Can Sadness Be Good for You?

The subtle relationship between feeling and thinking, affect and cognition has fascinated philosophers and writers since time immemorial, yet, empirical research on this topic was relatively neglected by psychologists until recently. There have been many claims emphasising the beneficial cognitive and behavioural consequences of positive affect. Many recent works suggest that negative affect may also facilitate optimal performance in many situations, consistent with evolutionary theories suggesting the adaptive signalling function of various affective states. This paper reviews traditional and current psychological theories linking affect to social thinking and behaviour. A variety of empirical studies from our laboratory will also be presented, demonstrating that in many situations, negative affect promotes optimal performance in cognitive and social tasks, including tasks such as memory, social judgements, motivation, and strategic interpersonal behaviours. These results will be interpreted in terms of a dual‐process theory that predicts that negative affect promotes a more accommodative, vigilant, and externally focused thinking strategy. The relevance of these findings for recent affect–cognition theories will be discussed, and the practical implications of negative affect promoting improved social thinking and performance in a number of applied fields will be considered.     

Caffeine cravings impair memory and metacognition

Cravings for food and other substances can impair cognition. We extended previous research by testing the effects of caffeine cravings on cued-recall and recognition memory tasks, and on the accuracy of judgements of learning (JOLs; predicted future recall) and feeling-of-knowing (FOK; predicted future recognition for items that cannot be recalled). Participants (N?=?55) studied word pairs (POND-BOOK) and completed a cued-recall test and a recognition test. Participants made JOLs prior to the cued-recall test and FOK judgements prior to the recognition test. Participants were randomly allocated to a craving or control condition; we manipulated caffeine cravings via a combination of abstinence, cue exposure, and imagery. Cravings impaired memory performance on the cued-recall and recognition tasks. Cravings also impaired resolution (the ability to distinguish items that would be remembered from those that would not) for FOK judgements but not JOLs, and reduced calibration (correspondence between predicted and actual accuracy) for JOLs but not FOK judgements. Additional analysis of the cued-recall data suggested that cravings also reduced participants’ ability to monitor the likely accuracy of answers during the cued-recall test. These findings add to prior research demonstrating that memory strength manipulations have systematically different effects on different types of metacognitive judgements.     

Analogical reasoning as a tool of epidemiological investigation

Few, if any, scientific inquiries are conducted against a background of complete knowledge, a background in which inquirers are in possession of the full facts that relate to a particular question or issue. More often than not, scientists are compelled to conduct their deliberations in contexts of epistemic uncertainty, in which partial knowledge or even a total absence of knowledge characterise inquiry. Nowhere is this epistemic uncertainty more evident, or indeed more successfully controlled, than in the branch of scientific inquiry called epidemiology. In this paper, I examine how epidemiologists overcome the unique challenges to inquiry that are posed by epistemic uncertainty. In specific terms, I contend that epidemiologists employ analogical reasoning strategies in an attempt to advance their inquiries in situations that are epistemically uncertain. The context for my claims will be the early inquiries that were conducted into the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the United States. I argue that early scientific work in relation to HIV/AIDS was directly premised upon epidemiological investigations in which analogical reasoning with hepatitis B had featured significantly. I conclude that epidemiological investigations of AIDS exemplify the capacity of analogical reasoning to advance inquiry under conditions of epistemic uncertainty. To this extent, analogical reasoning should be a concern both to those who address practical problems of uncertainty management and to those who pursue theoretical debates within argumentation studies and epistemology.     

似然性、必然性和恒等:一种相对似然性逻辑

We construct a Hilbert style system RPL for the notion of plausibility measure introduced by Halpern J, and we prove the soundness and completeness with respect to a neighborhood style semantics. Using the language of RPL, we demonstrate that it can define well-studied notions of necessity, conditionals and propositional identity. The paper is partially supported by a project (No. 05JJD720. 40001) granted by the Key Research Institutes for Humanities and Social Sciences of Chinese Ministry of Education.     

Men's ratings of physical attractiveness,health, and partner suitability simultaneously versus separately: Does it matter whether within- or between-subjects designs are used?

Previous studies have documented moderate-to-large associations between ratings of physical attractiveness and other interpersonal traits, but this research has invariably relied on within-subjects designs that leave open the possibility of halo effects or response biases. In the present study, 40 men completed the Photographic Figure Rating Scale in a within-subjects design, rating the figures for physical attractiveness, health, and suitability as a long-term partner. In addition, 108 men completed the same scale in a between-subjects design, being randomly allocated to one of three subgroups where they rated the figures for attractiveness, health, or suitability as a long-term partner. Results indicated no significant differences in ratings for the within-subjects participants. In contrast, there were significant differences in ratings for the between-subjects design. These results highlight the importance of considering halo and response bias effects when designing studies of interpersonal judgements and interpreting their results.     

