Social Psychology

Cross-cultural encounters can provide an excellent opportunity for
personal growth by placing us in situations where our understanding
of self and world, and of how we believe things “are” or “should
be,” is severely challenged. In this article, the authors argue that in
the United States, the cultural dimension is often overlooked in our
understanding of personal growth because U.S. individualism
obscures the role of culture in the constitution of the self and that
understanding this dimension makes a vital contribution to self-understanding.
They also view cross-cultural encounters as potentially
creative and draw on the psychology of creativity to explore
the implications of this view. The authors conclude by arguing that
to have the greatest effect, humanistic psychology must both return
to its roots in existential-phenomenological psychology and philosophy
and tackle its own understanding of the self as a culturally
situated phenomenon.

This essay outlines the characteristics of what I call the ‘totalitarian mindset’. Under certain circumstances, human beings engage in patterns of thinking and behavior that are extremely closed and intolerant of difference and pluralism. These patterns of thinking and behaving lead us towards totalitarian, anti-pluralistic futures. An awareness of how these patterns arise, how individuals and groups can be manipulated through the use of fear, and how totalitarianism plays into the desire in human beings for ‘absolute’ answers and solutions, can be helpful in preventing attempts at manipulation and from the dangers of actively wanting to succumb to totalitarian, simplistic, black-and-white solutions in times of stress and anxiety. I present a broad outline of an agenda for education for a pluralistic future. The lived experience of pluralism is still largely unfamiliar and anxiety inducing, and that the phenomenon is generally not understood, with many myths of purity and racial or cultural superiority still prevalent. Finally, as part of that agenda for education, I stress the importance of creativity as an adaptive capacity, an attitude that allows us to see pluralism as an opportunity for growth and positive change rather than simply conflict.

Gregory Bateson was a thinker beyond disciplines, contributing not only to specific disciplines ranging from Communication to Family Therapy to Ecology, but also helping us to think about the nature of inquiry, thought and disciplinary organization. In this paper I argue Bateson was a transdisciplinary thinker, and illustrate how his work can lead us to a new approach to inquiry. I conclude by outlining the 5 central features of transdisciplinarity: inquiry-driven rather than exclusively discipline-driven; meta-paradigmatic rather than intra-paradigmatic; informed by thinking that is complex, creative, contextualizing, and connective; inquiry as a process of creative combining rigor and imagination.

"The concept of improvisation has become increasingly popular in the discourse of organizational theory. This paper explores the several aspects of improvisation, in the context of musical, organizational, and everyday activities, in order to address some of the philosophical issues relevant to this emerging interest. It addresses, for instance, the way the term improvisation has fallen into disrepute, referring to something that is, ultimately, a pale and messy copy of the ‘correct’ way. It argues that in western music, this can be traced to the modernist valorization of the order provided by a written musical score, perfectly representing the composer’s wishes, and the concomitant devalorization of the spontaneity and creativity of musicians who, before approximately 1800, improvised a substantial amount of their performances. Connections are made between the modernist concept of organization and postmodern or complexity-based approaches that stress creativity as an emergent property of the relationship between order and disorder. It concludes by suggesting that the study of improvisation demands a profound immersion into (inter-)subjectivity, emotions, time, aesthetics, performance, and social creativity, none of which have traditionally been the focus of organization and management studies, or the social sciences in general."

In May 2007 I took part in a performance installation by Jerusalem-born visual artist Yael Davids. The piece, titled A Line, A Sentence, A Word, was part of the group exhibition Memorial to the Iraq War at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

"Reviews of The Making of Psychotherapists:

“An insightful study of the training of psychoanalytic psychotherapists from an anthropological perspective…[and] a valuable contribution to ethnographies of professional socialization.”
- Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

“A remarkable anthropological study via participant observation of the world of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Davies has produced a tour de force of critical yet compassionate engagement covering all aspects of our institutional life, including the institution of the clinic itself…. Anyone involved with training or other work of any kind in psychoanalytic organisations who cares about the degree of self-knowledge and social awareness they bring to their jobs should read this work.”
- Professor Andrew Samuels (Analytical Psychology), University of Essex


"According to James Davies's fascinating book, the medicalized mental health landscape in which English psychoanalytic institutes currently operate...further discourages analysts from critically assessing their institutional systems, theoretical assumptions, and professional practices....This thought-provoking book, which is suitable for teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate level, should make even the most unreflexive analyst question traditional institutional practices. If such questioning ultimately leads to better patient care, then we all stand to benefit"
- Medical Anthropology Quarterly

“James Davies has produced an unprecedented book that is stimulating, challenging and unequivocal in its claims.”
- The United Kingdom Association for Psychotherapy Integration.

