This essay aims to shed new light on the relations between physiology and psychology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by focusing on the use of unicellular organisms as research objects during that period. Within the frameworks of evolutionism and monism advocated by Ernst Haeckel, protozoa were perceived as objects situated at the borders between organism and cell and individual and society. Scholars such as Max Verworn, Alfred Binet, and Herbert Spencer Jennings were provoked by these organisms to (...) undertake experimental investigations situated between general physiology and psychology that differed from the physiological psychology advocated by Wilhelm Wundt. Some of these investigations sought to locate psychological properties in the molecular structure of protoplasm; others stressed the existence of organic and psychological individuality in protozoa. In the following decades, leading philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Henri Bergson, as well as psychological researchers like Sigmund Freud, integrated the results of these investigations into their reflections on such problems as the nature of the will, the structure of the ego, and the holistic nature of the reactions of organisms to their environment. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper arrives at a normative position regarding the relevance of Henri Bergson's philosophy to historical enquiry. It does so via experimental historical analysis of the adaptation of cinematographic devices to physiological investigation. Bergson's philosophy accorded well with a mode of physiological psychology in which claims relating to mental and physiological existence interacted. Notably however, cinematograph-centered experimentation by British physiologists including Charles Scott Sherrington, as well as German-trained psychologists such as Hugo Münsterberg and Max Wertheimer, contributed (...) to a cordoning-off of psychological from physiological questioning during the early twentieth century. Bergson invested in a mode of intellectual practice in which psychological claims had direct relevance to the interpretation of physiological nature. The in-part cinematograph-inspired breakdown of this mode had significance for subsequent interpretations of his philosophy. It is suggested that this experimental particularization of Bergson's contentions indicates that any adaptation of his thought for historical enquiry must be disciplinarily specific. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the meaning that the term “experimental” acquires within spiritualism during the second half of the nineteenth century. It builds upon Paul Janet’s notions of “experience” and “experimentation” in psychology, by stressing the role of physiology and pathology in his reflection. Regardless of the role the concept of “experimentalism” took on in Victor Cousin’s psychology, which arguably indicated more an “internal affection” than actual experimentation, in Janet’s spiritualism the term regains its original meaning of empirical verification. (...) Janet highlights the importance of madness to the development of a new psychological paradigm that could reconcile philosophy and medicine, reason and experience, by taking up pathology as a form of natural and indirect experimentation. (shrink)

Bruno Petermann in his The Gestalt Theory and the Problem of Configuration and S. H. MacColl in her A Comparative Study of the Systems of Lewin and Koffka with special reference to Memory Phenomena have shown that the gestalt concept is fundamentally valid but that as a tool of psychological explanation it has been developed with unrecognized inconsistencies and without a successful correlation with physiological facts. And John J. Ryan in his “Volition” has shown that psychology must provide a (...) place for ethical responsibility. The purpose of the present paper is to show that the gestalt concept when conceived in accord with the fundamentals of experimental psychology and of theoretical mathematics and physics: avoids unrecognized inconsistencies; opens the gates to an increasingly refined mensurational correlation between physiological facts and psychological experience; and provides a place within a comprehensive psychology for freedom and purpose, integrated with conditioning, which result in understanding and cooperation in the achievement of ideal purposes. (shrink)

ObjectivesConstant Installation of Present Orientation and Safety is a Eye Movements Desensitization and Reprocessing -derived technique, which is often used to prepare for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. It differs from the latter by involving cyclically recurring exercises in reorientation to the present, interspersed between brief periods of exposure to the traumatic material.While EMDR is well established as a therapeutic method, the efficacy and mechanisms of action of CIPOS have not been investigated so far. In this pilot study, an (...) experimental setting was used to record the subjective and physiological effects of the CIPOS intervention compared to a control condition with pure mental exposition.MethodsThe study was performed on 30 healthy volunteers aged from 20 to 30 years. Distress was induced using audio files of subjectively stressful situations. Subjective distress was measured via the Subjective Units of Distress Scale, while physiological indicators were used as measures for objective stress. For each condition, pre- and post-intervention comparisons were calculated.ResultsIn both groups, startle reflex potentiation and mean skin conductance level significantly decreased. In the group with CIPOS intervention, but not in the control group, a significant decrease in the SUD value was found.Conclusion and significanceThe results show that the CIPOS technique is as effective as pure mental exposition in reducing physiological stress. In addition, a superiority in reducing subjective distress was found compared to pure mental exposition. Possible explanations of these effects are discussed. (shrink)

From Leibniz and Georg Ernst Stahl to Albrecht von Haller, Germans of the eighteenth century calved off an experimental physiology from medicine and made this research a centerpiece of their new model university, first under Haller at Göttingen, then under von Humboldt at Berlin. Haller made Göttingen the most important center for the advancement of Enlightenment science in Germany, but that is not where Johann Herder went looking for new ideas in psychology, turning instead to France, avidly studying Condillac (...) and Diderot, and meeting the latter in Paris in 1769. Herder wanted to use French psychology in his theory of how the history of art recapitulates the development of the senses. To work out his ideas he found it necessary to ignore Kant's careful distinction between life and matter. Kant made life an inexplicable boundary for mechanical explanation, though with Herder it became the key concept for interpreting nature. That all the forces in the physical world are held to express one organizing, integrating vital principle is what excited Goethe about Herder's work and provoked the Naturphilosophie that Schelling invented at this time in close collaboration with Goethe. (shrink)

