Social Faux Pas Research Articles

Faux pas deficits in people with medial frontal lesions as related to impaired understanding of a speaker's mental state

This study examined the nature of deficits in mentalizing, the ability to read the mental state of other people, as measured by a faux pas task in people with medial frontal lesions. A total of 56 Mandarin-speaking Chinese individuals participated (9 participants with medial frontal lesions, 12 participants with lateral frontal lesions, 5 participants with non-frontal lesions, and 30 healthy controls). The faux pas test ascertained the participants’ ability to identify and understand a social faux pas, and to understand the mental states of the characters (the speaker and the recipient in a conversation with a social faux pas). Although the participants with medial frontal lesions performed less well than the other clinical participants and the control participants on all aspects of the faux pas test, the most significant deficit was observed in understanding mental states and hence inferring the speaker's intentions. The performance on the various aspects of decoding a social faux pas by people with medial frontal lesions suggests that the cognitive processes, and hence the respective neural correlates subserving these various processes, may be different. Our results add to existing literature and illustrate the very nature of deficits of mentalizing, measured by a faux pas test, experienced by people with medial frontal lesions. The data have also prompted that future behavioral and neuroimaging studies may be applied to further decode both the neural mechanisms and the cognitive variables affecting “mentalizing”.

Nick Dubin: Asperger Syndrome and Anxiety—A Guide to Successful Stress Management

Nick Dubin: Asperger Syndrome and Anxiety—A Guide to Successful Stress Management

Perceptions of Social Transgressions in Adulthood

People may react differently when individuals of different ages commit a social faux pas. Younger (22 to 35 years old) and older (65 to 77 years old) participants read vignettes where age of characters committing social transgressions varied (young vs. old). Participants rated whether the offended person would respond with engagement, confrontational, and avoidant behaviors and how much people would blame or forgive the transgressor. Multilevel models revealed endorsement of avoidant behaviors with older transgressors, confrontational behaviors with younger transgressors, and engagement behaviors with both. Levels of blame and forgiveness mediated this association, with less blame and greater forgiveness of older adults. Discussion focuses on the social input model and why adults may regulate reactions to interpersonal problems with older adults.

Neuropsychological Evidence of Impaired Cognitive Empathy in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder

The empathic abilities have never been examined in bipolar disorder patients, despite frequent observations of impaired social behavior. To examine the neuropsychological processes that underlie the affective and cognitive empathic ability in bipolar disorder, the authors compared affective and cognitive empathic abilities, as well as theory of mind and executive functions, of euthymic bipolar disorder patients and healthy comparison subjects. Significant deficits in cognitive empathy and theory of mind were observed, while affective empathy was elevated in bipolar disorder. Patients showed impaired cognitive flexibility (shifting and reversal learning) but intact planning behavior. Impaired cognitive empathy was related with performance in neurocognitive tasks of cognitive flexibility, suggesting that prefrontal cortical dysfunction may account for impaired cognitive empathy in bipolar disorder.

Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Impairs Advanced Social Cognition

Although memory, language, and executive functions have been extensively studied in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), investigations into advanced social cognitive abilities have been neglected. In the present study, we investigated the ability to detect social faux pas and studied possible mediating clinical and demographic variables in patients with MTLE compared with patients with an epilepsy not originating within the MTLE and healthy controls. The 27 MTLE patients (16 were investigated pre- and 11 postoperatively), 27 patients with an extramesiotemporal epilepsy (except frontal lobe epilepsy), and 12 healthy controls performed a shortened version of the faux-pas test. Additionally, we used standardized tests to measure intelligence. Only patients with intact reading-comprehension abilities were included in the study. MTLE patients, both pre- and postoperative, performed the faux-pas test significantly worse than patients with extramesiotemporal lobe epilepsy and healthy controls. The latter two groups showed comparable performance. No statistical association was found between the MTLE patients' deficit in recognizing a faux pas and the variables IQ, age, age at seizure onset, and duration of epilepsy. We report for the first time that patients with MTLE are specifically impaired in recognizing faux pas, suggesting that MTLE as such is a specific etiology of deficits in higher-order social cognition.

