Implicit self-esteem is the automatic, nonconscious aspect of self-esteem. This study demonstrated that implicit self-esteem can be increased using a computer game that repeatedly pairs self-relevant information with smiling faces. These findings, which are consistent with principles of classical conditioning, establish the associative and interpersonal nature of implicit self-esteem and demonstrate the potential benefit of applying basic learning principles in this domain.

Historical developments regarding the attitude concept are reviewed, and set the stage for consideration of a theoretical perspective that views attitude, not as a hypothetical construct, but as evaluative knowledge. A model of attitudes as object-evaluation associations of varying strength is summarized, along with research supporting the model's contention that at least some attitudes are represented in memory and activated automatically upon the individual's encountering the attitude object. The implications of the theoretical perspective for a number of recent discussions related to the attitude concept are elaborated. Among these issues are the notion of attitudes as

Researchers have used J. Bowlby's (1969/1982, 1973, 1980, 1988) attachment theory frequently as a basis for examining whether experiences in close personal relationships relate to the processing of social information across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We present an integrative life-span encompassing theoretical model to explain the patterns of results that have emerged from these studies. The central proposition is that individuals who possess secure experience-based internal working models of attachment will process in a relatively open manner a broad range of positive and negative attachment-relevant social information. Moreover, secure individuals will draw on their positive attachment-related knowledge to process this information in a positively biased schematic way. In contrast, individuals who possess insecure internal working models of attachment will process attachment-relevant social information in one of two ways, depending on whether the information could cause the individual psychological pain. If processing the information is likely to lead to psychological pain, insecure individuals will defensively exclude this information from further processing. If, however, the information is unlikely to lead to psychological pain, then insecure individuals will process this information in a negatively biased schematic fashion that is congruent with their negative attachment-related experiences. In a comprehensive literature review, we describe studies that illustrate these patterns of attachment-related information processing from childhood to adulthood. This review focuses on studies that have examined specific components (e.g., attention and memory) and broader aspects (e.g., attributions) of social information processing. We also provide general conclusions and suggestions for future research.

Empathy plays an important role in human social interaction. A multifaceted construct, empathy includes a prosocial motivation or intention to help others in need. Although humans are often willing to help others in need, at times (e.g., during intergroup conflict), empathic responses are diminished or absent. Research examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying prosocial tendencies has focused on the facilitating roles of perspective taking and emotion sharing but has not previously elucidated the contributions of episodic simulation and memory to facilitating prosocial intentions. Here, we investigated whether humans' ability to construct episodes by vividly imagining (episodic simulation) or remembering (episodic memory) specific events also supports a willingness to help others. Three experiments provide evidence that, when participants were presented with a situation depicting another person's plight, the act of imagining an event of helping the person or remembering a related past event of helping others increased prosocial intentions to help the present person in need, compared with various control conditions. We also report evidence suggesting that the vividness of constructed episodes-r ather than simply heightened emotional reactions or degree of perspective taking-supports this effect. Our results shed light on a role that episodic simulation and memory can play in fostering empathy and begin to offer insight into the underlying mechanisms.

The same neural structures involved in the unconscious modeling of our acting body in space also contribute to our awareness of the lived body and of the objects that the world contains. Neuroscientific research also shows that there are neural mechanisms mediating between the multi-level personal experience we entertain of our lived body, and the implicit certainties we simultaneously hold about others. Such personal and body-related experiential knowledge enables us to understand the actions performed by others, and to directly decode the emotions and sensations they experience. A common functional mechanism is at the basis of both body awareness and basic forms of social understanding: embodied simulation. It will be shown that the present proposal is consistent with some of the perspectives offered by phenomenology.]]>

AbstractFor over two decades, individual differences in adult attachment style have been conceptualized and measured in terms of anxiety, avoidance, and security. During this time, the prevailing assumption has been that an adult’s attachment style is a relatively stable disposition, rooted in internal working models of self and relationship partners. These models are based on previous experiences in close relationships. Recent research, however, suggests that levels of attachment anxiety, avoidance, and security are also affected by situational factors. To capture temporary fluctuations in the sense of attachment security and insecurity we developed a state adult attachment measure (SAAM). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses yielded three reliable subscales measuring state levels of attachment-related anxiety, avoidance, and security. Additional studies demonstrated both convergent and discriminant validity of the new measure, and its sensitivity to a variety of experimental manipulations. Our discussion focuses on potential uses for the SAAM for both researchers and clinicians.]]>

