Was that (cyber)bullying? Investigating the operational definitions of bullying and cyberbullying from adolescents’ perspective

Background/Objective: Despite the great interest that bullying and cyberbullying have received during the last decades, the problem of defining these phenomena is still debated. Recently, this discussion has also been articulated in terms of how young people who are directly involved in bullying and cyberbullying understand these notions. This study aimed at investigating the operational definitions of both bullying and cyberbullying provided by adolescent victims and perpetrators, by inquiring the weight of traditional criteria (i.e., frequency, deliberateness, imbalance of power, and harm) as well as dominance in the perception of these phenomena. Method: A total of 899 students aged between 11 and 16 years filled out the Student Aggression and Victimisation Questionnaire. Results: Common traits and differences between the operational definition of bullying and cyberbullying and between the perspectives of victims and perpetrators of aggression were found. The most relevant criterion for the perception of both these phenomena was clearly the presence of dominance. By contrast, the imbalance of power showed no significant relationship with the perception of being bullied or bullying others both offline and online. Conclusions: Findings emphasise that young people conceptualise bullying with a clear reference to relational and group processes, rather than to individual differences.     

Has cyber technology produced a new group of peer aggressors?

Cyber technology provides a new venue for the expression of aggression. However, whether cyber technology has produced a new group of peer aggressors or simply allowed aggressive peers new tools to victimize others is unclear. This study sampled 1,672 adolescents to assess their engagement in cyber aggression. Although "cyber," "overt," and "relational" represent distinct subtypes of aggressive behavior, our results indicate that adolescents' behaviors clustered according to their frequency-not type-of aggression. Thus cyber technology provides new tools for youth who already engage in aggressive behaviors in the physical world to victimize peers in cyberspace.     

Education and Psycho-Utopianism—Comenius,Skinner, and Beyond

In the history of ideas some researchers have recently coined the term psycho-utopianism, denoting the notion that the ideal society presupposes a “new man,” that is, the psychological nature of man must change before society can change. Cultural studies have noted this line of thinking also within the so-called New Age movement. However, the notion of a New Age is not really new; it occurred already at the beginning of the Modern Epoch; in seventeenth-century Europe. At that time, the educational philosopher J. A. Comenius was writing his canonical work Didactica Magna and other texts on education, science, and philosophy, with the ultimate aim of contributing to a new world order. Comenius was one of the first modern educators to argue for a general education of both boys and girls irrespective of social class. Three hundred years later, B. F. Skinner suggested psychological methods of education and upbringing, also with the ultimate aim to transform society. In this article I will look closer at the similarities and differences between these two thinkers regarding their psycho-utopian notions. I will conclude with similar reflections on psycho-utopian tendencies in present discourses on information and communication technology (ICT) and education.     

Ethics,metaphysics, and psychoanalysis∗

An attempt is made to point out some of the moral presuppositions and implications of psychotherapy in theory and in practice. In the various forms of dynamically oriented psychotherapy, the setting of goals and decisions concerning maturation and health have value components. Even in psychoanalysis in its strict sense, decisions made in accepting or rejecting contracts and determination of the terminating point of analysis are value laden.

Finally, in the theorizing of Freud and others about psychotherapy moral positions are assumed.     

A tempest, a birth, and death: Freud, Jung, and Shakespeare’sPericles

This essay applies a Freudian psychoanalytic and Jungian archetypal narrative analysis to Shakespeare’s first and oft-criticized romance. The author argues that key structural and thematic elements ofPericles are best illuminated when viewed through a psychological interpretative lens, and that the play is best comprehended when examined in the context of its associative, rather than linear, richness. Masculinity and femininity, central themes of the narrative, are explored both in relation to the Oedipal complex and psychological individuation.Pericles also provides an excellent basis to examine key differences between Freud’s and Jung’s approach, particularly Jung’s widening of the primarily sexual psychoanalytic approach to encompass broader archetypal meaning.     

School Counselors’ General Self-Efficacy,Ethical and Legal Self-Efficacy,and Ethical and Legal Knowledge

School counselors encounter ethical and legal situations that necessitate the knowledge and confidence to apply decision-making skills. We report the findings from a correlational investigation that examines practicing school counselors’ (N = 287) ethical and legal self-efficacy, ethical and legal knowledge, and general self-efficacy. Higher ethical and legal self-efficacy was associated with higher general self-efficacy and ethical and legal knowledge. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Self-Consciousness,Self-presentation,and Performance Under Pressure: Who Chokes,and When?