The History of Ophelia (review)

Reviewed by: The History of Ophelia Betty A. Schellenberg (bio) Sarah Fielding . The History of Ophelia. Edited by Peter Sabor Broadview. 320. $18.95 Peter Sabor concludes his critical introduction to Sarah Fielding's The History of Ophelia (1760) with the observation that 'In the mid-eighteenth century, Sarah Fielding was the second most popular English woman novelist, behind only Eliza Haywood. And just as Haywood, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, has become a canonical author, more intensively studied than almost all of her contemporaries, male or female, Sarah Fielding's writings seem set to become widely read and vigorously debated once again.' That Sabor's prediction, supported by the very recent scholarship informing his introduction, convinces is in large part due to his [End Page 272] own leading role in bringing the work of this very accomplished Fielding out from the shadow of her brother Henry's reputation. Having previously edited two of Sarah Fielding's most important works - The Adventures of David Simple, her debut novel, together with its 1753 sequel Volume the Last (Kentucky 1998), and Remarks on Clarissa, Addressed to the Author, the first critical analysis of Richardson's novel to appear in print (Augustan Reprint Society 1985) - Sabor here continues to broaden the range of Fielding's publications accessible for wide reading and vigorous debate. Fielding's final novel, Ophelia is the engaging first-person account of a female noble savage, raised in Welsh isolation, who is kidnapped and introduced to an insincere and dissipated London society by Lord Dorchester, a rakish nobleman who has fallen in love with her after stumbling upon the rural cottage she shares with her aunt. Dorchester is no Lovelace, however (a deliberate rewriting of Richardson, Sabor argues), treating Ophelia with generosity and affection while, it ultimately appears, awaiting a propitious moment to assault her virtue. And so the reader is at leisure to enjoy not only the exposure of high-society follies, but also two further abductions within the principal narrative, the first farcical in the manner of Henry Fielding, and the second a kind of early Gothic rewriting of Pamela's Lincolnshire captivity. Ophelia was in the long term one of Fielding's most popular novels; in the established pattern of Broadview editions, Sabor demonstrates the novel's reception through appendices of material added to the second Dublin edition, illustrations from the 1785 Novelist's Magazine reprinting, and, most intriguingly, an 1888 appraisal by the critic Clementina Black. Sabor also presents considerable evidence for the novel's being woven into a complex tissue of influences or at least shared plot patterns, ranging from tales of the innocent traveller as social critic, to the use of Wales as primitive hinterland to England, to scenes of an ingénue's social faux pas and their comic, yet potentially tragic, repercussions (like those of Burney's Evelina). Such material, presented in a learned, but highly readable, introduction as well as through the appendices, should prove very useful to undergraduate readers in situating this novel in the landscape of eighteenth-century prose fiction. Notes identifying quotations and explaining eighteenth-century English places and manners are judicious and succinct. I am left with one question: why Ophelia rather than the 1759 The Countess of Dellwyn, a novel which traces with considerable sympathy the descent of a not-unworthy heroine through an unfortunate marriage, adultery, and divorce? Like so much of Fielding's writing, this earlier work seems courageously experimental and probing in its anatomy of human foibles and their potentially disastrous consequences. This may be simply a matter of individual taste, but the novel's first reviewers imply a similar [End Page 273] assessment in their rather cursory dismissals of Ophelia as genre work, unlike their relatively respectful response to the Countess's story. Perhaps my either-or formulation is a false one: certainly, in these post-recovery times, theoretically sophisticated arguments can be marshalled for attending to the formerly popular just as effectively as for privileging the original or innovative. Sabor's detailed account of Ophelia editions and translations implies such an argument. Ideally, both of these novels - indeed, all of Fielding's accomplished and widely varied fiction...

Neuropsychological Impairments and Changes in Emotional and Social Behaviour Following Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Changes in emotional and social behaviour are relatively common following severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Despite the serious consequences of these changes, little is known about the underlying neuropsychological deficits. In this study, we investigated which deficits might underlie these behavioural changes. The emotional and social behaviour of 17 patients with severe TBI was assessed with questionnaires, completed by the patient and a relative. Neuropsychological tests assessed recognition of emotional expressions, understanding of other people's mental states and cognitive fluency. Ratings from patients and relatives revealed changes in emotional and social behaviour after injury. Compared to matched healthy controls, the patients were impaired at recognising facial and vocal expressions of emotions, detecting social faux pas and nonverbal fluency. None of these impairments was significantly associated with the relatives' ratings of behavioural problems following TBI, although the correlation with detecting social faux pas was relatively high (r =-.61).

'Merit in distress': The Troubled Success of Mary Barber

This article discusses the brief but illuminating literary career of Mary Barber (c. 1685–1755), a friend and protégée of Jonathan Swift, who published her expensive subscription volume, Poems on Several Occasions, in 1735. Her subscription list was, excepting Matthew Prior's 1718 folio, without precedent for its resplendent length and illustrious contents, and it was moreover remarkable given Barber's otherwise pedestrian social standing as an ailing Irish housewife. By examining the list of its eminent subscribers and their likely ambivalent relationship to Barber's means of attracting and maintaining literary patronage, the article suggests that the eighteenth‐century book trade allowed subscribers to sign for the book (and so list themselves in its pages) without paying for or collecting their copies. By discussing contemporary correspondence, publication costs, drawing‐room politics, and Mary Barber's remarkable ability to maintain the favour of important poets such as Gay, Pope, and Swift—despite notable social faux pas and her arrest and imprisonment for seditious conduct shortly before her quarto's anticipated release—the article argues that Mary Barber, ‘the Citizen's‐Housewife Poet’, employed a means of attracting subscribers which would itself enforce her subsequent financial collapse and long‐standing obscurity.