The development of a methodologically naturalistic approach to physiological and experimental psychology in the nineteenth century was not primarily driven by a naturalistic agenda. The work of R. Hermann Lotze and G. T. Fechner help to illustrate this claim. I examine a selected set of central commitments in each thinkers philosophical outlook, particularly regarding the human soul and the nature of God, that departed strongly from a reductionist materialism. Yet, each contributed significantly to the formation of experimental (...) and physiological psychology. Their work was influenced substantively by their respective philosophical commitments. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the merits of their specific proposals, Fechner's psychophysics and Lotze's local sign hypothesis respectively, did not depend upon sharing their metaphysical views regarding the human soul or the nature of God. A moderate, but significant, distinction between the contexts of discovery and of justification aids in understanding this balancing act. (shrink)

The period 1873–1947 was productive in fostering ideas about observing, measuring, and quantifying repetitive human movements, prior to the rise of occupational health and ergonomics within industrial psychology. Starting with physiological experimentation in the lab, instruments of graphic inscription were then applied in the industrial workplace, initially as a benevolent measurement for monitoring worker health, but elsewhere as a more invasive measurement for the surveillance of worker efficiency. Herman Helmholtz’s invention of the myograph, and an adaptation called the ergograph, (...) would help form what Kronecker (1873) and later Mosso (1891) termed the ‘curve of fatigue’, and were used in extensive research on factory workers for Jules Amar’s Le Moteur humain in 1914. Meanwhile, in Britain in 1915 the physiologist Sherrington was observing workers in munitions factories, feeding into the formation of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in 1919, which produced official reports. In the United States, similar but more high-profile research was conducted by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Lillian and Frank Gilbreth, who studied movement efficiency to maximize industrial productivity by innovating upon photographic and chronophotographic techniques. Further physiological research was taken up in Lawrence J. Henderson’s Harvard Fatigue Laboratory between 1927 and 1947 on subjects situated in environmental extremes. (shrink)

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner’s psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach’s (...) engagement with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach’s study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach’s emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach – building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome. (shrink)

The quantitative experimental scientific psychology that became prominent by the turn of the twentieth century grew from three main areas of intellectual inquiry. First and most directly, it arose out of the traditional psychology of the philosophy curriculum, as expressed in theories of mind and cognition. Second, it adopted the attitudes of the new natural philosophy of the scientific revolution, attitudes of empirically driven causal analysis and exact observation and experimentation. Third, it drew upon investigations of the senses. Natural (...) philosophical disciplines such as optics and acoustics treated the functioning of the senses. Optics, in particular, had from antiquity comprised a complete theory of vision, combining the physics, physiology, psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology of vision, using mathematical techniques where feasible. Within medicine, sensory physiology examined anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Philosophical psychology had long examined the senses as mental capacities connected with cognition and knowledge, and such discussions also heeded the new attitudes of natural philosophy. This chapter first examines the early relations of psychology to biology and characterizes various eighteenth-century loci of psychological thought. It then pursues nineteenth-century developments in Germany and Britain that culminate in the “new” psychology of the 1860s and 1870s. (shrink)

Professor Wilhelm Blasius, physiologist at Giessen in West Germany, has written a book "Probleme der Lebensforschung" (Verlag Rombach, Freiburg 1973) which - I understand - is to be published in an English version. To me it has been of interest as an orientation in a world of traditional German thinking, best known from Goethe's natural philosophy of perceptible "Ur­ bilder", which perhaps in English could be rendered descriptively by calling it an inner vision of further irre­ ducible totalities. It is (...) in contemporary language a kind of intuitive 'holistic' insight which represents understanding different from that of natural science. The latter is devoted to the study of causal chains, is largely experimental and in its aim ultimately 'reduc­ tionist' -to use another modern term. Goethe's approach is reincarnated in the "Wesenslehre" of the late Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) and in the thinking of Carl Gustav Caruso To Klages the perceived image alone is the meaning of everything in this world and in this sense he is the advocate of a psychological phenom­ enology that is an end in itself. Originally trained as a chemist Klages soon turned to philosophy and de­ veloped a system of concepts supposed to give a deeper insight into the essence of life than did the endless causal chains of natural science. Blasius makes much use of the concepts of this philosopher, in particular his ideas on 'polarities'. (shrink)

This paper deals with one of the first attempts to measure simple reactions in humans. The Swiss astronomer Adolph Hirsch investigated personal differences in the speed of sensory transmission in order to achieve accuracy in astronomy. His controversial results, however, started an intense debate among both physiologists and astronomers who disagreed on the nature of these differences. Were they due to different eyes or brains, or to differences in skill and education? Furthermore, they debated how to eliminate them. Some, for (...) example, wanted to eliminate the observer, and prescribed the use of new technologies like the electro-chronograph or photography, while others believed in discipline and education. By debating the nature of these differences, astronomers and physiologists sketched both different conceptions of ‘man’ and different paths to objectivity. These diverse conceptions, moreover, were tied to current nineteenth-century debates, such as the benefits or disadvantages of railroads, telegraphy and the standardization of time and longitudes. By focusing on the debates surrounding the speed of sensory transmission, this paper reevaluates the history of astronomy, physiology and experimental psychology. Furthermore, in investigating astronomy's relation to the human sciences, it uncovers profound connections in the traditionally separate histories of objectivity and the body.L'heure sera distribuée dans les maisons,comme l'eau ou le gaz.Adolph Hirsch. (shrink)

