The supernatural guilt trip does not take us far enough

Belief in souls is only one component of supernatural thinking in which individuals infer the presence of invisible mechanisms that explain events as paranormal rather than natural. We believe it is important to place greater emphasis on the prevalence of supernatural beliefs across other domains, if only to counter simplistic divisions between rationality and irrationality recently aligned with the contentious science/religion debate

The Effects of Media Capabilities on the Rationalization of Online Consumer Fraud

This research develops and tests a model of online consumer fraud to determine how the capabilities of communication technologies affect the rationalization of fraudulent behaviors. The model is based on research about the rationalization of fraud, media capabilities, and computer-mediated deception. This investigation empirically tests this model by analyzing 459 Facebook advertisements and 1,896 surveys completed by university students. The findings indicate that the capabilities provided by communication technologies affect the extent to which media mask cues of deceit and dehumanize others. As a result, some media capabilities increase one’s willingness to engage in fraudulent behaviors while other capabilities deter those actions. Media capabilities that mask cues of deceit and reduce social presence increase the inclination of individuals to rationalize fraudulent activities, while media capabilities that expose cues of deceit and increase social presence deter individuals from rationalizing acts of fraud. Media offering greater capabilities for reprocessability and transmission velocity decrease the inclination to rationalize fraud, whereas greater capabilities for anonymity, rehearsability, and parallelism increase the inclination to rationalize fraud. In contrast, symbol set variety does not appear to significantly affect the inclination to rationalize fraud

A Human−Computer Interface Replacing Mouse and Keyboard for Individuals with Limited Upper Limb Mobility

People with physical disabilities in their upper extremities face serious issues in using classical input devices due to lacking movement possibilities and precision. This article suggests an alternative input concept and presents corresponding input devices. The proposed interface combines an inertial measurement unit and force sensing resistors, which can replace mouse and keyboard. Head motions are mapped to mouse pointer positions, while mouse button actions are triggered by contracting mastication muscles. The contact pressures of each fingertip are acquired to replace the conventional keyboard. To allow for complex text entry, the sensory concept is complemented by an ambiguous keyboard layout with ten keys. The related word prediction function provides disambiguation at word level. Haptic feedback is provided to users corresponding to their virtual keystrokes for enhanced closed-loop interactions. This alternative input system enables text input as well as the emulation of a two-button mouse

Testing location memory for threatening and nonthreatening stimuli : implications for evolutionary psychological theorizing.

Humans respond to the presence of threatening stimuli more rapidly than nonthreatening stimuli, a trait that some authors believe humans have been selected for. Based on this finding, it has been proposed that humans should also have superior location memory for threatening stimuli, possibly depending on whether stimuli have ancestral (e.g., snakes) or modern (e.g., guns) ecological relevance. This is herein called the Superior Location Memory for Threatening Stimuli (SLMTS) hypothesis. Some authors believe that humans possess a domain-specific adaptation that gives rise to the hypothesized memory advantage for threatening stimuli. The primary aim of this dissertation is to test the SLMTS hypothesis. Three experiments were performed using stimuli that fully crossed threat level (threatening versus nonthreatening) and ecological relevance (ancestral versus modern). Each experiment included a learning phase, in which subjects responded to threatening or nonthreatening stimuli in various locations, and a subsequent location memory phase. Experiments 1 and 2 tested explicit location memory. Experiment 1 compared recall and recognition tests of conscious location memory. Experiment 2 used a version of the Process Dissociation Procedure to test both conscious and unconscious influences of location memory. Location memory for ancestral nonthreatening, ancestral threatening, and modern threatening stimuli was better than for modern nonthreatening stimuli. These results do not support the SLMTS hypothesis but rather support the general mnemonic principles (GMP) hypothesis, which is that location memory is best for stimuli that are uncommon, arousing, and valenced (either positive or negative). However, Experiment 3 tested implicit location memory and supported the SLMTS hypothesis: Implicit memory was greater for threatening than nonthreatening stimuli. I argue that, taken together, the results of the three experiments do not require the invocation of a specific adaptation for explanatory purposes. Finding support for the GMP hypothesis in Experiments 1 and 2 and the SLMTS hypothesis in Experiment 3 is consistent with a domain-general explanation: Location memory is best for stimuli that are deemed most relevant to the memory system given current circumstances and goals. The relevance of these findings to evolutionary psychological theories of memory is discussed and suggestions for future research are offered

The Locked-in Syndrome of Panpsychism: Integrated Information Theory, Orch-OR, TGD and the Search for the Right Experimental Model

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Response Mapping in Evaluative Priming

Recently, Scherer and Lambert: 2009) proposed a new model of priming, which they called the Response Mapping: RM) Model. That model assumes that under some circumstances, priming effects are the result of an unintentional tendency for participants to impose the target categorization task onto the primes: which they are supposed to ignore). In the present dissertation, the RM model is reviewed, and the implications and boundary conditions of the model are explored. In Experiments 1 and 2, it was predicted and found that response mapping processes can result in evaluative conditioning effects. That is, priming tasks do not always simply measure attitudes, but rather these tasks can additionally create new attitudes towards the prime stimuli. In Experiments 3 and 4, two boundary conditions of the RM model were tested. In those experiments, it was found that evaluative priming effects depend on participants\u27 ability to perceive the primes as belonging to distinct categories: boundary condition 1), and that those distinct categories must have different evaluative connotations: boundary condition 2). Importantly, results showed that priming effects are significantly stronger when primes are easily categorizable, relative to when they are not, even when the evaluative strength of the primes is held constant. Implications for theory and research involving priming measures and implicit attitudes more generally are discussed