A critical adaptive feature of future thinking involves the ability to generate alternative versions of possible future events. However, little is known about the nature of the processes that support this ability. Here we examined whether an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting details of a recent experience that selectively impacts tasks that draw on episodic retrieval - (1) boosts alternative event generation and (2) changes one's initial perceptions of negative future events. In Experiment 1, an episodic specificity induction significantly increased the number of alternative positive outcomes that participants generated to a series of standardized negative events, compared with a control induction not focused on episodic specificity. We also observed larger decreases in the perceived plausibility and negativity of the original events in the specificity condition, where participants generated more alternative outcomes, relative to the control condition. In Experiment 2, we replicated and extended these findings using a series of personalized negative events. Our findings support the idea that episodic memory processes are involved in generating alternative outcomes to anticipated future events, and that boosting the number of alternative outcomes is related to subsequent changes in the perceived plausibility and valence of the original events, which may have implications for psychological well-being.

Recent studies based on J. Bowlby's (1969/1982) attachment theory reveal that both dispositional and experimentally enhanced attachment security facilitate cognitive openness and empathy, strengthen self-transcendent values, and foster tolerance of out-group members. Moreover, dispositional attachment security is associated with volunteering to help others in everyday life and to unselfish motives for volunteering. The present article reports 5 experiments, replicated in 2 countries (Israel and the United States), testing the hypothesis that increases in security (accomplished through both implicit and explicit priming techniques) foster compassion and altruistic behavior. The hypothesized effects were consistently obtained, and various alternative explanations were explored and ruled out. Dispositional attachment-related anxiety and avoidance adversely influenced compassion, personal distress, and altruistic behavior in theoretically predictable ways. As expected, attachment security provides a foundation for care-oriented feelings and caregiving behaviors, whereas various forms of insecurity suppress or interfere with compassionate caregiving.

Attachment theory is a theory of affect regulation as it occurs in the context of close relationships. Early research focused on regulation of emotions through maintenance of proximity to supportive others (attachment figures) in times of need. Recently, emphasis has shifted to the regulation of emotion, and the benefits of such regulation for exploration and learning, via the activation of mental representations of attachment figures (security priming). We conducted two studies on the effects of implicit and explicit security priming on creative problem solving. In Study 1, implicit security priming (subliminal presentation of attachment figures' names) led to more creative problem solving (compared with control conditions) regardless of dispositional attachment anxiety and avoidance. In Study 2, the effects of explicit security priming (recalling experiences of being well cared for) were moderated by anxiety and avoidance. We discuss the link between attachment and exploration and the different effects of implicit and explicit security priming.

In 8 studies the authors explored the procedural knowledge (secure-base script; H. S. Waters & E. Waters, 2006) associated with secure attachment (i.e., low scores on attachment anxiety and avoidance). The studies assessed the accessibility, richness, and automaticity of the secure-base script and the extent to which it guided the processing of attachment-relevant information. Secure attachment (lower scores on anxiety and avoidance) was associated with greater secure-base

Memory serves critical functions in everyday life but is also prone to error. This article examines adaptive constructive processes, which play a functional role in memory and cognition but can also produce distortions, errors, and illusions. The article describes several types of memory errors that are produced by adaptive constructive processes and focuses in particular on the process of imagining or simulating events that might occur in one's personal future. Simulating future events relies on many of the same cognitive and neural processes as remembering past events, which may help to explain why imagination and memory can be easily confused. The article considers both pitfalls and adaptive aspects of future event simulation in the context of research on planning, prediction, problem solving, mind-wandering, prospective and retrospective memory, coping and positivity bias, and the interconnected set of brain regions known as the default network.

Episodic memory is widely conceived as a fundamentally constructive, rather than reproductive, process that is prone to various kinds of errors and illusions. With a view towards examining the functions served by a constructive episodic memory system, we consider recent neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies indicating that some types of memory distortions reflect the operation of adaptive processes. An important function of a constructive episodic memory is to allow individuals to simulate or imagine future episodes, happenings and scenarios. Since the future is not an exact repetition of the past, simulation of future episodes requires a system that can draw on the past in a manner that flexibly extracts and recombines elements of previous experiences. Consistent with this constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, we consider cognitive, neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence showing that there is considerable overlap in the psychological and neural processes involved in remembering the past and imagining the future.