Taking Multiculturalism Personally: Ethnos and Ethos in the Classroom

Since its beginning in the 1970s, the movement known as multiculturalism has taken two distinct directions (for summaries, see Erickson; McCarthy and Crichlow viii-xxviii). On the one hand, multiculturalism celebrates the diversity of cultural groups. Sometimes called ethnic revitalization, this multiculturalism seeks to preserve the cultural practices of specific groups and to resist the homogeneity of assimilation. It sees the identities of individuals as primarily cultural, determined by their membership in a group, not as the expression of a unique self-consciousness. Oriented by identity politics, this multiculturalism rejects the individualistic model of personhood and instead stresses the analysis of communal expressive traditions. The forms and values of these traditions, in turn, become the focus of curriculum reform. Pedagogy is responsible for developing a competence in the student, such that he or she can understand various cultures and appreciate their achievements. This competence may even lead to the student's choosing to join in that culture's practices, though this choice may be seen as a social faux pas and as a violation of the decorum of essentialism. For marginalized groups, an appreciation of their culture can improve students' performances and so reverse the effects of bigotry and discrimination. Ideologically, this multiculturalism may be called pluralist, since it emphasizes the characteristics of individual cultures rather than analyzing the kind of social or political relationships between them.

Ghost Woman: A Novel by Lawrence Thornton

186 Western American Literature an old man, still embittered against the fanatics who permitted mob rule to kill forty-four of the citizens of Milcourt, the fictionalized setting. His sentimental and emotionally laden account details much of what happened in historical Gainesville, although Clark bends history and factual detail to fit the fictional circumstances, sometimes leaving his story at sea with regard to probability. The centerpiece of the story, for example, is Todd’s quick, sexy, and improbable love affair with the head Rebel’s niece. The elder Todd describes every detail of his emotional trauma, sometimes giving a second-by-second account of what he felt, why he felt it, what he might have felt otherwise, etc. Clark’s attempt to approximate period vernacular renders many figures as caricatures in both their villainy and tender nostalgic remembrance. Todd’s inexorable analysis of every detail is often tedious, as is his self-recrimination, agitation, and passion. He witnesses horrendous catastro­ phe with calm acceptance compared to his anguish over social faux pas and verbal missteps. Further, Todd’s incessant and vicious attacks on the Confederacy, although possibly accurate in reflection of the anti-secessionist’s position, is unrelieved by any nobility of purpose on the part of the Rebels, nor any tragic sense of misguided and overzealous prosecution of law in a confused and terrible time. In Todd’s opinion, Confederates are only slightly better than bushwhackers, who are Unionists. Clark also plays fast and loose with historical detail, endowing Todd with a Spencer repeater, for example. Unaccountably, he increases the number of executed men from forty-two to forty-four, and his Milcourt has many more civilized appointments than existed in frontier-post Gainesville, which didn’t erect a courthouse until the 1870s. Although from time to time Todd rises to eloquence in his account, such poetic passages as appear here and there are routed by such observations as “At long last, it turned late in the day,” reinforced by more numerous descriptions of weeping than have been seen in any book not labelled “Romance.” In all, then, this fictional account of tragedy is more melodrama than tragedy. It’s far less interesting than the factual account published in 1963 by the Southwest Historical Quarterly. One wishes that Clark had forsaken the recol­ lected emotional trauma of a beardless youth and given a more exacting fictional twist to this horrible affair. CLAY REYNOLDS Denton, Texas &host Woman: A Novel. By Lawrence Thornton. (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1992. 302 pages, $19.95.) Ghost Woman begins with an actual historical incident: an Indian woman Reviews 187 who has been living alone for years on San Nicholas Island is discovered and brought to Santa Barbara. From this point on, the novel travels to Never-Never Land. Thornton has an American town, a mission with Indians, and ranchos all functioning simultaneously in a historical time warp that is utterly absurd. The historical backdrop of this novel is so distorted and such a mishmash of misin­ formation that one wonders why it was not subjected to more rigorous editorial review. Stereotypes abound in the novel. O ’Reilly is the local Irish drunk. The American doctor is corrupt, ready to perform abortions at the drop of a hat. The Hispanic soldiers are all “unhappy conscripts,” whose “wives and lovers were back in desert villages,”which is a patent falsehood; the Spanish/Mexican soldiers in Santa Barbara almost to a man came with their spouses. Anything seems to go in this novel, the point of which seems to be to tell us that Spanish and American civilizations were immoral and disgusting macho cultures, while the Indians had a wonderful religion and lived wonderful lives. I can’t imagine a world more simplistic than portrayed in this morality play. Author Thornton, in an interview in Coastlines (Summer 1992), mentions the background research he did while working on Ghost Woman: “While the historical documents were useful in providing details about the Chumash and the Franciscans, my major source was photographs and drawings. I find that images open up my imagination, whereas documents tend to close it down.” One wishes he would have spent a little more time with...

