“Authoritarianism” and Agreement with Things Authoritative

The use of personality and attitudinal questionnaires in private executive and military samples is briefly reviewed. The need for evidence regarding the factor similarity of such questionnaires in comparative studies is noted. Such a comparative factorial study of an abbreviated version of the Shure-Meeker (11) Personality/Attitude Schedule (PAS) is reported. In terms of the general scales examined, three of the four scales emerge in both samples. The order of emergence, as well as the number and item content of the factors, differs slightly between the two samples. Caution is suggested in assuming factor similarity across samples in comparative studies utilizing the PAS and other personality and attitudinal instruments.     

It is never the right time: How to help a mother to separate from her young child

In this paper I have described a short-psychotherapy treatment with a mother, a 3-year-old girl, and occasionally a father, over the difficulty in separating and settling down at nursery. The mother's unresolved mourning for the early miscarriage of her second baby was one important factor. She held on to the company and comfort provided by the little girl, who had become the vessel of maternal projections. Filled with Poppy's projections, the mother had also felt unable to withstand and process them. Mr Green was a conflictual element in the family, rather than a supportive husband and father, and Poppy's care and problems were left with the mother. Nine sessions unblocked the situation and allowed Poppy to settle down at a private nursery.     

The social side of shame: approach versus withdrawal

ABSTRACT

At present, the consequences and functions of experiences of shame are not yet well understood. Whereas psychology literature typically portrays shame as being bad for social relations, motivating social avoidance and withdrawal, there are recent indications that shame can be reinterpreted as having clear social tendencies in the form of motivating approach and social affiliation. Yet, until now, no research has ever put these alternative interpretations of shame-motivated behaviours directly to the test. The present paper presents such a test by studying the extent to which shame motivates a preference for social withdrawal versus a preference for social approach. Two studies (N?=?148 and N?=?133) using different shame inductions both showed people experiencing shame to prefer to be together with others (social approach) over being alone (social withdrawal). In addition, the preference for a social situation was found to be unique for shame; it was not found for the closely related emotion of guilt. Taken together, these findings provide direct empirical support for the idea that shame can have positive interpersonal consequences.     

Reduced willingness to approach genuine smilers in social anxiety explained by potential for social evaluation,not misperception of smile authenticity

ABSTRACT

We investigate perception of, and responses to, facial expression authenticity for the first time in social anxiety, testing genuine and polite smiles. Experiment 1 (N?=?141) found perception of smile authenticity was unaffected, but that approach ratings, which are known to be reduced in social anxiety for happy faces, are more strongly reduced for genuine than polite smiles. Moreover, we found an independent contribution of social anxiety to approach ratings, over and above general negative affect (state/trait anxiety, depression), only for genuine smiles, and not for polite ones. We argue this pattern of results can be explained by genuine smilers signalling greater potential for interaction – and thus greater potential for the scrutiny that is feared in social anxiety – than polite smiles. Experiment 2 established that, relative to polite smilers, genuine smilers are indeed perceived as friendlier and likely to want to talk for longer if approached. Critically, the degree to which individual face items were perceived as wanting to interact correlated strongly with the amount that social anxiety reduced willingness to approach in Experiment 1. We conclude it is the potential for social evaluation and scrutiny signalled by happy expressions, rather than their positive valence, that is important in social anxiety.     

Emotion,core affect,and psychological construction

As an alternative to using the concepts of emotion, fear, anger, and the like as scientific tools, this article advocates an approach based on the concepts of core affect and psychological construction, expanding the domain of inquiry beyond “emotion”. Core affect is a neurophysiological state that underlies simply feeling good or bad, drowsy or energised. Psychological construction is not one process but an umbrella term for the various processes that produce: (a) a particular emotional episode's “components” (such as facial movement, vocal tone, peripheral nervous system change, appraisal, attribution, behaviour, subjective experience, and emotion regulation); (b) associations among the components; and (c) the categorisation of the pattern of components as a specific emotion.     

