In Chapter 3 knowledge from sociocultural psychology is integrated with other disciplines within psychology such as cognitive, social, and neuro psychology, and outside psychology such as sociology, visual studies, and philosophy, to tackle the power of images to influence our seeing, thinking, feeling, and remembering.

Chapter 7 tackles the viewing of image through an understanding of the social act of viewing and how social positions, socialization, and the environment shape certain ways of looking, a certain gaze. Methods for the investigation of viewer engagement are presented and applied on the case example of political campaign images.

This chapter explores the neuroscience of fear, examining how our brains detect and respond to threats, both real and imagined. It introduces major theories of emotion and focuses on the role of the limbic system in processing fear-related stimuli. Through research in animals and humans —including lesion studies and the famous case of patient S.M.—the chapter distinguishes between behavioral responses to danger and the subjective experience of fear. It also challenges the idea of a single “fear center,” emphasizing that fear arises from dynamic interactions across multiple brain regions. These concepts are then applied to ambiguous situations, such as sensing a presence in a dark room, where the brain may interpret uncertainty in emotionally charged ways. Finally, this chapter encourages readers to consider how the brain constructs meaning from unclear stimuli, laying the groundwork for a scientific exploration of the supernatural.

The notion that people with psychopathy traits do not respond positively to treatment efforts may sound intuitive. If people are inflexible, uncaring towards others, manipulative, and just generally difficult to get along with, it follows that treatment might be ineffective. However, what is intuitive and what is accurate do not always overlap perfectly. The analyses in this chapter contribute to a growing body of literature indicating that individuals with psychopathy traits can change and respond in expected ways to intervention strategies (Bernstein et al., 2021; Wong et al., 2015). The analyses in this chapter identified that people with psychopathy traits who spent more time incarcerated, thereby increasing access to rehabilitative services, experienced a subsequent decline in offending. It is possible that these findings reflect the efficacy of the risk-need-responsivity model, wherein intensive intervention strategies reduce criminal behaviour for high-risk persons. Treatment modalities for people with psychopathy traits are discussed.

Part II introduces the social life of the image as an analytical framework to analyse images as an object of study as well as a method for studying psychological and social processes and contested dialogues in society.

Friendship has its public life in urban spaces. Drawing on recent social constructionist approaches to the domestication of space in urban studies, and based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the outdoor spaces of a mall in Beijing, China, this chapter explores how ordinary visitors domesticate the mall in their everyday lives. Focusing on the practice of friendship in three small groups, I trace how the mall’s spaces are (1) appropriated as “playgrounds” by after-school children, (2) negotiated as “informal childcare workshops” by guardians, and (3) claimed as “senior centers” by elderly visitors. I argue that the mall is not merely a backdrop for friendship, but that friendship practices constitute the mall beyond its default setting as merely a space for consumption. This chapter contributes to scholarship on modern friendship beyond the private realm and advocates for a more embracing conceptualization of friendship in urban spaces.

This chapter revisits “critical friendships,” exploring how moments of sociopolitical and health crises shape and challenge relational bonds. Drawing on UK-based studies of personal responses to Brexit and dating app use during COVID-19, we demonstrate that theoretical assumptions about friendship’s egalitarian and inherently “good” nature often fail to capture the complexities of lived experience. The Brexit study revealed how political differences strained friendships, yet participants often prioritized shared history over political alignment. The COVID-19 study found that while apps facilitated “suffused” relationships during lockdown, these relationships were ultimately disappointingly short-lived. Using Berlant’s “cruel optimism,” we demonstrate how the illusion of the ideal “pure” friendship creates an inevitable disappointment when such relationships prove unachievable. Yet despite these disappointments, the “goods” of friendship can still outweigh the “bads” of “the times” in the potential for new suffused relational forms, however fleeting, as well as in the effort expended to sustain friendships.

Whereas Chapters 3–5 deal with different aspects of the representation of word meanings, Chapter 6 focuses on their organization. The two most well-studied domains of object concepts are animals and tools, and words for them (e.g., dog and scissors) appear to be organized as separate, category-specific circuits, each of which includes all three types of representation mentioned above – namely, sensory/motor representations in modal networks, integrated representations in the GSN/DMN, and purely verbal representations in the core language network. The contrasting specializations of these circuits for animal and tool concepts reflect many factors that involve both the learning environment and innate patterns of cortical connectivity. This chapter also shows that three other categories of lexically encoded object concepts similarly appear to have distinct neural substrates: plants (especially fruits and vegetables like apple and potato); people (including face parts like eye, body parts like hand, and unique individuals like Tom Hanks); and places (including generic scenes like beach and famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower). What’s more, there are some hints that hundreds of other classes of word meanings may be distinguished, like in a thesaurus, by the fine-grained representational geometries of numerous cortical areas, especially those comprising the GSN/DMN.

The main focus of this chapter is on evaluating the reliability and validity of the PCL:YV among a cohort of 535 youth from the ISVYOS. Reliability indicators included internal reliability and interrater reliability. Overall, there was strong support for the reliability of the PCL:YV among ISVYOS participants. Validity indicators included construct validity and convergent validity. In terms of construct validity, in line with prior research, a series of confirmatory factor analyses found support for both a hierarchical three-factor model (i.e., Interpersonal, Affective, and Lifestyle Factors). Although there was also support for a four-factor model that includes an Antisocial factor, this model did not offer an improvement over a three-factor model. Item response theory and psychopathology network modeling identified interpersonal and affective traits as most prototypical of the overarching psychopathy construct (e.g., impression management, grandiosity, pathological lying, manipulation, lack of remorse, shallow affect, callous/lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility). In terms of convergent validity, only moderate overlap was observed between the PCL:YV and two other measures of psychopathy.

Beginning with the eerie history of Edinburgh’s South Bridge vaults, Chapter 3 investigates how supernatural encounters are often reported in places associated with death, decay, and sensory uncertainty. Here, we explore the connection between electromagnetic fluctuations, ambiguous sensory experiences, and supernatural perceptions. The chapter explores the human tendency to assign meaning to ambiguous stimuli and introduces key concepts in measurement science, such as reliability and validity. It also addresses the limited evidence for human sensitivity to EMF changes. Disruptions in spatial and body awareness in the brain can lead to experiences like feeling a presence or seeing a shadow figure. Together, these ideas offer plausible brain-based explanations for some ghostly encounters and demonstrate how the brain strives to make sense of the unknown when sensory information is unclear.

This chapter details the role that metaphor displays in illness and disordered bodies.