Exploring the emotional territory for brands

It has become a truism that brand marketing is in the business of selling emotional connections rather than product benefits. Because of the relatively small number of primary emotions, however, brands in the same categories often end up standing for the same sort of emotions. Let us face facts: telecoms brands either connect or empower people; most whisky brands tend to occupy the emotional territories of maturity or discernment; cleaning product brands have at their core the idea of the good carer, be it mother/father/spouse/self; many vodka and pre‐mix vodka brands play within the territory of transgression. Therefore, the key questions to ask about these brands are: What kind of connecting or empowerment? What kind of maturity? What kind of carer? What kind of transgression? It is this specific differentiated expression within an emotional territory that makes the difference between success and failure for brands. This paper highlights a different approach to exploring these emotional territories through using research stimulus (called Brandcepts) that can actively help respondents to make the sort of fine distinctions in the world of emotional territories that they would never be able to make on their own. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Development of the Collectivist‐Sensitive Trait Forgivingness Scale

Mounting evidence suggests that experiences of forgiveness vary across cultures. However, culturally sensitive conceptualizations of forgiveness lack empirical support, in part because psychometrically sound instruments designed to capture unique aspects of forgiveness in non‐Western cultures are rare. For this reason, we developed the Collectivist‐Sensitive Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS‐CS), which is designed to measure trait forgivingness within societies characterized by a blend of individualistic and collectivistic worldviews. In Study 1 (N = 597), exploratory factor analysis revealed a 16‐item three‐factor structure of third‐party forgiveness, collectivistic forgiveness, and interpersonal resentment among South Africans. In Study 2 (N = 897), the three‐factor model replicated in an independent South African sample. Findings also offered preliminary evidence supporting the construct validity of the TFS‐CS. Overall, these studies support a conceptualization of trait forgivingness with similarities and differences relative to Western models and highlight the importance of appreciating the influence of culture when measuring forgiveness.     

Judgments in a hurry: Time pressure affects how judges assess unfairly shared losses and unfairly shared gains

Human society has evolved to allow third parties—the court system, parents or other societal arbitrators—to punish norm violators and compensate victims. Few studies explore the effect of stress or time pressure on a third‐party judge. Under time pressure, people will likely show a more instinctual reaction or judgment style. We investigated third‐party punishment and compensation within the context of unfairly shared losses and gains in a dictator game under time pressure. Our results show that under no time pressure, participants were inclined to punish dictators who unfairly split windfall gains; however, participants chose to compensate victims more than punish the norm‐violating dictators in the context of unfairly shared losses. With added time pressure, third‐parties were disposed to inflict punishment upon the dictator in both the gain and loss contexts—punishment became the action of choice. Our results shed light on the way observed behavior and stress affect social cognition and decision making in the context of altruistic social interventions and the enforcement of social norms.     

Care,play and lifelong learning

In this paper, links between the concepts of long-term care and lifelong learning are suggested, and notions of care and the author’s construction of the Pedagogic Third will be proposed. The psychoanalysis of children stresses the importance of symbolic play, during which the child uses games to master internal conflicts. Analogous results might emerge from play that engages adult learners. However, where play helps children define roles and accept rule-regulated behaviour, we consider to what extent an adult learner is addressing desires which cannot be satisfied because they are too threatening, or desires which cannot be satisfied in reality and which are represented symbolically in play as an alternative. In order to work through these ideas, we consider a comedic representation of a hospital ward and an extract from the diary of a midwife who was also a long-term patient. The author’s contribution to the conference was a workshop and not the presentation of a paper. As such, this paper has been written in retrospect and is consequently reflective in stance. Much of the work described in this paper is connected to a larger piece of work, a monograph in progress, due to be published in 2019.     

THE MISSING FATHER FUNCTION IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY AND TECHNIQUE: THE ANALYST'S INTERNAL COUPLE AND MATURING INTIMACY

This paper argues that recovering the “missing” paternal function in analytic space is essential for the patient's achievement of mature object relations. Emerging from the helpless infant's contact with primary caregivers, mature intimacy rests on establishing healthy triadic functioning based on an infant‐with‐mother‐and‐father. Despite a maternocentric bias in contemporary clinical theory, the emergence of triangularity and the inclusion of the paternal third as a separating element is vital in the analytic dyad. Effective technique requires the analyst's balanced interplay between the paternal, investigative and the maternal, maximally receptive modes of functioning—the good enough analytic couple within the analyst—to serve as the separating element that procreatively fertilizes the capacity for intimacy with a differentiated other. A clinical example illustrates how treatment is limited when the paternal function is minimized within more collusive, unconsciously symbiotic dyads.     

