A Right to Understand Injustice: Epistemology and the “Right to the Truth” in International Human Rights Discourse

People's “right to truth” or their “right to know” about their government's human rights abuses is a growing consensus in human rights discourses and a fertile area of work in international and humanitarian law. In most discussions of this right to know the truth, it is commonly seen as requiring the state or international institutions to provide access to evidence of the violations. In this paper, I argue that such a right naturally has many epistemic aspects, and the tools of social epistemology can be helpful in elucidating what such a right entails. As a beginning for this project, I draw on those resources to argue that the right to know the truth is only meaningful if it includes a right to understand the abuses, and that such understanding can only come through the development of community epistemic capacities. Given this, I further argue that the state has a duty to support the development of these capacities, and that a critical place for beginning this process is in public schools.     

Focused on the Family? Religious Traditions,Family Discourse,and Pastoral Practice

The relationship between religion and the family has recently reemerged as an important object of sociological inquiry. However, research has largely overlooked the ways in which the family discourse produced by specific religious traditions is connected to family-focused pastoral practices of congregations. Using data from the National Congregations Study, we find that family discourse and pastoral practice are only "loosely coupled" to one another. Ideological differences among mainline Protestant, conservative Protestant, and Roman Catholic congregations do not translate directly into differences in family ministry offerings. These findings help explain why research often finds that religion exercises uniform effects on family life, insofar as most congregations offer a similar package of ministries even though their family discourse is markedly different .     

Exposure to Parents’ Negative Emotions as a Developmental Pathway to the Family Aggregation of Depression and Anxiety in the First Year of Life

Depression and anxiety load in families. In the present study, we focus on exposure to parental negative emotions in first postnatal year as a developmental pathway to early parent-to-child transmission of depression and anxiety. We provide an overview of the little research available on the links between infants’ exposure to negative emotion and infants’ emotional development in this developmentally sensitive period, and highlight priorities for future research. To address continuity between normative and maladaptive development, we discuss exposure to parental negative emotions in infants of parents with as well as without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. We focus on infants’ emotional expressions in everyday parent–infant interactions, and on infants’ attention to negative facial expressions as early indices of emotional development. Available evidence suggests that infants’ emotional expressions echo parents’ expressions and reactions in everyday interactions. In turn, infants exposed more to negative emotions from the parent seem to attend less to negative emotions in others’ facial expressions. The links between exposure to parental negative emotion and development hold similarly in infants of parents with and without depression and/or anxiety diagnoses. Given its potential links to infants’ emotional development, and to later psychological outcomes in children of parents with depression and anxiety, we conclude that early exposure to parental negative emotions is an important developmental mechanism that awaits further research. Longitudinal designs that incorporate the study of early exposure to parents’ negative emotion, socio-emotional development in infancy, and later psychological functioning while considering other genetic and biological vulnerabilities should be prioritized in future research.     

Kāma,Preman, and Bhakti in Śrīdhara’s Commentary on Kṛṣṇa and the Gopīs in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

International Journal of Hindu Studies - Although the Bhāgavata Purāṇa presents an innovative soteriology of emotion that explicitly identifies kāma as the gopīs’...     

Close to Death,Close to Spouse? Effects of Age and Subjective Life Expectancy on Spousal Support

Journal of Adult Development - This study examines the longitudinal effects of older adults’ subjective life expectancy (SLE) on spousal support and strain toward their spouse. Data of 2080...     

What Is Important on the Job? Differences Across Gender,Perspective, and Job Level1

The importance ratings of job competency dimensions on a 360‐degree feedback instrument were examined. We hypothesized that men (incumbents and bosses) would rate agentic behaviors higher in importance than would women, and that women (incumbents and bosses) would rate communal behaviors higher in importance than would men. Differences were found for men and women across rating sources and across job level (organizational position). The present findings suggest that men and women incumbents view different factors as important for their jobs and that people in higher level jobs place more importance on agentic behaviors than do those in lower level positions, and people in lower level jobs place more importance on communal behaviors than do those in higher level positions.     

