Does the cowl make the monk? The effect of military and Red Cross uniforms on empathy for pain, sense of agency and moral behaviors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie A. Caspar ◽  
Guillaume Pech
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Free Condition ◽  
Electric Shocks ◽  
Empathy For Pain ◽  
Military Uniform ◽  
The Impact

The present study investigated to what extent the clothes we wear influence prosocial behaviors and two related neuro-cognitive processes, namely the sense of agency and empathy for pain. We tested forty participants wearing civilian, military and Red Cross uniforms across three consecutive days. Participants were tested by pairs and were assigned either to the role of the agent or to the role of the ‘victim’. Agents could deliver real electric shocks to the ‘victim’ in exchange for +€0.05, either following their own decision or following the experimenter’s instructions. Our results indicated that wearing a Red Cross uniform increased the amplitude of the neural response to pain when participants witnessed shocks in comparison with wearing civilian or military clothing. Results also revealed that the sense of agency increased when participants wore a military uniform compared to wearing their own civilian clothing in the Free condition. Finally, participants gave less shocks when wearing the Red Cross uniform compared to wearing their civilian clothing. This study highlights the effect of wearing symbolic uniforms on the sense of agency, on the neural empathic response and on prosocial behavior, thus broadening our knowledge on the impact of ‘enclothed cognition’ on cognitive and psychological processes.

Transnational logic of gratitude: Marriage migrants’ narratives on marital satisfaction in South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 026858092199469
Author(s):  
Gowoon Jung
Keyword(s):  
Marital Satisfaction ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Marriage Migrants ◽  
Sociology Of Emotion ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Depth Interviews

Scholarship on marriage migrants has examined the impact of class and gender ideology of receiving countries on their marital satisfaction. However, little is known about the role of transnational background in explaining women’s feelings of gratitude for husbands. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with marriage migrant women residing in the eastern side of Seoul, Korea, this article explores the micro-level cognitive processes in understanding women’s gratitude for their husbands. Categorizing marriage migrants into two groups, ‘gratified’ and ‘ungratified’ wives, the author demonstrates how the gratified wives’ feelings of contentment is mediated by their active comparison of Korean husbands with local men in their homelands, and how these viewpoints conversely affect their aspirations for return. Bringing the sociology of emotion into an explanation of marriage migrants’ marital satisfaction, this study aims to develop a transnational frame of reference as an underlying dynamic for comprehending marriage migrants’ (in)gratitude.

The International Committee of the Red Widget? The Diversity Debate and International Humanitarian Law

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 614-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Provost
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
The Impact

This article asserts there has been a lack of attention to the impact of cultural diversity within the field of international humanitarian law. Discussions surrounding culture in international humanitarian law have nearly always avoided the central issue of cultural particularism. This has been so in relation to the debate surrounding the emblem, in general surveys of humanitarian law, and in discussions of the laws of war in distinct legal and cultural traditions. The emblems debate, in particular, signals the elusiveness of rigid universality within international humanitarian law. Five elements are suggested to explain the resistance of humanitarian law to contagion by the cultural relativism debate in human rights: the nature of human rights, the distinct normative frameworks of human rights and humanitarian law, the unified conventional basis of humanitarian law, the very broad participation in the humanitarian regime, and the unique role of the International Committee of the Red Cross. While these reasons might explain the fact that the relativism debate in human rights did not readily transfer to humanitarian law, they offer no substantive basis for immunity for humanitarian law to the challenges posed by cultural diversity. Ultimately, the article proposes a legal pluralist approach that recognizes the role of actors in the cultural process of norm-creation. Given the continued violation of the laws of war, the author suggests a need to open the door to cultural diversity in order to generate greater compliance. Without cultural legitimacy, there is a danger that humanitarian law aspires to self-defeating universalism.

scholarly journals Manipulating and controlling for personality effects on visualization tasks

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvitta Ottley ◽  
R Jordan Crouser ◽  
Caroline Ziemkiewicz ◽  
Remco Chang
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
System Design ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
User Experiences ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Visual Interface ◽  
Computer Interaction ◽  
Observed Behavior

Researchers in human–computer interaction and visualization have recently been challenged to develop a better understanding of users’ underlying cognitive processes in order to improve system design and evaluation. While existing studies lay a critical foundation for understanding the role of cognitive processes and individual differences in visualization, concretizing the intuition that each user experiences a visual interface through an individual cognitive lens is only half the battle. In this article, we investigate the impact of manipulating users’ personality on observed behavior when using a visualization. In a targeted study, we demonstrate that personality priming can result in changes in behavior when interacting with visualizations. We then discuss how this and similar techniques could be used to control for personality effects when designing and evaluating visualizations systems.

scholarly journals The impact of eye contact on the sense of agency

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Luis Ulloa Fulgeri ◽  
Roberta Vastano ◽  
Nathalie George ◽  
Marcel Brass
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Button Press ◽  
Related Phenomenon ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Key Press ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Trial Participants

Recent research suggests that eye contact can lead to enhanced self-awareness. A related phenomenon, the sense of agency deals with the notion of the self as the origin of our actions. Possible links between eye contact and agency have been so far neglected. Here, we investigated whether an implicit sense of agency could be modulated by eye gaze. We asked participants to respond (button press) to a face stimulus: looking or not at the participant (experiment 1); or displaying distinct eye gaze before or after a mask (experiment 2). After each trial, participants estimated the time between their key press and the ensuing effects. We found enhanced intentional binding for conditions that involved direct compared to averted gaze. This study supports the idea that eye contact is an important cue that affects complex cognitive processes and suggests that modulating self-processing can impact the sense of agency.