浅析医患纠纷的解决机制

目前,我国未有一条有效的途径来缓和医患矛盾。诉讼、仲裁和调解是较为常见的几种纠纷解决机制。如果能建立起配套的法律法规和相应的组织机构,充分发挥诉讼、仲裁和调解各自的优势,应该可以有效解决目前的医患纠纷。因此,我国目前必须加大对该问题的研究力度,加快立法进程,在实践中努力寻找最有效的解决办法,尽快建立我国医患纠纷的解决机制。     

Living in the soap bubble: the infertile couple and the standstill of the transcendent function in the treatment of an adolescent girl1

Abstract: This paper considers disturbances of identity and developmental breakdown in the phase of ‘emergent adulthood’ with young adults together with a disturbance of the capacity of the Self for coniunctio. It is proposed that the capacity for effective intrapsychic linking as conceptualized in analytic psychology with the concepts of the coniunctio and the transcendent function, is disturbed because of an unconscious identification with an infertile ‘couple’. This unconscious couple fantasy can lead to a standstill of the transcendent function and prevents the growth of meaning via the linking between parts of the psyche. This can lead to considerable clinical disturbances. A clinical vignette from the treatment of an adolescent girl should illustrate these hypotheses. The patient had developed a not good enough internal space and she suffered from fragmentation anxieties. She tried to control these anxieties by obsessive behaviour and by forms of adhesive identification. The standstill of the transcendent function was manifested when the patient developed a negative therapeutic reaction.     

Employing autobiographical memory perspective to influence self‐congruence and brand preference

This paper advances our understanding of consumer behavior by examining the influence of autobiographical memory perspective on consumer's self‐congruence. While extant research has primarily restricted itself to the consequences of self‐congruence, this work focuses on an antecedent, by examining the psychological processes associated with the consumer's autobiographical memory perspective and the resulting impact on self‐congruence. Through three experiments, we demonstrate that visualizing autobiographical memories from a first‐person versus a third‐person perspective impacts consumers' self‐brand congruence differently under varied circumstances. Specifically, differing degrees of self‐brand congruence are experienced when consumers focus on differences (vs. similarities) between their present and recalled selves, combined with distinct autobiographical memory perspectives. The autobiographical memory perspective is identified as a key determinant of consumers' perceived change in self‐image, which, in turn, has a cascading effect on their self‐brand congruence. Thus, consumers' perceived change in self‐image is identified as the mechanism underlying the main effect. Furthermore, as an important component of self‐image, this research determines and examines a moderating influence of self‐esteem in the relationship between autobiographical memory perspective and self‐congruence. Collectively, these results facilitate our understanding of the autobiographical memory perspective as an antecedent of consumer's self‐congruence, with implications for nostalgia advertising and retro branding.     

熟练中－英双语者三语词汇的语义通达

通过两个实验运用跨语言重复启动的范式考察熟练中－英双语者对不熟练的第三语言词汇的语义通达方式。实验1以三语为日语的熟练中－英双语者为被试,实验2以三语为法语的熟练中－英双语者为被试,两个实验都发现了显著的跨语言重复启动效应。实验结果表明,熟练双语者尽管已经形成了直接通达二语词汇概念意义的语义通达方式,但其并没有将此方式迁移到对三语词汇概念意义的通达,他们仍然需要以一语词为中介从而间接通达三语词汇的概念意义。综合先前系列研究的结果初步表明,第二语言的熟练水平是影响晚期双语者语义通达方式的主要因素,晚期双语者记忆表征中的语义通达方式在本质上是一种经验性变化     

ALAIN LOCKE AND COMMUNITY

Locke consistently argues for the importance of cosmopolitan identity, i.e., cultural-citizenship. Paradoxically, he also argues for the importance of particular, local, and racial/ethnic identities. People have a natural instinct that Locke terms a consciousness of kind, to bond with persons in relatively closed communities. Communities are not natural social groups for Locke, but historical social constructions. I argue that Locke's ethical and conceptual paradox is revolved by considering the relationship between instincts and particular social groups as asymmetrical; that groups are inherently constructed, and thus require continual revaluation. Particular communities are, at best, Gemeinschaft.