Adopting Evaluative Conditioning to Improve Coach–Athlete Relationships

Coach–athlete relationships are key to athletes’ well-being, development, training, and sports performance. The present study explored the effect of an evaluative conditioning (EC) intervention on the improvement of coach–athlete relationships. We applied a 6-week EC intervention to the athletes in a volleyball team with two of their coaches involved in the EC while the third coach taken as control. In the EC, we repeatedly presented the coaches’ facial images (i.e., conditioned stimuli) together with positively valenced pictures and words (i.e., unconditioned stimuli) to the athletes. The results showed that the EC intervention led the athletes to recognize their coaches’ neutral faces as showing more happiness, respond faster to coach-positive associations in the implicit association test (IAT), and give higher ratings to the coaches in the Coach–Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (CART-Q). The present study suggests that EC may be adopted as an effective intervention for coach–athlete relationships, altering athletes’ affective associations with their coaches to be more positive and improving their explicitly evaluation of the relationship.

Prophecy as Diplomacy in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean

Late medieval and early modern diplomats and intermediaries drew on the authoritative language of prophecy, a language that conveyed divine threats to the current order, or divine sanctions of a new world. Because apocalyptic discourse has the capacity to conjure affective associations through its redemptive potential, its use in a diplomatic context seems to have been aimed at shaping the way individuals perceived the issues at hand. Based on a number of case studies from both Christian and Islamic contexts, this contribution renders it clear that it was precisely these cultural and political commonalities that made prophecy a recognizable political and diplomatic discourse. As a totalizing religio-political discourse, prophecy articulated the aspirations of a multitude of competing universalizing imperial projects that were emerging in the fifteenth century, which required diplomatic mediation.

Affective Determinants of Physical Activity: A Conceptual Framework and Narrative Review

The literature on affective determinants of physical activity (PA) is growing rapidly. The present paper aims to provide greater clarity regarding the definition and distinctions among the various affect-related constructs that have been examined in relation to PA. Affective constructs are organized according to the Affect and Health Behavior Framework (AHBF), including: (1) affective response (e.g., how one feels in response to PA behavior) to PA; (2) incidental affect (e.g., how one feels throughout the day, unrelated to the target behavior); (3) affect processing (e.g., affective associations, implicit attitudes, remembered affect, anticipated affective response, and affective judgments); and (4) affectively charged motivational states (e.g., intrinsic motivation, fear, and hedonic motivation). After defining each category of affective construct, we provide examples of relevant research showing how each construct may relate to PA behavior. We conclude each section with a discussion of future directions for research.

Drivers of consumer-based brand equity: a two-country analysis of perceived brand origin and identity expressiveness

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how the effects of cognitive, sensory and affective brand associations on brand love (a core driver of brand loyalty) differ by perceived brand origin (domestic vs imported) and identity expressiveness (low vs high) in two different national contexts.Design/methodology/approachThe data for this study were collected through an online survey in the US and China. A total of 711 responses (n = 362 for the US, n = 349 for China) were used for data analysis. A multiple-group structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.FindingsCognitive and sensory associations are significant drivers of US consumers' brand love while affective associations are important for Chinese consumers' brand love. Also, perceived brand origin and identity expressiveness moderate the three brand associations–brand love relationship. For US consumers, cognitive associations significantly influence brand love for both domestic and imported brands, but sensory associations are important for domestic brand love. For Chinese consumers, affective associations significantly influence brand love for both domestic and imported brands, but cognitive associations are important for imported brand love. The impacts of the three brand associations on brand love differ by the degree of identity expressiveness.Research limitations/implicationsThis empirical study offers important insights into the differing effects of perceived brand origin and identity expressiveness in enhancing brand love across cultures in order to establish strong international brand equity.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the scarce cross-cultural research on brand equity by testing the extended brand equity model. The findings provide more specific, meaningful insights into the role of perceived brand origin and identity expressiveness, leading to more effective international brand management.

The Return of Muslim Granada

This chapter examines how the newly converted Muslims of Castile dealt with the trauma of forced assimilation into Catholic society from the 1530s to the 1560s. It looks at the cultural resources that the Morisco rebels relied on to construct that rhetoric and discourse of mobilization, focusing on the cultural idioms with which the Moriscos who participated in the rebellion expressed their grievances—the apocalyptic prognostications known as “jofores.” The “jofores” that circulated during the rebellion were aimed at creating affective associations that would reinforce the Muslim identity of the Morisco rebels and their potential supporters. This chapter also analyzes the significance of apocalyptic prophecy in mobilizing the Morisco population for collective action. More specifically, it demonstrates that the rebellion of the Moriscos in the Alpujarras mountains was encouraged by a discourse of martyrdom that was articulated in an apocalyptic key, an element that has hitherto been overlooked in the historiography of the Alpujarras revolt.

Category-Selective Visual Regions Have Distinctive Signatures of Connectivity in Neonates

The development of the ventral visual stream is shaped both by an innate proto-organization and by experience. The fusiform face area (FFA), for example, has stronger connectivity to early visual regions representing the fovea and lower spatial frequencies. In adults, category-selective regions in the ventral stream (e.g. the FFA) also have distinct signatures of connectivity to widely distributed brain regions, which are thought to encode rich cross-modal, motoric, and affective associations (e.g., tool regions to the motor cortex). It is unclear whether this long-range connectivity is also innate, or if it develops with experience. We used MRI diffusion-weighted imaging with tractography to characterize the connectivity of face, place, and tool category-selective regions in neonates (N=445), 1-9 month old infants (N=11), and adults (N=14). Using a set of linear-discriminant classifiers, category-selective connectivity was found to be both innate and shaped by experience. Connectivity for faces was the most developed, with no evidence of significant change in the time period studied. Place and tool networks were present at birth but also demonstrated evidence of development with experience, with tool connectivity developing over a more protracted period (9 months). Taken together, the results support an extended proto-organizon to include long-range connectivity that could provide additional constraints on experience dependent development.