Choking under pressure by persons low and high in self-consciousness was examined as a function of two sources of performance pressure: audience and performance feedback. Subjects competed with an alleged opponent on a psychomotor task while alone, before a supportive (same team) audience, or a nonsupportive (opposing team) audience. Before the critical trial, subjects learned that their team was either somewhat ahead of or somewhat behind the opposing team. Self-consciousness, audience, and feedback interacted to affect performance during the critical trial. When disappointing the audience was likely, subjects low in self-consciousness choked. Subjects high in self-consciousness tended to choke when they were told that their team had fallen behind. It is suggested that persons who are low and high in self-consciousness experience different types of performance pressure due to disparate self-presentational motives.     

Difference and presence: Derrida and Husserl’s phenomenology of language,time, history,and scientific rationality

Continental Philosophy Review - This article seeks to reconstruct and critically extend Jacques Derrida’s critique of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Derrida’s...     

Separation—Individuation,Self-Concept,and Object Relations in Fraternal Twins,Identical Twins,and Singletons

Identical twins, fraternal twins, and singletons (n = 30 in each group) were compared on objective measures of separation–individuation, object relations, and self-esteem. No significant differences were found. The data did not support the popular notion that twins face special problems with respect to personality development or the idea that twins have more difficulty than others in establishing and maintaining close relationships. Twins and nontwins did not differ significantly with respect to marital status, number of years married, whether married before, number of previous marriages, number of years divorced, or living arrangements if single. The majority of twins had been raised in a way that encouraged at least some individual differences.     

Reply to Kurth,Crosby, and Basse’s review of Emotions,Values, and Agency

In this reply, I argue that the worries raised by Kurth and this coauthors are not fatal for the perceptual theory of emotions. A first point to keep in mind in discussing the analogy argument in favor of that account is that what counts is the overall balance of similarities and differences, given their respective weight. In any case, I argue that none of the alleged differences between sensory perceptual experiences and emotions are such as to rule out that emotions are a kind of perceptual experience which can confer epistemic justification of our evaluative beliefs. Finally, I suggest that the perceptual theory is in a position to nicely capture what happens when we disagree about evaluative issues.     

Christ,Country, and Conspiracies? Christian Nationalism,Biblical Literalism,and Belief in Conspiracy Theories

When misinformation is rampant, “fake news” is rising, and conspiracy theories are widespread, social scientists have a vested interest in understanding who is most susceptible to these false narratives and why. Recent research suggests Christians are especially susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories in the United States, but scholars have yet to ascertain the role of religiopolitical identities and epistomological approaches, specifically Christian nationalism and biblical literalism, in generalized conspiracy thinking. Because Christian nationalists sense that the nation is under cultural threat and biblical literalism provides an alternative (often anti-elite) source of information, we predict that both will amplify conspiracy thinking. We find that Christian nationalism and biblical literalism independently predict conspiracy thinking, but that the effect of Christian nationalism increases with literalism. Our results point to the contingent effects of Christian nationalism and the need for the religious variables in understanding conspiracy thinking.     

Moving Beyond Us and Them? Marginality,Rhizomes, and Immanent Forgiveness

Here, I offer a candid response to bell hooks's call for a testimony to the “movement beyond a mere ‘us and them’ discussion” that purportedly informs contemporary radical and feminist thought on difference. In alignment with a tradition that includes bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aurora Levins Morales, I offer a personal testimony to the ways in which I—a middle‐class, French, immigrant, continental‐philosophy‐bred incest survivor—envision both that movement and its limits. To establish these alliances means forming necessary (if only momentary and unlikely) communities. I call on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to propose an account of the production of such communities that does not depend only on shared lived experience, but also on shared marginal spatiality (rhizomes), temporality (trauma), and “medicinal history” (nomadology). I suggest that on the one hand, Deleuze's philosophy of immanence may indeed find apt expression in the politics of integrity that hooks, Lorde, and Morales call for. On the other hand, a genuine politics of integrity may benefit from drawing on the philosophy of immanence, which alone offers alternatives to the traditional, oppositional models of difference informed by transcendence. Finally, I propose the concept of “immanent forgiveness” to capture the movement at issue.     