“His careful and well-written examination of the training process and the insights that he brings from anthropology offer us a timely and valuable contribution to meeting the many challenges now threatening the vitality and even very existence of our profession…. This groundbreaking new book dissects the way that the profession is taught and asks whether its very vitality is at stake.”
- The Foundation for Psychotherapy

“A wise, thoughtful, careful examination of a world often shrouded in secrecy. Davies is both a trained psychotherapist and a trained anthropological observer. As a result, his observations have a quite different feel than most of the literature in either field. Not only psychotherapists, but their clients (not to mention anthropologists) can look to this book to understand how this profession learns to see and respond to human pain.”
- Professor Tanya Luhrmann, (Anthropology and Psychology),
Stanford University

“Combining narrative and analytical skills, Davies provides a gripping story of life among trainee and professional psychoanalytic therapists and their patients. The clinic is the participant anthropologist's village and the dramatis personae are the individuals he studies, whose ambitions and problems punctuate their learning and experiences of psychotherapy.... While laying bare the sometimes unpalatable essence of such training, Davies conveys warmth and empathy for his fellow participants. The value of the study goes beyond the particular instance of psychoanalysis and tells us how small groups meet all kinds of unanticipated consequences as they transmit the knowledge on which their profession depends”.
- Professor David Parkin (Social Anthropology),
University of Oxford.

“I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the field of psychoanalysis, in
the culture of institutions, and in how institutions foster change in their constituent members.”
- Contemporary Psychology (American Psychological Association).

“James Davies’ ‘The Making of Psychotherapists: An Anthropological Analysis’ is a thorough and thought provoking anthropological study of the culture of psychoanalytic training…. On his impressive juxtaposition of mastery of both anthropological and psychoanalytic theory, Davies points out that in a parallel development psychoanalysis developed the notion of countertransference and anthropology that of self-reflexivity….Davies’ book is well written, thoroughly and academically resourced and describes with acute detail the striving for the establishment of the doctrine of psychoanalysis…. It is essential reading for anyone involved in the therapy world who is interested in the understanding of the philosophical, historical, social and political implications of the construction of psychoanalysis in the twentieth century.”
- The European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling."

In the early/mid nineties, the author observed and interviewed adults with congenital and early visual impairments. During this study he discovered that as a result of these students’ lack of formal visual arts education during their schooling they often displayed little self-esteem during their artistic tasks. This lack of self-esteem appeared to lead to task avoidance – they would especially avoid those with an especially creative or ambiguous theme.

In a re-appraisal of his earlier findings, the author compared the students with early and congenital disabilities’ unwillingness to undertake creative and ambiguous tasks during learning to the approaches to tasks undertaken by those with visual impairments developed in later life. He found that the latter category were more likely to risk their self-esteem, and indeed had the motivation to undertake what he felt were artistic studies with high risks – one in particular had become a professional artist.

In his current research study, the author has decided to look at younger students with visual impairments studying more structured visual art courses. The reason for this change of emphasis was to look at the effects that factors such as age, syllabus structure and a compulsory exposure to a full artistic curriculum after the 1981 Special Educational Needs Act had on the students that he studied. This research was undertaken at a beacon school for those with visual impairments. He has collected data from these students by a combination of interviews, monthly reports and latterly photographs of their artifacts during different stages of production.

Of the two Art A level students that the author has studied, both registered blind, he has discovered that one had a restricted education when younger, with particular restrictions on his visual art education. For example, he was only ever given a large crayon during art lessons and had very low expectations placed upon him. As a result, the author has discovered that during his current A Level, the student avoids drawing his ceramic pieces or sculptures prior to their construction at all costs. Additionally he has often stated during interviews and reports that he actively hates drawing. As a result the student has attempted to adapt his artistic process to avoid drawings whenever he can. Instead he relies on mockettes and photography wherever possible.

