The effects of expected future interaction and prior group support on the conformity process

Previous results indicate that people conform more to group judgments when they have received unanimous group support for their opinions than when they have received no support. The present study tested the hypothesis that these differences would be attenuated when future interaction with the group members was anticipated. The 70 male subjects were tested in a Crutchfield-type conformity situation, where prior group support (100 vs 0%) and anticipation of future interaction (alone vs group) were manipulated. Predictions were based on an examination of conformity incentives that considered normative and informational sources of social influence, as well as Hollander's model of idiosyncracy credit. Consistent with predictions, conformity in the 0% prior support condition was greater when subjects anticipated future group interaction than when they did not, whereas the reverse was true in the 100% prior support condition. In addition, conformity was correlated negatively with both confidence in task ability and feelings of group acceptance when future interaction with the group was anticipated. These data suggest that when future group activity is expected, the tendency to reciprocate past treatment from the group is reduced.     

Off-line authorship effects in action perception

Does the perception of our actions differ from the perception of other individuals' actions when we observe them, like other individual's actions, in an offline perspective? Previous studies, using recognition as well as prediction judgments, suggest that it does even if the stimulus information is reduced to a single moving point-light. Here, we assessed whether this difference also affects the timing of actions. This was tested in two experiments, using a specific synchronization task. After some practice, self-generated action events were anticipated faster than other action events, provided that the anticipation could not be accomplished sufficiently well on the basis of easily detectable cues. The results are discussed with regard to the previous findings of off-line authorship effects in action perception.     

The authorship list in science: Junior physicists’ perceptions of who appears and why

A questionnaire probing the distribution of authorship credit was given to postdoctoral associates (“postdocs”) in order to determine their awareness of the professional society’s ethical statement on authorship, the extent of communication with their supervisors about authorship criteria, and the appropriateness of authorship assignments on submitted papers. Results indicate a low awareness of the professional society’s ethical statement and that little communication takes place between postdocs and supervisors about authorship criteria. A substantial amount of authorship credit given to supervisors and other workers is perceived by the postdocs to violate the professional society’s ethical statement.     

‘An unpublished letter by Sigmund Freud on the Shakespeare authorship question’

This article provides the text of the English translation of Sigmund Freud’s previously unpublished 1935 letter to Percy Allen, the only known letter in which Freud expresses his unqualified support for the theory that ‘William Shakespeare’ was the pen name of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550–1604). The article summarizes the literature on Freud’s authorship views, showing that scholars who disagree with Freud on this matter have minimized his opinion by pathologizing it, or emphasizing Freud’s reservations about the matter. The prevailing theory as to who wrote Shakespeare, on close examination, turns out to be based primarily on circular thinking, confirmation bias, tradition, authority, groupthink, and enforcement of a taboo against the presentation or objective consideration of conflicting evidence. In addition, it originated before we had a better understanding of the high frequency of anonymous, pseudonymous, and allonymous literature in Elizabethan England. The reputations enjoyed by leading Shakespeare scholars lead nonspecialists to assume that these experts can be trusted to tell us who wrote Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Shakespeare scholars falsely claim absolute certainty that they know that ‘Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.’ Freud’s dissenting opinion has been supported by increasing evidence since 1935.     

The authorship of Uri Zohar: the ethics and aesthetics of the Archimedean lever

This article discusses Zohar’s subversive reflexive aesthetics, termed the “Archimedean-lever ethics,” comprised of three stages: the world rendered from one perspective; the same world rendered from a different perspective, challenging or destroying the first; and awareness of the shift of perspectives. It argues that Zohar’s creative energy, imbued with male sexuality, derives from this collision, and examines its ethical aspect in relation to Zionist values during the 1950s and 1960s. Zionism and Israel should always consider more than one perspective, being able not only to build but also to destroy (convictions, territories) in order to bring change, with destruction thus becoming a particular form of creation. However, in Zohar’s films made during the 1970s, the male sexual energy becomes an endless sexual appetite, expressed mostly through coveting gazes, which is no more than a cover up for male impotency, tantamount to Israel’s endless appetite for land.     

Action observation modulates auditory perception of the consequence of others' actions

We can easily discriminate self-produced from externally generated sensory signals. Recent studies suggest that the prediction of the sensory consequences of one’s own actions made by forward model can be used to attenuate the sensory effects of self-produced movements, thereby enabling a differentiation of the self-produced sensation from the externally generated one. The present study showed that attenuation of sensation occurred both when participants themselves performed a goal-directed action and when they observed experimenter performing the same action, although they clearly reported that the tones were produced by other during action observation and by themselves during their own action. These results suggest that sensory prediction of action modulates ongoing auditory processing irrespective of who produces the sounds and that the explicit judgment of agency does not necessarily rely on the same mechanisms on which implicit perceptual measures such as sensory attenuation rely.     

The nonconscious road to perceptions of performance: Achievement priming augments outcome expectancies and experienced self-agency

Three experiments explored the effects of priming the achievement concept on the expectation of performance outcomes and experiences of self-agency over outcomes in a task in which performance outcomes were dependent on chance. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that achievement priming produced expectations of higher (more successful) outcomes prior to working on the task, regardless of whether priming was subliminal (nonconscious) or supraliminal (conscious) and that this effect could not be attributed to subjective motivation to perform well. Experiment 3 revealed that subliminal achievement priming decreased participants’ experienced self-agency when outcome feedback was low, but increased self-agency when it was high. Together, these results suggest that activating achievement concepts outside of awareness spontaneously triggers expectations of higher task outcomes, which increases or decreases self-agency depending on whether there is a match or mismatch with observed outcomes. Implications for the literature on achievement-priming effects on behavior are discussed.     

Foucault and Derrida: The Question of Empowering and Disempowering the Author

This article focuses on Michel Foucault’s concepts of authorship and power. Jacques Derrida has often been accused of being more of a literary author than a philosopher or political theorist. Richard Rorty complains that Derrida’s views on politics are not pragmatic enough; he sees Derrida’s later work, including his political work, more as a “private self-fashioning” than concrete political thinking aimed at devising short-term solutions to problems here and now. Employing Foucault’s work around authorship and the origins of power, I show that Derrida is indeed fashioning himself. This self-fashioning is not merely private or fanciful. Rather, I argue that Derrida can be read as employing what Foucault would call “technologies of the self” to not only show the play of possibility and impossibility at work in all politics and thought, but also to use his savoir to create two important and potentially constructive power structures. First, there is the power of deconstruction itself as a “militant critique” that calls for a forceful and irreducible justice. Second, there is the power of Derrida himself, understood as leaving behind a legacy of himself as the “originator” of deconstruction and as a public intellectual.