Family, School, and Community Factors and Relationships to Racial–Ethnic Attitudes and Academic Achievement

This study examined family, school, and community factors and the relationships to racial–ethnic attitudes and academic achievement among 98 African American fourth-grade children. It has been posited that young people who feel better about their racial–ethnic background have better behavioral and academic outcomes, yet there is a need for more empirical tests of this premise. Psychometric information is reported on measures of parent, teacher, and child racial–ethnic attitudes. Path analysis was used to investigate ecological variables potentially related to children's racial–ethnic attitudes and achievement. Parental education and level of racial–ethnic pride were correlated and both were related to children's achievement though in the final path model, only the path from parental education level was statistically significant. Children whose teachers exhibited higher levels of racial–ethnic trust and perceived fewer barriers due to race and ethnicity evidenced more trust and optimism as well. Children living in communities with higher proportions of college-educated residents also exhibited more positive racial–ethnic attitudes. For children, higher racial–ethnic pride was related to higher achievement measured by grades and standardized test scores, while racial distrust and perception of barriers due to race were related to reduced performance. This study suggests that family, school, and community are all important factors related to children's racial–ethnic attitudes and also to their academic achievement.     

Ethics Training,Ethical Context,and Sales and Marketing Professionals’ Satisfaction with Supervisors and Coworkers

Because organizational support for ethical conduct is valued highly in personal selling and sales management, ethics training, functioning through a company’s ethical values and culture, should prompt greater satisfaction with supervisors and coworkers because these individuals play a part in the ethical practices that impact job satisfaction in others. Using a national sample of 324 sales and marketing professionals representing a variety of organizations, this study examined the mediating role of perceived ethical context in the proposed relationships between hours of ethics training and satisfaction with supervisors and coworkers. The results indicated that the focal variables were indeed related, with either full or partial mediation identified, using two separate measures of perceived ethical context. Organizational leaders in the sales and marketing professions should consider using ethics training to institutionalize an ethical environment in sales organizations, as well as involving sales managers and other professionals in this institutionalization process. Such efforts could yield greater employee satisfaction for supervisors and coworkers.     

Short‐term and working memory: Past,progress, and prospects

Abstract

The role of current personal experience in understanding of word meaning was investigated in a patient, WM, who suffers from semantic dementia. The study was prompted by the observation that WM, despite being severely impaired on formal tests of word comprehension and naming, retained a range of vocabulary pertaining to her daily life. If autobiographical experience has a general facilitatory effect, then this should affect which concepts are retained and which lost, but not influence the quality of that conceptual knowledge. Conversely, if personal autobiography has a direct role in investing concepts with meaning, then WM's understanding of nominal terms that she uses spontaneously in conversation ought not to be normal, but should be constrained by the autobiographical context in which she uses those terms. WM could define nouns and noun phrases drawn from her conversational vocabulary, but her definitions had a markedly autobiographical quality. Moreover, WM was extremely impaired in her ability to define new noun phrases, constructed by combining words from her conversational vocabulary (e.g. “dog licence”, constructed from “driving licence” and “dog” “oil field” constructed from “oil” and “field”). It was concluded that WM does not have normal conceptual understanding of nouns and noun phrases that she uses appropriately in conversation. Her understanding is narrow and autobiographically constrained. The findings, which suggest an interactive relationship between autobiographical and semantic memory, have implications for understanding of the progressive breakdown of semantic knowledge.     

Famine,affluence, and philosophers’ biases

Moral relativists often defend their view as an inference to the best explanation of widespread and deep moral disagreement. Many philosophers have challenged this line of reasoning in recent years, arguing that moral objectivism provides us with ample resources to develop an equally or more plausible method of explanation. One of the most promising of these objectivist methods is what I call the self-interest explanation, the view that intractable moral diversity is due to the distorting effects of our interests. In this paper I examine the self-interest explanation through the lens of the famine debate, a well-known disagreement over whether we have a moral obligation to donate most of our income to the global poor. I argue that objectivists should reduce their confidence that the persistence of the famine debate is due to the distorting influence of self-interest. If my argument is on target, then objectivists may need to supply a stronger explanation of moral disagreement to defend their view against the threat of moral relativism.