Why Don't People Change? A Psychoanalytic Perspective

From a psychoanalytic perspective, a central reason that people do not easily change is their fear of the dangers that they believe, at some level, change entails. These dangers include relinquishment of infantile wishes and fantasies, anxiety that would be experienced were defenses weakened, guilt, fantasies that change would harm a parental figure or threaten a vital relationship. Other factors that prevent change and maintain the sameness of behavior include defenses, unconscious pathogenic beliefs, devotion and loyalty to early figures, stable internal working models of self, other, and prototypic interactions, and emitting cues that elicit responses from others that confirm these working models. Finally, 1 discuss some selective psychoanalytic research on therapeutic change.     

Why Don't Moral People Act Morally? Motivational Considerations

Failure of moral people to act morally is usually attributed to either learning deficits or situational pressures. We believe that it is also important to consider the nature of moral motivation. Is the goal actually to be moral (moral integrity) or only to appear moral while, if possible, avoiding the cost of being moral (moral hypocrisy)? Do people initially intend to be moral, only to surrender this goal when the costs of being moral become clear (overpowered integrity)? We have found evidence of both moral hypocrisy and overpowered integrity. Each can lead ostensibly moral people to act immorally. These findings raise important questions for future research on the role of moral principles as guides to behavior.     

You Don't Say?

This paper defends a purely semantic notionof what is said against various recent objections. Theobjections each cite some sort of linguistic,psychological, or epistemological fact that issupposed to show that on any viable notion of what aspeaker says in uttering a sentence, there ispragmatic intrusion into what is said. Relying on amodified version of Grice's notion, on which what issaid must be a projection of the syntax of the utteredsentence, I argue that a purely semantic notion isneeded to account for the linguistically determinedinput to the hearer's inference to what, if anything,the speaker intends to be conveying in uttering thesentence.     

Why Don't You Just Show Me? Performance interviews for skill‐based promotions

Despite the high skill levels needed to cope with complex technical systems and the pace of technological change, there remain persistent skill gaps in the United States workforce. Organizations are increasingly relying on skill‐based programs to encourage and foster employee skill development. Unfortunately, many questions remain about how to make skill‐based promotions. Drawing from research on performance testing and structured interviewing, as well as work that examines broader issues of performance prediction and candidate reactions, we outline the development and empirical test of a performance interview that can be used for skill‐based promotions. Such interviews allow employees to demonstrate their skills on the job, and thus may be more accepted by employees. We first discuss seven design principles that form the conceptual foundation for the performance interview, followed by the specific steps practitioners can follow to develop a performance interview. Finally, using a sample of 230 auto parts manufacturing employees, we provide empirical evidence for the high reliability, validity, and positive candidate reactions to the performance interview.     

Why Me? Why Not Me?

The decision to undergo BRCA testing is very complex and emotionally laden. This decision can be further complicated by the loss of a mother at an early age. The following personal account by a genetic counselor discusses the testing process and the struggle to accept the results and reframe one’s self-identity. The sensitive nature of this testing and the implications for other family members is explored.     

Why Don't People Change? What Stops Them from Changing? An Integrative Commentary on the Special Issue on Resistance

This commentary discusses the four papers from the vantage point of a cognitive-developmental view. Psychotherapeutic change involving changes in core cognitive structures is seen as threatening an individual's personal sense of identity as well as security and safety needs. Core cognitive constructs are laid down early via the principle of covariation of events and form the basis of our tacit knowledge base. Subsequent changes in this tacit knowledge is difficult because the core cognitive constructs act like a mental filter to screen in confirming data and screen out disconfirming data. Ambiguous stimuli tend to be interpreted on the basis of preexisting cognitive constructs, even when the match between event and interpretation is not ideal. Several suggestions are given for increasing the probability of changes occurring in core cognitive constructs.     

Why Homophobia?

Suzanne Pharr's Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism may be an effective tool for women committed to overcoming their own homophobia who want practical advice on recognizing and eradicating it, although as an essay in theory it does not advance the issues. The author seems unaware that Celia Kitzinger has argued recently that “homophobia” is not a helpful concept because it individualizes problems better seen as political and begs the question of the rationality of the fear. I argue that “homophobia” has been misused but that freed of the medical model and understood in connection with issues of pride and shame, it can be a helpful concept.     

Why Intentions?

There is an influential conception of intentional agency in terms of just beliefs and desires. And there is an equally influential conception that adds intentions as separate ingredients. It remains disputed whether (1) adding intentions is really necessary, and (2) what difference that addition exactly makes. I argue that (1) adding intentions is required, but only because and insofar as (2) it makes room for a distinctively practical kind of reasoning. I critically consider Bratman's main considerations in support of adding intentions, viz., conduct‐control, inertia, and input for practical reasoning, and argue that a desire‐belief theorist can easily accommodate those. I then reconsider all three Bratmanian considerations in order to establish a more fundamental difference in terms of a robust notion of practical reasoning. Such a difference can be found if we place Bratman's considerations in the light of Sebastian Rödl's idea of a measure or order of practical reasoning.     

Why Naturalism?

