Alive after death: An exploratory cultural artifact analysis of the Merry Cemetery of Săpânţa

The paper uses insights from several Social Psychological theories to study the cultural artifacts of the Merry Cemetery (MC) of S?pân?a (Romania). In the first study we have content analysed the epitaphs written on the painted crosses of the MC and the results show that the epitaphs reflect personal as well as social identity (in which individuals are described as members of both the family and the community) and play two important roles for the community members: they serve as a message to the dear ones and as an external memory of the community's social norms and shared worldview. The second study explored the social representation of the MC in the local community. The results show that the social representation of the MC clusters around three main themes: its symbolic, economic and local identity value. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dreaming and hallucinations - continuity or discontinuity? Perspectives from dementia with Lewy bodies

Comparing the phenomenology, neurochemical pathology, and psychopharmacology of hallucinations and dreaming is limited by the available data. Evidence to date reveals no simple correspondence between the two states. Differences in the phenomenology of visual hallucinations and the visual component of dreams may reflect variations in visual context acting on the same underlying mechanism – the minimal visual input during dreaming contrasts with the more substantial perceived context in hallucinations. Variations in cholinergic, dopaminergic and serotonergic neurotransmitter function during sleep and during hallucinations in Lewy body dementias, together with relevant drug effects suggest that, on the whole, different, potentially opposite, changes characterise the two states. A similar analysis of other psychotic features in Lewy body dementia and other disorders suggests that, in contrast to hallucinations, there may be more convincing parallels between dreaming and delusional states.     

Emotional reactions to scandals: When does moral character make a difference?

A scandal can evoke public outrage when it is widely publicized and involves an individual who is perceived to have a high level of cultural representativeness. Two experiments showed that when the scandalous target's moral character was highlighted, emotional responses towards the target were least negative when the scandal was widely circulated and when the target was seen as a representative of his culture. These results suggest that when a cultural symbol is implicated in a widely‐circulated scandal, the negative emotions directed towards the scandalous individual can be alleviated when the public remains confident in his or her commitment to morality.     

La valorisation professionnelle des caractéristiques de personnalité masculines,féminines et androgynes

This article examines the professional valorisation of gender-typed traits. In the study, participants should assess masculine, feminine and androgynous profiles in a set of professional contexts obtained by the crossing of social status (high versus low), gender (masculine versus feminine) and sector (production versus maintenance) of occupations. Consistent with a gender- typed trait matching model, the results showed that masculine profiles were the most valued ones in the most masculine occupations, feminine profiles were mostly valued in the most feminine occupations while androgynous profiles were the most valued in gender ambiguous occupations. Of particular interest was the fact that the perception of occupations’ gender was a function of the interaction between the gender and the sector of occupations (i.e.: the most masculine occupations were those that were stereotypically masculine and belonging to the production sector; the most feminine were those that were stereotypically feminine and belonging to the maintenance sector; the stereotypically masculine and maintenance occupations as the stereotypically feminine and production occupations were perceived as less gender typed).     

大学生民族文化认同感研究前瞻

通过CNKI进行资料检索、归类和分析,以民族国家认同、母语认同、传统节日的民族文化认同、民族精神和民族主义的民族文化认同、政治认同等五个维度作为大学生民族文化认同调查研究的切入点,进行调查问卷题项的编制。以此引领对民族国家认同感有研究兴趣的同仁对这类研究的进一步关注。     

积极心理学视野下的工作压力

工作压力是职业健康心理学研究的重要领域。随着经济发展,工作压力问题日益突出,它降低了生产率,使员工的健康受损,增加了成本消耗。但是以往的研究主要关注压力的消极面,干预方法也是以预防和治疗为主。然而积极心理学运动的兴起改变了传统的工作压力研究方法,提出积极压力的概念,倡导以健康、整合的方式建立一个完整的工作压力模型。并提出在预防和治疗消极压力的同时,也要重视激发积极压力。     

Distinctions between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being: Results from a day reconstruction study among Norwegian jobholders