Hemispheric laterality measured in Rembrandt's portraits using pupil diameter and aesthetic verbal judgements

Eckhard Hess claimed that pupils dilate to pleasant images and constrict to unpleasant images. However, his work was confounded since his image's luminances and contrasts across conditions were inconsistent. We overcome this limitation and suggest a new, promising methodology for research in this area. We presented rightward or leftward facing male and female portraits by Rembrandt to observers in either their original or mirror-reversed position. Since emotional content may be expressed differently on each side of the face, we used Rembrandt's portraits since most of his males had their right-cheek exposed and females had their left-cheek exposed. This raises questions regarding the emotional and cognitive significance of such biased positioning. Simultaneously, we measured observers pupil size while asking observers to report how (dis)pleasing they found each image. We found that in viewing male portraits pupil diameter was a function of arousal. That is, larger pupil diameter occurred for images rated both low and high in pleasantness. We discuss these findings in regard to the perceived dominance of males and how emotional expressions may be driven by hemispheric laterality.     

Veracity is in the eye of the beholder: A lens model examination of consistency and deception

Research has attempted to explain perceived cues to deception based upon self-report of what participants believe are ‘good’ cues to deception, or self-report of what cues participants say they base their veracity judgements on. However, it is not clear to what extent participants can accurately self-report what influences their decision-making. Using a within-subjects design, 285 participants completed a questionnaire regarding their beliefs about deception before rating a selection of truthful and deceptive statements on a variety of cues. Expert coders also rated the statements for the same cues. Laypeople and expert coders do not conceptualise between-subject consistency in the same way. A lens model showed that whilst perceptions of cues, such as consistency and amount of detail, influence veracity judgements, these perceptions (and overall veracity judgements) are mostly inaccurate. Fundamentally, there seems to be inconsistencies between how deception research examines consistency and how it is understood and used by laypeople.     

A meta-analysis and systematic review of reactivity to judgements of learning

Judgements of learning (JoL) are often used in memory research as a means for assessing an individual’s metacognitive beliefs about their learning. JoL have been shown to reliably predict performance as well as learning behaviours and decisions . Participants may, however, modify their behaviour in response to performing JoL. There has, however, been little consensus as to the reliability and direction of the effect. We report on a meta-analyses that assesses the evidence that memory performance is reactive to JoL. The results indicate that overall providing JoL does not have a significant effect on memory performance (g?=?0.054, 95% CI ?0.027 to 0.135). However, sub-groups analysis showed that this effect depends on the nature of the stimuli to be recalled, with moderate positive reactivity observed for related word pairs (g?=?0.323, 95% CI 0.083 to 0.563) and word lists (g?=?0.384, 95% CI 0.146 to 0.622) but no reactivity when pairs were unrelated or a mixture of related and unrelated pairs. These results indicate that researchers should be aware that eliciting JoL may well influence participants’ underlying encoding processes, especially when using related word pairs or word lists.     

词频、可预测性及合理性对目标词首次注视位置的影响

采用三项实验分别考察了目标词的词频、可预测性和合理性对读者眼动模式的影响。结果显示:(1)词频、可预测性和合理性对目标词语的凝视时间和总注视时间都有显著影响,但在首次注视时间上主效应不显著;(2)词频和可预测性不影响目标词的跳读率和再注视概率,而合理性对目标词的再注视概率产生显著的影响;(3)远注视点眼跳倾向于将首次注视位置着落于目标词的开端部位,而近注视点眼跳倾向于将首次注视着落于目标词的中央部位;词频、可预测性和合理性均不影响首次注视位置。     

An Alternate Method of Deriving Priorities and Related Inferences for Group Decision Making in Analytic Hierarchy Process

Some work has been carried out in the past on statistically deriving priorities in Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In AHP, the aggregated worths of the alternatives, when compared with respect to several criteria, are estimated in a hierarchical comparisons model introduced by Saaty. In this setup, statistical models are used for Saaty's method of scaling in paired comparisons experiments in any level of the hierarchy. At the end, the final priority weights of the alternatives and related inferences are developed with appropriate statistical methods. Existing statistical methods in the literature assume independence of the entries of the paired comparison matrix. However, these entries are highly dependent among themselves. In this article, we propose a statistical method that allows for the dependence among the entries of the pairwise comparisons matrix. The proposed method is then illustrated with a numerical example. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.