Global surrogacy: exploitation to empowerment

Commercial surrogacy has gone global in the last decade, and India has become the international centre for reproductive tourism, boasting numerous high-quality and low-fee clinics. The growth of the surrogacy industry in India raises serious concerns of global gender justice, in particular whether the option is inordinately enticing for women who lack other remunerable options and whether the conditions are adequate and the compensation fair. In this paper I argue that the moral harm of global commercial surrogacy lies in the exploitative nature of transactions involving unequally vulnerable parties. More specifically, I argue that the practice exploits Indian surrogates on the basis of an inter-contractual failure of both justice and consent. I go on to consider an important objection to my use of exploitation as the relevant conceptual tool of analysis. The ethnographic challenge holds that the exploitation lens Occidentalizes surrogacy by conceptualizing the practice in universalizing terms, thereby eclipsing the particularities of the global surrogate's lived experience. I respond by showing that in fact the exploitation and the ethnographic models are not so at odds as they might seem. Provided we are careful in our use of the former to nuance our analysis by appeal to narrative evidence supplied by the latter, we are thereby best situated to identify and address the moral difficulties generated by commercial surrogacy under conditions of global injustice.     

Personality in context: an interpersonal systems perspective

Because a significant part of individuals' lives involve close relationships, an important and substantial part of the situations they encounter consists of other people's behaviors. We suggest that individuals' characteristic ways of behaving, which are typically attributed to "personality," arise from two processes. One lies primarily within the individual, conceptualized as individual differences in one's cognitive and affective processing system. The other process, which has received less attention in personality research, lies outside the person in the individual differences in the situations that people encounter in their everyday lives. The interplay between these two processes can be particularly relevant for understanding close relationships. By assuming that each partner's behavior provides the situational context for the other partner, we conceptualize a dyadic relationship as the "interlocking" of the cognitive-affective processing systems of both partners. We illustrate this approach to personality-in-context with a hypothetical scenario and use this framework to organize research on attachment styles, rejection sensitivity, self-fulfilling prophecy, the self in relation to others, and interdependence theory.     

Third party assisted conception: an African perspective

The central importance of reproduction in all human cultures has given rise to many methods and techniques of assisting reproduction or overcoming infertility. Such methods and techniques have achieved spectacular successes in the Western world, where processes like in vitro fertilization (IVF) constitute a remarkable breakthrough. In this paper, the author attempts to reflect critically on assisted reproduction technologies (ART) from the background and perspective of African culture, a culture within which human reproduction is given the highest priority but which also exhibits a highly ambivalent attitude to modern technology-assisted methods of reproduction. The author considers the ethical crux of reproductive technologies to be linked to the issue of the moral status of the human embryo and argues that a morally significant line of demarcation cannot be drawn between embryos and other categories of humans.     

Undue game of baseline principles: the physician-patient relationship from a bioethical perspective

This article is inspired by an accident in a hospital where a pregnant woman died on the operating table because her husband was unwilling to sign the operation consent form. What's lurking behind this tragedy is the crisis of faith between doctors and patients in China. The crisis is a product of the Marketization of the health care system, which generates an unequal relationship between doctors and patients. Such a relationship makes patients unable to actively protect their rights. From a bioethical perspective, health is a basic right for everyone. In order to improve the physician-patient relationship, health rights must be considered as a priority in policy making. Although the Chinese government has been trying to implement universal health coverage, a progress indeed, problems and difficulties still exist in equalizing status between patients and doctors and in rebuilding a benign physician-patient relationship.     

Partiality and distributive justice in African bioethics

African ethical theories tend to hold that moral agents ought to be partial, in the sense that they should favour members of their family or close community. This is considered an advantage over the impartiality of many Western moral theories, which are regarded as having counterintuitive implications, such as the idea that it is unethical to save a family member before a stranger. The partiality of African ethics is thought to be particularly valuable in the context of bioethics. Thaddeus Metz, in particular, argues that his African-derived theory best accounts for a number of plausible intuitions, such as the intuition that health care practitioners ought to be biased towards the patients for whom they are directly responsible. In this article, I claim that the plausible intuitions drawn on in favour of partiality can be satisfactorily explained on the basis of impartial moral theories. Moreover, I argue that blanket acceptance of partiality has problematic consequences for distributive justice in resource allocation in biomedical contexts. By contrast, impartial theories can justify plausible instances of partiality whilst avoiding the pitfalls of fully partial moral theories. Although this provides grounds for abandoning partiality in principle, I claim that this finding should not be seen as damaging to African medical ethics. Instead, it prompts investigation of underexplored possibilities of impartial African moral theories. To demonstrate the value of this direction, I sketch some novel and attractive conceptions that combine impartiality with elements of African ethics.     

