类比通过努力使其发挥作用来提供价值:理解心理免疫系统

IF 7.2 2区 心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
André Vaz, André Mata, Clayton R. Critcher
{"title":"类比通过努力使其发挥作用来提供价值:理解心理免疫系统","authors":"André Vaz, André Mata, Clayton R. Critcher","doi":"10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ions of the mind. We begin by highlighting questions that arose from our efforts to fully embrace and play out the analogy. In so doing, we seek to clarify (and at times speculate on) the nature of the psychological immune system and thus the maladaptive traps into which it may fall. At that point, we turn to a consideration of the role of the interconnectedness of the self’s structures, a topic of particular interest both in understanding current social trends and in explaining previous research that was not considered through the lens of ego defense. Finally, we close by considering how social perceptions fit within the project of self-enhancement. In the process, we identify a basic question that, to our surprise, decades of research on self-enhancement seem not to have addressed. Understanding the Connection Between the Biological and Psychological Immune Systems What does the psychological immune system monitor versus aim to gauge? Several of the recent COVID-19 vaccines train the body to monitor for the spike protein on the virus’s surface in an effort to gauge the presence of the virus. Diabetics who use a glucometer monitor the numbers on their readers’ display in an effort to gauge their blood glucose levels. In each case, the symptom is ultimately dissociable from the underlying state. The mRNA vaccines encourage production of the spike protein but not the virus itself; glucose readers can malfunction. What one thus hopes to monitor (to decide if supplemental action is necessary) is an imperfect guide to what one is ultimately trying to gauge. If the psychological immune system aims to achieve psychological homeostasis, what does this mean in terms of what it monitors, and what it is ultimately trying to gauge? What is the symptom, and what is the real threat? Sedikides describes psychological homeostasis as modulating or CONTACT Andr!e Vaz arvaz@campus.ul.pt, aomata@psicologia.ulisboa.pt Faculdade de Psicologia, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013, Lisboa, Portugal. ! 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 2021, VOL. 32, NO. 4, 230–239 https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815 reducing negative affect, achieving emotional equilibrium, and helping with the desire to achieve the most favorable emotional life that people can attain. This is a provocative claim: Is the psychological immune system merely a mood maintenance system, not one that is on the lookout for selfevaluative threat in particular? At its core, we consider this a question of whether the psychological immune system looks to James’s (1950 [1890]) “I” or “me.” The “I” is not merely a volitional executive, but is accompanied by affectively rich phenomenological experience (Gregg et al., 2011). When people feel paralyzed by crippling anxiety or inspired by the promise of future possibility, the “I” experiences a weight or boost as it navigates its environment. In contrast, the “me” is an object of evaluation, a catalog of resources that can serve the self and its goals. Determining that one lacks the vocal range to land a recording contract or that one’s writing can deftly illustrate through relevant examples both entail conclusions about the “me.” We suspect that the psychological immune system is largely attentive to and thus triggered by the phenomenological experience of the “I,” but that the self’s (understandable) egocentrism means that analyses of the resources of the “me” disproportionately guide the “I”’s general emotional state. On first consideration, such a conclusion may seem incompatible with previous researchers’ identification of self-enhancement (held in check by the reality constraints of self-assessment; Trope, 1980, 1986) as the paramount motive with which other human motives must not conflict (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). This primacy of self-enhancement might seem to elevate self-evaluation to a special status. But if the psychological immune system monitors one’s present emotional state, what do such states aim to gauge? Life events inspire emotions to the extent that they make contact with one’s goals. Of course, emotions are experienced not merely when people achieve or fail to achieve their goals, but when their pathways to future goal fulfillment are facilitated or blocked. Lottery winners experience elation before any of their jackpot is spent, much less hits their bank accounts. And people’s life plans and pursuits almost always require the involvement of, and thus a look to, the self’s own resources. This likely explains why selfevaluation is a hefty contributor to emotional well-being. Furthermore, the self’s ability to