Should We Take “Gender” Out of Gender Subtypes? The Effects of Gender,Evaluative Valence,and Context on the Organization of Person Subtypes

Previous research examining the organization of person subtypes has focused on gender and evaluation as organizing principles. Our research additionally examined subtype organization in terms of the classic “person categories” described in the self-concept and impression formation literature. Using both qualitative and quantitative measures, we examined the relative impact of these three mechanisms of subtype organization. We also investigated whether contextual cues impact subtype organization. We found that subtypes are more frequently organized in terms of person categories than by gender or evaluation. Also, as predicted, some subtype clusters' organization was relatively stable, whereas other subtype clusters were more sensitive to contextual influences. These results are discussed in terms of how characteristics that are salient in a situation may prime certain subtypes.     

Attachment,Family Therapy,and Relational Psychoanalysis: Introduction to Virginia Goldner’s “Romantic Bonds,Binds, and Ruptures: Couples on the Brink”

Virginia Goldner’s paper reflects her exceptional role as a leader in both the family therapy and relational psychoanalytic worlds. Integrating those domains with theory and attachment and affect regulation, she presents a vivid and elegant theoretical perspective with an acutely empathic and self-reflective account of a torturous case. Commentaries by Leslie Greenberg and Paul Wachtel follow, along with a reply from Goldner.     

Gender Ideology and Social Transformation: Using Mixed Methods to Explore Processes of Ideological Change and the Promotion of Women’s Human Rights in Tanzania

Despite growing international interest in policies and practices to enhance women’s status and well-being in the Global South, ideological constraints to structural transformation and increasing opportunities available to women are widespread. There is thus considerable need to examine how ideological processes surrounding women’s status and value can be challenged. In the current study we used mixed method analyses to examine a process of deideologization—the contestation and transformation of traditional ideology—among a group of Maasai women in northern Tanzania. First, thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative interviews conducted with 16 Maasai women. Themes involving traditional ideology, the value of popular education, and components of a deideologization process were identified and assessed. Second, quantitative structural equation modeling was used to test a process model connecting women’s participation in popular education classes to increased political efficacy, decreased discomfort speaking at community meetings, and, in turn, deceased patriarchal beliefs about women. Overall, findings provided evidence for an iterative deideologization process catalyzed by popular education that led to improvements in women’s lives. The importance of promoting processes of deideologization via locally driven efforts to improve the status and well-being of women are discussed.     

The Power of the Spoken Word in Life,Psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis—A Contribution to Interpersonal Psychoanalysis

Starting with a 1890 essay by Freud, the author goes in search of an interpersonal psychology native to Freud's psychoanalytic method and to in psychoanalysis and the interpersonal method in psychiatry. This derives from the basic interpersonal nature of the human situation in the lives of individuals and social groups. Psychiatry, the healing of the soul, and psychotherapy, therapy of the soul, are examined from the perspective of the communication model, based on the essential interpersonal function of language and the spoken word: persons addressing speeches to themselves and to others in relations, between family members, others in society, and the professionals who serve them. The communicational model is also applied in examining psychiatric disorders and psychiatric diagnoses, as well as psychodynamic formulas, which leads to a reformulation of the psychoanalytic therapy as a process. A plea is entered to define psychoanalysis as an interpersonal discipline, in analogy to Sullivan's interpersonal psychiatry.     

The Right to Our Own History: Paradoxical Transference and the “Friendly Foreigner” Commentary on Orna Guralnik Paper

This paper comments on Dr. Guralnik’s paper and in particular reflects on how the “history of an ‘other’” and “History with a capital H” can be brought to analysis without turning the psychoanalytical process into sociology or “applied” psychoanalysis.     

Life satisfaction and the ‘end of history illusion’: A reply to Quoidbach,Gilbert, and Wilson (2020)

Contrary to the ‘end of history illusion’, in a longitudinal sample of American adults Harris and Busseri (2019) found that most individuals were accurate or expected too much change in their future life satisfaction, rather than expecting too little change. Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson (2020) suggested that the discrepancy in conclusions arose because we focused on mean-level trends rather than individual differences. Here we clarify that the discrepancy stems from the analysis of directional versus absolute change, with the latter preferred by Quoidbach et al. (2020). Both approaches are informative. Indeed, in addition to determining whether the altitude of an elevator in a skyscraper is changing over time, it matters very much whether the elevator is going up or down.     

Introduction to the Symposium on Sabine Roeser’s Risk,Technology, and Moral Emotions

Science and Engineering Ethics -     

Effects of Socioeconomic Status,Parental Stress,and Family Support on Children’s Physical and Emotional Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Journal of Child and Family Studies - In the current study, we conduct an exploratory study on children’s emotional and physical health in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The direct and...