A Bright Tragic Thing: A Tale of Civil War Texas by L. D. Clark

Reviews 185 Etilogy for a Brown Angel. By Lucha Corpi. (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1992. 189 pages, $17.95.) Opening during the final violent hours of the 1970 National Chicano Moratorium as the protagonist, Gloria Demasco, discovers a child’s defiled body, Eulogy chronicles Demasco’s eighteen-year search for the murderer. As Demasco’s search moves from the political hotbed of East Los Angeles to its conclusion in the pastoral California wine country, Corpi’s novel loses all of its initial claim to political significance. The reader will be disappointed to find that this is a novel of missed opportunities. Corpi seems to lose sight of her original project after the opening chapters as the novel’s focus shifts from the geographical and political “scene” of the m urder to the powerful, but troubled, family of the victim. Corpi’s initial chapters strongly suggest a correspondence between the m urder and the riot­ ing in the midst of which the body appears. To this end, she alludes to Oscar Acosta, writer, attorney, and highly visible Chicano-rights activist, and journalist Ruben Salazar, who was killed by the L. A. police during the 1970 rioting. Corpi juxtaposes the child’s death with that of Salazar, the news of which recalled Acosta from voluntary exile in Acapulco and motivated him to write his influen­ tial 1973 work, The Revolt ofthe Cockroach People. But Corpi reneges, dropping the novel set up in the opening chapters and focusing instead upon the fragmenting Cisneros family. The evil, we find, is not social, but familial. However, with its mixed European and Mexican ancestry, its history of self-victimization and infighting, this family seems from certain very oblique angles to suggest the inflammatory social and racial dynamic dropped earlier. This does not pan out: like the novel’s political thrust, the Cisneros family’s metaphysical significance is never realized. Though Eulogy is a good read, one cannot but feel that itjust isn’t finished. Besides the novel’s political angle, which she seems to have tried and aban­ doned, Corpi has overdeveloped certain minor characters while merely sketch­ ing in others (Gloria’s husband and daughter for example) whose demands weigh heavily upon the mind of the protagonist. One feels upon finishing that Eulogy is but a draft or two away from something very good. BftlK LUKENS Princeton University A'Bright Tragic Thing: A Tale of Civil War Texas. By L. D. Clark. (El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press. 302 pages, $14.95.) L. D. Clark’s novel about “The Great Hanging” in Gainesville, Texas in 1862, is related through the recollections of Todd Blair, son of one of the condemned men who died as a result of Confederate actions to break up a “Peace Party Conspiracy” in several north central Texas counties. Todd is now 186 Western American Literature an old man, still embittered against the fanatics who permitted mob rule to kill forty-four of the citizens of Milcourt, the fictionalized setting. His sentimental and emotionally laden account details much of what happened in historical Gainesville, although Clark bends history and factual detail to fit the fictional circumstances, sometimes leaving his story at sea with regard to probability. The centerpiece of the story, for example, is Todd’s quick, sexy, and improbable love affair with the head Rebel’s niece. The elder Todd describes every detail of his emotional trauma, sometimes giving a second-by-second account of what he felt, why he felt it, what he might have felt otherwise, etc. Clark’s attempt to approximate period vernacular renders many figures as caricatures in both their villainy and tender nostalgic remembrance. Todd’s inexorable analysis of every detail is often tedious, as is his self-recrimination, agitation, and passion. He witnesses horrendous catastro­ phe with calm acceptance compared to his anguish over social faux pas and verbal missteps. Further, Todd’s incessant and vicious attacks on the Confederacy, although possibly accurate in reflection of the anti-secessionist’s position, is unrelieved by any nobility of purpose on the part of the Rebels, nor any tragic sense of misguided and overzealous prosecution of law in a confused and terrible time. In Todd’s opinion, Confederates...