mentally time travel allows it to bask in its previous successes and fret over its past defeats. Of course, such previous episodes often portend future successes and failures, both due to what they suggest about the self’s abilities and due to the lingering reputational consequences of previous endeavors. Accepting that the psychological immune system is attuned to how one feels instead of how one feels about self-aspect X helps to explain why there is so much substitutability between different means of ego repair (Gregg et al., 2011; Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Tesser, 2000). Furthermore, it would explain why apparent needs for selfesteem repair can be addressed by alternate emotionally comforting routes (e.g., attachment and worldview defense; Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005) that relate to interpersonal and societal resources that may aid in pursuing one’s goals. That is, addressing the self’s feelings of frustration, disappointment, and anxiety about its ability to pursue its own needs does not require that the self be personally equipped to address them. As a false alarm blares, one may feel panic at not knowing how to shut it off. But we suspect that this anxiety subsides whether one possesses the resources and knowledge to turn it off oneself or whether a knowledgeable other appears to deal with the issue. Emotional states are sensitive to what is currently focal. And to be clear, this is where the self and its resources do take center stage. Before the “I” can act, it often needs to consult the “me”; it is, necessarily, always nearby. Because the self is typically first on the scene to solve its own problems, it is understandable why there has seemed to be such a close connection between self-evaluation in particular and the psychological alarm bells that suggest the self’s future comfort, success, and fulfillment is in jeopardy. There is not always an able aide waiting in the wings. But the attentional allure of the negative—combined with the mind’s ability to easily transport itself from the here and now to consider the past and the future (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2010)—exacerbates a flaw of the psychological immune system. It does not adopt a dispassionate, balanced perspective of the state of the self and its life pursuits, but can enter into a ruminative spiral (Martin & Tesser, 1996; Mikulincer, 1989), one that is particularly counterproductive when consciousness’s capacity to relive the disappointments and embarrassments of the past can lead it to become stuck there. Losing one’s voice in the middle of a speech sounds alarm bells not only in the moment, but for the subsequent days in which one mentally replays this event over and over. And given that people tend to overblow the reputational implications of one-off failures (Moon, Gan, & Critcher, 2020; Savitsky, Epley, & Gilovich, 2001), the psychological immune system can be inspired to declare war after what was only a mild dust-up. Sedikides seems to argue that many of the apparent faults of the psychological immune system are simply inevitable shortcomings. But a tolerance for a system’s flaws should not be confused with a passive acceptance of them. The fact that a home’s smoke detector will occasionally be activated by safe, contained cooking activity is not a reason to rip it from the ceiling, but it may be a reason to start using one’s vent hood. And it is here—in considering the self’s response to psychological alarm bells—that we urge further analysis of what would constitute more or less adaptive responses to threat instead of simply accepting that the system’s functioning is generally adaptive. If the psychological immune system is ultimately aiming to gauge whether one can navigate one’s world effectively, then one should prioritize means of mood repair that will aid with this goal. The smoke detector loses its adaptive function if homeowners’ response to it is to search for their noise-canceling headphones. We thus have less faith that the psychological immune system—by monitoring emotional states instead of the underlying COMMENTARIES 231","PeriodicalId":48327,"journal":{"name":"Psychological Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Analogies Offer Value Through the Struggle to Make Them Work: Making Sense of the Psychological Immune System\",\"authors\":\"André Vaz, André Mata, Clayton R. Critcher\",\"doi\":\"10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"ions of the mind. We begin by highlighting questions that arose from our efforts to fully embrace and play out the analogy. In so doing, we seek to clarify (and at times speculate on) the nature of the psychological immune system and thus the maladaptive traps into which it may fall. At that point, we turn to a consideration of the role of the interconnectedness of the self’s structures, a topic of particular interest both in understanding current social trends and