This study explored effects of experimental cortisol manipulation on changes in implicit motives. Thirty-six participants were randomly allocated to a hydrocortisone or a placebo condition, provided saliva samples that were assayed for cortisol, and wrote picture stories both before and after treatment. Stories were coded for motivational imagery related to power, achievement, and affiliation a...

Recent studies have provided evidence for mental simulation as a strategy in mechanical reasoning. This type of reasoning can be dissociated from reasoning based on descriptive knowledge in that it depends on different abilities and memory stores, is expressed more easily in gesture than in language, exhibits analog properties, and can result in correct inferences in situations where people do ...

To examine the hypothetical role of the eyes in visual mental imagery of movement 72 undergraduate women students in psychology were asked to imagine a running horse and then to produce the same mental image without moving the eyes and the head. In 59% of the subjects interesting modifications of the imagined movement appeared: 37% observed an inhibition of the movement and 19% an evident slowi...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Optimism is a personality trait which has repeatedly been shown to correlate with, and predict psychological and physical well-being. The present study investigated whether optimism can be increased by imagining a best possible self (BPS). Effects were compared to a control group in which participants imagined their daily activities (DA). METHODS In order to minimize...

This article provides data from statistical analysis of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and spectral power from 20 participants during three attentional conditions. Specifically, P1, N1 and P300 amplitude of ERP were compared when participant׳s attention was oriented to an external task, to a visual imagery and to an inner speech. The spectral power from alpha band was also compared in th...

Research on omission neglect has demonstrated that consumers are insensitive to many different types of missing, unmentioned, and unknown information. However, there is no prior research examining the role that vividness plays in omission detection and persuasion. The present research distinguishes between vividness in imagery and vividness of verbal information and shows that vividness in imag...

Previous research suggests that conversion disordered patients with hand/arm paralysis exhibit slowed reaction times for mental hand-rotation tasks that correspond to their affected arm when the tasks are explicitly instructed and not when they are implicitly cued. Because of the many similarities between hypnotic phenomena and conversion symptoms, the authors tested whether similar motor image...

This study assessed response times and accuracy of motor imagery in waking and hypnotic states and to related responses to hypnotic experiences. The Vividness of Motor Imagery Questionnaire (VMIQ) was administered to 47 participants. A mental walking task was then performed in the waking state. In hypnosis, the same task was included within an imaginary journey after a hypnotic induction. An in...