Mass Shootings Backfire: The Boomerang Effects of Death Concerns on Policy Attitudes

ABSTRACT

Fear-inducing communication is commonly adopted in the public domain. For example, advocates of gun control have believed that the tragic cases of mass shooting would be an effective persuasive tool to draw favorable public opinion about gun control policies. However, this assumption does not meet reality. Despite a rash of mass shootings over the past 2 decades, public support for gun regulation has continued to decline. To resolve this dilemma, this article conducted 3 experiments and provided compelling explanations of how threatening shooting stories generated the unintended effects. In line with the terror management theory, the moderated mediation model showed that shooting stories produced partisan polarization on gun policies. Theoretical and practical implications of fear-inducing messages are discussed.     

辞世教育与宗教

辞世教育在于提升临终者生命的意义与品质.通过辞世教育使人们坦然面对死亡这个不可避免的人生课题,而死亡又是各类宗教最关注的内容,各宗教都有对死亡奥秘的深入诠释,对死后世界的详尽描述.宗教在辞世教育方面具有其独特性,辞世教育可以借鉴宗教智慧.     

灵性照顾与辞世教育

灵性照顾是临终关怀不可或缺的内容之一,同时也是辞世教育的重要内容和有效方式.灵性照顾可以帮助人们树立良好的人生观、价值观,可以帮助临终患者,可以安慰死者亲属,也可提高临终关怀工作人员的素质.     

我国医学教育亟需死亡教育补课

随着社会的进步、精神文明水平的提高和医学人文的呼唤,死亡教育将备受关注.通过介绍国内、外死亡教育发展现状,从我国当前的社会形势、医学教育、临床现状和医学生职业特殊性说明在我国医学教育中进行死亡教育补课之必要性;最后着重分析了在我国开展死亡教育存在的问题.     

Reasoning Together: Temptations, Dangers, and Cautions

In the appropriate contexts reasoning is a powerful tool for producing intersubjective agreement about what counts as the best answer to a question that generates inquiry; sometimes employing arguments can lead to agreement about what is the right answer. In this paper we hope to show, however, that unabashed optimism about the power of argument is misplaced. Such optimism rests on an implausible picture of the power of articulation. Sentences cashed out as reasons to believe another sentence is true cannot bridge large gaps in substantive understanding. A failure to realize this fact, moreover, leads to an uncautious and unreflective optimism about the power of argument that ultimately threatens the very reasons-giving process. What is needed, then, is a much more modest sense of the role of argument.     

Life and Death of Music as Education: A Philosophical Overview

Abstract

This essay contemplates the role of music as education (as opposed to music education) in the Western World since Ancient Greek philosophical inquiry and throughout early Christianity, the Middle Ages, and Modernism. It regards music as a potential tool for instruction and knowledge exchange. In particular, this essay examines post-Enlightenment philosophical trends that reshaped Western understandings of music. Finally, this paper explores music education within the Seventh-day Adventist educational system as influenced by both nineteenth-century thought as well as informed by the reformative attempts that followed in the twentieth century.     

Counseling Prisoners: Ethical Issues,Dilemmas, and Cautions

Counseling prisoners involves multiple ethical and therapeutic choices and risks. Prison environments emphasize external control and security. Thus, work in such settings challenges the role of the counselor as a facilitator of client responsibility for independent decision making.     

Culture and Social Distance: A Case Study of Methodological Cautions

Abstract

The authors presented, as a case study of methodological challenges in cross-cultural research, E. S. Bogardus's (1925) Social Distance Scale, which requires respondents to indicate the social distance between themselves and others. The meaningfulness of the scale depends on the assumption that respondents believe that the magnitude of social distance increases as one moves through the social categories of family member, friend, neighbor, coworker, and citizen. The authors tested this assumption for English Canadian, French Canadian, Jewish, Indian, Algerian, and Greek participants, all 1st-generation immigrants in Montreal. The participants rated their willingness to associate with members of each of the other ethnic groups in 5 social categories. The percentage of respondents in each sample whose data conformed to the prediction ranged from 63.7% to 98.0%, with English Canadian, French Canadian, and Jewish respondents providing responses most consistent with the predicted pattern. The Indian and Algerian respondents' data were the least consistent with the predicted pattern, especially when rating members of their own ethnic groups.     

Taking the Divinity from the Divine: The Interaction Between Death Concerns and Religiosity on the Evaluation of a Human Jesus

Journal of Religion and Health - Quest religiosity is characterized by an openness toward religious doubt and uncertainty as a way to grow existentially. The current paper examines how death...     

开展大学生死亡教育的成效分析

死亡教育既是医学教育应有的内容,同时又是通向其终级目标的一个有效途径,"向死而生"则是死亡教育的核心价值理念.开展死亡教育,能够帮助大学生正确认识死亡,使其自觉地对自我生存境遇进行体察,克服对死亡的恐惧和焦虑,省思生命,明晰生命的真谛,进而超越死亡,展现人性光辉,活出人生意义,这也是死亡教育意义的价值指向.     

英国辞世教育见闻

英国是现代临终关怀的发源地,经过多年努力,逐渐摸索出一套有效并广为借鉴和效仿的辞世教育方法.圣克里斯多夫宁养院主要通过“学校计划”对中、小学、医学院校学生进行教育培训,通过音乐会、图书馆和书店、临终事务联盟、预先照顾计划等多种形式进行公众教育,带动了整个英国的辞世教育.医学院校医学生的辞世教育是以当地的临终关怀专业机构作为教学的资源,教学方法多样,且切合临床实际,是医学生辞世教育的典范.     

Death and gratitude: Death reflection enhances gratitude

Although gratitude is important to the good life, little is known about factors that enhance gratitude. Some have suggested that traumatic events such as near-death experiences and life-threatening illnesses might enhance gratitude. If reflecting on death causes one to appreciate life as a limited resource, this might enhance gratitude. This study investigated this theory. Participants were randomly assigned to a death reflection condition, a traditional mortality salience condition, or to a control condition. Participants in the death reflection and the mortality salience conditions showed enhanced gratitude compared to individuals in the control condition, supporting the theory that becoming aware of one's mortal limitations enhances gratitude for the life that what one has.     

Some Cautions for Research on Personality and Health

This article comments on three conceptualizations of the relationship between personality and disease as they relate to the papers in this issue. Despite the sophistication and promise of recent research in this area, conceptual and methodological difficulties present in earlier psychosomatic research have persisted. In this area, robust and convincing associations between traits and disease remain largely elusive, and stable, valid measures of psychological factors are relatively rare. In addition, the mechanisms relating behavior to health are sometimes sketchy or overstated. We suggest that the most productive research strategies will focus on mechanisms linking behavior to health, rather than merely correlating traits with measures of disease. Needed are continued close attention to these pitfalls by researchers as well as the maintenance of a critical attitude by readers.     

Death:

In the near future there will be some changes in our patterns of dying, but only in superficial and circumstantial ways. The present views of what death is and what causes natural death probably will not change. The brightest prospects for new learnings about death are from the new physics and the new metaphysics it has produced, and possibly from scientifically respectable psychic data.     

论死亡教育的心理健康价值取向

立足构成"生命"重要部分的"死亡",通过死亡教育和心理健康教育在内容、功能目标和课程实施上的比较研究,论证死亡教育促进人的心理健康和提升人的心理品质的价值和作为心理健康教育途径的可能性与现实性.