Memory and Counterfactual Simulations for Past Wrongdoings Foster Moral Learning and Improvement

In four studies, we investigated the role of remembering, reflecting on, and mutating personal past moral transgressions to learn from those moral mistakes and to form intentions for moral improvement. Participants reported having ruminated on their past wrongdoings, particularly their more severe transgressions, and they reported having frequently thought about morally better ways in which they could have acted instead (i.e., morally upward counterfactuals; Studies 1–3). The more that participants reported having mentally simulated morally better ways in which they could have acted, the stronger their intentions were to improve in the future (Studies 2 and 3). Implementing an experimental manipulation, we then found that making accessible a morally upward counterfactual after committing a moral transgression strengthened reported intentions for moral improvement—relative to resimulating the remembered event and considering morally worse ways in which they could have acted instead (Study 4). We discuss the implications of these results for competing theoretical views on the relationship between memory and morality and for functional theories of counterfactual thinking.     

For-Me-Ness,For-Us-Ness,and the We-Relationship

Topoi - This article investigates the relationship between for-me-ness and sociality. I start by pointing out some ambiguities in claims pursued by critics that have recently pressed on the...     

Psychology,population, and reproductive behavior

This special section on international perspectives in psychology focuses on population issues and reproductive behavior across national and cultural boundaries, emphasizing the responsibility of psychologists and colleagues in related disciplines to generate and communicate culturally mindful findings likely to shape public health policy and improve human well-being. After considering the historical and policy context, it highlights internationally collaborative research projects in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Mexico, and the United States that address reproductive behavior, women's roles and status, responsible parenthood, and abortion legislation in terms of cultural context, gender equity, the needs of adolescents, and public health policy. The articles illustrate the importance of the cultural context within which psychological research is conducted and how psychology can be informed by international perspectives.     

Posttraumatic Growth in Children and Adolescents Exposed to the 2010 Earthquake in Chile and Its Relationship with Rumination and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms

The aim of this study was to assess a predictive model of posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress symptoms in children and adolescents exposed to the earthquake in Chile in 2010. 325 children (47.4% male), aged between 10 and 15 years, were surveyed 12 months after the earthquake. The following tests were administered: the posttraumatic growth inventory for children in its brief version of Kilmer et al., the child PTSD symptom scale of Foa et al., the rumination scale for children of Crider et al., along with a scale to assess the trauma severity and a socio-demographic questionnaire. The model was assessed through a path analysis, which showed that deliberate rumination mediated the relationship between trauma severity and intrusive rumination with posttraumatic growth, that intrusive rumination mediated the relationship between the severity of the event and posttraumatic stress symptoms and that the latter mediated the relationship between intrusive rumination and posttraumatic growth. The sex was included as control variable in the path model. The final model achieved adequate fit indexes. The relevance of rumination processes for the development of the psychological consequences in children and adolescents following a natural disaster and their implications for clinical is discussed.     

No evidence for unethical amnesia for imagined actions: A failed replication and extension

In a recent study, Kouchaki and Gino (2016) suggest that memory for unethical actions is impaired, regardless of whether such actions are real or imagined. However, as we argue in the current study, their claim that people develop “unethical amnesia” confuses two distinct and dissociable memory deficits: one affecting the phenomenology of remembering and another affecting memory accuracy. To further investigate whether unethical amnesia affects memory accuracy, we conducted three studies exploring unethical amnesia for imagined ethical violations. The first study (N = 228) attempts to directly replicate the only study from Kouchaki and Gino (2016) that includes a measure of memory accuracy. The second study (N = 232) attempts again to replicate these accuracy effects from Kouchaki and Gino (2016), while including several additional variables meant to potentially help in finding the effect. The third study (N = 228) is an attempted conceptual replication using the same paradigm as Kouchaki and Gino (2016), but with a new vignette describing a different moral violation. We did not find an unethical amnesia effect involving memory accuracy in any of our three studies. These results cast doubt upon the claim that memory accuracy is impaired for imagined unethical actions. Suggestions for further ways to study memory for moral and immoral actions are discussed.     

The Catholic Church,moral doctrine,and HIV prevention in Recife,Brazil: Negotiating the contradictions between religious belief and the realities of everyday life

Religious beliefs have had a key role in shaping local responses to HIV and AIDS. As the world's largest Catholic country, Brazil is no exception. Yet little research has been conducted to document how religious doctrine is enacted in practice among its lay leaders and followers. In this article, we present ethnographic research from Recife, Brazil, conducted to understand the way in which religious doctrines are interpreted at a local level. Contextualised within the sociology of contemporary Brazilian Catholicism, we draw on interviews with clergy members, lay leaders, and parishioners to discuss how the Catholic Church's vision of sexuality translates into everyday lives of its followers. We explore the disjuncture between the Catholic ideals of fidelity and delaying sex until marriage with the everyday reality of the Church's followers, highlighting the role that gender plays in defining sexual roles and expectations. We conclude by posing questions for future research and HIV prevention strategies considering the formal institutional response of the Brazilian Catholic Church to AIDS on the one hand, and the social and cultural contexts in which Catholics live their daily lives on the other.     

Argentines’ collective memories of the military Junta of 1976: differences and similarities across generations and ideology

Although memories about a nation's past usually are semantic in nature, a distinction needs to be made between lived and distant semantic collective memories. The former refers to memories of community-relevant events occurring during the lifetime of the rememberer, whereas the latter to memories of distant events. Does the content of lived and distant semantic collective memories differ? Employing both free and cued recall, we examined the memories of younger and older Argentines of the Military Junta of 1976. We also examined the effects of political ideology. Content analysis indicated that (1) lived semantic collective memories were more likely to contain personal recollections than distant semantic collective memories, even though those with distant semantic collective memories could have incorporated memories of the parent's personal experience in their recollections, (2) lived semantic collective memories contained more causal statements, and (3) those on the Right with distant semantic collective memories were more likely to claim that they “Don't know” or offer positive accounts of the Junta, suggesting a need to “defend” the reputation of those on the Right. The results are discussed in terms of the goals and plans different generations might have when recollecting their nation's past.     

Tracking the emergence of memories: A category-learning paradigm to explore schema-driven recognition

Previous research has shown that prior knowledge structures or schemas affect recognition memory. However, since the acquisition of schemas occurs over prolonged periods of time, few paradigms allow the direct manipulation of schema acquisition to study their effect on memory performance. Recently, a number of parallelisms in recognition memory between studies involving schemas and studies involving category learning have been identified. The current paper capitalizes on these findings and offers a novel experimental paradigm that allows manipulation of category learning between individuals to study the effects of schema acquisition on recognition. First, participants learn to categorize computer-generated items whose category-inclusion criteria differ between participants. Next, participants study items that belong to either the learned category, the non-learned category, both, or neither. Finally, participants receive a recognition test that includes old and new items, either from the learned, the non-learned, or neither category. Using variations on this paradigm, four experiments were conducted. The results from the first three studies suggest that learning a category increases hit rates for old category-consistent items and false alarm rates for new category-consistent lures. Absent the category learning, no such effects are evident, even when participants are exposed to the same learning trials as those who learned the categories. The results from the fourth experiment suggest that, at least for false alarm rates, the effects of category learning are not solely attributable to frequency of occurrence of category-consistent items during learning. Implications for recognition memory as well as advantages of the proposed paradigm are discussed.