"Little Rapes," Specious Claims,and Moral Hubris: A Reply to Korn,Huelsman, Reed,and Aiello

Because they failed to include our informed consent, guided imagery scenarios, and debriefing, the relevance of Korn, Huelsman, Reed, and Aiello's (1992) data remains unknown. The design of their Study 1 did not test the greater objectivity of role taking over involved participation. The design of their Study 2 did not demonstrate the effects of demand characteristics. The older "personal acquaintances" were not at higher risk of rape as they claimed. Properly gathered data from the University of Connecticut's laboratory demonstrated that participants regarded the guided imagining of rape to be personally and scientifically beneficial, educating them about the crime and the experience of the rape victim. Prior research had demonstrated that exposure to rape stimuli in combination with debriefing had an educational effect on the decreased endorsement of rape myths. Previously published ethical principles for balancing the rights of scientists, subjects, and society explicate our ethical stance. Informed consent precludes the occurrence of wrongful harms. This poorly designed and poorly reasoned "ethical" critique was unfounded; yet, it might produce a chilling effect on both the use of guided imagery and freedom of inquiry into politically sensitive topics.     

The mettle of moral fundamentalism: a reply to Robert Baker

This article is a reply to Robert Baker's attempt to rebut moral fundamentalism, while grounding international bioethics in a form of contractarianism. Baker is mistaken in several of his interpretations of the alleged moral fundamentalism and findings of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. He also misunderstands moral fundamentalism generally and wrongly categorizes it as morally bankrupt. His negotiated contract model is, in the final analysis, itself a form of the moral fundamentalism he declares bankrupt.     

Why there might be a moral faculty: A reply to Johnson

Is there a cognitive faculty dedicated to the moral domain? Mark Johnson has developed a number of arguments against the existence of such a faculty. I claim that these arguments are not persuasive and that there may be a moral faculty.     

The "I," the "we," and the "when": a meta-analysis of motivational primacy in self-definition

What is the primary motivational basis of self-definition? The authors meta-analytically assessed 3 hypotheses: (a) The individual self is motivationally primary, (b) the collective self is motivationally primary, and (c) neither self is inherently primary; instead, motivational primacy depends on which self becomes accessible through contextual features. Results identified the individual self as the primary motivational basis of self-definition. People react more strongly to threat and enhancement of the individual than the collective self. Additionally, people more readily deny threatening information and more readily accept enhancing information when it pertains to the individual rather than the collective self, regardless of contextual influences. The individual self is the psychological home base, a stable system that can react flexibly to contextual influences.     

The myth of "ecological dyslexia": a reply to Pontius (1984)

Ways in which Pontius' rejoinder to the criticisms raised earlier about her 1982 study of white and Aboriginal Australians fall short of success are enumerated.     

Race, brain size, and intelligence: a reply to Cernovsky

Cernovsky's 1990 critique of my work on the relation between brain size and IQ inadequately presents my position. I did not address the issue of sex differences in brain size nor did I conclude that "women are less intelligent than men" (p. 337). In the autopsy study cited by Cernovsky, it was concluded that, when body size is controlled, the male-female difference in brain size is removed but the black-white difference in brain size remains. Cernovsky also ignores much additional data, including that Mongoloid populations have larger and heavier brains than Caucasoids. Here, I review evidence on the relation between (a) brain size and race and (b) brain size and intelligence. Data are also tabulated for personality, speed of maturation, and sexuality, on all of which the Caucasoid average consistently falls between those of Mongoloids and Negroids. This ordering may be explained by a gene-based evolutionary theory of r/K reproductive strategies in which Mongoloids are more K-selected than Caucasoids and Caucasoids more than Negroids.