On the cognitive mechanisms supporting prosocial disobedience in a post-genocidal context.

The aim of the present study was to offer a first investigation of the neuro-cognitive processes and the temporal dynamics at the neural level, together with cultural, social and psychological dimensions, that may support resistance to orders to harm another person. Using a novel experimental approach to study experimentally disobedience, we recruited individuals from the first generation born after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Seventy-two were recruited and tested in Rwanda and 72 were recruited and tested in Belgium.

The effect of military training on the sense of agency and outcome processing.

Armed forces often rely on strict hierarchical organization, where people are required to follow orders. In two cross-sectional studies, we investigate whether or not working in a military context influences the sense of agency and outcome processing, and how different durations (junior cadets vs senior cadets) and types (cadets vs privates) of military experience may modulate these effects. Participants could administer painful electrical shocks to a 'victim' in exchange for money, either by their own free choice, or following orders of the experimenter.

The Power of Suggestion: Posthypnotically Induced Changes in the Temporal Binding of Intentional Action Outcomes.

The sense of agency is the experience of initiating and controlling one's voluntary actions and their outcomes. Intentional binding (i.e.

The Influence of (Dis)belief in Free Will on Immoral Behavior.

One of the hallmarks of human existence is that we all hold beliefs that determine how we act. Amongst such beliefs, the idea that we are endowed with free will appears to be linked to prosocial behaviors, probably by enhancing the feeling of responsibility of individuals over their own actions. However, such effects appear to be more complex that one might have initially thought.

New frontiers in the rubber hand experiment: when a robotic hand becomes one's own.

The rubber hand illusion is an experimental paradigm in which participants consider a fake hand to be part of their body. This paradigm has been used in many domains of psychology (i.e.

Placebo-suggestion modulates conflict resolution in the Stroop Task.

Here, we ask whether placebo-suggestion (without any form of hypnotic induction) can modulate the resolution of cognitive conflict. Naïve participants performed a Stroop Task while wearing an EEG cap described as a "brain wave" machine. In Experiment 1, participants were made to believe that the EEG cap would either enhance or decrease their color perception and performance on the Stroop task.

Low Hopes, High Expectations: Expectancy Effects and the Replicability of Behavioral Experiments.

This article revisits two classical issues in experimental methodology: experimenter bias and demand characteristics. We report a content analysis of the method section of experiments reported in two psychology journals (Psychological Science and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology), focusing on aspects of the procedure associated with these two phenomena, such as mention of the presence of the experimenter, suspicion probing, and handling of deception. We note that such information is very often absent, which prevents observers from gauging the extent to which such factors influence the results.

Belgian norms for the Waterloo-Stanford Group C (WSGC) Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility.

Belgian norms of the Waterloo-Stanford Group C Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (WSGC) are presented. A French translation of the WSGC was administered to 150 Belgium college students between October and December 2009. Belgium has 2 main linguistic groups, Dutch and French speakers.