We may now ask the question: In what historical perspective should we place the work of Richard Goldschmidt? There is no doubt that in the period 1910–1950 Goldschmidt was an important and prolific figure in the history of biology in general, and of genetics in particular. His textbook on physiological genetics, published in 1938, was an amazing compendium of ideas put forward in the previous half-century about how genes influence physiology and development. His earlier studies on the genetic and (...) geographic distribution of the various species and races of Lymantria contributed soundly to an understanding of the inheritance and development of sex, as well as the genetics of speciation. He was a curious mixture of the experimentalist, empiricist, and theorizer, who could grasp both the large and the small at once and wrap them into the same integrated and coherent package.In insisting on trying to relate genetics to development, Goldschmidt was continually forced to speculate and to forsake experimental fact for generalized theory. In refusing to reconcile a physiological and developmental conception with a corpuscular theory of the gene, he forced himself to substitute for a large body of experimentally verified evidence, vague and general speculations which did not lead in any precise direction. L. C. Dunn summarizes succinctly the effect of Goldschmidt's thinking on the development of genetic theory: Although Goldschmidt's ideas had a considerable influence in directing attention to the developmental processes intervening between genes and characters, they did not lead to the establishment of a general theory of development in genetical terms. In fact, at the end of the period, as signalized by Goldschmidt's book of 1938 [Physiological Gentics] doubt remained whether there was a field with a defined problem which could be identified as developmental genetics.Yet the frequency with which Goldschmidt is cited by later writers suggests that there is a more positive side to his contribution than this. The early Mendelians had recognized the genic constitution of organisms and the Drosophila workers had uncovered in detail the chromosomal mechanism of heredity. These great discoveries were of classical character, solidly based on a multitude of well established facts. By themselves, however, they would not have been sufficient to place genetics in the central position within biology which it was to assume. Beyond the “static” analysis of gene transmission an insight was needed into the dynamic role of genes in cellular physiology, biochemistry, and development. Goldschmidt recognized this aspect and outlined in brilliant generalizations a physiological theory of genetics. Necessarily the prophetic nature of this achievement — romantic in the sense of Ostwald's classification of great scientists and their discoveries — transcended its factual basis. It was the audacity of the theoretician unimpeded by the still scanty data which gave a new focus to biological thought.Some have called Goldschmidt an “obstructionist” in the history of genetics—one whose efforts were largely directed toward useless and continual criticism — challenge for the sake of challenge. As this line of argument goes, time wasted answering Goldschmidt's poorly conceived criticisms could have been better used to pursue new lines of thought within the classical gene theory. Sometimes historians are upbraided for studying the work of such “obstructionists,” or even the work of those whose ideas have later proved to be inadequate. This argument misses the point of history and the lessons which it can teach. Perhaps Goldschmidt did take the time of a number of the classical geneticists who tried to answer his objections to the gene theory; and perhaps many of his own ideas about genes were, by today's view, “wrong.” These are always easier judgments to make by hindsight than at the moment. But that is not the point. Goldschmidt had a considerable influence on his contemporaries, and to dismiss him as an obstructionist because his opponents later proved to be more nearly right, distorts history and obscures significant questions which we might well be asking. It might be valuable to know why Goldschmidt felt compelled to be an iconoclast —and how that impulse, psychological in orgin, led him to overlook critical items of evidence which his opponents considered more carefully. It might also be valuable to try and understand how a contemporary of Goldschmidt or. Morgan really viewed the gene theory — what were its strong and weak point? Such questions are not readily answered by studying the work of only those men who were correct by later standards.Answers to some of the above questions can be gleaned from this study of Goldschmidt — though the first, and most psychologically oriented, question is largely untouched here.On the one hand, Goldschmidt forced classical geneticists to reexamine the foundation of their ideas about the nature, inviolability, and even physical dimensions of genes. He also kept alive the very real problems of gene physiology and its relations to development — a relationship that was given less attention by the Drosophila school in their pursuit of the transmission process. On a broader level he emphasized to the biological community a principle that was in danger of being lost in the enthusiasm surrounding the expansion of the Mendelian-chromosome theory. The point was that all theories in science are transient, logical constructs which should not be held as sacred. Time and again, as the history of science has shown, theories become rigid structures which retard new modes of thought. From Goldschmidt's perspective, the gene theory was in danger of performing just that function, for it was preventing workers from viewing the gene in a functional as well as a structural light.On the other hand, examining the work of critics (or even of outright “obstructionists”) gives the historian an opportunity to observe how the more established community of scholars at some point in time reacts to challenges of its cherished ideas. The fact that many workers in his own day (such as Beadle, Luria, Delbruck, Sturtevant, Bridges, and others), as well as most geneticists today, saw Goldschmidt as having been largely “obstructionist” is useful historical (and/or sociological) data. Clearly, as this paper has tried to show, Goldschmidt's ideas were not all obstructionist, and his viewpoint that genes must be considered functionally was one which was clearly valid, premature as it may have been from an experimental and technique point of view. Perhaps Goldschmidt's major fault was that he developed alternative theories which were not easily testable. Nonetheless, his challenge to a fundamental and established idea brought forth a reaction from many members of the genetic community which indicates how unwilling they were to reconsider the formalized theory on which their work was based. While many of Goldschmidt's criticisms — and particularly his way of making them — arose out of his own idiosyncrasies, they were also a product of his times. His view of the nature of theory-construction, and his rejection of old-style reductionism and mechanism, were part of a growing awareness within the world scientific community that explanations based on reducing complex phenomena to ultimate particles or units were clearly inadequate. The success of the Mendelian-chromosome theory had obscured that fact for many geneticists, but to Goldschmidt it was a point that could not be allowed to pass unnoticed. (shrink)

