Body-extension versus body-incorporation: Is there a need for a body-model?

This paper investigates the role of a pre-existing body-model that is an enabling constraint for the incorporation of objects into the body. This body-model is also a basis for the distinction between body extensions (e.g., in the case of tool-use) and incorporation (e.g., in the case of successful prosthesis use). It is argued that, in the case of incorporation, changes in the sense of body-ownership involve a reorganization of the body-model, whereas extension of the body with tools does not involve changes in the sense of body-ownership.     

Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?

It is assumed that people seek positive self-regard; that is, they are motivated to possess, enhance, and maintain positive self-views. The cross-cultural generalizability of such motivations was addressed by examining Japanese culture. Anthropological, sociological, and psychological analyses revealed that many elements of Japanese culture are incongruent with such motivations. Moreover, the empirical literature provides scant evidence for a need for positive self-regard among Japanese and indicates that a self-critical focus is more characteristic of Japanese. It is argued that the need for self-regard must be culturally variant because the constructions of self and regard themselves differ across cultures. The need for positive self-regard, as it is currently conceptualized, is not a universal, but rather is rooted in significant aspects of North American culture. Conventional interpretations of positive self-regard are too narrow to encompass the Japanese experience.     

What is conscience and why is respect for it so important?

The literature on conscience in medicine has paid little attention to what is meant by the word ‘conscience.’ This article distinguishes between retrospective and prospective conscience, distinguishes synderesis from conscience, and argues against intuitionist views of conscience. Conscience is defined as having two interrelated parts: (1) a commitment to morality itself; to acting and choosing morally according to the best of one’s ability, and (2) the activity of judging that an act one has done or about which one is deliberating would violate that commitment. Tolerance is defined as mutual respect for conscience. A set of boundary conditions for justifiable respect for conscientious objection in medicine is proposed.

Moral philosophy and theology: why is there so little difference for Roman Catholics?

The cardinal question in Christian moral theory and bioethics is whether the knowledge that Christians have (1) by grace and (2) by revelation (e.g., regarding the character of human and cosmic history as reaching from creation through the Incarnation and the Redemption to the Second Coming and the restoration of all things) makes a crucial contribution to understanding morality, as for example issues such as the good death and the morality of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. This article argues that such a contribution is made by grace and revelation. The reduction of Roman Catholic moral theology and bioethics to secular bioethics is explored, as well as the necessity of the unique knowledge possessed by Christians for adequate end-of-life decision-making.     

Suppressing unwanted memories: where there is a will,there is a way?

Research suggests that suppressing unwanted thoughts, generally, is an ineffective thought control strategy, because suppression attempts oftentimes fail, and, furthermore, result in a paradoxical increase of unwanted thoughts, later on. The present study sought to investigate whether manipulated expectations about suppression efficacy determine actual effects of suppression attempts. To test this hypothesis, participants listened to an audiotaped story, and were subsequently appointed to one of four conditions: a no-instruction-control (n = 20), suppression (n = 20), suppression-works (n = 20; participants were told that suppression generally is a fruitful strategy), or suppression-does-not-work (n = 25; participants were told that suppression primarily has paradoxical effects) condition. Two hours later, participants' memories of the story were tested, and several metamemory questions were answered. Induced expectations actually determined the perceived efficacy of suppression attempts, as well as thought frequency, although perceived or actual accuracy of recollections was not affected by the instructions.     

Child abuse: is there a mandate for researchers to report?

During the past 20 years, states have increasingly expanded the lists of individuals who are obligated to report their suspicions of child abuse and neglect. These legal requirements are juxtaposed with ethical considerations in research and professional practice. The ethical issues include the obligation to maintain both confidentiality of information provided by human participants and the safety and protection of these participants. This article reviews the types of state child abuse reporting statutes and outlines the categories of mandated reporters. I develop a model of how individual researchers should approach deciding whether they are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect.     

Loss is a loss,why categorize it? Mental accounting across cultures

Consumers regularly track their expenses and assign them to categories like food, entertainment, and clothing, which is popularly known as mental accounting. In this paper, we show that consumption biases that result from mental accounting—underconsumption or overconsumption—are not prevalent in Easterners due to their holistic thinking style, whereas Westerners exhibit such biases due to their analytic thinking style. In Study 1, we collected data with Easterners (students from the eastern part of India) and show that they do not exhibit mental accounting biases as is seen in Westerners. In Study 2, we show that such differences in mental accounting across cultures result from their thinking styles by manipulating thinking styles within a Western population (American students from the Midwest). We also show that the differences in styles of thinking across cultures motivate two different types of accounting processes—a piecemeal accounting process in the Westerners and a comprehensive accounting process in the Easterners—which in turn influence the differences in mental accounting biases across cultures. This finding adds to the growing literature in cross‐cultural differences in consumer decision making and explores how and why a well‐documented robust effect, mental accounting, varies with the cultural background of the consumers.     