Episodic future thinking refers to the capacity to imagine or simulate experiences that might occur in one's personal future. Cognitive, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging research concerning episodic future thinking has accelerated during recent years. This article discusses research that has delineated cognitive and neural mechanisms that support episodic future thinking as well as the functions that episodic future thinking serves. Studies focused on mechanisms have identified a core brain network that underlies episodic future thinking and have begun to tease apart the relative contributions of particular regions in this network, and the specific cognitive processes that they support. Studies concerned with functions have identified several domains in which episodic future thinking produces performance benefits, including decision making, emotion regulation, prospective memory, and spatial navigation.

Prospection (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007), the representation of possible futures, is a ubiquitous feature of the human mind. Much psychological theory and practice, in contrast, has understood human action as determined by the past and viewed any such teleology (selection of action in light of goals) as a violation of natural law because the future cannot act on the present. Prospection involves no backward causation; rather, it is guidance not by the future itself but by present, evaluative representations of possible future states. These representations can be understood minimally as

Mental simulation provides a window on the future by enabling people to envision possibilities and develop plans for bringing those possibilities about. In moving oneself from a current situation toward an envisioned future one, the anticipation and management of emotions and the initiation and maintenance of problem-solving activities are fundamental tasks. In the program of research described in this article, mental simulation of the process for reaching a goal or of the dynamics of an unfolding stressful event produced progress in achieving those goals or resolving those events. Envisioning successful completion of a goal or resolution of a stressor--recommendations derived from the self-help literature--did not. Discussion centers on the characteristics of effective and ineffective mental simulations and their relation to self-regulatory processes.

We examined whether accuracy of affective forecasting for significant life events was moderated by a theoretically relevant individual difference (anxious attachment), with different expected relations to predicted and actual happiness. In 3 studies (2 cross-sectional, 1 longitudinal), participants predicted what their happiness would be after entering or ending a romantic relationship. Consistent with previous research, people were generally inaccurate forecasters. However, inaccuracy for entering a relationship was significantly moderated by anxious attachment. Predictions were largely unrelated to anxious attachment, but actual happiness was negatively related to attachment anxiety. Moderation for breaking up showed a similar but less consistent pattern. These results suggest a failure to account for one's degree of anxious attachment when making affective forecasts and show how affective forecasting accuracy in important life domains may be moderated by a focally relevant individual difference, with systematically different associations between predicted and actual happiness.

According to attachment theory, insecure individuals respond to events in their romantic relationships in ways that sometimes can be destructive. The objective of this research was to examine how these responses may accumulate over repeated interactions to influence the quality of the relationship. Across three studies, participants were presented with a

Mental representations are of central importance in attachment theory. Most often conceptualized in terms of working models, ideas about mental representation have helped guide both attachment theory and research. At the same time, the working models concept has been criticized as overly extensible, explaining too much and therefore too little. Once unavoidable, such openness is increasingly unnecessary and a threat to the coherence of attachment theory. Cognitive and developmental understanding of mental representation has advanced markedly since Bowlby's day, allowing us to become increasingly specific about how attachment-related representations evolve, interact, and influence affect, cognition, and behavior. This makes it possible to be increasingly specific about mental representations of attachment and secure base experience. Focusing on script-like representations of secure base experience is a useful first step in this direction. Here we define the concept of a secure base script, outline a method for assessing a person's knowledge/access to a secure base script, and review evidence that script-like representations are an important component of the working models concept.

Research on subjective well-being suggests that it is only partly a function of environmental circumstances. There may be a personality characteristic or a resilient disposition toward experiencing high levels of well-being even in unfavorable circumstances. Adult attachment may contribute to this resilient disposition. This study examined whether the association between attachment anxiety and subjective well-being was mediated by Neff's (2003a, 2003b) concept of self-compassion. It also examined empathy toward others as a mediator in the association between attachment avoidance and subjective well-being. In Study 1, 195 college students completed self-report surveys. In Study 2, 136 community adults provided a cross-validation of the results. As expected, across these 2 samples, findings suggested that self-compassion mediated the association between attachment anxiety and subjective well-being, and emotional empathy toward others mediated the association between attachment avoidance and subjective well-being.