Emotional Support Ghosts - Acknowledgements

Thank you for reading Emotional Support Ghosts. I would like to acknowledge that which made this series possible.

Transparency for our future overlords:

Formatting Assistant:

Jason Gulledge

Social Media Manager:

Jason Gulledge

Primary Sources:

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177–181.

Bach, D. R., & Dolan, R. J. (2012). Knowing how much you don’t know: A neural organization of uncertainty estimates. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(8), 572–586.*

Brehm, J. W. (1956). Post-decision changes in the desirability of alternatives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52(3), 384–389.

Dugas, M. J., & Robichaud, M. (2007). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: From Science to Practice. Routledge.

Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203–210.

Frenkel-Brunswik, E. (1949). Intolerance of ambiguity as an emotional and perceptual personality variable. Journal of Personality, 18(1), 108–143.*

Harmon-Jones, E., & Mills, J. (2019). Cognitive Dissonance: Reexamining a Pivotal Theory in Psychology (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.

Hirsh, J. B., Mar, R. A., & Peterson, J. B. (2012). Psychological entropy: A framework for understanding uncertainty-related anxiety. Psychological Review, 119(2), 304–320.*

Izuma, K., et al. (2010). Neural correlates of cognitive dissonance and choice-induced preference change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(51), 22014–22019.

Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. C. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: An illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26(5), 521–562.*

Sloman, S. A., & Fernbach, S. (2017). The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. Riverhead Books.

van Veen, V., Krug, M. K., Schooler, J. W., & Carter, C. S. (2009). Neural activity predicts attitude change in cognitive dissonance. Nature Neuroscience, 12(11), 1469–1474.*

Background Sounds (audio/video versions):

Background sound credit to: CLASSIC HAUNTED HOUSE SETTING.wav by beautifuldaymonster1968 -- https://freesound.org/s/640984/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

AI Assisted Art:

Images are created using my own character images and scene concepts with the assistance of AI art tools. Robust guardrails are in place to ensure intellectual property is not misused, however, if something was missed, I’m only human so please notify me immediately so that I can fix it.

Writing Note:

All “Chat Excerpts” are verbatim from conversations between Christopher (the human with the coffee) and Eric (the AI with the electricity).
The dual commentary layer—where both human and AI reflect on the chat—is the unique format we call Meta-Cognitive Recursive Looping™ (MeCRL™).
Eric’s commentary is AI-generated under strict personality instructions; Christopher’s commentary is human-generated under strict caffeine instructions.

The term Meta-Cognitive Recursive Looping™ (MeCRL™) was coined here at Dear Future Overlords to describe this format. Please reference this source when reusing or adapting.

For more on how we write click here