Enjoyment of sexualization: is it different for men?

We elucidated the Enjoyment of Sexualization (ES) construct in a sample of 206 female and 118 male undergraduate students. Our male ES Scale had high reliability, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a univariate structure was appropriate for both men and women. ES added to the prediction of self‐esteem and number of sexual partners (but not body shame) after controlling for self‐objectification; gender did not moderate these relationships. The relationship between ES and number of sexual partners was moderated by attractiveness such that individuals who believed themselves to be more attractive had more sexual partners at high levels of ES. Furthermore, ES was distinguishable from the conceptually‐related self‐objectification construct with regard to Big Five personality. Finally, results suggested that ES might be less harmful than self‐objectification.     

Isn't there a catch in it somewhere?

The relationship between skill, vision, and proprioception in simple one-handed catching has recently been researched by Fischman and Schneider (1985). The parts of their work addressed to the necessity of being able to see the hand for optimal performance are critically evaluated in the light of earlier published studies, and other methodological and interpretative problems are signalled.     

Statisticism in personality psychologists’ use of trait constructs: What is it? How was it contracted? Is there a cure?

‘Statisticism’ is meant to characterize a way of thinking in psychology that invests virtually boundless trust in the aptness of statistical concepts and methods to reveal the ‘lawfulness’ of human psychological functioning and behavior. In the article, I discuss how statisticism came to infect the thinking of mainstream 20th century personality investigators and how – if at all – the discipline might be cured. Unfortunately, mainstream thinking within the sub-discipline of personality psychology has long sanctioned an understanding of the statistical findings issuing from studies of individual differences in personality traits that is faithful to neither of the so-called ‘frequentist’ or ‘subjectivist’ traditions. Instead, such findings are widely regarded as a scientifically acceptable warrant for claims to knowledge about objective states of affairs existing for individuals within the samples one has studied. I suggest that the prospects for eradicating dubious fruits of this form of statisticism will hinge importantly on (a) the ability of theoretically and philosophically-oriented psychologists to re-instill within the discipline a healthy respect for the power of conceptual analysis more generally, and, following this, (b) concern within the discipline for the fact that the deep and abiding conceptual problem described above in fact does exist.     

The cocktail party problem: what is it? How can it be solved? And why should animal behaviorists study it?

Animals often use acoustic signals to communicate in groups or social aggregations in which multiple individuals signal within a receiver's hearing range. Consequently, receivers face challenges related to acoustic interference and auditory masking that are not unlike the human cocktail party problem, which refers to the problem of perceiving speech in noisy social settings. Understanding the sensory solutions to the cocktail party problem has been a goal of research on human hearing and speech communication for several decades. Despite a general interest in acoustic signaling in groups, animal behaviorists have devoted comparatively less attention toward understanding how animals solve problems equivalent to the human cocktail party problem. After illustrating how humans and nonhuman animals experience and overcome similar perceptual challenges in cocktail-party-like social environments, this article reviews previous psychophysical and physiological studies of humans and nonhuman animals to describe how the cocktail party problem can be solved. This review also outlines several basic and applied benefits that could result from studies of the cocktail party problem in the context of animal acoustic communication.     

The phonological store of working memory: is it phonological and is it a store?

The phonological store construct of the working memory model is critically evaluated. Three experiments test the prediction that the effect of irrelevant sound and the effect of phonological similarity each survive the action of articulatory suppression but only when presentation of to-be-remembered lists is auditory, not visual. No evidence was found to support the interaction predicted among irrelevant speech, modality, and articulatory suppression. Although evidence for an interaction among modality, phonological similarity, and articulatory suppression was found, its presence could be diminished by a suffix, which is an acoustic, not a phonological factor. Coupled with other evidence--from the irrelevant sound effect and errors in natural speech--the action attributed to the phonological store seems better described in terms of a combination of auditory-perceptual and output planning mechanisms.     

Unification: What is it,how do we Reach and why do we Want it?

This article has three aims. The first is to give a partial explication of the concept of unification. My explication will be partial because I confine myself to unification of particular events, because I do not consider events of a quantitative nature, and discuss only deductive cases. The second aim is to analyze how unification can be reached. My third aim is to show that unification is an intellectual benefit. Instead of being an intellectual benefit unification could be an intellectual harm, i.e., a state of mind we should try to avoid by all means. By calling unification an intellectual benefit, we claim that this form of understanding has an intrinsic value for us. I argue that unification really has this alleged intrinsic value. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.