A new aspect of cell membrane structure is presented, based on the dynamic clustering of sphingolipids and cholesterol to form rafts that move within the fluid bilayer. It is proposed that these rafts function as platforms for the attachment of proteins when membranes are moved around inside the cell and during signal transduction.

Functional rafts in cell membranes

The emerging field of emotion regulation studies how individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them. This review takes an evolutionary perspective and characterizes emotion in terms of response tendencies. Emotion regulation is denned and distinguished from coping, mood regulation, defense, and affect regulation. In the increasingly specialized discipline of psychology, the field of emotion regulation cuts across traditional boundaries and provides common ground. According to a process model of emotion regulation, emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion generative process: (a) selection of the situation, (b) modification of the situation, (c) deployment of attention, (d) change of cognitions, and (e) modulation of responses. The field of emotion regulation promises new insights into age-old questions about how people manage their emotions.

http://www.elaborer.org/cours/A13/lectures/Gross1998.pdf

The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review.

We are in the midst of a technological revolution whereby, for the first time, researchers can link daily word use to a broad array of real-world behaviors. This article reviews several computerized text analysis methods and describes how Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) was created and validated. LIWC is a transparent text analysis program that counts words in psychologically meaningful categories. Empirical results using LIWC demonstrate its ability to detect meaning in a wide variety of experimental settings, including to show attentional focus, emotionality, social relationships, thinking styles, and individual differences.

/pdf/the-psychological-meaning-of-words-liwc-and-computerized-4sd1bn03dk.pdf

The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods

People are capable of thinking about the future, the past, remote locations, another person's perspective, and counterfactual alternatives. Without denying the uniqueness of each process, it is proposed that they constitute different forms of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance is egocentric: Its reference point is the self in the here and now, and the different ways in which an object might be removed from that point-in time, in space, in social distance, and in hypotheticality-constitute different distance dimensions. Transcending the self in the here and now entails mental construal, and the farther removed an object is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the level of construal of that object. Supporting this analysis, research shows (a) that the various distances are cognitively related to each other, (b) that they similarly influence and are influenced by level of mental construal, and (c) that they similarly affect prediction, preference, and action.

/pdf/construal-level-theory-of-psychological-distance-g5kjiydrew.pdf

Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance

A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.

Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Drawing on illustrative examples of the functional and cognitive psychology in contemporary research, the present article emphasizes the primacy of functional relationships, which provide the fundament for all attempts to uncover invisible cognitive processes. Cognitive research is not only inherently more difficult and much more ambitious than functional research. It also suffers from several home-made problems, such as unwarranted inferences from model fitting, the mediation-analysis cult and the failure to take environmental influences into account. However, despite the primacy of functional psychology and the problems associated with the ambitious goals of cognitive research, the two partners in this unequal pair are firmly connected and jointly responsible for the most impressive examples of progress in behavioural science.

Functional research and cognitive‐process research in behavioural science: An unequal but firmly connected pair

In analogy to the appreciation of humor, that of tickling is based upon the re-interpretation of an anticipated emotional situation. Hence, the anticipation of tickling contributes to the final outburst of ticklish laughter. To localize the neuronal substrates of this process, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was conducted on 31 healthy volunteers. The state of anticipation was simulated by generating an uncertainty respecting the onset of manual foot tickling. Anticipation was characterized by an augmented fMRI signal in the anterior insula, the hypothalamus, the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area, as well as by an attenuated one in the internal globus pallidus. Furthermore, anticipatory activity in the anterior insula correlated positively with the degree of laughter that was produced during tickling. These findings are consistent with an encoding of the expected emotional consequences of tickling and suggest that early regulatory mechanisms influence, automatically, the laughter circuitry at the level of affective and sensory processing. Tickling activated not only those regions of the brain that were involved during anticipation, but also the posterior insula, the anterior cingulate cortex and the periaqueductal gray matter. Sequential or combined anticipatory and tickling-related neuronal activities may adjust emotional and sensorimotor pathways in preparation for the impending laughter response.

Laughter is in the air: involvement of key nodes of the emotional motor system in the anticipation of tickling

/pdf/psychologie-im-21-jahrhundert-fuhrende-deutsche-psychologen-2l4j2fwyad.pdf

Psychologie im 21. Jahrhundert : Führende deutsche Psychologen über Lage und Zukunft ihres Fachs und die Rolle der psychologischen Grundlagenforschung

Social Instability and Identity-Uncertainty: Fertile Ground for Political Extremism

If one social group occurs more often than another, and one attribute level occurs more often than another, an inference is drawn linking majoritygroup members with frequent attribute levels. According to the pseudocontingency framework, such illusory stereotypes reflect the perception of attribute base rates increasing or decreasing together with group base rates. Intriguingly, this reasoning suggests that when opposing base rate trends can be observed across ecologies, illusory stereotypes may reverse. In two experiments, participants were presented with base rates for group membership and attributes in nine different ecologies. When base rates of the majority group increased with the frequent attribute level, classic illusory stereotypes were observed. When base rates of the majority group decreased with the frequent attribute level increasing, the illusion was reversed. The majority was linked to the infrequent attribute level. A focus on differences between ecologies further increased the impact of b...

Klaus Fiedler

Papers

Functional research and cognitive‐process research in behavioural science: An unequal but firmly connected pair

Laughter is in the air: involvement of key nodes of the emotional motor system in the anticipation of tickling

Psychologie im 21. Jahrhundert : Führende deutsche Psychologen über Lage und Zukunft ihres Fachs und die Rolle der psychologischen Grundlagenforschung

Social Instability and Identity-Uncertainty: Fertile Ground for Political Extremism

How Majority MeMbers becoMe associated witH rare attributes: ecological correlations in stereotype ForMation