Dimensionality of organizational justice in a call center context

Summary.-Employees in three call centers were surveyed about their perceptions of organizational justice. Four factors were measured: distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. Structural equation modeling was employed to test whether a two-, three-, or four-factor model best fit the call center data. A three-factor model of distributive, procedural, and informational justice provided the best fit to these data. The three-factor model that showed the best fit does not conform to any of the more traditional models identified in the organizational justice literature. This implies that the context in which organizational justice is measured may play a role in identifying which justice factors are relevant to employees. Findings add to the empirical evidence on the dimensionality of organizational justice and imply that dimensionality of organizational justice is more context-dependent than previously thought.     

Differentiating the effects of status and power: a justice perspective

Few empirical efforts have been devoted to differentiating status and power, and thus significant questions remain about differences in how status and power impact social encounters. We conducted 5 studies to address this gap. In particular, these studies tested the prediction that status and power would have opposing effects on justice enacted toward others. In the first 3 studies, we directly compared the effects of status and power on people's enactment of distributive (Study 1) and procedural (Studies 2 and 3) justice. In the last 2 studies, we orthogonally manipulated status and power and examined their main and interactive effects on people's enactment of distributive (Study 4) and procedural (Study 5) justice. As predicted, all 5 studies showed consistent evidence that status is positively associated with justice toward others, while power is negatively associated with justice toward others. The effects of power are moderated, however, by an individual's other orientation (Studies 2, 3, 4, and 5), and the effects of status are moderated by an individual's dispositional concern about status (Study 5). Furthermore, Studies 4 and 5 also demonstrated that status and power interact, such that the positive effect of status on justice emerges when power is low and not when power is high, providing further evidence for differential effects between power and status. Theoretical implications for the literatures on status, power, and distributive/procedural justice are discussed.     

Peer status in an ethnic context: Associations with African American adolescents' ethnic identity

This investigation examined the association between ethnic identity centrality and peer status for African American adolescents who represented a sizable proportion, yet numerical minority within a high school context. Initial analyses indicated that a traditional sociometric nomination procedure did not adequately characterize peer status for African American adolescents. A modified nomination procedure varying the ethnicity of nominators yielded measures of African American adolescents' peer acceptance/rejection and perceived popularity as rated by African American or European American peers. Results suggest that high levels of peer acceptance and popularity as rated by African American peers were associated with high ethnic identity centrality; however, acceptance and popularity as rated by European American peers were unrelated to ethnic identity centrality among African American adolescents. Findings suggest the importance of examining peer status of African American adolescents with consideration given to ethnicity as a relevant context.     

Prototypical analysis of adolescent psychopathy: investigating the juvenile justice perspective

The past ten years have seen a dramatic increase in the empirical investigation of psychopathic characteristics in children and adolescents. In general, the focus of this research has been on the validation of assessment instruments to evaluate psychopathy as well as concurrent and predictive validity. Little attention has been directed toward elucidating the core characteristics of this construct. The current study expands on previous research by asking juvenile justice personnel (424 juvenile detention and probation officers) to identify the core characteristics of the construct via prototypical analysis for both male and female adolescents. Results of separate factor analyses by gender revealed five identifiable dimensions: juvenile delinquency, serious/violent conduct problems, narcissistic/manipulation of others, impulsivity/acting out, and family problems. The results suggest that juvenile justice personnel focus on a wide range of behavioral indicators as indicative of adolescent psychopathy in addition to affective and interpersonal characteristics typically viewed as crucial to the construct by clinicians.     

Danish cartoon controversy in the Chinese context: transnational Islam and public visibility of Hong Kong Muslims

Placed within the wider Chinese context of Muslims’ reticent response to the publication of twelve cartoons by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, this paper attempts to understand the transnational impact of global Muslim protests against the Danish cartoons, which resulted in the re-emergence of Hong Kong Muslims in the public sphere. By discussing the genesis of the public appearance of Hong Kong Muslims in response to the Danish Cartoon affair, this paper argues that the controversy has resulted in a heightened sense of Islam in the Chinese public sphere. Framing the emerging Islamic voices in a context where the Chinese government has a coherent rationale towards religious policy in its domestic politics, and its unprecedented political experiment of ‘One country, two systems’, this article points out the contrasting public visibility and global connection of Muslims in Hong Kong and the Mainland.     