in explaining previous research that was not considered through the lens of ego defense. Finally, we close by considering how social perceptions fit within the project of self-enhancement. In the process, we identify a basic question that, to our surprise, decades of research on self-enhancement seem not to have addressed. Understanding the Connection Between the Biological and Psychological Immune Systems What does the psychological immune system monitor versus aim to gauge? Several of the recent COVID-19 vaccines train the body to monitor for the spike protein on the virus’s surface in an effort to gauge the presence of the virus. Diabetics who use a glucometer monitor the numbers on their readers’ display in an effort to gauge their blood glucose levels. In each case, the symptom is ultimately dissociable from the underlying state. The mRNA vaccines encourage production of the spike protein but not the virus itself; glucose readers can malfunction. What one thus hopes to monitor (to decide if supplemental action is necessary) is an imperfect guide to what one is ultimately trying to gauge. If the psychological immune system aims to achieve psychological homeostasis, what does this mean in terms of what it monitors, and what it is ultimately trying to gauge? What is the symptom, and what is the real threat? Sedikides describes psychological homeostasis as modulating or CONTACT Andr!e Vaz arvaz@campus.ul.pt, aomata@psicologia.ulisboa.pt Faculdade de Psicologia, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013, Lisboa, Portugal. ! 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 2021, VOL. 32, NO. 4, 230–239 https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815 reducing negative affect, achieving emotional equilibrium, and helping with the desire to achieve the most favorable emotional life that people can attain. This is a provocative claim: Is the psychological immune system merely a mood maintenance system, not one that is on the lookout for selfevaluative threat in particular? At its core, we consider this a question of whether the psychological immune system looks to James’s (1950 [1890]) “I” or “me.” The “I” is not merely a volitional executive, but is accompanied by affectively rich phenomenological experience (Gregg et al., 2011). When people feel paralyzed by crippling anxiety or inspired by the promise of future possibility, the “I” experiences a weight or boost as it navigates its environment. In contrast, the “me” is an object of evaluation, a catalog of resources that can serve the self and its goals. Determining that one lacks the vocal range to land a recording contract or that one’s writing can deftly illustrate through relevant examples both entail conclusions about the “me.” We suspect that the psychological immune system is largely attentive to and thus triggered by the phenomenological experience of the “I,” but that the self’s (understandable) egocentrism means that analyses of the resources of the “me” disproportionately guide the “I”’s general emotional state. On first consideration, such a conclusion may seem incompatible with previous researchers’ identification of self-enhancement (held in check by the reality constraints of self-assessment; Trope, 1980, 1986) as the paramount motive with which other human motives must not conflict (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). This primacy of self-enhancement might seem to elevate self-evaluation to a special status. But if the psychological immune system monitors one’s present emotional state, what do such states aim to gauge? Life events inspire emotions to the extent that they make contact with one’s goals. Of course, emotions are experienced not merely when people achieve or fail to achieve their goals, but when their pathways to future goal fulfillment are facilitated or blocked. Lottery winners experience elation before any of their jackpot is spent, much less hits their bank accounts. And people’s life plans and pursuits almost always require the involvement of, and thus a look to, the self’s own resources. This likely explains why selfevaluation is a hefty contributor to emotional well-being. Furthermore, the self’s ability to mentally time travel allows it to bask in its previous successes and fret over its past defeats. Of course, such previous episodes often portend future successes and failures, both due to what they suggest about the self’s abilities and due to the lingering reputational consequences of previous endeavors. Accepting that the psychological immune system is attuned to how one feels instead of how one feels about self-aspect X helps to explain why there is so much substitutability between different means of ego repair (Gregg et al., 2011; Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Tesser, 2000). Furthermore, it would explain why apparent needs for selfesteem repair can be addressed by alternate emotionally comforting routes (e.g., attachment and