In contrast, the second student - who is also totally colour-blind - appears to have no such fears of drawing. The author feels that a reason for her lack of fear is that, eventhough she also came to New College after attending a mainstream school she did not have such negative experiences. As a result she appears to rely on drawing as a tool of construction a great deal during her art projects, similar to many able bodied students. Furthermore, because of her total colour blindness, she has also described a different understanding of the meaning of colour. However, despite this disability she has not avoided using or trying to understand colour in her art work, and indeed has added a great deal of colour to many of her projects.

The aim of this paper is to discuss different approaches to creativity and underline the cultural nature of its genesis. Biological genius (the “He-paradigm”) and psychological-individualistic (the “I-paradigm”) standpoints are contrasted with social and cross-cultural ones (the “We-paradigm”) and the cultural psychology of creativity is introduced and positioned. This emerging paradigm, drawing from both social accounts of creativity and the latest developments in cultural psychology and the theory of social representations, emphasises the contextual and generative nature of creative acts and employs a person (creator) – other (community) – object (artefacts) model. Creativity is conceptualized as a complex process that leads to the generation of new artefacts by working with “culturally-impregnated” materials within a representational space. This particular viewpoint highlights the meaning-oriented nature of creativity, its link to personal and group identities, and also calls for ecological research and situational interventions. One of the central issues addressed by the cultural psychology of creativity is the problem of “genesis” or how creativity is developed and manifested within cultural settings. The pioneer in this field is undoubtedly D.W. Winnicott who asserted at the beginning of the 70’s that creativity and cultural experience are twin-born. Children experiment culture creatively and they do so in the “third” or “potential” space, one that we can identify today with the social world of representations. In his view of ontogenesis the origins of creativity are found in the first forms of playing and are shaped by the nature of the mother – child relationship. The final part of the paper will develop further this account and show how creativity emerges from early childhood within a symbolic space where children “play” with artefactual resources, a space of dialogue between self and significant others, constantly alimented by social and collective systems of beliefs and practices, life experiences and communication.

Key-words: creativity paradigms, the cultural psychology of creativity, representational space, genetic account, culture, artefacts, play

This article explores the difference between learning in an organization and organizational learning. I construct a conceptual framework for understanding organizational learning at an organizational level of analysis. This framework is based on the proposition that organizational learning is visible in the organizational dynamics created from the interaction between politics (power relations) and emotion within an organization. Using a combination of psychodynamic theory and reflections on the politics of organizing I develop the idea that organizations are learning when the 'establishment' that is being created through the very process of organizing can be identified and critically reflected upon. I use a case example of a change initiative within Hyder PLC, a multinational company, to identify organizational dynamics that limit organizational learning. In the final part of the article, I discuss the conclusions that emerged from the case example and the implications of these conclusions for the theory and practice of organizational learning.

Based upon six years social work practice with dependent drug users in Merseyside, the author introduces the broad principles of a cognitive behavioural approach, and then integrates this theoretical understanding to a highly specific area of practice, - assessing dependent drug users. Assessment is discussed in detail and using examples the article provides a much needed model of good practice. The approach is based upon a risk reduction philosophy and is underpinned by cognitive behavioural principles. The article offers a comprehensive outline from which a practitioner could follow and conduct an assessment. Importantly, the process seeks to empower clients, redressing the balance by returning to them responsibility for their future, thus enabling them to set their own targets and plans without coercion from the worker.

This paper briefly outlines the emergence of cognitive behavioural therapy from within behaviourist theory and then, using examples, relates it to dependent behaviour. Based upon six years social work practice with dependent drug users, the paper provides a detailed framework of an established cognitive behavioural assessment which has been developed and refined through practice.

Successful ‘recovery’ from long-term problem drug use has depended largely upon understanding and tackling the physiological and psychological nature of drug dependence; however, drawing upon research and practice in Liverpool, England, the author questions whether this discourse is sufficient given the changing nature, context and attitudes towards drug consumption in the twenty-first century. This article emphasises the importance of incorporating structural and social factors. Drawing upon qualitative data from three separate studies, the author illustrates how stigmatisation, marginalisation, and social exclusion are significant debilitating components that have tended to be overlooked. This paper contributes new insights into the damaging impact of political rhetoric and structural discrimination that has placed many long-term drug users vulnerable to relapse. In response to these findings the author offers a new conceptual framework for practice that incorporates and pro-motes an understanding of the social nature and context of long-term drug dependence.