Cognitive Control Processes in Paranoia: The Impact of Threat Induction on Strategic Cognition and Self-Focused Attention

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Flower ◽  
Katherine Newman-Taylor ◽  
Lusia Stopa
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Strategic Cognition ◽  
Clinical Models ◽  
The Impact

Background:Current clinical models emphasize certain cognitive processes in the maintenance of distressing paranoia. While a number of these processes have been examined in detail, the role of strategic cognition and self-focused attention remain under-researched.Aims:This study examined the deployment of cognitive strategies and self-focused attention in people with non-clinical paranoia.Method:An experimental design was used to examine the impact of a threat activation task on these processes, in participants with high and low non-clinical paranoia. Twenty-eight people were recruited to each group, and completed measures of anxiety, paranoid cognition, strategic cognition and self-focused attention.Results:The threat activation task was effective in increasing anxiety in people with high and low non-clinical paranoia. The high paranoia group experienced more paranoid cognitions following threat activation. This group also reported greater use of thought suppression, punishment and worry, and less use of social control strategies when under threat. No differences were found between the groups on measures of self-focused attention.Conclusions:This study shows that the threat activation task increased anxiety in people with high non-clinical paranoia, leading to increased paranoid thinking. The use of strategic cognition following threat activation varied dependent on level of non-clinical paranoia. If these differences are replicated in clinical groups, the strategies may be implicated in the maintenance of distressing psychosis, and may therefore be a valuable target for therapeutic intervention.

Power Fosters Context-Independent, Analytic Cognition

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (11) ◽  
pp. 1449-1458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri Miyamoto ◽  
Li-Jun Ji
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Low Ses ◽  
Life Context ◽  
Linguistic Categories ◽  
Analytic Cognition ◽  
Ses Differences

The present research tested the hypothesis that power, defined as the capacity to influence others, promotes analytic cognitive processing, by examining the use of linguistic categories and the categorization of objects. Supporting the hypothesis, recalling instances of influencing others facilitated the use of adjectives and discouraged the use of verbs to describe others (Study 1). Recalling instances of influencing others also promoted taxonomic, instead of thematic, categorization (Study 2). Furthermore, the authors also examined the effect of power in a real-life context. They examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) differences in cognitive processing can be partly explained by sense of agency, an antecedent of power (Study 3); high SES individuals made more taxonomic categorization than did low SES individuals, and a sense of agency partially mediated the SES differences in categorization. These findings underscore the role of power in shaping cognitive processes.

Unconscious influences of, not just on, decision making

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Géraldine Coppin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis commentary focuses on the bidirectional links between unconscious influences and decision making. In particular, it examines the extent to which awareness is (not) necessary to the impact of decisions on psychological processes such as preferences. This analysis might help researchers to gain an extended perspective of Newell & Shanks' (N&S's) concerns regarding the role of unconscious influences in theories of decision making.

scholarly journals Editorial

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Usha Goswami ◽  
Martha Crago
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Language Disorders ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
The Impact ◽  
And Linguistics

It is now 5 years since we took over the Editorship of Applied Psycholinguistics. In that time, we have endeavored to refocus the journal toward empirical work in psychology and linguistics across languages and learners. We introduced a new subtitle for the journal to this effect, and we have produced Special Issues reflecting current “hot topics” in the field, for example, the role of genetics in developmental language disorders (January 2005), grammatical processing in language learners (January 2006), nonword repetition and word learning (October 2006), and the upcoming Special Issue on language acquisition and bilingualism, reflecting on the consequences for a multilingual society. We have been delighted to see that the impact factor of the journal is now at 1.37 and that the number of submissions based on cross-language comparisons continues to increase. We welcome this trend, as in our view a cross-language approach to studying the psychological processes involved in language is particularly likely to discover fundamental processes, developments, and impairments.

scholarly journals The apparent action causation: Using a magician forcing technique to investigate our illusory sense of agency over the outcome of our choices

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (11) ◽  
pp. 1784-1795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Pailhès ◽  
Gustav Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Sense Of Control ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Substitution Error ◽  
The Difference

We often fall victim of an illusory sense of control and agency over our thoughts and actions. Magicians are masters at exploiting these illusions, and forcing techniques provide a powerful way to study apparent action causation—the illusion that our action caused the outcome we get. In this article, we used the Criss-Cross force to study whether people can tell the difference between an action which had an impact on the outcome they get and one which has no impact. In the Criss-Cross force, participants are asked to cut to a card, and while they are genuinely free to cut the cards at any position, the cut does not affect the card they are given (i.e., they always get the top card). We investigate the psychological processes that underpin the success of this force. Experiment 1 ( N = 60) showed that participants cannot tell the difference between a forced and a controlled outcome. Experiment 2 ( N = 90) showed that contrary to common magicians’ knowledge, misdirection does not play a role in the success of the force. Finally, Experiment 3 ( N = 60) suggests that rather than misdirection, an attribute substitution error explains why people fail to understand that their action does not have an impact on the outcome they get. Debriefing also shows the importance of participants’ expectations in the perception of the trick, as well as the role of prediction of the outcome in participants’ sense of agency over the events.

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