worldview defense; Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005) that relate to interpersonal and societal resources that may aid in pursuing one’s goals. That is, addressing the self’s feelings of frustration, disappointment, and anxiety about its ability to pursue its own needs does not require that the self be personally equipped to address them. As a false alarm blares, one may feel panic at not knowing how to shut it off. But we suspect that this anxiety subsides whether one possesses the resources and knowledge to turn it off oneself or whether a knowledgeable other appears to deal with the issue. Emotional states are sensitive to what is currently focal. And to be clear, this is where the self and its resources do take center stage. Before the “I” can act, it often needs to consult the “me”; it is, necessarily, always nearby. Because the self is typically first on the scene to solve its own problems, it is understandable why there has seemed to be such a close connection between self-evaluation in particular and the psychological alarm bells that suggest the self’s future comfort, success, and fulfillment is in jeopardy. There is not always an able aide waiting in the wings. But the attentional allure of the negative—combined with the mind’s ability to easily transport itself from the here and now to consider the past and the future (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2010)—exacerbates a flaw of the psychological immune system. It does not adopt a dispassionate, balanced perspective of the state of the self and its life pursuits, but can enter into a ruminative spiral (Martin & Tesser, 1996; Mikulincer, 1989), one that is particularly counterproductive when consciousness’s capacity to relive the disappointments and embarrassments of the past can lead it to become stuck there. Losing one’s voice in the middle of a speech sounds alarm bells not only in the moment, but for the subsequent days in which one mentally replays this event over and over. And given that people tend to overblow the reputational implications of one-off failures (Moon, Gan, & Critcher, 2020; Savitsky, Epley, & Gilovich, 2001), the psychological immune system can be inspired to declare war after what was only a mild dust-up. Sedikides seems to argue that many of the apparent faults of the psychological immune system are simply inevitable shortcomings. But a tolerance for a system’s flaws should not be confused with a passive acceptance of them. The fact that a home’s smoke detector will occasionally be activated by safe, contained cooking activity is not a reason to rip it from the ceiling, but it may be a reason to start using one’s vent hood. And it is here—in considering the self’s response to psychological alarm bells—that we urge further analysis of what would constitute more or less adaptive responses to threat instead of simply accepting that the system’s functioning is generally adaptive. If the psychological immune system is ultimately aiming to gauge whether one can navigate one’s world effectively, then one should prioritize means of mood repair that will aid with this goal. The smoke detector loses its adaptive function if homeowners’ response to it is to search for their noise-canceling headphones. We thus have less faith that the psychological immune system—by monitoring emotional states instead of the underlying COMMENTARIES 231\",\"PeriodicalId\":48327,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Psychological Inquiry\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":7.2000,\"publicationDate\":\"2021-10-02\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"1\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Psychological Inquiry\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"102\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"心理学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Psychological Inquiry","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1

摘要

接受心理免疫系统与一个人的感受相适应,而不是与一个人对自我方面X的感受相协调,有助于解释为什么不同的自我修复手段之间存在如此多的可替代性(Gregg et al.,2011;Sherman&Cohen,2006;Tesser,2000)。此外,这将解释为什么自尊修复的明显需求可以通过其他情感安慰途径来解决(例如,依恋和世界观防御;Hart,Shaver,&Goldenberg,2005),这些途径与可能有助于追求目标的人际和社会资源有关。也就是说,解决自我对追求自身需求的能力的沮丧、失望和焦虑并不需要自我具备解决这些问题的个人能力。当虚惊一场时,人们可能会因为不知道如何关闭它而感到恐慌。但我们怀疑,无论一个人是否拥有资源和知识来关闭它,或者是否有知识渊博的其他人来处理这个问题,这种焦虑都会消退。情绪状态对当前焦点很敏感。需要明确的是,这是自我及其资源占据中心舞台的地方。在“我”能够行动之前,它经常需要咨询“我”;它必然就在附近。因为自我通常是第一个解决自己问题的人,所以可以理解为什么自我评价与心理警钟之间似乎存在如此密切的联系,这些警钟表明自我未来的舒适感、成功感和成就感处于危险之中。并非总是有一个能干的助手在等待。但消极情绪的注意力吸引力,再加上大脑能够轻松地从此时此地转移到思考过去和未来(Liberman&Trope,2008;Trope&Liberman,2010),加剧了心理免疫系统的缺陷。它没有对自我状态及其生活追求采取冷静、平衡的视角,而是可以进入沉思的螺旋(Martin&Tesser,1996;Mikulincer,1989),当意识重温过去的失望和尴尬的能力导致它陷入困境时,这种螺旋尤其会适得其反。在演讲中失声不仅在当下敲响了警钟,而且在接下来的几天里,人们会在脑海中一遍又一遍地回放这一事件。考虑到人们往往高估了一次性失败对声誉的影响(Moon,Gan,&Critcher,2020;Savitsky,Epley,&Gilovich,2001),心理免疫系统可能会在一场轻微的尘埃落定后被激发宣战。Sedikides似乎认为,心理免疫系统的许多明显缺陷只是不可避免的缺陷。但对制度缺陷的容忍不应与被动接受相混淆。家庭的烟雾探测器偶尔会被安全、可控的烹饪活动激活,这并不是把它从天花板上扯下来的原因,但这可能是开始使用通风罩的原因。正是在这里——在考虑自我对心理警钟的反应时——我们敦促进一步分析什么会构成对威胁的或多或少的适应性反应,而不是简单地接受系统的功能通常是适应性的。如果心理免疫系统最终的目标是衡量一个人是否能够有效地驾驭自己的世界,那么人们应该优先考虑有助于实现这一目标的情绪修复方法。如果房主的反应是寻找降噪耳机,烟雾探测器就会失去自适应功能。因此,我们不太相信心理免疫系统——通过监测情绪状态而不是潜在的评论231
