Всеукраїнська наукова конференція «Х Костомарівські читання»

14-15 квітня 2011 р. Чернігівщина вже вкотре приймала учасників всеукраїнської наукової конференції «Костомарівські читання». Зусиллями її незмінних організаторів Юрія Пінчука, Сергія Лаєвського та Сергія Леп’явка, конференція стала доброю науковою традицією, а цього року ще й відсвяткувала свій перший ювілей, адже відбувалася вдесяте. Х Костомарівські читання були присвячені 390-й річниці перемоги у Хотинській битві, однак їхня тематика не обмежувалася власне війною та добою гетьмана П. Сагайдачного. Основною метою читань організатори вбачають: спілкування вчених-істориків «без краваток» для ознайомлення колег з новітніми дослідженнями, знахідками та ідеями в ділянці історії України доби козаччини; залучення чернігівських істориків до спілкування з провідними вченими з наукових центрів; ознайомлення дослідників з Черніговом та його історичною спадщиною

On the emergence of deprivation-reducing behaviors: Subliminal priming of behavior representations turns deprivation into motivation

Building on recent research into the emergence of human motivation and goal pursuit in the absence of the conscious awareness of the source of this pursuit, the present article aimed to shed light on how states of deprivation (e.g., deprivation of fluid) actually produce the motivation and corresponding behavior that lifts the deprivation. Two studies established that when participants were relatively deprived of fluids, they experienced enhanced motivation to drink and consumed more fluid in an alleged tasting test, and these effects were more pronounced when the concept of drinking was rendered accessible by subliminal priming. These results suggest that specific motivational goal states and corresponding behaviors do not arise directly from deprivation per se, but that accessible goal-related cognitions play a role in this process. Implications for theory and research on deprivation and non-conscious goal pursuit are briefly discussed

The goal dependent automaticity of drinking habits

In recent treatments of habitual social behaviour, habits are conceptualised as a form of goal-directed automatic behaviour that are mentally represented as goal-action links. Three experiments tested this conceptualisation in the context of students’ drinking (alcohol consumption) habits. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where either a goal related to drinking behaviour (socialising) was activated, or an unrelated goal was activated. In addition, participants’ drinking habits were measured. The dependent variable in Experiments 1 and 2 was readiness to drink, operationalised by speed of responding to the action concept “drinking” in a verb verification task. Experiment 3 used uptake of a voucher to measure drinking behaviour. Findings supported the view that when habits are established, simply activating a goal related to the focal behaviour automatically elicits that behaviour. These findings are consistent with a goal-dependent conception of habit. Possibilities for interventions designed to attenuate undesirable habitual behaviours are considered

The Nonconscious Road to Perceptions of Performance: Achievement Priming Augments Outcome Expectancies and Experienced Self-Agency

Three experiments explored the effects of priming the achievement concept on the expectation of performance outcomes and experiences of self-agency over outcomes in a task in which performance outcomes were dependent on chance. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that achievement priming produced expectations of higher (more successful) outcomes prior to working on the task, regardless of whether priming was subliminal (nonconscious) or supraliminal (conscious) and that this effect could not be attributed to subjective motivation to perform well. Experiment 3 revealed that subliminal achievement priming decreased participants’ experienced self-agency when outcome feedback was low, but increased self-agency when it was high. Together, these results suggest that activating achievement concepts outside of awareness spontaneously triggers expectations of higher task outcomes, which increases or decreases self-agency depending on whether there is a match or mismatch with observed outcomes. Implications for the literature on achievement-priming effects on behavior are discussed

Positive affect as implicit motivator: On the nonconscious operation of behavioral goals

Recent research has revealed that nonconscious activation of desired behavioral states—or behavioral goals—promotes motivational activity to accomplish these states. Six studies demonstrate that this nonconscious operation of behavioral goals emerges if mental representations of specific behavioral states are associated with positive affect. In an evaluative-conditioning paradigm, unobtrusive linking of behavioral states to positive, as compared with neutral or negative, affect increased participants ’ wanting to accomplish these states. Furthermore, participants worked harder on tasks that were instrumental in attaining behavioral states when these states were implicitly linked to positive affect, thereby mimicking the effects on motivational behavior of preexisting individual wanting and explicit goal instructions to attain the states. Together, these results suggest that positive affect plays a key role in nonconscious goal pursuit. Implications for behavior-priming research are discussed

Moving Forward : On the Limits of Motor-Based Forward Models

The human ability to anticipate the consequences that result from action is an essential building block for cognitive, emotional, and social functioning. A dominant view is that this faculty is based on motor predictions, in which a forward model uses a copy of the motor command to predict imminent sensory action-consequences. Although this account was originally conceived to explain the processing of action-outcomes that are tightly coupled to bodily movements, it has been increasingly extrapolated to effects beyond the body. Here, we critically evaluate this generalization and argue that, although there is ample evidence for the role of predictions in the processing of environment-related action-outcomes, there is hitherto little reason to assume that these predictions result from motor-based forward models