The theory of the Dynamics of Action was a theory before its time. Few psychologists of the 1970s were prepared to understand differential equations or to do computer modeling of difference equations. With modern software and computational power, the model is much easier to simulate and examine. This article describes a reparameterization of the original theory and and applies the power of simple modeling to the study of action, emotions, and social behavior.

This is an example of a minimal "manuscript" using the L A T E X apa.cls document class to typeset manuscripts according to the Americal Psychological Association (APA) manual, fifth edition. It also takes advantage of the L A T E X apa.cite class. It is modified only slightly from a superb example by Athanassios Protopapas. The abstract should convey five points: 1) why is the problem interesting, 2) what you did, 3) who were the participants, 4) what you found, and 5) what does it mean? All this and be less than 100 words! APA style manuscript 3

According to Shweder and D'Andrade (1979, 1980), covariation in memory-based ratings of people's behavior is determined more by semantic relations between behavior categories than by actual co-occurrence. They claim therefore that the existence of personality traits is largely a fiction supported by our conceptions rather than by reality. Contrary to this hypothesis, we argue that semantics are logically implicated in both the observation and recall of behavior and that support for this assumption can be found if immediate encodings of behavior are as sensitively scaled as subsequent memory-based ratings. Results of a demonstration experiment supported this conclusion. When immediate encodings were scaled across all behavior categories, the relation between semantics and memory was completely explained by the role of semantics in the immediate encoding of behavior. However, when immediately encoded behavior was simply identified (rather than scaled), support for systematic distortion was obtained. Previous support for the systematic distortion hypothesis may therefore be attributed to the use of too simple a coding scheme for the measurement of immediate behavior. Implications for the existence of personality traits and for personality

In a recent paper, provide evidence on the political affiliations of faculty at UC Berkeley and Stanford, finding that Democrats far outnumber Republicans. This is an important contribution to debates about political beliefs in academia due to the effort to systematically these authors make to quantify these beliefs via party registration. In this comment, we make two arguments. First, we argue that the evidence presented by Klein and Western is less suggestive of ideological lopsidedness than they claim. This is so both because party affiliation is not informative about the intensity or degree of moderation or extremism of beliefs and because the incompleteness of the party identification strategy they employ is compatible with many faculty being independent or apathetic. Further, we argue that there are good a priori reasons to regard whatever degree of lopsidedness is present as due to self-selection, not hostility towards conservatives.

Research has found that narcissists behave aggressively when they receive a blow to their ego. The current studies examined whether narcissistic aggression could be reduced by inducing a unit relation between the target of aggression and the aggressor. Experimental participants were told that they shared either a birthday (Study 1) or a fingerprint type (Study 2) with a partner. Control participants were not given any information indicating similarity to their partner. Before aggression was measured, the partners criticized essays written by the participants. Aggression was measured by allowing participants to give their partner loud blasts of noise through a pair of headphones. In the control groups, narcissists were especially aggressive toward their partner. However, narcissistic aggression was completely attenuated, even under ego threat, when participants believed they shared a key similarity with their partner.

Research has found that narcissists behave aggressively when they receive a blow to their ego. The current studies examined whether narcissistic aggression could be reduced by inducing a unit relation between the target of aggression and the aggressor. Experimental participants were told that they shared either a birthday (Study 1) or a fingerprint type (Study 2) with a partner. Control participants were not given any information indicating similarity to their partner. Before aggression was measured, the partners criticized essays written by the participants. Aggression was measured by allowing participants to give their partner loud blasts of noise through a pair of headphones. In the control groups, narcissists were especially aggressive toward their partner. However, narcissistic aggression was completely attenuated, even under ego threat, when participants believed they shared a key similarity with their partner.

The present article describes VAS Generator (www.vasgenerator.net), a free Web service for creating a wide
range of visual analogue scales that can be used as measurement devices in Web surveys and Web experimentation, as well as for local computerized assessment. A step-by-step example for creating and implementing a visual analogue scale with visual feedback is given. VAS Generator and the scales it generates work independently of platforms and use the underlying languages HTML and JavaScript. Results from a validation study with 355 participants are reported and show that the scales generated with VAS Generator approximate an interval-scale level. In light of previous research on visual analogue versus categorical (e.g., radio button) scales in Internet-based research, we conclude that categorical scales only reach ordinal-scale level, and thus visual analogue scales are to be preferred whenever possible.

