Can unconscious intentions be more effective than conscious intentions? Test of the role of metacognition in hypnotic response

While several theories assume that responses to hypnotic suggestions can be implemented without executive intentions, the metacognitive class of theories postulate that the behaviors produced by hypnotic suggestions are intended and the accompanying feeling of involuntariness is only a consequence of strategically not being aware of the intention. Cold control theory asserts that the only difference between a hypnotic and non-hypnotic response is this metacognitive one, that is, whether or not one is aware of one's intention to perform the relevant act. To test the theory, we compared the performance of highly suggestible participants in reducing the Stroop interference effect in a post-hypnotic suggestion condition (word blindness: that words will appear as a meaningless foreign script) and in a volitional condition (asking the participants to imagine the words as a meaningless foreign script). We found that participants had equivalent expectations that the posthypnotic suggestion and the volitional request would help control the conflicting information. Further, participants felt they had more control over experiencing the words as meaningless with the request rather than the suggestion; and they experienced the request largely as imagination and the suggestion largely as perception. That is, we set up the interventions we required for the experiment to constitute a test of cold control theory. Both the suggestion and the request reduced Stroop interference. Crucially, there was Bayesian evidence that the reduction in Stroop interference was the same between the suggestion and the volitional request. That is, the results support the claim that responding hypnotically does not grant a person greater first order abilities than they have non-hypnotically, consistent with cold control theory.

Knowing your choice before you choose

In 1980s, neuroscientists joined philosophers and psychologists in the investigation of volitional actions and freedom of will. In a series of experiments pioneered by Benjamin Libet (1985), it was observed that some neural activities correlated with volitional action regularly precedes the conscious will to perform it, which suggests that what appears to be a free action may actually be predetermined by some neural activities, even before the conscious intention to act arises. Shortly after publication of that study, Libet’s findings and interpretations were started to be criticized on philosophical and methodological grounds. In this study, the legitimacy of the criticisms directed to Libet’s and his successors’ experiments is discussed by taking recent neuroscience studies on volition into account and it is argued that these criticisms are not sufficient to eliminate the doubt that these experiments casted on the freedom of the will.Keywords: Free will, Benjamin Libet, neuroscience, unconscious intentions.

Women’s and men’s happiness in the context of eternal values

The authors draw attention to the issue of gender differences in the features of the subjective experience of happiness and unhappiness. The article describes the results of a study conducted with clients of psychologists who report problems related to the experience of destructive interpersonal relationships and consider themselves deeply unhappy in life. The purpose of the study is to reveal the gender specificity of the frustration of the subjects’ life needs underlying the deep experience of unhappiness in their lives. A peculiarity of the approach used by the authors is the consideration of issues of psychological nature in the context of philosophical and religious understanding of eternal values, such as happiness and love for one’s neighbor. A special focus of the authors’ attention is the problems related to the philosophical and religious basis of consideration of the feminine as Sophia the Wisdom of God with the complex of her rejection, the dominant sense of guilt, and the desire to return to the Father. Such methodological symbiosis is facilitated by interdisciplinarity as one of the main principles of the authors’ interaction with the materials of this work. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) aimed at the amplification of subjects’ unconscious intentions is used as a diagnostic instrument. The conducted psychological study allows to reveal and describe some of the causes for the manifestation and experience of happiness and unhappiness in the lives of modern men and women and show specific differences between their subjective experiences of happiness and unhappiness in their lives. Unlike previous studies of this kind, the deployed philosophical and religious studies approach provides an opportunity to take a new look at the outlined issues considering them from the point of the philosophical context of values.

STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION OF REPRESENTATIONS IN THE 20 CENTURY ON THE DETERMINATION OF THE FEATURES OF ARCHITECTURAL OBJECTS BY THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THEIR CREATORS – ARCHITECTS

This article considers architecture as a product of the architect's psychological activity, and therefore raises the question of the role of the architect's personality, his internal conscious and unconscious intentions to create certain compositional and figurative solutions of buildings. The article consistently examines how the development of theories, concepts and experimental data of the main psychological schools of the 20 century influenced the ideas about the features of the design process, possible relationships between the psychological characteristics of the master's personality and the specifics of his creations, as well as the theory and practice of architecture in General. It is concluded that, despite the fact that the features of creativity were studied in almost every psychological school, and most of them recognize and highlight the possibility of reflecting the psychological characteristics of the architect in the products of his work, each school understood these features in accordance with the theory of personality that exists in it. This determined the narrowness of approaches and the impossibility of conducting full-fledged research within a single psychological school.

Crystallizing the relationship between adolescents, music, and emotions

The ways that young people use music to work with emotions is impressively diverse and difficult to box into categories of good and bad, helpful and unhelpful. The intersection of where, when, and why the young person is using music is further complicated by what music, what associations, and what conscious and unconscious intentions the young person has. This introductory chapter canvasses the vast landscape of music, adolescents, and emotions, using the lens of crystallization to consider the different perspectives offered by young people, music therapists, and music psychologists. The result is a rich and varied picture that places agency in the hands of the young person and encourages all caring adults to engage with the multiple possibilities that music affords.

The Struggle for Orchestral Control: Power, Dialogue, and the Role of the Orchestra in Wagner's Ring

This article examines the degree to which characters in Wagner's Ring might be heard to control the orchestra for specific rhetorical purposes. Using Edward Cone's work as a starting point, I adopt a "fully diegetic" perspective in which music is understood as a physical presence in the Ring, a continuous tissue of sound that can be altered, shaped, and re-created according to a given character's conscious or unconscious intentions. An analysis of Die Walkure, act III, sc. 3, clarifies the approach.