Observing Virtual Arms that You Imagine Are Yours Increases the Galvanic Skin Response to an Unexpected Threat

Multi-modal visuo-tactile stimulation of the type performed in the rubber hand illusion can induce the brain to temporarily incorporate external objects into the body image. In this study we show that audio-visual stimulation combined with mental imagery more rapidly elicits an elevated physiological response (skin conductance) after an unexpected threat to a virtual limb, compared to audio-visual stimulation alone. Two groups of subjects seated in front of a monitor watched a first-person perspective view of slow movements of two virtual arms intercepting virtual balls rolling towards the viewer. One group was instructed to simply observe the movements of the two virtual arms, while the other group was instructed to observe the virtual arms and imagine that the arms were their own. After 84 seconds the right virtual arm was unexpectedly “stabbed” by a knife and began “bleeding”. This aversive stimulus caused both groups to show a significant increase in skin conductance. In addition, the observation-with-imagery group showed a significantly higher skin conductance (p<0.05) than the observation-only group over a 2-second period shortly after the aversive stimulus onset. No corresponding change was found in subjects' heart rates. Our results suggest that simple visual input combined with mental imagery may induce the brain to measurably temporarily incorporate external objects into its body image

Predicting support for social action: how values, justice-related variables, discrete emotions, and outcome expectations influence support for the Stolen Generations

The Stolen Generations are Indigenous Australians who were taken from their homes by the State and placed in children’s homes or foster care. This study investigated relations between the values held by Non-Indigenous Australians and willingness to support a hypothetical organization set up to repair the damage caused. Participants (N = 235) completed the Schwartz Portrait Values Questionnaire followed by items concerning their perceived responsibility; Indigenous deservingness; feelings of pleasure, anger, guilt, regret, shame, and sympathy; their support for the organization; and how efficacious they expected their support would be. It was found at the bivariate level that support was positively associated with self-transcendence values (universalism, benevolence) and negatively associated with both self-enhancement (power, achievement, hedonism) and security values. A path analysis implied that universalism values influenced support via the justice-related variables of perceived responsibility and undeserved treatment, outcome expectations, negative emotions, and sympathy. This study contributes new information about the effects of values on personal willingness to repair past wrongs.N. T. Feather, Lydia Woodyatt, Ian R. McKe

Alfred Russel Wallace: Self-educated genius and polymath

Alfred Russel Wallace was a Colossus: courageous, heroic, radical, modest, and above all, a man of insatiable curiosity. One hundred years on one can propose that his prescience anticipated many modern scientific developments and that despite relative neglect his far-ranging insight continues to inspire even now. His earliest memories take us to Usk in South Wales, where he was born in 1823, and many experiences there are fondly recounted as formative influences. Adolescent interest in natural history during apprenticeship to his elder brother, a land-surveyor at the dawn of the railway era in Mid Wales and the Neath valley, blossomed into a lifelong fascination with the living world. The depth and reach of his thinking on the diversity and distribution of species outpaced his contemporaries, and he became the undisputed father of biogeography. Interaction with the ‘poor farmers’ of South Wales and exposure to their humble conditions inculcated a concern for the deprivation of the underclasses, and were influential in the shaping of his societal concerns and later activism. After proposing the basic principles of speciation and of selection and arriving at a novel and original concept of evolutionary mechanisms, Wallace daringly pursued several non-scientific interests: phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism, and the great question of whether we are alone in the cosmos. Honoured late in a long life, Wallace became regarded as one of the greatest scientists in the world, despite his enthusiasms for supernatural phenomena. Eclipsed after his passing in 1913, a gradual realisation of the depth of his mainstream science as well as premature dismissal of some of his more arcane insights continues beyond his centenary year