Creating Brand Meaning: A Review and Research Agenda

In this paper I review, from the perspective of experimental research, studies that have examined how brands acquire cultural meaning, and suggest future research directions. McCracken's (Journal of Consumer Research, 13 , 1986 and 71) model of the meaning transfer process gained influence about thirty years ago, but experimental studies of the processes it posited have been limited in their scope. The review is organized around three questions. First, what should be the dependent variables: the types of meanings that can adhere to brands? Second, what have we learned from studies on the types of visual, sensory, and human cues that are the sources of particular types of brand meaning—our independent variables? Third, what do we know, and need to know, about the inferential and other processes through which consumers “take possession” of these brand meanings from these cues? The review concludes with a research agenda.     

Slavery in the White Psyche

This article was born out of the hypothesis that slavery—as historical reality, signifier, and symbol—has deep psychological implications for contemporary white Americans. Using data collected in an exploratory, qualitative study, my participants’ responses serve to illuminate the psychic structure of whiteness, which functions as a distortion that gets passed down intergenerationally (and horizontally) through a white collective unconscious. Housed in individual psyches, I suggest that this distorted structure of self actively resists and prevents white Americans (as a collective) from making contact with the racialized realities, both past and present, that would potentially lead to opportunities for choice, reparation, and transformation.     

Unconscious integration of pointing relation between two masked arrows

In the present study, by using a briefly masked prime display paradigm, we investigated whether the pointing relation (same or different) between two unconsciously perceived arrows in the prime could be processed. Since only motor response priming can reflect unconscious processing of two arrows’ pointing-direction relation (i.e., a relational integration), we could distinguish the motor response priming from the visual priming in this study which in other studies were not separated. We also manipulated the prime-to-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) by using a 70?ms and a 180?ms SOA. In this experiment, two masked arrow signs pointing in the same or different directions (> > or > <) were simultaneously presented in the prime, followed by two arrow symbols also pointing in the same or different directions in the target. The participants were asked to decide whether the two arrows in the target were pointing in the same or different directions. The results did not show any visual priming effect, but did show that the unconsciously perceived pointing relation in the prime elicited a positive motor response priming effect in RT under the 70?ms SOA condition, and a negative motor response priming effect in accuracy under the 180?ms SOA condition. The results were discussed in terms of self-motor-inhibition (or mask-triggered inhibition) and attention mechanisms. Overall, this study indicated that the pointing relation between the two subliminal arrows in the prime could influence the subsequent responses to the target and suggested that people can integrate unconsciously perceived information.     

A Direct-Learning Approach to Acquiring a Bimanual Tapping Skill

The theory of direct learning (D. M. Jacobs &; C. F. Michaels, 2007 Jacobs, D. M., &; Michaels, C. F. (2007). Direct learning. Ecological Psychology, 19, 321–349.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has proven useful in understanding improvement in perception and exploratory action. Here the authors assess its usefulness for understanding the learning of a motor skill, bimanual tapping at a difficult phase relation. Twenty participants attempted to learn to tap with 2 index fingers at 2 Hz with a phase lag of 90° (i.e., with a right-right period of 500 ms and a right-left period of 125 ms). There were 30 trials, each with 50 tapping cycles. Computer-screen feedback informed of errors in both period and phase for each pair of taps. Participants differed dramatically in their success. Learning was assessed by identifying the succession of attractors capturing tapping over the experiment. A few participants’ attractors migrated from antiphase to 90° with an appropriate period; others became attracted to a fixed right-left interval, rather than phase, with or without attraction to period. Changes in attractor loci were explained with mixed success by direct learning, inviting elaboration of the theory. The transition to interval attractors was understood as a change in intention, and was remarkable for its indifference to typical bimanual interactions.     

TRANSFERENCE BEFORE TRANSFERENCE

This paper is predominantly a clinical presentation that describes the transmigration of one patient's transference to another, with the analyst functioning as a sort of transponder. It involves an apparently accidental episode in which there was an unconscious intersection between two patients. The author's aim is to show how transference from one case may affect transference in another, a phenomenon the author calls transference before transference. The author believes that this idea may serve as a tool for understanding the unconscious work that takes place in the clinical situation. In a clinical example, the analyst finds himself caught up in an enactment involving two patients in which he becomes the medium of what happens in session.     

Drives and objects - notes on the change of drive theory

Freud’s drive theory has been questioned since the 1940s when Fairbairn created a metaphor of the mind that is not based on the tripartite model and drive theory. His work inspired others to elaborate on the significance of internal object relationships. According to the object relation theory, internal object relations are dynamic structures capable of generating meanings and action. Consequently, two distinct metapsychologies were created.The aim of this article is to show how the interaction of theories has initiated revisions of classic drive theory. Freud’s concept of drive and three synthesizing viewpoints between the two perspectives are discussed. Otto Kernberg addresses affects as a primary motivational system; the mother–infant relationship organizes affects to drives. Joseph Sandler adheres to classic drive theory but proposes that the ego’s attempt to protect the mind against psychic pain is as important as drive derivatives in motivating the mind. Laplanche proposes that the unconscious of the care-giving adult is the crucial factor for the constitution of an infant’s unconscious and drives. For Freud and Klein, drive is inherent. Contemporary writers, like Loewald and Laplanche, conceive drive as a function of the mind that is born out of the same matrix of interaction with the other elements of the mind.     

A Case Study Demonstrating Reduction of Aggressive Client Behaviors Using the Neuro-Occupation Model: Addressing Professional Burnout through Nonlinear Thinking

This single case study suggests that mental health practitioners adopt nonlinear modes of thinking within the neuro-occupation model to avoid professional burnout. Accordingly, the elimination of severely aggressive behavior of an institutionalized client was reviewed following an intervention using the model. Provided with new opportunities, the client self-extinguished aggressive interactions, reinstated social behaviors, and expanded occupations. Accepting clients as their own change agents limits our role to facilitators and reframes service delivery in mental health, which argues for comparison studies that measure reduced burnout in occupational therapists using the model.     

Ecobiopsychology

The latest scientific discoveries acknowledge that the universe, from the atom to the galaxies, is a system behaving as a whole where each single set composing it seems informed by the global state of the system. In-formation can be exemplified as a “software” governing the “hardware” that is composed of the objects of the universe. This in formation comes from an Akashic Field or archetypal field that can breed each single form as well as the relevant states of consciousness. Ecobiopsychology, through the study of vital analogies and symbols, supports reflective consciousness to have access to the archetypal field studying the relation between the aspects of matter (infrared) and those referred to the psyche (ultraviolet). With this perspective the human's reflective consciousness field can gradually expand until becoming accessible to the reality of the Unus Mundus, represented by the coherence of the single structures of the universe and their own embedded state of implicit consciousness.     

An atomistic modelling and statistical analysis study of crack–void interaction in Aluminum

The interaction between a brittle crack and pre-existing void in front of the crack tip was studied in the realm of molecular dynamics simulations at the nanoscale in face centred cubic Al within the framework of embedded-atom method. The results provide corroborative evidence of the fact that presence of a void in front of a running crack deters further crack growth. By performing an extensive series of simulations with different void sizes and crack-void distances coupled with statistical analysis, it has been found that (1) major role of voids is to decrease the fracture stress with increasing void size, in addition to slight increase in strain at which the crack growth occurs and the consequent strain to fracture, (2) fracture stress for a constant void size follows a sinusoidal distribution by varying the crack-void distance and (3) it is the void size that is most crucial in dictating the fracture properties of the material, rather than the void placement.