The high-quality workspace can be used as a physical carrier for design innovation and entrepreneurial organizational culture to continuously change the psychological cognition and behavior of employees in community of practice. The spatial narrative of the culture of design innovation and entrepreneurial organizations means to integrate entrepreneurship and organizational culture into the space through visual presentation. Whether the spatial narrative is successful or not needs to be judged by whether the change of people’s psychological cognition achieves the expected effect. The (...) traditional qualitative research methods such as interviews and questionnaires cannot fully and accurately present the psychological cognitive mechanism of design Innovation and entrepreneurship organization members. We use virtual reality technology combined with electrophysiological technology to conduct experiments. We use these technologies to conduct quantitative experiments on psychological cognition in community of practice. This study will select a design innovation and entrepreneurial organization, randomly select 20 participants, and divide them into 2 groups for experimentation. The VR scene is based on their real office space as a prototype. Put the visual elements of corporate culture in one of the VR scenes. The other VR scene as a reference does not incorporate visual elements of organizational culture. Participants participated in the experiment in these two VR scenarios. There are many advanced devices that can accurately test individual psychological changes, but the ErgoLab man-machine environment test platform, can collect and compare these data [physiological data, electroencephalogram data, and behavior data] in real-time and comprehensively, which is its advantage. According to the experimental results, judge the changes in the psychological cognitive data of the participants before and after the placement of the spatial narrative in design innovation and entrepreneurial organizations. The experiment combined interviews and questionnaires to ensure the authenticity of the quantitative data. The conclusion of the experiment will produce an accurate quantitative study on the psychological cognition of the spatial narrative of design innovation and entrepreneurial organizational culture. A sense of organizational belonging, collective sense, pride, mission, and work fun can be generated in the workspace. (shrink)

Past research showed that the ability to focus on one’s internal states positively correlates with the self-regulation of behavior in situations that are accompanied by somatic and/or physiological changes, such as emotions, physical workload, and decision-making. The analysis of moral oriented decision-making can be the first step for better understanding the legal reasoning carried on by the main players in the field, as lawyers are. For this reason, this study investigated the influence of the decision context and interoceptive manipulation (...) on the moral decision-making process in the legal field gathering the responses of two groups of lawyers. A total of 20 lawyers were randomly divided into an experimental group, which was explicitly required to focus the attention on its interoceptive correlates, and a control group, which only received the general instruction to perform the task. Both groups underwent a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, where are presented three different moral conditions and three different offers. Results highlighted a significant increase of Acceptance Rate in those offers that should be considered more equal than fair or unfair ones, associated with a general increase of Reaction Times in the equal offers. Furthermore, the interoceptive manipulation oriented the Lawyers toward a more self-centered decision. This study shows how individual, situational, contextual, and interoceptive factors may influence the moral decision-making of lawyers. Future research in the so-called Neurolaw field is needed to replicate and expand current findings. (shrink)

The paper aims to put certain basic mathematical elements and operations into an empirical perspective, evaluate the empirical status of various analytic operations widely used within psychology and suggest alternatives to procedures criticized as inadequate. Experimentation shows the "manyness" of items to be a perceptual quality for both young children and animals and that natural operations are performed by naive children analogous to those performed by persons tutored in arithmetic. Number, counting, arithmetic operations therefore can make distinctions that are not (...) inevitably arbitrary, and conceptual operations can obviously have a status as natural events with psychology. If the elements and conceptual operations involved in mathematical systems were not inherent in physiological process, various primitive discriminations could not be possible. Also, since some calculi have a natural status in a given empirical circumstance, the axioms of others can not be satisfied. Therefore the psychologist when acting as an empirical scientist seeks a calculus having a structure whose elements are isomorphic with natural units of stimulus and response and whose operations are isomorphic with whatever natural processes are involved. Measurement poses a special problem for the empirical scientist. It concerns but a single class of natural qualities and this only in a limited way. The concept of quantity has a natural counterpart but quantity and measurement are not wholly analogous. Measurement is defined, as H. S. Leonard suggests, as a theoretical activity. Measurement theory has a formal structure but empirical end. Measurement hypothesizes about the position of a particular quality within a definite range of qualities. It therefore is beholden to definite empirical restrictions. Some hypotheses-making systems use terms and relations per se as the context and starting point for dealing with discriminable events. Such procedures are 'transcendent." In empirical science, questions are part of problem-solving activity and their reference is naturally restricted. In providing description and explanation, psychological researchers frequently use calculi in a transcendent way. This results in theories that are only quasi-empirical and "half" true. The roles measurement plays in psychology are discussed. Of particular concern are those cases in which the results of measuring or a theory of measurement are used to define the "real" units, or the "real" relations involved in problematic psychological events, and thence to describe and explain behaviors of interest. Metaphysical or ontological usages of measurement sometimes occur. The implication of these arguments with regard to a view of empirical science is discussed. (shrink)

The concept of the person, and the notion that the latter is an entity separate and distinct from other persons, has persisted as one of the more secure ‘givens’ of philosophical thought. We have very little difficulty, in observer language, in pointing to a person, describing his or her attributes, distinguishing him or her from other persons, etc. Likewise, it is ordinarily not much of a problem to subjectively experience, both sensorially and conceptually, the self – that is, to distinguish (...) in agent language ‘my person’ from the rest of the universe. The second of these two perspectives on the person defines the ‘I,’ ‘ego,’ or ‘identity.’ Several recent developments in experimental psychology and brain science – while not defeating the ordinary notion of the person on the merits of data per se – at least force a re-thinking of tacit assumptions basic to our sense of the concepts of both the person and personal identity. In this paper, I would like to show how the concept of the person needs revision, and at the same time to raise some objections to Shaffer's (1977) account of the consequences of brain bisection and brain transplant with respect to the fate of the person and his identity. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In order to explain trauma resilience, previous research has been investigating possible risk and protective factors, both on an individual and a contextual level. In this experimental study, we examined narrative coherence and social support in relation to trauma resilience. Participants were asked to write about a turning point memory, after which they did the Maastricht Acute Stress Test, our lab analog of a traumatic event. Following, half of the participants received social support, whereas the other half did not. (...) Afterwards, all participants wrote a narrative on the traumatic event. Moment-to-moment fluctuations in psychological and physiological well-being throughout the experiment were investigated with state anxiety questionnaires and cortisol measures. Results showed that narratives of traumatic experiences were less coherent than narratives of turning point memories. However, contrary to our predictions, coherence, and, in particular, thematic coherence, related positively to anxiety levels. Possibly, particular types of thematic coherence are a non-adaptive form of coping, which reflect unfinished attempts at meaning-making and are more similar to continuous rumination than to arriving at a resolution. Furthermore, coherence at baseline could not buffer against the impact of trauma on anxiety levels in this study. Contrary to our hypotheses, social support did not have the intended beneficial effects on coherence, neither on well-being. Multiple explanations as to why our support manipulation remained ineffective are suggested. Remarkably, lower cortisol levels at baseline and after writing about the turning point memory predicted higher coherence in the trauma narratives. This may suggest that the ability to remain calm in difficult situations does relate to the ability to cope adaptively with future difficult experiences. Clinical and social implications of the present findings are discussed, and future research recommendations on the relations between narrative coherence, social support, and trauma resilience are addressed. (shrink)