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
Analogies Offer Value Through the Struggle to Make Them Work: Making Sense of the Psychological Immune System
ions of the mind. We begin by highlighting questions that arose from our efforts to fully embrace and play out the analogy. In so doing, we seek to clarify (and at times speculate on) the nature of the psychological immune system and thus the maladaptive traps into which it may fall. At that point, we turn to a consideration of the role of the interconnectedness of the self’s structures, a topic of particular interest both in understanding current social trends and in explaining previous research that was not considered through the lens of ego defense. Finally, we close by considering how social perceptions fit within the project of self-enhancement. In the process, we identify a basic question that, to our surprise, decades of research on self-enhancement seem not to have addressed. Understanding the Connection Between the Biological and Psychological Immune Systems What does the psychological immune system monitor versus aim to gauge? Several of the recent COVID-19 vaccines train the body to monitor for the spike protein on the virus’s surface in an effort to gauge the presence of the virus. Diabetics who use a glucometer monitor the numbers on their readers’ display in an effort to gauge their blood glucose levels. In each case, the symptom is ultimately dissociable from the underlying state. The mRNA vaccines encourage production of the spike protein but not the virus itself; glucose readers can malfunction. What one thus hopes to monitor (to decide if supplemental action is necessary) is an imperfect guide to what one is ultimately trying to gauge. If the psychological immune system aims to achieve psychological homeostasis, what does this mean in terms of what it monitors, and what it is ultimately trying to gauge? What is the symptom, and what is the real threat? Sedikides describes psychological homeostasis as modulating or CONTACT Andr!e Vaz arvaz@campus.ul.pt, aomata@psicologia.ulisboa.pt Faculdade de Psicologia, Alameda da Universidade, 1649-013, Lisboa, Portugal. ! 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY 2021, VOL. 32, NO. 4, 230–239 https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.2004815 reducing negative affect, achieving emotional equilibrium, and helping with the desire to achieve the most favorable emotional life that people can attain. This is a provocative claim: Is the psychological immune system merely a mood maintenance system, not one that is on the lookout for selfevaluative threat in particular? At its core, we consider this a question of whether the psychological immune system looks to James’s (1950 [1890]) “I” or “me.” The “I” is not merely a volitional executive, but is accompanied by affectively rich phenomenological experience (Gregg et al., 2011). When people feel paralyzed by crippling anxiety or inspired by the promise of future possibility, the “I” experiences a weight or boost as it navigates its environment. In contrast, the “me” is an object of evaluation, a catalog of resources that can serve the self and its goals. Determining that one lacks the vocal range to land a recording contract or that one’s writing can deftly illustrate through relevant examples both entail conclusions about the “me.” We suspect that the psychological immune system is largely attentive to and thus triggered by the phenomenological experience of the “I,” but that the self’s (understandable) egocentrism means that analyses of the resources of the “me” disproportionately guide the “I”’s general emotional state. On first consideration, such a conclusion may seem incompatible with previous researchers’ identification of self-enhancement (held in check by the reality constraints of self-assessment; Trope, 1980, 1986) as the paramount motive with which other human motives must not conflict (Sedikides, 1993; Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). This primacy of self-enhancement might seem to elevate self-evaluation to a special status. But if the psychological immune system monitors one’s present emotional state, what do such states aim to gauge? Life events inspire emotions to the extent that they make contact with one’s goals. Of course, emotions are experienced not merely when people achieve or fail to achieve their goals, but when their pathways to future goal fulfillment are facilitated or blocked. Lottery winners experience elation before any of their jackpot is spent, much less hits their bank accounts. And people’s life plans and pursuits almost always require the involvement of, and thus a look to, the self’s own resources. This likely explains why selfevaluation is a hefty contributor to