The role of properties of attitude-relevant knowledge in attitude-behavior consistency was explored in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, attitudes based on behaviorally relevant knowledge predicted behavior better than attitudes based on low-relevance knowledge, especially when people had time to deliberate. Relevance, complexity, and amount of knowledge were investigated in Experiment 2. It was found that complexity increased attitude-behavior consistency when knowledge was of low-behavioral relevance. Under high-behavioral relevance, attitudes predicted behavior well regardless of complexity. Amount of knowledge had no effect on attitude-behavior consistency. In Experiment 3, the findings of Experiment 2 were replicated, and the complexity effect was extended to behaviors of ambiguous relevance. Together, these experiments support an attitude inference perspective, which holds that under high deliberation conditions, people consider the behavioral relevance and dimensional complexity of knowledge underlying their attitudes before deciding to act on them.

This study investigated whether the temporal order of people's expressed statements and their behaviors affected others' judgments of hypocrisy, and why. It was proposed that hypocrisy would be greater when a statement establishing a personal standard preceded a behavior violating that standard as opposed to the reverse order. This order effect occurred in three studies, generalizing across two topic areas (healthy living and safe sex) and for both normative and nonnormative statements (pro/anti-safe sex). Mediation analyses indicated that the reverse order mitigated against hypocrisy because the target's inconsistency was attributed to dispositional change. The discussion addresses additional variables likely to affect hypocrisy and the relationship of this research to hypocrisy paradigms in dissonance.

Research indicates that messages or products matching individuals' self-schemata are viewed more favorably, but little is known about how or when such effects occur. Experiment 1 indicates that messages matched to participants' level of extroversion lead to larger argument quality effects on attitudes than do mismatched messages. In experiment 2, these effects are replicated with the selfschema of need for cognition. Across studies, matching messages to recipients' self-schemata leads to increased or decreased persuasion, depending on the advertisement's argument quality. The interaction of self-schema matching with argument quality along with participants' pattern of cognitive responses suggests an elaboration-based account.

We examine the influence of two specific negative emotions (i.e., sadness and anger) on consumers' preference for an advertised product promoting either activity (e.g., exercise) or passivity (e.g., relaxation). On the basis of empirical distinctions between the level of activation accompanying sadness and anger, and drawing upon a mood-as-information perspective, we hypothesized that individuals will have a preference for activity to passivity when in an angry compared to a sad emotional state. Thus, when angry, they preferred a product advertised as active, whereas when sad they preferred a product described in more passive terms.

The rationality of individual agents is secured for the most part by their make-up or design. Some agents, however -in particular, human beings -rely on the intentional exercise of thinking or reasoning in order to promote their rationality further; this is the activity that is classically exemplified in Rodin's sculpture of Le Penseur. Do group agents have to rely on reasoning in order to maintain a rational profile? Recent results in the theory of judgment aggregation show that under a range of plausible conditions they do. In a slogan: group agents are made, not born.

Although fully generative models have been successfully used to model the contents of text documents, they are often awkward to apply to combinations of text data and document metadata. In this paper we propose a Dirichlet-multinomial regression (DMR) topic model that includes a log-linear prior on document-topic distributions that is a function of observed features of the document, such as author, publication venue, references, and dates. We show that by selecting appropriate features, DMR topic models can meet or exceed the performance of several previously published topic models designed for specific data.

Although fully generative models have been successfully used to model the contents of text documents, they are often awkward to apply to combinations of text data and document metadata. In this paper we propose a Dirichlet-multinomial regression (DMR) topic model that includes a log-linear prior on document-topic distributions that is a function of observed features of the document, such as author, publication venue, references, and dates. We show that by selecting appropriate features, DMR topic models can meet or exceed the performance of several previously published topic models designed for specific data.