Indoor plants can positively impact physical and mental health in daily life. However, the benefits of viewing indoor plants may be enhanced if the plants emit a fragrant aroma. In this crossover-design study, we measured the physiological and psychological effects of fragrant and non-fragrant Primula plants on 50 female college students, and explored whether aroma stimulation had additive benefits for this group. Non-fragrant Primula malacoides Franch was used as a control stimulus, and Primula forbesii Franch, which has a floral (...) fragrance, was used as an experimental stimulus. We measured blood pressure, pulse rate, and electroencephalogram to evaluate physiological responses, and used a mood state profile and the semantic differential method to evaluate psychological responses. We found that mean blood pressure and pulse rate decreased significantly after the experiment in both conditions. EEGs showed that the mean values of high alpha waves, high beta waves, and relaxation scores were significantly higher in the experimental vs. control condition. The average scores on each subscale of the psychological questionnaire improved after the experiment in both conditions, and the vitality subscale and total emotional state scores were significantly better in the experimental vs. control condition. The results of the SD method showed that the sense of relaxation and comfort were significantly higher in the experimental vs. control condition. Compared with the non-fragrant Primula, the fragrant Primula induced relatively better physiological and psychological effects. (shrink)

When discussing the changing sense of reality around 1900 in the cultural arts the lexicon of early modernism reigns supreme. This essay contends that a critical condition for the possibility of many of the turn of the century modernist movements in the arts can be found in exchange of instruments, concepts, and media of representation between the sciences and the arts. One route of interaction came through physiological aesthetics, the attempt to ‘elucidate physiologically the nature of our Aesthetic feelings’ (...) and explain how works of art achieve their effects. Physiological aesthetics provided the terms for new formalist languages of art and criticism, and in some instances suggested optimistic, even utopian, possibilities for art to remake human individuals and societies.Keywords: Physiology; Psychology; Evolution; Aesthetics; Modernism; Art history. (shrink)

Decades ago, several authors have proposed that disorders in automatic processing lead to intrusive symptoms or abnormal contents in the consciousness of people with schizophrenia. However, since then, studies have mainly highlighted difficulties in patients’ conscious experiencing and processing but rarely explored how unconscious and conscious mechanisms may interact in producing this experience. We report three lines of research, focusing on the processing of spatial frequencies, unpleasant information, and time-event structure that suggest that impairments occur at both the unconscious and (...) conscious level.We argue that focusing on unconscious, physiological and automatic processing of information in patients, while contrasting that processing with conscious processing, is a first required step before understanding how distortions or other impairments emerge at the conscious level. We then indicate that the phenomenological tradition of psychiatry supports a similar claim and provides a theoretical framework helping to understand the relationship between the impairments and clinical symptoms. We base our argument on the presence of disorders in the minimal self in patients with schizophrenia. The minimal self is tacit and non-verbal and refers to the sense of bodily presence. We argue this sense is shaped by unconscious processes, whose alteration may thus affect the feeling of being a unique individual. This justifies a focus on unconscious mechanisms and a distinction from those associated with consciousness. (shrink)

This is a work in the epistemology of functional neuroimaging (fNI) and it applies the error-statistical (ES) philosophy to inferential problems in fNI to formulate and address these problems. This gives us a clear, accurate, and more complete understanding of what we can learn from fNI and how we can learn it. I review the works in the epistemology of fNI which I group into two categories; the first category consists of discussions of the theoretical significance of fNI findings and (...) the second category discusses methodological difficulties of fNI. Both types of works have shortcomings; the first category has been too theory-centered in its approach and the second category has implicitly or explicitly adopted the assumption that methodological difficulties of fNI cannot be satisfactorily addressed. In this dissertation, I address these shortcomings and show how and what kind of experimental knowledge fNI can reliably produce which would be theoretically significant. I take fMRI as a representative fNI procedure and discuss the history of its development. Two independent trajectories of research in physics and physiology eventually converge to give rise to fMRI. Thus, fMRI findings are laden in the theories of physics and physiology and I propose how this creates a kind of useful theory-ladenness which allows for the representation of and intervention in the constructs of cognitive neuroscience. Duhemian challenges and problems of underdetermination are often raised to argue that fNI is of little, if any, epistemic value for psychology. I show how the ES notions of severe tests and error probabilities can be applied in epistemological analyses of fMRI. The result is that hemodynamic hypotheses can be severely tested in fMRI experiments and I demonstrate how these hypotheses are theoretically significant and fuel the growth of experimental knowledge in cognitive neuroscience. Throughout this dissertation, I put the emphasis on the experimental knowledge we obtain from fNI and argue that this is the fruitful approach that enables us to see how fNI can contribute to psychology. In doing so, I offer an error-statistical epistemology of fNI, which hopefully will be a significant contribution to the philosophy of psychology. (shrink)