My goal in this paper is to explain what ethical naturalism is, to locate the pivotal issue between naturalists and non-naturalists, and to motivate taking naturalism seriously. I do not aim to establish the truth of naturalism nor to answer the various familiar objections to it. But I do aim to motivate naturalism sufficiently that the attempt to deal with the objections will seem worthwhile. I propose that naturalism is best understood as the view that the moral properties are natural in the sense that they are empirical. I pursue certain issues in the understanding of the empirical. The crux of the matter is whether any synthetic proposition about the instantiation of a moral property is strongly a priori in that it does not admit of empirical evidence against it. I propose an argument from epistemic defeaters that, I believe, undermines the plausibility of a priorism in ethics and supports the plausibility of naturalism.     

Why cognitivism?

Intention Cognitivism – the doctrine that intending to V entails, or even consists in, believing that one will V – is an important position with potentially wide-ranging implications, such as a revisionary understanding of practical reason, and a vindicating explanation of ‘Practical Knowledge.’ In this paper, I critically examine the standard arguments adduced in support of IC, including arguments from the parity of expression of intention and belief; from the ability to plan around one’s intention; and from the explanation provided by the thesis for our knowledge of our intentional acts. I conclude that none of these arguments are compelling, and therefore that no good reason has been given to accept IC.     

Why Jesus?

Jesus plays potentially a uniquely important role in relation to the world's greatest needs. To respond to the global crisis, we need historical consciousness. The source of historical consciousness is the prophetic tradition. Through Jesus the prophetic tradition became widely available and important. However, this consciousness has been responsible for great evil as well as great good, often bound up with we/they thinking and the use of violence. Jesus’ teaching of love of the enemy in principle overcomes this tendency and points to way forward.     

Why bion? Why jung? For that matter, why freud?

Bion and Jung share both a significant disjunction from reflecting on personal experience, and a commitment to connecting with a higher truth outside of personal experience; in this they contrast with the Freudian standpoint that fully engages with reflecting on personal experience, and that considers efforts to connect to a higher truth as themselves usefully thought about in terms of their personal meaning. In these aspects of their work, Bion and Jung strongly endorse a romantic and communal approach to experience, whereas Freud essentially integrates the romantic and communal with the classical and agentic.     

Why Don't They Demand More? Entitlement and Work Values of Religious and Secular Women and Men in Israel

For decades researchers have shown that women earn less than men; the wages they feel entitled to are lower than men's; and they are as satisfied as men with their salaries even though they earn less. These studies show that complacency regarding wages is more prevalent among tradition-oriented women than among "modern" women. The tendency is related to "traditional" women's work behavior: Tradition-oriented and religious women turn to low status, female-typed occupations, and prefer to work in part-time jobs. They also believe that working women are worse mothers and spouses than non-working women, but they report high work satisfaction. Secular women, on the other hand, believe they should get equal wages when working in the same occupations as men, and they are less satisfied with their pay than religious women, even though they earn more. The findings are explained in terms of Expectations States and Status Value theories.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Understanding How British and Indonesian Extremists Disengage and Why They Don't

This article compares how individuals from two different Salafi-jihadi groups disengage from high-risk activism and political violence. Drawing on original interviews, we explore the “push” and “pull” factors that influence our respondents' decisions to leave. We identify numerous push-and-pull factors that are consistent with previous research, including disagreements with group leaders over strategy and practices and educational and employment opportunities. We also contribute to existing research by including “persistent activists” in our sample who did not disengage. Surprisingly, these respondents remained in their groups despite experiencing some of the same push-and-pull factors as those who left. Including this variation allows us to separate necessary but insufficient conditions of disengagement from factors that exert a more profound impact. We highlight the influence of one key factor—and its absence—in our discussion: alternative social networks with supportive outsiders for those who left and the lack of such meaningful relationships for those who remained. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for countering violent extremism.     

Why Be Immoral?

Developing themes in the work of Thomas Hill, I argue that servility is an underappreciated but pervasive reason for moral transgression. Recognizing servility as a basic cause of immorality obliges us to reconsider questions about the rationality of morality. Traditional answers to the problem of the immoralist, which tend to be stated in terms of enlightened self-interest, fail to properly engage the problems posed by 'servile immorality.' In response to these problems, I develop a Humean version of a traditionally Kantian strategy for substantiating the rationality of morality: (i.e.) agents' conceptions of themselves commit them to accepting morality's authority. Servile behavior implies cognitive dissonance, which can restructure or dissolve those particular desires, beliefs, and projects that constitute agents' most highly valued contingent conceptions of themselves. I conclude that agents have reason to abstain from servility even on a parsimonious Humean account of practical reasons.     

Why Take Painkillers?

Accounts of the nature of unpleasant pain have proliferated over the past decade, but there has been little systematic investigation of which of them can accommodate its badness. This paper is such a study. In its sights are two targets: those who deny the non‐instrumental disvalue of pain's unpleasantness; and those who allow it but deny that it can be accommodated by the view—advanced by me and others—that unpleasant pains are interoceptive experiences with evaluative content. Against the former, I argue that pain's unpleasantness does indeed have noninstrumental disvalue; against the latter I argue both that my critics’ own desire‐theoretic accounts of pain's unpleasantness cannot accommodate such disvalue, and that my evaluativist view can—either by appealing to “anti‐unpleasantness” desires or by exploiting pain's perceptuality.