scholarly journals Self-other distinction modulates the social softness illusion

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Pyasik ◽  
Elisabetta Fortunato ◽  
Olga Dal Monte ◽  
Selene Schintu ◽  
Francesca Garbarini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Body Part ◽  
The Self ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
Affective Touch ◽  
The Social

AbstractThe social softness illusion (i.e., the tendency to perceive another person's skin as softer than our own) is thought to promote the sharing of social-emotional experiences because of the rewarding properties of receiving and giving social affective touch. Here we investigated whether the ability to distinguish someone else’s body from our own modulates the social softness illusion. In particular, we tested whether the spatial perspective taken by the participants and seeing or not the touched arms could alter this illusion. Pairs of female participants were assigned the roles of either the giver (i.e., delivering the touches) or the receiver (i.e., being touched). We manipulated the location of the touch (palm or forearm), the spatial perspective of the receiver’s body with respect to the giver’s body (egocentric or allocentric perspective), and the vision of the touched body part (the giver could either see both her own and the receiver’s body part, or she was blindfolded). Consistently with previous findings, the skin of another person was perceived as softer than the own one. Additionally, the illusion was present for both the forearm and the palm, and it was stronger in allocentric compared to the egocentric perspective (i.e., when the self-other distinction was clearer). These findings show that the mechanisms underpinning the ability to represent another person’s body as distinct from our own modulates the social softness illusion, and thus support the role of the social softness illusion in fostering social relationships.

scholarly journals A Theory of War and Violence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
thomas Scheff
Keyword(s):  
Feedback Loops ◽  
The Self ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of War ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Looking Glass

It is possible that war in modern societies is largely driven by emotions, but in a way that is almost completely hidden. Modernity individualizes the self and tends to ignore emotions. As a result, conflict can be caused by sequences in which the total hiding of humiliation leads to vengeance. This essay outlines a theory of the social-emotional world implied in the work of C. H. Cooley and others. Cooley’s concept of the “looking-glass self” can be used as antidote to the assumptions of modernity: the basic self is social and emotional: selves are based on “living in the mind” of others, with a result of feeling either pride of shame. Cooley discusses shame at some length, unlike most approaches, which tend to hide it. This essay proposes that the complete hiding of shame can lead to feedback loops (spirals) with no natural limit: shame about shame and anger is only the first step. Emotion backlogs can feed back when emotional experiences are completely hidden: avoiding all pain can lead to limitless spirals. These ideas may help explain the role of France in causing WWI, and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. To the extent that these propositions are true, the part played by emotions and especially shame in causing wars need to be further studied.

scholarly journals A Theory of War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
thomas Scheff
Keyword(s):  
Karl Marx ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of War ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Looking Glass

A Theory of War and Violence (First section)Thomas Scheff, G. Reginald Daniel, and Joseph Loe-Sterphone, Dept of Sociology, UCSB(9260 words total) Abstract: It is possible that war in modern societies is largely driven by emotions, but in a way that is almost completely hidden. Modernity individualizes the self and tends to ignore emotions. As a result, conflict can be caused by sequences in which the total hiding of humiliation leads to vengeance. This essay outlines a theory of the social-emotional world implied in the work of C. H. Cooley and others. Cooley’s concept of the “looking-glass self” can be used as antidote to the assumptions of modernity: the basic self is social and emotional: selves are based on “living in the mind” of others, with a result of feeling either pride of shame. Cooley discusses shame at some length, unlike most approaches, which tend to hide it. This essay proposes that the complete hiding of shame can lead to feedback loops (spirals) with no natural limit: shame about shame and anger is only the first step. Emotion backlogs can feed back when emotional experiences are completely hidden: avoiding all pain can lead to limitless spirals. These ideas may help explain the role of France in causing WWI, and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. To the extent that these propositions are true, the part played by emotions and especially shame in causing wars need to be further studied.“...if a whole nation were to feel ashamed it would be like a lion recoiling in order to spring.” Karl Marx (1975, p. 200)

scholarly journals Harming Kin to Save Strangers: Further Evidence for Abnormally Utilitarian Moral Judgments after Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2186-2196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley C. Thomas ◽  
Katie E. Croft ◽  
Daniel Tranel
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Conflict ◽  
Harm To Others

The ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) has been implicated as a critical neural substrate mediating the influence of emotion on moral reasoning. It has been shown that the vmPFC is especially important for making moral judgments about “high-conflict” moral dilemmas involving direct personal actions, that is, scenarios that pit compelling utilitarian considerations of aggregate welfare against the highly emotionally aversive act of directly causing harm to others [Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., et al. Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908–911, 2007]. The current study was designed to elucidate further the role of the vmPFC in high-conflict moral judgments, including those that involve indirect personal actions, such as indirectly causing harm to one's kin to save a group of strangers. We found that patients with vmPFC lesions were more likely than brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants to endorse utilitarian outcomes on high-conflict dilemmas regardless of whether the dilemmas (1) entailed direct versus indirect personal harms and (2) were presented from the Self versus Other perspective. In addition, all groups were more likely to endorse utilitarian outcomes in the Other perspective as compared with the Self perspective. These results provide important extensions of previous work, and the findings align with the proposal that the vmPFC is critical for reasoning about moral dilemmas in which anticipating the social-emotional consequences of an action (e.g., guilt or remorse) is crucial for normal moral judgments [Greene, J. D. Why are VMPFC patients more utilitarian?: A dual-process theory of moral judgment explains. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 322–323, 2007; Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., et al. Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908–911, 2007].

Field Dependence and Self-Disclosure

1973 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 735-738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joaquin F. Sousa-Poza ◽  
Robert Rohrberg ◽  
Ernest Shulman
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Field Dependence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Stimuli ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Field Independent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Field Dependent ◽  
Personality Theories

Some characteristics of the social behavior of field-dependents as well as their superior recognition of ambiguous social stimuli led to the hypothesis that they would show greater self-disclosure than field-independents. This hypothesis was tested by administering the 60-item Jourard Self-disclosure Questionnaire (JSDQ) to 13 field-dependent and 13 field-independent Ss. In terms of total self-disclosure scores, field-dependents showed significantly (.025) higher levels than field-independents. Results are discussed in light of personality theories which emphasize the role of self-conceptual transactions in the development of the self.

scholarly journals Moral discourses and pharmaceuticalised governance in households

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dew ◽  
P Norris ◽  
J Gabe ◽  
K Chamberlain ◽  
D Hodgetts
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Natural Production ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Health Experts

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This article extends our understanding of the everyday practices of pharmaceuticalisation through an examination of moral concerns over medication practices in the household. Moral concerns of responsibility and discipline in relation to pharmaceutical consumption have been identified, such as passive or active medication practices, and adherence to orthodox or unorthodox accounts. This paper further delineates dimensions of the moral evaluations of pharmaceuticals. In 2010 and 2011 data were collected from 55 households across New Zealand and data collection techniques, such as photo- and diary-elicitation interviews, allowed the participants to develop and articulate reflective stories of the moral meaning of pharmaceuticals. Four repertoires were identified: a disordering society repertoire where pharmaceuticals evoke a society in an unnatural state; a disordering self repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a moral failing of the individual; a disordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a threat to one's physical or mental equilibrium; a re-ordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify the restoration of function. The research demonstrated that the dichotomies of orthodox/unorthodox and compliance/resistance do not adequately capture how medications are used and understood in everyday practice. Attitudes change according to why pharmaceuticals are taken and who is taking them, their impacts on social relationships, and different views on the social or natural production of disease, the power of the pharmaceutical industry, and the role of health experts. Pharmaceuticals are tied to our identity, what we want to show of ourselves, and what sort of world we see ourselves living in. The ordering and disordering understandings of pharmaceuticals intersect with forms of pharmaceuticalised governance, where conduct is governed through pharmaceutical routines, and where self-responsibility entails following the prescription of other agents. Pharmaceuticals symbolise forms of governance with different sets of roles and responsibilities.

Multimodal strategies for balancing formality and informality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiko Kaneyasu
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
Local Functions ◽  
The Social

Abstract This paper investigates multimodal strategies for balancing formality and informality online. The analysis of 300 comment-reply interactions on a recipe sharing site in Japan demonstrates that writers tend to avoid being overly formal or informal in their messages. For example, most comments and replies are written in polite forms but many incorporate some plain forms and colloquial expressions. Linguistic features, however, are not the only way through which the writers manage an appropriate level of formality and informality. The study examines the role of kaomoji or Japanese-style emoticons for socio-relational work online. Some kaomoji function locally as cues for interpreting the sentences featuring kaomoji. All kaomoji, including those with local functions, work to enhance the social presence of the writers on the screen via pictographic gaze and gestures, which increases the perception of intimate rapport. The findings underscore the importance of a multimodal perspective in examining how people handle social relationships online.

scholarly journals The Belle Gibson scandal: The rise of lifestyle gurus as micro-celebrities in low-trust societies

