目标之间的联结。     

抑制能力与工作记忆能量的相关研究

采用汉字材料的负启动范式,考察了大学生和老年人被试的特性和空间位置抑制能力,及其与工作记忆能量的相关。结果发现：位置抑制能力与工作记忆能量无显著相关,而特性抑制能力与工作记忆能量存在正相关。说明个体的分心抑制能力是影响其工作记忆能量的重要因素。但工作记忆的年龄差异可能还受分心抑制之外其它认知因素的影响。     

科技时代的替代经验与道德的个人亲证问题

人对自己生活于其中的科技时代的批判,是与人的自我意识一同发生的。当今世界,科技已越来越被当作自主的、异在于人的并沿着非人性化的惯性而展开的过程。如何对这一过程重新进行人化?如何使现代人具有科技进步时代的人的内容的清醒意识?这是每一个人文学者必须给予严肃关注的问题。从道德本性的角度视之,科技社会所制造的大量的替代经验对道德实践基础的蚕食和颠覆,具有根本的决定性的作用。因此,在科技社会中如何确立实践智慧、个人亲证在道德领域里的独立性,对于避免当代人的“道德孤儿”的命运,便具有头等重要的意义。     

Dissidence from within: Examining the effects of intergroup context on group members’ reactions to attitudinal opposition

The successful achievement of a group’s goals often requires a broad base of support among members. Because group and individual interests can diverge, however, dissension is likely. We argued that reactions to such dissension on an issue that is relevant to the group’s status can vary as a function of contextual goals. Whereas dissension from an ingroup member would be rejected in an intergroup context, it might be tolerated in an intragroup context. Regression analyses of women’s (N=96) responses to dissension on an attitudinal issue (abortion on demand) indicated that in an intergroup context, women derogated a dissenting woman more if they had a strong gender identity and viewed the issue as gender relevant. Dissent in an intragroup context was evaluated more positively. The results provided insight into the factors involved in defining a collective identity.     

Derogating black sheep: Individual or group protection?

What motivates people to derogate unfavorable ingroup members more harshly than comparably unfavorable outgroup members? Researchers investigating the black sheep effect maintain that this differential derogation is a means of group protection. In contrast, we argue that derogating unfavorable ingroup members may be an individual protection strategy whereby target devaluation distances an unfavorable other from the self as a means of limiting the threat of being associatively miscast. Participants read an article describing an unfavorable ingroup or outgroup target, and then received two means of responding to the target: target devaluation and group disidentification. Importantly, group disidentification was considered to be a uniquely individualistic distancing strategy. We found that both response options substituted for one another, depending on the order of presentation. Substitutability, we argue, suggests that the primary motive behind ingroup derogation in our study was distance augmentation, an individual protection strategy.     

Narrative Unity as a Condition of Personhood

Abstract: In this article I critically discuss a claim made by several writers in philosophy and the social sciences that for an individual to count as a person, a single personality, or the subject of a life, the experiences of the subject in question must take a narrative form. I argue that narrativity is a misleading and, in some ways of understanding it, implausible condition of what it is that adds unity to personhood and personality. I pursue this critique by considering canonical accounts of narrativity in philosophy and literary studies. I consider those connections between events that must hold for the sequence to be considered a narrative: causal, teleological, and thematic connections. I argue that for each of these, the condition that experiential sequences (for a given subject) must have this structure is empty: any life sequence that is reflected upon in an interpretive spirit can meet it. What the condition of narrativity amounts to, then, is the more basic requirement that the person must be able to look upon the factors and events of her life with a certain interpretive reflection, whether or not those factors and events have any particular narrative unity in a traditional sense.     

Coping with a threatened group identity: Psychosocial and neuroendocrine responses

Given the stress associated with belonging to a socially devalued group, members' reactions to a threat were evaluated within a stress and coping framework. Participants (N=72) were presented with an explicit or nonexplicit (positive vs. neutral cues) threat to a devalued identity. Regressions indicated that problem-focused coping was related to appraising the identity threat as controllable, and with a greater sense of optimism. Together these variables were associated with lower salivary cortisol levels. The role of emotion-focused coping was most evident under explicit threat conditions, such that it was associated with sustained cortisol elevations and a diminution of identity importance. The findings suggest that intergroup responses involve a complex interplay among stressor appraisals and coping propensities.     

Accessing the multitude within: A psychoanalytic perspective on the transformation of masculinity at mid‐life1

This paper reflects upon the essential components of male identity that commonly are reworked in middle age. The author argues that healthy masculine gender identity involves an ongoing, plastic process of destabilization and reconstruction at various pivotal developmental stages, particularly during middle adulthood. In essence, a man's mature transformation of his sense of masculinity results when finite concepts of gender identity are superseded by an awareness of the complexity of one's multiple, early and diverse gender identifications. A clinical case provides insight into how psychoanalytic treatment can contribute to a new experience of masculinity. The case illustrates how a maturing man, meeting an altered sense of identity in mid‐life, relies less on gender splitting and more on reuniting previously antithetical intrapsychic elements. Why this more pluralistic, polythreaded masculinity frequently must wait until mid‐life is further clarified. Specific importance is attached to the early development of male gender identity as it is founded on the boy's unique struggles in separating from his mother. The foundation for male gender identity formation is reconsidered as the author questions the ‘dis‐identification’ model while explicating how the boy's striving for narcissistic completion shapes the gendered masculine ego ideal. Classically termed ‘phallicism’ is understood both to facilitate and obstruct a man's adult development, while the concept of ‘genitality’ is augmented by the postclassical notion of ‘interiority’. At mid‐life, ‘phallic’ ego ideals (resting on omnipotence, desires for narcissistic completion and gender splitting) are transformed into more realistic, ‘genital’ ego ideals (synthesizing autonomy and connection). The achievement of a mature, less sharply gendered ‘masculine’ ego ideal (revitalizing the foreclosed dimensions of both the early maternal and paternal imagos) occurs as the balance of forces shifts in the direction of true genitality rather than defensive phallicism.     

The psychopathology of everyday Vienna: Psychoanalysis and Freud's familiars

This paper examines the parapraxes made by, to or about Jewish-identifi ed individuals discussed by Freud in Psychopathology of everyday life. Each of these errors and slips is occasioned by what he terms a 'mésalliance' between a Jew and a Gentile. Such incidents of distorted language betray unresolved ambivalences and unformulated anxieties endemic to Jewish-Gentile interaction in Freud's Vienna. First, the disturbed relationships between German-speaking Gentiles and their threatening Doppelgänger, the Jews, are analyzed by means of Freud's analysis of the 'uncanny' and an examination of the particular restrictions placed upon the 'offi cially' emancipated Jews in the Habsburg Empire, especially with regard to intermarriage. Then, the paper turns to Freud's discussions of explicitly Jewish-identifi ed individuals and their limitation to illustrating parapraxes associated with what should be the most pleasurable and intimate relationships between Jew and Gentile, namely sexual and connubial relations. His focus upon this confl icted conjunction diagnosed the intrinsically problematic character of Jew-Gentile interaction in his Vienna.     

What Does It Mean to Be an American? Patriotism,Nationalism, and American Identity After 9/11

The period of heightened nationalism in the United States that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 provided unusual conditions for investigating issues surrounding the distinction between patriotism and nationalism and the relationship between national identification and pluralistic values. In a survey of national identity and social attitudes conducted in late September 2001, two different definitions of national unity were inserted in the introduction to the questionnaire in an attempt to prime activation of different conceptualizations of nationality. Results demonstrated that the priming conditions did have an effect on the pattern of interrelationships among measures of patriotism, nationalism, and tolerance for cultural diversity.