In reflecting on the relation between early empiricist conceptions of the mind and more experimentally motivated materialist philosophies of mind in the mid-eighteenth century, I suggest that we take seriously the existence of what I shall call ‘phantom philosophical projects’. A canonical empiricist like Locke goes out of his way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (...) (Essay, I.i.2). An equally prominent thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to make an elementary mistake, given such a clear statement, when he claims that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding,” in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). A first question, then, would be: what is this physiology of the understanding, if it was not Locke’s project? Did anyone undertake such a project? If not, what would it have resembled? My second and related case comes out of a remark the Hieronymus Gaub makes in a letter to Charles Bonnet of 1761: criticizing materialist accounts of mind and mind-body relations such as La Mettrie’s, Gaub suggests that what is needed is a thorough study of the “mechanics of the soul,” and that Bonnet could write such a study. What is the mechanics of the soul, especially given that it is presented as a non-materialist project? To what extent does it resemble the purported “physiology of the understanding”? And more generally, what do both of these phantom projects have to do with a process we might describe as a ‘naturalization of the soul’? (shrink)

In the twentieth century, most PhD-trained academic philosophers in both the United States and United Kingdom were white men. The first black woman to earn a PhD in Philosophy was Joyce E. Mitchell Cook. A preacher's daughter from a small town in western Pennsylvania, Cook earned a BA from Bryn Mawr College. She went on to earn degrees in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology from St Hilda's College at Oxford University before earning a PhD in Philosophy from Yale University in 1965. (...) At Yale she served as Managing Editor of the Review of Metaphysics and was the first woman appointed as a teaching assistant in Philosophy. She taught at Howard University for nearly a decade and held positions in national government service in Washington, DC, before retiring to a life of independent study of the black experience. Although she did not publish much in her lifetime, Cook deserves to be remembered as: first, an academic trailblazer who proved that race and gender are not barriers to excellence in philosophy; second, a public philosopher who broke barriers as a foreign and economic affairs analyst and presidential speech writer; third, among the first philosophical bioethicists of informed consent and experimentation on humans; and, fourth, an analytic philosopher of race, opposing claims that blacks suffer from inherited intellectual inferiority. Cook's achievements can inspire women of all backgrounds who love philosophy to pursue graduate studies and academic careers. (shrink)

Research on collective emotion spans social sciences, psychology and philosophy. There are detailed case studies and diverse theories of collective emotion. However, experimental evidence regarding the universal characteristics, antecedents and consequences of collective emotion remains sparse. Moreover, current research mainly relies on emotion self-reports, accounting for the subjective experience of collective emotion and ignoring their cognitive and physiological bases. In response to these challenges, we argue for experimental research on collective emotion. We start with an overview of (...) theoretical frameworks to identify a set of three characteristics of collective emotion. Based on research in cognitive and affective sciences, we then examine the corresponding candidate mechanisms. Finally, we highlight outstanding questions, review experimental evidence, and suggest ideas for future experimental research. (shrink)

Financial and prosocial biases in favor of attractive adults have been documented in the labor market, in social transactions in everyday life, and in studies involving experimental economic games. According to the taste-based discrimination model developed by economists, attractiveness-related financial and prosocial biases are the result of preferences or prejudices similar to those displayed toward members of a particular sex, racial, ethnic, or religious group. Other explanations proposed by economists and social psychologists maintain that attractiveness is a marker of (...) personality, intelligence, trustworthiness, professional competence, or productivity. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that attractive adults are favored because they are preferred sexual partners. Evidence that stereotypes about attractive people are causally related to financial or prosocial biases toward them is weak or nonexistent. Consistent with evolutionary explanations, biases in favor of attractive women appear to be more consistent or stronger than those in favor of attractive men, and biases are more consistently reported in interactions between opposite-sex than same-sex individuals. Evolutionary explanations also account for increased prosocial behavior in situations in which attractive individuals are simply bystanders. Finally, evolutionary explanations are consistent with the psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes that occur when individuals are exposed to potential mates, which facilitate the expression of courtship behavior and increase the probability of occurrence of mating. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence suggest that mating motives play a more important role in driving financial and prosocial biases toward attractive adults than previously recognized. (shrink)

The value of psychology as a science has been challenged in phenomenology and in other epistemological trends. The main objective of this book is to draw the attention of students of human and animal behaviour to important achievements in phenomenological psychology and comparative physiology which are mostly overlooked, although they offer a genuine approach to subjective experience in relation to behavioural regulations. The work of Brentano, Stumpf, Husserl, Politzer, Katz, Michotte, Buytendijk and many others is analysed from this epistemological standpoint. (...) The significance of the phenomenological approach for the biology of behaviour is discussed. The meaning of Sherrington's physiology of the behavioural field is evaluated in the same framework. Basic reading for students of experimental psychology, comparative psychology and ethology, this book will appeal particularly to those interested in the philosophy of psychology and biology. Originally published in 1977. (shrink)

Experimental emotion inductions provide the strongest causal evidence of the effects of emotions on psychological and physiological outcomes. In the present qualitative review, we evaluated five common experimental emotion induction techniques: visual stimuli, music, autobiographical recall, situational procedures, and imagery. For each technique, we discuss the extent to which they induce six basic emotions: anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, fear, and sadness. For each emotion, we discuss the relative influences of the induction methods on subjective emotional experience and (...) physiological responses. Based on the literature reviewed, we make emotion-specific recommendations for induction methods to use in experiments. (shrink)