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Alice Baker ◽  
Chris Rojek
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Public ◽  
Celebrity Status ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Advice ◽  
Ubiquitous Access

The Belle Gibson scandal that broke in 2015 is a testament to the growing phenomenon of lifestyle gurus in the 21st century. In this article, our aim is not to explain the psychology behind Gibson’s lies. Rather, we focus on the social, cultural and technological conditions that enabled Gibson’s persona to flourish and their impact on contemporary understandings of the self. Lifestyle gurus embody the para-social, trading off the appeal of intimacy, authenticity and integrity. We demonstrate how social media have increased the levels of emotional investment, trust and attention capital in para-social relationships by providing ubiquitous access to native experts and creating the platform to achieve influence and micro-celebrity status. Finally, we contend that the growing number of lifestyle gurus providing the public with health advice and scientific knowledge points to the need to examine critically the social and cultural landscape that enables micro-celebrities to emerge.

European Legal Culture and WTO Dispute Settlement: Thirty Years of Socio-Legal Transplants from Brussels to Geneva

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-133
Author(s):  
Tommaso Soave
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Trade Measures

Abstract This article argues that the legal culture of EC/EU institutions has made a significant contribution to the ethos, the style, and the tone of WTO dispute settlement bodies. Areas of alignment between the two regimes include the self-perceived role of adjudicators vis-à-vis their political environment and the jurisprudence on the ‘necessity’ of non-trade measures. Based on these premises, the article traces some of the social and professional pathways through which European sensibilities and perspectives have found their way from Brussels (and Luxembourg) to Geneva. In particular, it describes the convergent trajectories of the EC/EU and the GATT/WTO professional communities. The goal of the analysis is to provide a fresh outlook on the ongoing diplomatic stalemate surrounding the future of the Appellate Body and WTO dispute settlement at large.

Interpersonal Considerations and Judgements in a Day Hospital

1970 ◽  
Vol 117 (539) ◽  
pp. 397-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Ferguson ◽  
M. W. P. Carney
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Therapeutic Process ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Professional Worker ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intellectual Skills ◽  
Operational Range ◽  
The Relationship

There is a body of opinion which regards psychiatrically ill individuals, or at least one great class or subdivision of them, as suffering primarily from disturbances in personal relationships and social interaction processes generally. Sullivan, Horney and Fromm have made the most significant theoretical contributions to this subject, and empirical applications have been reported by Balint (1957), Maxwell Jones (1968), Rapoport (1960) and Laing (1961). These writers have at least this in common, that they take the point of view that since the pathology of the illness lies in social relationships the fundamental treatment process must lie there also—must, in fact, consist of re-experiencing social interaction within a therapeutic re-educative framework. In the past attention has been directed principally to the doctor-patient relationship as a heuristic model of social interaction, but Rapoport has extended the operational range of significant interaction to include all staff-patient, staff-staff and patient-patient encounters. As the recent Subcommittee of the Central Health Services Council has pointed out (1968), little has been written of the nurse as therapist, but a considerable literature has accumulated concerning the role of the social worker or caseworker or counsellor (e.g. Halmos, 1965). Halmos investigates the nature of such relationships, and finds therapeutic utility to be unrelated to intellectual skills. The therapeutic process is adjudged to lie in the relationship, true enough, but the essential qualities have more to do with the interpersonal styles of the therapist, than with his analytical expertise. Such is his conclusion. Apparently social skills are necessary for the professional worker, but intellectual skills for the problems to be unravelled are of little importance, and are largely irrelevant.

How Old Magic Does the Trick for Modern Politics

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 428-450
Author(s):  
Claudio Sergio Nun-Ingerflom
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Material Form ◽  
Spiritual Ideal

This article attempts to interpret the insurrection led by Razin in the seventeenth century as the beginning of modern politics, because it was founded on the immanence of the social in contrast to the transcendent conceptions of power maintained by the court and church. This advance was made possible by the working of magic. Through performative speech, magic permitted the creation of a verbal presence for the non-existent tsarevich Alexis, who, however, was never given material form. In keeping the self-appointed heir invisible and by declaring his father’s rule illegitimate, the rebels reduced the role of the tsar to a pure signifier. The proof that this uprising represented a turn toward modern politics is that it did not rely upon the invocation of an intangible philosophical or spiritual ideal (as in the West); it was built instead upon an armed people, expressing itself in a language that was still archaic but already oriented toward a new representation of power as socially legitimatized. This analysis opens an important line of argument that has power beyond this specific case.

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