Ethnicity and the theory of planned behavior in an exercise context: A mediation and moderation perspective

ObjectivesMost college students fail to meet recommended exercise levels and ethnic disparities in participation are apparent. The present study examined the moderating and mediating relationships among ethnicity, the theory of planned behavior (TPB), and exercise, and identified common and ethnic-specific beliefs related to exercise.MethodCollege students completed a baseline TPB questionnaire and an exercise assessment at either two-week (n=237 blacks; n=176 whites) or two-month (n=280 blacks; n=273 whites) follow-ups.DesignOne week and two month longitudinal designs.ResultsStructural equation modeling showed that the TPB was invariant by ethnicity in both samples with affective attitudes and perceived behavioral control being significant predictors of intention, which in turn, significantly predicted exercise. Furthermore, analyses showed that the TPB had a small mediating effect on the ethnicity/exercise relationship in both samples. Finally, common and ethnic-specific beliefs were identified that varied by sample.ConclusionThe TPB is a useful framework to explain exercise behavior in black and white students; however, its ability to explain the ethnic disparity in exercise may be limited.     

Sociocultural theories,academic achievement,and African American adolescents in a multicultural context: a review of the cultural incompatibility perspective

Some theories have posited that African American youth are academic underachievers because of sociocultural factors. We label this point of view the cultural incompatibility perspective. Ogbu’s oppositional culture theory and Steele’s stereotype threat theory are selected as popular examples of this viewpoint. A critical review of the literature on these particular theories was conducted. It was concluded that there is limited empirical support for the cultural incompatibility perspective on African American academic achievement. This raises questions about the focus on academic underachievement among African Americans versus high achievement among other ethnic/racial groups. Implications of the empirical findings on the incompatibility perspective for the role of African American culture in Black student achievement are discussed.     

Training in law and behavioral sciences: Issues from the criminal justice perspective

Interdisciplinary training in behavioral sciences and the law should be appropriate for a criminal justice education program. However, adopting such an interdisciplinary goal is problematic because the divisions in the types of educational curricula need to be confronted. The relationships of the criminal justice academic community with the profession, and of the behavioral sciences with present criminal justice policies, must also be addressed in the attempt to develop familiarity with behavioral sciences and their legal relevance in shaping the criminal justice system. These factors may hinder extensive implementation of such training. Suggestions are made for incorporating this raining in a criminal justice curriculum.     

Engagement in the university context: exploring the role of a sense of justice and social identification

The aim of this study was to investigate how a sense of justice, university identification and student engagement emerge within the educational context and the reciprocal relationships among these constructs. Two correlational studies were conducted: (1) a pilot study aimed at validating the constructs of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional aspects), social identification and student engagement (rule-abiding and extra-role aspects), within the university context (N \(=\) 280); (2) a study exploring the robustness of and the relationships between those constructs (N \(=\) 429). The results confirmed the presence of a four-factor solution involving a sense of overall justice (comprising distributive, procedural and interactional aspects), social identification, and two types of student engagement (rule-abiding and extra-role behaviours). A sense of justice was found to be related to students’ rule-abiding behaviour and, at the same time, it was related to students’ extra-role behaviour, only for closely identified students. In other words, student identification with the university moderated the relationship between sense of justice and extra-role behaviours. Our results showed the important role of sense justice in promoting student engagement (in both aspects of rule-abiding and extra-role behaviour), providing useful insights for the management of the university level educational system towards a better involvement of students in the attainment of higher academic performances and institutional commitment.     

Gender perspective in the context of Spanish academic psychology

The purpose of this study is to analyse the evolution of gender perspective in the context of the Spanish academic Psychology. The last three decades were analysed. In each decade, the study describes the groups and individuals who have contributed to the analysis of gender perspective in Psychology, the sponsoring institutions, and the most frequently used research strategies. Likewise, the study analyses the development of topics and areas in these three decades. The general trend shows that the interpretation of sex/gender has moved away from being considered an individual and internal factor to a more dynamic approach that analyses sex/gender through behavioural practices.