Tracing the Path from Personality — via Cooperativeness — to Conservation

Ecological behaviour is often conceptualized as an instance of cooperating in a social dilemma situation. Thus, it has been argued to relate to dispositional tendencies of moral virtue and pro‐social orientation. To embed such notions in models of basic personality, we herein predicted that the recently proposed sixth basic personality factor, Honesty–Humility — which specifically pertains to individual differences in cooperativeness — is linked to environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. Results from two studies (N = 137 and N = 531, respectively) supported these hypotheses and showed that Honesty–Humility explains incremental variance beyond the remaining, more classical five factors of personality. In addition, mediation analyses revealed that Honesty–Humility exerts part of its influence via individual differences in pro‐social value orientations. Individual tendencies to cooperate in social dilemma situations could thus be shown to form a bridge between basic personality dimensions and ecological behaviour. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A General Setting for Dedekind's Axiomatization of the Positive Integers

A Dedekind algebra is an ordered pair (B, h), where B is a non-empty set and h is a similarity transformation on B. Among the Dedekind algebras is the sequence of the positive integers. From a contemporary perspective, Dedekind established that the second-order theory of the sequence of the positive integers is categorical and finitely axiomatizable. The purpose here is to show that this seemingly isolated result is a consequence of more general results in the model theory of second-order languages. Each Dedekind algebra can be decomposed into a family of disjoint, countable subalgebras called the configurations of the algebra. There are ?₀ isomorphism types of configurations. Each Dedekind algebra is associated with a cardinal-valued function on ω called its configuration signature. The configuration signature counts the number of configurations in each isomorphism type that occurs in the decomposition of the algebra. Two Dedekind algebras are isomorphic iff their configuration signatures are identical. The second-order theory of any countably infinite Dedekind algebra is categorical, and there are countably infinite Dedekind algebras whose second-order theories are not finitely axiomatizable. It is shown that there is a condition on configuration signatures necessary and sufficient for the second-order theory of a Dedekind algebra to be finitely axiomatizable. It follows that the second-order theory of the sequence of the positive integers is categorical and finitely axiomatizable.     

Positive Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Evidence from a Large‐Scale Field Experiment on Voter Mobilization

Political scientists are increasingly exploring the psychological underpinnings of voting behavior using field experimental techniques. Research in psychology demonstrates that positive reinforcement—what I describe as positive social pressure—motivates prosocial behavior. A distinctive feature of the current study is the focus on key subgroups of voters, namely unmarried women and minorities. Attention to these voter subgroups allows us to build upon findings reported in previous studies that leave questions about the generalizability of the reported effects of positive social pressure to key demographic subgroups of voters largely unanswered. This article reports the results of a large‐scale randomized field experiment designed to investigate the impact of positive social pressure on voter turnout. The experiment was conducted during the November 2009 gubernatorial election in New Jersey, and the results suggest positive social pressure mobilizes voters. Moreover, the effects appear to be robust across subgroups of voters, including minorities and unmarried women, and both lower‐ and higher‐propensity voters.     

Posture affects emotional responses: A Head Down Bed Rest and ERP study

Body posture, mainly represented by horizontal bed rest, has been found to be associated with cortical inhibition, altered perceptual and cognitive processing. In the present research, the influence of Head Down Bed Rest (HDBR) – a condition also termed simulated microgravity – on emotional responses has been studied. Twenty-two male subjects were randomly assigned to either Sitting Control or HDBR group. After 3-h, subjects attended to a passive viewing emotional task in which 75 IAPS slides, divided into 25 pleasant, 25 neutral and 25 unpleasant, were presented in random order for 6 s each, while EEG was recorded from F7, F8 and Pz locations. Results showed in Sitting Controls the expected greater P300 and Late Positive Potential (LPP) to pleasant and unpleasant compared with neutral slides, an effect which indicates greater processing of emotional arousing stimuli. The HDBR group showed smaller non-significant differences among all emotional conditions in both ERP components. Arousal and valence subjective evaluations, typically less sensitive to experimental manipulation, did not differentiate groups. The observed ability of HDBR to inhibit cortical emotional responses raises an important issue on the risk that astronauts underestimate a dangerous/threatening situation or that long-term bedridden inpatients develop depressive symptoms.     

对信息源的正向跟随倾向对决策效果的影响*

采用实验研究的方法,检验了二元选择情形下高准确率信息源(准确率x >50%)和低准确率信息源(准确率为1?x)对决策者预测效果的影响。尽管从逻辑上二者从准确率层面具有完全相等的信息价值,然而研究结果显示,决策者更倾向于采用正向跟随而非逆向跟随的方式处理来自信息源的信息。这导致低准确信息源的价值未能得以充分利用。学习和信息源的规范性对该信息处理倾向起到调节作用。