Growing evidence suggests that natural environments – whether in outdoor or indoor settings – foster psychological health and physiological relaxation, indicated by increased wellbeing, reduced stress levels, and increased parasympathetic activity. Greater insight into differential psychological aspects modulating psychophysiological responses to nature-based relaxation videos could help understand modes of action and develop personalized relaxation interventions. We investigated heart rate variability as an indicator of autonomic regulation, specifically parasympathetic activity, in response to a 10-min video intervention in two consecutive studies (...) as well as heart rate. We hypothesized that a nature-based relaxation video elicits HRV increase and HR decrease, with response magnitude being affected by aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness. In Study 1, N = 60 participants watched a relaxation video intervention depicting different natural scenery. We analyzed changes in HR and respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a standard HRV measure, both based on 3-min segments from the experimental session, in multiple growth curve models. We found a decrease in HR and increase of RSA during the video intervention. Higher paternal care and lower trait mindfulness observing skills were associated with higher RSA values before but not during video exposure. In Study 2, N = 90 participants were assigned to three video conditions: natural scenery from Study 1, meditation video, or short clip from “The Lord of the Rings.” Again, HR decreased, and RSA increased during video segments, yet without expected group differences across different video types. We found higher parental care and lower parental overprotection to predict higher RSA at different times during the experiment. Interestingly, lower paternal overprotection predicted overall higher RSA. These results suggest a generic relaxation effect of video interventions on autonomic regulation that we discuss in light of different theories mapping restorative effects of natural environments. Further, psychological characteristics like aspects of early life adversity and trait mindfulness could contribute to individual differences in autonomic regulation. This study contributes to a better understanding of autonomic and psychological responses to relaxation videos. (shrink)

Contemporary moral psychology has been dominated by two broad traditions, one usually associated with Aristotle, the other with Kant. The broadly Aristotelian approach emphasizes the role of childhood upbringing in the development of good moral character, and the role of such character in ethical behavior. The broadly Kantian approach emphasizes the role of freely chosen conscious moral principles in ethical behavior. We review a growing body of experimental evidence that suggests that both of these approaches are predicated on an (...) implausible view of human psychology. This evidence suggests that both childhood upbringing and conscious moral principles have extraordinarily little impact on people's moral behavior. This paper argues that moral psychology needs to take seriously a third approach, derived from Nietzsche. This approach emphasizes the role of heritable psychological and physiological traits in explaining behavior. In particular, it claims that differences in the degree to which different individuals behave morally can often be traced back to heritable differences between those individuals. We show that this third approach enjoys considerable empirical support - indeed that it is far better supported by the empirical data than are either the Aristotelian or Kantian traditions in moral psychology. (shrink)

Instant messaging is a highly diffused form of communication among younger populations, yet little is known about the emotional experience during IM. The present study aimed to investigate the emotional experience during IM by drawing on the Circumplex Model of Affect and measuring heart rate and electrodermal activity as indicators of arousal in addition to self-reported perceived emotional valence. Using an experimental design, we manipulated message latency and message valence. Based on data collected from 65 young adults, we observed (...) arousal as participants’ electrodermal activity levels increased from the time a fictitious peer started typing a response to the receipt of that response, especially in the delayed condition. Electrodermal activity levels also increased in both the positive and the negative message conditions. No changes were observed for heart rate. Participants’ self-report perceived emotional valence revealed that positive messages were evaluated as more pleasant and the peer as more available, while no difference in the self-report was found for message latency. These findings shed light on the emotional experience during IM by adding valuable insights on the physiological processes underlying the anticipation of social reward, but only during delayed IM exchange that can be observed in Human–Computer-Interaction. (shrink)

Attention Restoration Theory proposes that exposure to natural environments helps to restore attention. For sustained attention—the ongoing application of focus to a task, the effect appears to be modest, and the underlying mechanisms of attention restoration remain unclear. Exposure to nature may improve attention performance through many means: modulation of alertness and one’s connection to nature were investigated here, in two separate studies. In both studies, participants performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task before and immediately after viewing a meadow, (...) ocean, or urban image for 40 s, and then completed the Perceived Restorativeness Scale. In Study 1, an eye-tracker recorded the participants’ tonic pupil diameter during the SARTs, providing a measure of alertness. In Study 2, the effects of connectedness to nature on SART performance and perceived restoration were studied. In both studies, the image viewed was not associated with participants’ sustained attention performance; both nature images were perceived as equally restorative, and more restorative than the urban image. The image viewed was not associated with changes in alertness. Connectedness to nature was not associated with sustained attention performance, but it did moderate the relation between viewing the natural images and perceived restorativeness; participants reporting a higher connection to nature also reported feeling more restored after viewing the nature, but not the urban, images. Dissociation was found between the physiological and behavioral measures and the perceived restorativeness of the images. The results suggest that restoration associated with nature exposure is not associated with modulation of alertness but is associated with connectedness with nature. (shrink)

This study investigated the stationarity of electrodermal time series collected in situations where turn taking in human interactions are involved. In this context, the stationarity of the time series is the extent to which a simple model can be used to fit the entire time series. The experiment involved seven participants in an emergency response simulation against one opponent. They generated 48 time series across six simulations, which were split and re-spliced to separate the team’s turns and the opponent’s turns. (...) Significant differences in R2 coefficients were found for both linear and nonlinear statistical models between experimental conditions, but the difference only amounted to 3% of the accuracy of those models relative to the original data. It was thus concluded that the impact of turn taking on stationarity was a small effect at most. A comparison of synchronization coefficients for the team data, which rely on the collective accuracy of the individual time series models, indicated stronger synchronization during periods when the team was watching the opponent’s actions compared to when they took their own turns. It was thus concluded, furthermore, that the common focus of attention prevailed against any non-stationarity that was introduced by turn taking. (shrink)

This research extends and confirms recent brainwave findings that distinguished an individual’s sense-of-self along an Object-referral/Self-referral Continuum of self-awareness. Subjects were interviewed and were given tests measuring inner/outer orientation, moral reasoning, anxiety, and personality. Scores on the psychological tests were factor analyzed. The first unrotated PCA component of the test scores yielded a “Consciousness Factor,” analogous to the intelligence “g” factor, which accounted for over half of the variance among groups. Analysis of unstructured interviews of these subjects revealed fundamentally different (...) descriptions of self-awareness. Individuals who described themselves in terms of concrete cognitive and behavioral processes exhibited lower Consciousness Factor scores, lower frontal EEG coherence, lower alpha and higher gamma power during tasks, and less efficient cortical preparatory responses . In contrast, individuals who described themselves in terms of an abstract, independent sense-of-self underlying thought, feeling and action exhibited higher Consciousness Factor scores, higher frontal coherence, higher alpha and lower gamma power during tasks, and more efficient cortical responses. These data suggest that definable states of brain activity and subjective experiences exist, in addition to waking, sleeping and dreaming, that may be operationally defined by psychological and physiological measures along a continuum of Object-referral/Self-referral Continuum of self-awareness. (shrink)