emotional well-being. Furthermore, the self’s ability to mentally time travel allows it to bask in its previous successes and fret over its past defeats. Of course, such previous episodes often portend future successes and failures, both due to what they suggest about the self’s abilities and due to the lingering reputational consequences of previous endeavors. Accepting that the psychological immune system is attuned to how one feels instead of how one feels about self-aspect X helps to explain why there is so much substitutability between different means of ego repair (Gregg et al., 2011; Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Tesser, 2000). Furthermore, it would explain why apparent needs for selfesteem repair can be addressed by alternate emotionally comforting routes (e.g., attachment and worldview defense; Hart, Shaver, & Goldenberg, 2005) that relate to interpersonal and societal resources that may aid in pursuing one’s goals. That is, addressing the self’s feelings of frustration, disappointment, and anxiety about its ability to pursue its own needs does not require that the self be personally equipped to address them. As a false alarm blares, one may feel panic at not knowing how to shut it off. But we suspect that this anxiety subsides whether one possesses the resources and knowledge to turn it off oneself or whether a knowledgeable other appears to deal with the issue. Emotional states are sensitive to what is currently focal. And to be clear, this is where the self and its resources do take center stage. Before the “I” can act, it often needs to consult the “me”; it is, necessarily, always nearby. Because the self is typically first on the scene to solve its own problems, it is understandable why there has seemed to be such a close connection between self-evaluation in particular and the psychological alarm bells that suggest the self’s future comfort, success, and fulfillment is in jeopardy. There is not always an able aide waiting in the wings. But the attentional allure of the negative—combined with the mind’s ability to easily transport itself from the here and now to consider the past and the future (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2010)—exacerbates a flaw of the psychological immune system. It does not adopt a dispassionate, balanced perspective of the state of the self and its life pursuits, but can enter into a ruminative spiral (Martin & Tesser, 1996; Mikulincer, 1989), one that is particularly counterproductive when consciousness’s capacity to relive the disappointments and embarrassments of the past can lead it to become stuck there. Losing one’s voice in the middle of a speech sounds alarm bells not only in the moment, but for the subsequent days in which one mentally replays this event over and over. And given that people tend to overblow the reputational implications of one-off failures (Moon, Gan, & Critcher, 2020; Savitsky, Epley, & Gilovich, 2001), the psychological immune system can be inspired to declare war after what was only a mild dust-up. Sedikides seems to argue that many of the apparent faults of the psychological immune system are simply inevitable shortcomings. But a tolerance for a system’s flaws should not be confused with a passive acceptance of them. The fact that a home’s smoke detector will occasionally be activated by safe, contained cooking activity is not a reason to rip it from the ceiling, but it may be a reason to start using one’s vent hood. And it is here—in considering the self’s response to psychological alarm bells—that we urge further analysis of what would constitute more or less adaptive responses to threat instead of simply accepting that the system’s functioning is generally adaptive. If the psychological immune system is ultimately aiming to gauge whether one can navigate one’s world effectively, then one should prioritize means of mood repair that will aid with this goal. The smoke detector loses its adaptive function if homeowners’ response to it is to search for their noise-canceling headphones. We thus have less faith that the psychological immune system—by monitoring emotional states instead of the underlying COMMENTARIES 231
求助全文
通过发布文献求助,成功后即可免费获取论文全文。 去求助
来源期刊
Psychological Inquiry
Psychological Inquiry PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
10.30
自引率
1.10%
发文量
31
期刊介绍: Psychological Inquiry serves as an international journal dedicated to the advancement of psychological theory. Each edition features an extensive target article exploring a controversial or provocative topic, accompanied by peer commentaries and a response from the target author(s). Proposals for target articles must be submitted using the Target Article Proposal Form, and only approved proposals undergo peer review by at least three reviewers. Authors are invited to submit their full articles after the proposal has received approval from the Editor.
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信