The study suggests that hedonic and eudaimonic well-being can be studied by theoretical and empirical analysis of subjective feelings. In this approach, pleasure is the hallmark of hedonism, and engagement serves as the core feeling of eudaimonia. The Day Reconstruction Method was used to investigate the assumption that overall life satisfaction predicts hedonic feelings but not eudaimonic feelings during a workday. Perceived job control was hypothesized to predict eudaimonic feelings but not hedonic feelings. Questionnaire data from 120 Norwegian jobholders were analyzed, providing support for the hypothesis. Moreover, pleasure was found to be relatively unrelated to engagement, and perceived control was basically unrelated to life satisfaction. The results are discussed against the background that hedonism and eudaimonia are two independent parts of a multidimensional concept of well-being.     

Applying an exemplar model to the artificial-grammar task: Inferring grammaticality from similarity

We present three artificial-grammar experiments. The first used position constraints, and the second used sequential constraints. The third varied both the amount of training and the degree of sequential constraint. Increasing both the amount of training and the redundancy of the grammar benefited participants' ability to infer grammatical status; nevertheless, they were unable to describe the grammar. We applied a multitrace model of memory to the task. The model used a global measure of similarity to assess the grammatical status of the probe and captured performance both in our experiments and in three classic studies from the literature. The model shows that retrieval is sensitive to structure in memory, even when individual exemplars are encoded sparsely. The work ties an understanding of performance in the artificial-grammar task to the principles used to understand performance in episodic-memory tasks.     

Beyond intensity: Spectral features effectively predict music-induced subjective arousal

Emotions in music are conveyed by a variety of acoustic cues. Notably, the positive association between sound intensity and arousal has particular biological relevance. However, although amplitude normalization is a common procedure used to control for intensity in music psychology research, direct comparisons between emotional ratings of original and amplitude-normalized musical excerpts are lacking.

In this study, 30 nonmusicians retrospectively rated the subjective arousal and pleasantness induced by 84 six-second classical music excerpts, and an additional 30 nonmusicians rated the same excerpts normalized for amplitude. Following the cue-redundancy and Brunswik lens models of acoustic communication, we hypothesized that arousal and pleasantness ratings would be similar for both versions of the excerpts, and that arousal could be predicted effectively by other acoustic cues besides intensity.

Although the difference in mean arousal and pleasantness ratings between original and amplitude-normalized excerpts correlated significantly with the amplitude adjustment, ratings for both sets of excerpts were highly correlated and shared a similar range of values, thus validating the use of amplitude normalization in music emotion research. Two acoustic parameters, spectral flux and spectral entropy, accounted for 65% of the variance in arousal ratings for both sets, indicating that spectral features can effectively predict arousal. Additionally, we confirmed that amplitude-normalized excerpts were adequately matched for loudness. Overall, the results corroborate our hypotheses and support the cue-redundancy and Brunswik lens models.     

Working memory and number line representations in single-digit addition: Approximate versus exact,nonsymbolic versus symbolic

How do kindergarteners solve different single-digit addition problem formats? We administered problems that differed solely on the basis of two dimensions: response type (approximate or exact), and stimulus type (nonsymbolic, i.e., dots, or symbolic, i.e., Arabic numbers). We examined how performance differs across these dimensions, and which cognitive mechanism (mental model, transcoding, or phonological storage) underlies performance in each problem format with respect to working memory (WM) resources and mental number line representations. As expected, nonsymbolic problem formats were easier than symbolic ones. The visuospatial sketchpad was the primary predictor of nonsymbolic addition. Symbolic problem formats were harder because they either required the storage and manipulation of quantitative symbols phonologically or taxed more WM resources than their nonsymbolic counterparts. In symbolic addition, WM and mental number line results showed that when an approximate response was needed, children transcoded the information to the nonsymbolic code. When an exact response was needed, however, they phonologically stored numerical information in the symbolic code. Lastly, we found that more accurate symbolic mental number line representations were related to better performance in exact addition problem formats, not the approximate ones. This study extends our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying children's simple addition skills.