Self-Doubt

The impact on self-esteem of activating self-doubt was investigated in three studies. Individuals with enduring high selfdoubt were expected to be more threatened by an experimental induction of self-doubt (modeled on the ease of retrieval paradigm) than individuals low in enduring self-doubt, and their self-esteem was predicted to decline. The predictions were supported when self-esteem was measured postexperimentally (Experiment 1) and when it was measured both pre- and post-experimentally (Experiment 2). There was no comparable loss in self-esteem for individuals low in self-doubt. A third experiment explored the phenomenology of low-self-doubt individuals and replicated the finding that their level of self-esteem was unaffected by the induction designed to produce doubt.

In early July 2015, I worked together with my co-moderators at the Sociolinguistic Events Calendar (http://www.baal.org.uk/slxevents.html) on an online survey to determine, once and for all, what’s hot and what’s not in the world of sociolinguistic conferences. On 9 July 2015, I released the survey to a number of sociolinguistic mailing lists. A week later on 16 July, after a healthy 100 responses, I cast my eyes over the results and wrote it all into a report for everyone to savour, to digest, and to use as a Conference Planning Bible. The survey is still live. You can take it here: https://goo.gl/MSMCgH. You can also check the latest results https://goo.gl/NchF58. The first 100 responses had some definite trends, so here’s my report... (Note: not all questions were mandatory so, despite 100 responses, the % doesn’t always equal the number.)

Regulatory focus theory [Higgins, E. T. (1998). Promotion and prevention: Regulatory focus as a motivational principle. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 1–46). New York: Academic Press.] argues that concerns with growth and nurturance (i.e., a promotion focus) and concerns with safety and security (i.e., a prevention focus) produce different motives and perception. The current studies test whether regulatory focus also affects individuals’ strivings for self-evaluation. Specifically, we argue that a promotion or a prevention focus directs the self-evaluation process to self-esteem or self-certainty, respectively. Two studies supported this prediction by demonstrating that regulatory focus affects the strength of self-evaluation goals and individuals’ reactions to goal failure. In Study 1, we found that a promotion focus led to a stronger self-esteem goal (as measured by greater accessibility of esteem-related words), whereas a prevention focus led to a stronger self-certainty goal (as measured by greater accessibility of certainty-related words). In Study 2, a promotion failure led to lower self-esteem than a prevention failure, but a prevention failure led to lower self-certainty than a promotion failure. This research suggests an unrecognized role of nurturance and safety concerns in understanding the self-evaluation process.

This paper aims at understanding the condition of the skeptic as skeptical. Using the mechanism of cognition argued by Aquinas, which explains how cognitions are connected with dispositions and affections, it tries to unlock the skeptic’s disposition to doubt as something willed. Culling insights from Wittgenstein, this essay points to certainty as a necessity for the person who wishes to live without the constant apprehension of doubt and pervasive suspicion of others. It concludes with an analysis of the skeptic’s need for trust as a willingness to open oneself dynamically in self-giving and submission to others, requiring that one give up self-sufficiency.

Se dire que nos croyances reflètent l'influence de facteurs arbitraires et non-pertinents  peut être dérangeant. La découverte de l'importance de tels facteurs sur la manière dont nous évaluons les données disponibles devrait-elle nous faire réduire notre confiance en ces croyances ? Quelle est la bonne réaction ? Plus généralement, lorsque nous apprenons qu’une croyance reflète l’influence de facteurs non-pertinents, de combien devrions-nous réduire la vigueur de la croyance en question ? La réponse est : cela dépend. Cela dépend si oui ou non le facteur non-pertinent risque de nous empêcher d’être en accord avec nos propres standards pour raisonner. Si c'est oui, alors le fait de se rendre compte de l'influence de ce facteur devrait réduire la vigueur des croyances influencées par ce facteur. Si c'est non, alors non. Ceci est ma thèse.

John G. Neihardt transcribed the story of Black Elk's vision. His vision was about a lot of things. And the fact that he told it to Neihardt and we can read it now means a whole lot more. You really should read the book, but the short and skinny of it is that people like the Lakota have practices and traditions that the people with the big guns and oil pipeline plans need to stop what they are doing and consider, before they go ahead trying to kill everybody on the planet by destroying the rapidly decreasing resources we all need in order to survive.