This study investigates the relationship between self-deception and variables associated with antisociality in the general population (i.e., mating effort, antisocial thinking, psychopathy, and personality), seeking to provide an evolutionary explanation for how self-deception might influence antisocial thinking. The Mating Effort Scale (MES); an adjusted version of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS); the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP); the NEO-Five Factor Inventory-Revised (NEO-FFI-R), and the Paulhus Deception Scales (PDS) were administered to 95 participants (33 males, 62 females, mean age = 36.4 years). Self-deceptive enhancement correlated significantly and negatively with Neuroticism (r = −.30, p < 0.01), and positively with Openness (r = .27, p < 0.05) and Conscientiousness (r = .43, p < 0.01). Mating effort related primarily to the PICTS and self-reported psychopathy. Factor analysis of the scales produced two underlying components; ‘careless non-cooperation’ (defined by impulsive antisociality) and ‘careful cooperation’ (reflecting dutifulness, emotional stability, and social desirability). Our results suggest self-deceptive enhancement may be a protective factor against antisocial thinking and behaviour, and that this is impeded by high neuroticism and impulsive thinking.

The current study examined the relationship between narcissism and vanity, and the degree these are predicted by the ‘Big Five’ personality traits and mating effort (ME) using a sample of 103 females recruited from a large beauty salon. Narcissism correlated with vanity at 0.72 (P < 0.001), and was associated positively with extraversion (E), ME and the subscales of vanity; narcissism was associated negatively with neuroticism (N) and agreeableness (A). Vanity correlated positively with E, conscientiousness, both subscales of narcissism, and ME, and negatively with N and A. A composite narcissism–vanity score was produced using principal components analysis, and used along with scores from the NEO-FFI-R to predict mating effort. The narcissism–vanity composite, low A and E significantly and independently predicted mating effort (adjusted R2 = 0.28, F(9.96) = 7.74, P < 0.001). These results show that mating effort is additionally predicted by narcissism as well as self-reported personality.

In two longitudinal studies, the authors examined the direction of the relationships between trait gratitude, perceived social support, stress, and depression during a life transition. Both studies used a full cross-lagged panel design, with participants completing all measures at the start and end of their first semester at college. Structural equation modeling was used to compare models of direct, reverse, and reciprocal models of directionality. Both studies supported a direct model whereby gratitude led to higher levels of perceived social support, and lower levels of stress and depression. In contrast, no variable led to gratitude, and most models of mediation were discounted. Study 2 additionally showed that gratitude leads to the other variables independently of the Big Five factors of personality. Overall gratitude seems to directly foster social support, and to protect people from stress and depression, which has implications for clinical interventions.

Are some people more prone to instabilities in partisanship due to the ways they rank and organize their core values? We investigate the mechanisms of partisan volatility, considering whether instabilities reflect value-driven ambivalence in party identification. Our expectation is that when the basic values of the American ethos come into conflict in elite discourse, citizens become ambivalent about partisan beliefs when they cannot reconcile their own value arrangement with that of elites. To this end, we use several heteroskedastic regression and ordered probit models to explore whether the conflict of competing values explains the response variance and over time instability of individual level partisanship and ideology. To construct measures of value conflict, we rely on data from the 1992, 1994, and 1996 American National Election Studies. We find that while instabilities in partisan identification reflect low information for some, the competition of core values generates ambivalence in partisan affiliations for others. In deliberating the value tradeoffs of politics, people may end up conflicted even about central beliefs such as party identification.

Buyer-Seller networks are pervasive in developing economies yet remain relatively understudied. Using primary data on contracts between the largest tractor assembler in Pakistan and its suppliers we …nd large variations in prices and quantities across suppliers of the same product. Surprisingly, "tied" suppliers -those that choose higher levels of speci…c investments -receive lower and more unstable orders and lower prices. These results are explained by developing a simple model of ‡exible specialization under demand uncertainty. A buyer faces multiple suppliers with heterogeneous types to supply customized parts. Speci…c investments raise surplus within the relationship but lower the seller's ‡exibility to cater to the outside market. Higher quality suppliers have a greater likelihood of selling outside and so this cost is greater for them. Therefore even if a buyer typically prefers high types, some low type suppliers might be kept as marginal suppliers because of their greater willingness to invest more in buyer-speci…c assets. Further empirical examination shows that the more tied suppliers are indeed of lower quality.

The paper presents a simulation of the dynamics of impersonal trust. It shows how a "trust and reciprocate" norm can emerge and stabilize in populations of conditional cooperators. The norm, or behavioral regularity, is not to be identified with a single strategy. It is instead supported by several conditional strategies that vary in the frequency and intensity of sanctions.

