No abstract

We investigated the contribution of the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFGop) in representing knowledge about social groups. We asked healthy individuals to categorize words preceded by semantically congruent or incongruent primes while stimulating the LIFGop. Previous studies showing an involvement of the LIFGop both in processing social stimuli and negative valence words led us to predict that its stimulation would affect responses to negative social category words. Compared to the Vertex as control site, the stimulation of the LIFGop increased the speed of categorization of negative social groups, and disrupted the semantic priming effect for negative words overall. Within the framework of recent theories of semantic memory, we argue that the present results provide initial evidence of the representation of social groups being characterized by affective properties, whose processing is supported by the LIFGop.

As Heavy Metal music’s most extreme subgenre of, motives of destruction, death and darkness are largely characteristic of Black Metal. A frequently anti-Christian message and commercially driven aim to shock the audiences have led to the impression that Black Metal is an expression of nihilism, Satanism, or simple transgression. However, this stigma does not capture the entirety of the concepts musically embodied in this genre with its distortion and screamed vocals. The aim of this work is to show that there is more to this genre, and to provide a description of the dual nature of the original motifs in this genre, how they are expressed using archetype and myth, and an alternative to nihilism. It will be seen that destruction is a prerequisite for rebuilding, death a precursor of rebirth, and darkness a call to courage so that one may conquer fear by facing it.

The aim of the present thesis is to study the dynamics of unconscious evaluative processes within the domain of racial prejudice. The models discussed claim that people can modify their automatic negative affective reactions towards individuals belonging to a different ethnicity if those who experience them are motivated to control them. The empirical research reported investigates whether such influence on evaluative processes stemming from the motivation not to show prejudice can also occur unconsciously.

We investigated the contribution of the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFGop) in representing knowledge about social groups. We asked healthy individuals to categorize words preceded by semantically congruent or incongruent primes while stimulating the LIFGop. Previous studies showing an involvement of the LIFGop both in processing social stimuli and negative valence words led us to predict that its stimulation would affect responses to negative social category words. Compared to the Vertex as control site, the stimulation of the LIFGop increased the speed of categorization of negative social groups, and disrupted the semantic priming effect for negative words overall. Within the framework of recent theories of semantic memory, we argue that the present results provide initial evidence of the representation of social groups being characterized by affective properties, whose processing is supported by the LIFGop.