This article critically examines the views that psychology first came into existence as a discipline ca. 1879, that philosophy and psychology were estranged in the ensuing decades, that psychology finally became scientific through the influence of logical empiricism, and that it should now disappear in favor of cognitive science and neuroscience. It argues that psychology had a natural philosophical phase (from antiquity) that waxed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that this psychology transformed into experimental psychology ca. 1900, that (...) philosophers and psychologists collaboratively discussed the subject matter and methods of psychology in the first two decades of the twentieth century, that the neobehaviorists were not substantively influenced by the Vienna Circle, that the study of perception and cognition in psychology did not disappear in the behaviorist period and so did not reemerge as a result of artificial intelligence, linguistics, and the computer analogy, that although some psychologists adopted the language-of-thought approach of traditional cognitive science, many did not, and that psychology will not go away because it contributes independently of cognitive science and neuroscience. (shrink)

"This work is designed to be an introduction to abnormal psychology. The problems considered, however, belong equally to normal psychology. The present volume consists of selected lectures (with the exception of four) from courses on abnormal psychology delivered at the Tufts College Medical School (1908-10) and later at the University of California (1910). These again were based on a series of papers on the Unconscious published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (1908-9) of which they are elaborations. Since the lectures (...) were delivered a large amount of new material has been incorporated and the subject matter considered in more detail and more exhaustively than was practical before student bodies. The four additional lectures (X, XI, XII and XIII) appeared in abbreviated form in the same Journal (Oct., Nov., 1912) under the title "The Meaning of Ideas as Determined by Unconscious Settings." As the subconscious and its processes are fundamentals both in the structure of personality and in the many mechanisms through which personality, normal and abnormal, finds expression, the first eight lectures are devoted to its exposition. Indeed, the subconscious is not only the most important problem of psychology, it is the problem. The study of its phenomena must be preliminary to that of the functioning mechanisms of both the normal mind and of those special pathological conditions--the psycho-neuroses--which modern investigators are tracing to its perversions. It ought to be possible to construct the theory of the subconscious by inductive methods on the basis of facts of observation just as any theory of the physical sciences is constructed. This task I have set before myself as well as that of giving precision to our conception of the theory and taking it out of the domain of philosophical concepts. With this purpose in view I have endeavored to apply the method of science and construct the theory by induction from the data of observation and experiment. I have divided the subconscious into two classes, namely (1) the unconscious, or neural dispositions and processes, and (2) the coconscious, or actual subconscious ideas which do not enter the content of conscious awareness. In these lectures I have also endeavored (Lectures XIV-XVI) to develop the phenomena of the emotional innate dispositions which I conceive play one of the most fundamental parts in human personality and in determining mental and physiological behavior. Experimental methods and the well-known clinical methods of investigation have been employed by me as far as possible. The data made use of have been derived for the most part from my own observations, though confirmatory observations of others have not been neglected. Although a large number and variety of subjects or cases have been studied, as they have presented themselves in private and hospital practice, the data have been to a large extent sought in intensive studies, on particular subjects, carried on in some cases over a period of many years. These subjects, because of the ease with which subconscious and emotional phenomena were either spontaneously manifested or could be experimentally evoked, were particularly suitable for such studies and fruitful in results. It is by such intensive studies on special subjects, rather than by casual observation of many cases, that I believe the deepest insight into mental processes and mechanisms can be obtained. The favorable reception which was given to the first edition of this work has tempted me in preparing a new edition at the request of the publishers to incorporate four additional chapters dealing with the general principles underlying the structure and dynamic elements of human personality (Lecture XVII) and a study of a special problem in personality in which these principles are involved, namely, the psychogenesis of multiple personality as illustrated by a study of the case known as B.C.A. (Lectures XVIII-XX)." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Abstract Physiological psychology has its conceptual roots in stimulus?response behaviourism. The resurgence of cognitive concepts in mainstream psychology has led to a separation between the two, largely due to the failure of most cognitive theories to specify how their explanatory processes could be realised in the nervous system. Connectionism looks as if it may be able to bridge this gap. The problem is that connectionism takes a radically different view of the brain from that adopted in traditional physiological (...) psychology. This paper looks at some of the implications of connectionism for how physiological psychology should develop. It also looks at the implications of the findings of physiological psychology for connectionism. (shrink)

The artificial neural network is employed to study children’s psychological emotion recognition to fully reflect the psychological status of preschool children and promote the healthy growth of preschool children. Specifically, the ANN model is used to construct the human physiological signal measurement platform and emotion recognition platform to measure the human physiological signals in different psychological and emotional states. Finally, the parameter values are analyzed on the emotion recognition platform to identify the children’s psychological and emotional states accurately. (...) The experimental results demonstrate that the recognition ability of children aged 4–6 to recognize the three basic emotions of happiness, calm, and fear increases with age. Besides, there are significant age differences in children’s recognition of happiness, calm, and fear. In addition, the effect of 4-year-old children on the theory of mind tasks is less than that of 5- to 6-year-old children, which may be related to more complex cognitive processes. Preschool children are experiencing a stage of rapid emotional development. If children cannot be guided to reasonably identify and deal with emotions at this stage, their education level and social ability development will be significantly affected. Therefore, this study has significant reference value for preschool children’s emotional recognition and guidance and can promote children’s emotional processing and mental health. (shrink)