“Put a Little Love in Your Heart”: Acceptance of Paternalistic and Ally Political Discourses Both Predict Pro-Roma Solidarity Intentions Through Moral Inclusion

The way politicians talk about minorities institutes the normative context of intergroup relations. We investigated how endorsement of different political discourses predicts donation and collective action intentions by majority members toward the Roma in five European countries. The survey was conducted online using samples demographically similar to the populations of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, France, and Ireland (N = 5,054). First, results showed that accepting paternalistic discourse versus discourse promoting allyship were not distinguishable; both promoted higher moral inclusion which in turn predicted higher prosocial intentions. Second, donations (i.e., immediate relief) and collective action (i.e., social change action) were driven by identical factors. Third, acceptance of openly hostile political discourse neither predicted moral exclusion, nor lower prosocial intentions. In summary, our research provides important evidence that when it comes to Roma—non-Roma relations, the previously established distinction between solidarity intentions that aim to solidify status relations versus bring about social change is completely blurred, presumably because of the social context in which any positive message communicates moral inclusion challenging the hostile status quo.     

Mental pain and its relationship to suicidality and life meaning

Shneidman (1996) proposed that intense mental pain is related to suicide. Relatedly, Frankl (1963) argued that the loss of life's meaning is related to intense mental pain. The first goal of this research was to test Shneidman's proposition by comparing the mental pain of suicidal and nonsuicidal individuals. Meaning in life and optimism are the polar opposites of suicidality and hopelessness, and the examination of these variables in relation to mental pain was undertaken to provide a test of Frankl's proposition. In two studies, a relationship between a newly developed measure of mental pain--the Orbach & Mikulincer Mental Pain Scale, 2002 (OMMP; see also Orbach, Mikulincer, Sirota & Gilboa-Schechtman, 2002)--and suicidal behavior and life meaning were examined. Results confirmed both propositions. Implications for the study of mental pain and suicide are discussed.     

Don’t wait to incubate: Immediate versus delayed incubation in divergent thinking

Previous evidence for the effectiveness of immediate incubation in divergent creative tasks has been weak, because earlier studies exhibited a range of methodological problems. This issue is theoretically important, as a demonstration of the effects of immediate incubation would strengthen the case for the involvement of unconscious work in incubation effects. For the present experiment, we used a creative divergent-thinking task (alternative uses) in which separate experimental groups had incubation periods that were either delayed or immediate and that consisted of either spatial or verbal tasks. Control groups were tested without incubation periods, and we carried out checks for intermittent conscious work on the target task during the incubation periods. The results showed significant incubation effects that were stronger for immediate than for delayed incubation. Performance was not different between the verbal and spatial incubation conditions, and we found no evidence for intermittent conscious working during the incubation periods. These results support a role for unconscious work in creative divergent thinking, particularly in the case of immediate incubation.     

Ecological rationality or nested sets? Individual differences in cognitive processing predict Bayesian reasoning

The presentation of a Bayesian inference problem in terms of natural frequencies rather than probabilities has been shown to enhance performance. The effect of individual differences in cognitive processing on Bayesian reasoning has rarely been studied, despite enabling us to test process-oriented variants of the two main accounts of the facilitative effect of natural frequencies: The ecological rationality account (ERA), which postulates an evolutionarily shaped ease of natural frequency automatic processing, and the nested sets account (NSA), which posits analytical processing of nested sets. In two experiments, we found that cognitive reflection abilities predicted normative performance equally well in tasks featuring whole and arbitrarily parsed objects (Experiment 1) and that cognitive abilities and thinking dispositions (analytical vs. intuitive) predicted performance with single-event probabilities, as well as natural frequencies (Experiment 2). Since these individual differences indicate that analytical processing improves Bayesian reasoning, our findings provide stronger support for the NSA than for the ERA.     

Can membership-functions capture the directionality of verbal probabilities?

Verbal probabilities are a common mean for communicating risk and uncertainties in many decision-making settings (e.g., finance, medicine, military). They are considered directional because they elicit a focus on either the outcome occurrence (e.g., there is a chance) or on its non-occurrence (e.g., it is unlikely). According to a quantitative perspective, directionality is dependent on the vague probabilistic meaning conveyed by verbal probabilities—e.g., p(outcome) > .50 = > focus on outcome occurrence. In contrast a more qualitative perspective suggests that directionality depends on contextual factors. The present study tested whether the directionality of verbal probabilities was determined by their vague probabilistic meaning, by contextually manipulated variables (i.e., representativeness and base rate), or by a combination of both. Participants provided their own expressions to describe the guilt of a suspect and then assessed the vague probabilistic meaning and directionality associated with those expressions. Results showed that directionality was mainly determined by the vague probabilistic meaning but also by the base rate of guilt. Although attention focus on the occurrence or the non-occurrence of the target outcome is dependent on vague probabilistic meaning, it cannot be fully accounted for by it.     

Anxiety-induced miscalculations,more than differential inhibition of intuition,explain the gender gap in cognitive reflection

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is among the most common and well-known instruments for measuring the propensity to engage reflective processing, in the context of the dual-process theory of high-level cognition. There is robust evidence that men perform better than women on this test—but we should be wary to conclude that men are more likely to engage in reflective processing than women. We consider several possible loci for the gender difference in CRT performance, and use mathematical modeling to show, across two studies, that the gender difference in CRT performance is more likely due to women making more mathematical mistakes (partially explained by their greater mathematics anxiety) than due to women being less likely to engage reflective processing. As a result, we argue that we need to use gender-equivalent variants of the CRT, both to improve the quality of our instruments and to fulfill our social responsibility as scientists.     

Peer identification and empirical validation of problematic interpersonal situations of male drug addicts

The present research was concerned with identifying and validating the problematic interpersonal situations of male veteran drug addicts. In Study I, 20 addicts self-monitored the situations with which they had difficulty coping and their associated characteristics throughout a 2-week period. Fifty situations were obtained and then rewritten into specific interpersonal scenarios. In Study II, a second group of 36 addicts and a comparison group of 20 disabled veterans rated the commonality and difficulty of each scenario along seven-point scales. Univariate ANOVAs found that five scenarios received ratings greater than four on both scales and were associated with significantly higher ratings by the addicts. These preliminary scenarios may serve as role-play situations during social-skills assessment and training and may provide further information regarding the interpersonal determinants of relapse occasioned in the natural environment. The need for controlled comparison studies using behavioral measures and an overall improvement in the methodological rigor of research in the area is discussed.The authors acknowledge the editorial comments of Ted D. Nirenberg, Ph.D., on an earlier draft of this paper. Portions of these data were presented at the Fifth World Congress on Behavior Therapy, Washington, DC.