Cognitive Social Psychology

Social psychology is presently dominated by cognitive theories that emphasize the importance of personal beliefs and in tellective processes as the immediate determinants of behavior. The present paper explores two areas of.research within this tra dition : (1) beliefs about the external world, and (2) beliefs about the self. The paper concludes with a brief critique of the cognitive approach to social psychology.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69030/2/10.1177_014616727700300402.pd

Propagating Disturbances in Coronal Loops: A Detailed Analysis of Propagation Speeds

Quasi-periodic disturbances have been observed in the outer solar atmosphere for many years now. Although first interpreted as upflows (Schrijver et al. (1999)), they have been widely regarded as slow magnetoacoustic waves, due to observed velocities and periods. However, recent observations have questioned this interpretation, as periodic disturbances in Doppler velocity, line width and profile asymmetry were found to be in phase with the intensity oscillations (De Pontieu et al. (2010),Tian1 et al. (2011))}, suggesting the disturbances could be quasi-periodic upflows. Here we conduct a detailed analysis of the velocities of these disturbances across several wavelengths using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We analysed 41 examples, including both sunspot and non sunspot regions of the Sun. We found that the velocities of propagating disturbances (PDs) located at sunspots are more likely to be temperature dependent, whereas the velocities of PDs at non sunspot locations do not show a clear temperature dependence. We also considered on what scale the underlying driver is affecting the properties of the PDs. Finally, we found that removing the contribution due to the cooler ions in the 193 A wavelength suggests that a substantial part of the 193 emission of sunspot PDs can be contributed to the cool component of 193\AA.Comment: 26 Papges, 15 Figure

Multi-system neurological disease is common in patients with OPA1 mutations

Additional neurological features have recently been described in seven families transmitting pathogenic mutations in OPA1, the most common cause of autosomal dominant optic atrophy. However, the frequency of these syndromal ‘dominant optic atrophy plus’ variants and the extent of neurological involvement have not been established. In this large multi-centre study of 104 patients from 45 independent families, including 60 new cases, we show that extra-ocular neurological complications are common in OPA1 disease, and affect up to 20% of all mutational carriers. Bilateral sensorineural deafness beginning in late childhood and early adulthood was a prominent manifestation, followed by a combination of ataxia, myopathy, peripheral neuropathy and progressive external ophthalmoplegia from the third decade of life onwards. We also identified novel clinical presentations with spastic paraparesis mimicking hereditary spastic paraplegia, and a multiple sclerosis-like illness. In contrast to initial reports, multi-system neurological disease was associated with all mutational subtypes, although there was an increased risk with missense mutations [odds ratio = 3.06, 95% confidence interval = 1.44–6.49; P = 0.0027], and mutations located within the guanosine triphosphate-ase region (odds ratio = 2.29, 95% confidence interval = 1.08–4.82; P = 0.0271). Histochemical and molecular characterization of skeletal muscle biopsies revealed the presence of cytochrome c oxidase-deficient fibres and multiple mitochondrial DNA deletions in the majority of patients harbouring OPA1 mutations, even in those with isolated optic nerve involvement. However, the cytochrome c oxidase-deficient load was over four times higher in the dominant optic atrophy + group compared to the pure optic neuropathy group, implicating a causal role for these secondary mitochondrial DNA defects in disease pathophysiology. Individuals with dominant optic atrophy plus phenotypes also had significantly worse visual outcomes, and careful surveillance is therefore mandatory to optimize the detection and management of neurological disability in a group of patients who already have significant visual impairment

Justifying attitudes by appealing to values: A functional perspective

This study examined the ‘value‐justification hypothesis’. Derived from accentuation theory (Eiser, 1987), this hypothesis states that people with different attitudes will appeal to different values to justify, or account for, their attitudes. Subjects completed measures of their attitudes towards abortion and nuclear weapons, ranked the importance of 18 values (Rokeach, 1967) and ranked the relevance of these values to each attitude issue. Multivariate analyses revealed that subjects with negative and positive attitudes differed in the values which they regarded as relevant to each issue. For example, subjects who favoured nuclear weapons regarded ‘national security’ as more relevant in comparison to subjects opposed to nuclear weapons who viewed ‘wisdom’ as a more relevant value consideration. Further, these effects occurred over and above differences in value importance. Finally, the results suggested that these value‐justification effects were stronger among low, relative to high, self‐monitors (Snyder, 1974). The latter finding is consistent with the notion that value‐justification effects are more likely to occur when attitudes fulfil a value‐expressive function. The relation of these findings to the functional approach to the study of attitudes and Tetlock's (1986) value pluralism model is also discussed. 1988 The British Psychological Societ

The Rhetorical Use of Values to Justify Social and Intergroup Attitudes

In this article we review research relevant to Rokeach's (1973) suggestion that, by appealing to socially shared conceptions of what is good, people may use values to ego defensively rationalize or justify their attitudes. In line with this value justification hypothesis, research suggests that, although attitudes may originally stem from the relative importance that people ascribe to various values, once formed, attitudes may well produce self‐serving biases that affect both the values that people deem relevant to an issue and the complexity or open‐mindedness of their reasoning about an issue. In addition, just as people may appeal to values to justify their attitudes toward social issues such as nuclear weaponry or abortion, data suggest that people may exaggerate perceptions of intergroup value differences in an effort to rationalize prejudicial intergroup attitudes and justify discrimination. Aspects of the ego defensive use of values that merit elaboration and have yet to be addressed, as well as the more general implications of a functional approach to the study of values, are discussed. 1994 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issue

Semi-explicit methods for isospectral flows

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:9106.1605(1997/16) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Numerical solution of isospectral flows

SIGLEGBUnited Kingdo