In this article, we propose that adolescents' online interactions are both a literal and a metaphoric screen for representing major adolescent developmental issues, such as sexuality and identity. Because of the public nature of Internet chat rooms, they provide an open window into the expression of adolescent concerns. Our study utilizes this window to explore how issues of sexuality and identity are constructed in a teen chat room. We adapt qualitative discourse methodology to microanalyze a half-hour transcript from a monitored teen chat room, comparing it, where relevant, to a second transcript, used in a prior study [Greenfield, P.M., Subrahmanyam, K., 2003. Online discourse in a teen chat room: New codes and new modes of coherence in a visual medium. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 24, 713-738.]. Our microanalysis reveals that participants use the online space of teen chat to air adolescent concerns about sexuality and to develop creative strategies to exchange identity information with their peers. This exchange is critical to the activity of bpairing offQ, an important teenage expression of emerging sexuality. Developmental issues from adolescents' offline lives are reconstructed online with some important differences. The virtual world of teen chat may offer a safer environment for exploring emerging sexuality than the real world. Through the verbally explicit exchange of identity information, participants are able to bpair offQ with partners of their choice, despite the disembodied nature of chat participants. D

Computational models of analogical inference have assumed that inferences about the target are generated solely by "copying with substitution and generation" from the source, guided by a mapping based on similarity and parallel structure. In contrast, work in philosophy of science has stressed that analogical inference is based on causal models of the source and target. In two experiments, we showed that reducing analogical overlap by eliminating a matching higherorder relation (a preventive cause) from the target increased inductive strength even though it decreased similarity of the analogs. Analogical inference appears to be mediated by building and then "running" a causal model.

This paper presents two studies, conducted in two different countries, investigating perceptions of ingroups as enduring, temporally persistent entities, and introduces a new instrument measuring 'perceived collective continuity' (PCC). In Study 1 we show that perceptions of ingroup continuity are based on two main dimensions: perceived cultural continuity (perceived continuity of norms and traditions) and perceived historical continuity (perceived interconnection between different historical ages and events). This study also allows the construction of an internally consistent PCC scale including two subscales tapping on these two dimensions. Study 2 replicates findings from the first study; it also reveals that PCC is positively correlated to a set of social identity-related measures (e.g., group identification and collective self-esteem), and that its effects on these measures are mediated by perceived group entitativity. Overall, these two studies confirm that PCC is an important theoretical construct, and that the PCC scale may become an important instrument in future research on group processes and social identity.

Research has shown that people tend to perceive the groups to which they belong (e.g., national groups) as temporally persistent. In this paper we argue that enhanced perceptions of collective continuity lead to lower levels of anomy and misfit, and to higher levels of social well-being (SWB). Furthermore, we argue that the effects of perceived collective continuity (PCC) on SWB are mediated by collective self-esteem (CSE). Finally, we contend that PCC has positive effects on perceived group entitativity (PGE), which in turn has a positive influence on CSE. This model is tested by means of a cross-sectional study using a sample of Spanish nationals (N ¼ 145) drawn from the general public. Results confirm that the data fit the model well. These findings are in line with research demonstrating that a sense of personal continuity through time is related with better mental health and personal well-being.

This volume is the first to bring together the fast-growing research on self-continuity from multiple perspectives within and beyond social psychology.

The book covers individual and collective aspects of self-continuity, while a final section explores the relationship between these two forms. Topics include environmental and cultural influences on self-continuity; the interplay of autobiographical memory and personal self-continuity; the psychological function of self-continuity; personal and collective self-continuity; and resistance to change. The volume is rounded off with commentaries on the central issues and themes that have been discussed.

The book provides a unique sourcebook for this important topic and will appeal not only to upper-level students and researchers in social psychology, but, in view of the multiple perspectives represented in the volume, it will also appeal to cognitive, developmental, and personality psychologists.

Brain images are believed to have a particularly persuasive influence on the public perception of research on cognition. Three experiments are reported showing that presenting brain images with articles summarizing cognitive neuroscience research resulted in higher ratings of scientific reasoning for arguments made in those articles, as compared to articles accompanied by bar graphs, a topographical map of brain activation, or no image. These data lend support to the notion that part of the fascination, and the credibility, of brain imaging research lies in the persuasive power of the actual brain images themselves. We argue that brain images are influential because they provide a physical basis for abstract cognitive processes, appealing to people's affinity for reductionistic explanations of cognitive phenomena.