Against Moral Character Evaluations: The Undetectability of Virtue and Vice

I defend the epistemic thesis that evaluations of people in terms of their moral character as good, bad, or intermediate are almost always epistemically unjustified. (1) Because most people are fragmented (they would behave deplorably in many and admirably in many other situations), one’s prior probability that any given person is fragmented should be high. (2) Because one’s information about specific people does not reliably distinguish those who are fragmented from those who are not, one’s posterior probability that any given person is fragmented should be close to one’s prior—and thus should also be high. (3) Because being fragmented entails being indeterminate (neither good nor bad nor intermediate), one’s posterior probability that any given person is indeterminate should also be high—and the epistemic thesis follows. (1) and (3) rely on previous work; here I support (2) by using a mathematical result together with empirical evidence from personality psychology.     

Candidate Evaluations Through the Lens of Adaptive Followership Psychology: How and Why Voters Prefer Leaders Based on Character Traits

An extensive literature in political science shows how citizens' evaluations of politicians—as well as their electoral behavior—are affected by trait impressions of these politicians. However, deeper, interdisciplinary theory building that seeks to address when and for whom specific trait impressions come to guide candidate evaluations remains absent. In this article, I outline the theory of adaptive followership that seeks to address this shortcoming. Grounded in evolutionary psychology, I argue that leadership evolved as a solution to problems of intragroup coordination in ancestral small-scale societies. In order to understand the traits that drive followers' and voters' evaluations of leaders and politicians, one should therefore focus on problems related to group coordination and ask how these problems might regulate followers' prioritizations of various traits in leaders. On this basis, I outline an analytical framework consisting of three predictions that simultaneously formulate how (1) contexts and (2) individual differences of relevance to a given group-coordination problem regulate trait preferences, and (3) how such preferences differ between leaders and nonleaders (i.e., other social categories). The analytical framework is applied for structuring two reviews (including new empirical studies) of the ways through which intergroup conflict and disease threat, respectively, affect followers' trait preferences in leaders. Finally, directions and suggestions for future research on trait-based candidates and leader evaluations are discussed.     

Social Psychology and the Paradox of Revolution

Abstract

According to the gunman theory, many revolutions do not take place, in spite of the fact that the majority stands to gain if they can put an end to the oppression exercised over it, since a gunman can see to it that egoistic individuals have no incentive to take part in revolution. Champions of the idea that there is a paradox of revolution go further: Even if individuals care about the common good, they will not take action. This is wrong. If they care about the common good, revolution will take place. This is good news. The bad news is, however, that those conditions we find in social psychological literature, which are helpful to the revolutionary cause, tend to be undennined by the oppressive system when it is well-functioning.     

近似确定中的不确定性——浅议医学中的不确定性问题

医学中的不确定性问题,是一个有关医学知识论和价值论的根本问题,也是医学复杂性的特质之一,这是一个基本判断。一方面,因医学研究对象及“患者—疾病—医生”之间的互动关系所呈现出的复杂性,导致不确定性广布于医学中的各个领域;另一方面,从不确定性问题入手,可以更好地揭示医学的复杂性本质。要理解与讨论医学的复杂性问题,势必需要对医学的不确定性问题引起足够的重视。由此,通过对科学、医学试验、临床医学等方面的不确定性问题的分析,探讨医学不确定性产生的根源及表现形式,进而思考相应的应对之道也就尤为必要。     

心理咨询的价值悖论与责任伦理

从责任伦理角度审视心理咨询中的价值问题,价值是一个不可悬置也不可逃避的问题。一方面,人的生存悖论与人的社会化过程失衡是人的心理失衡或心理疾病产生的主要原因;另一方面,心理咨询的宗旨是促进来访者的改变,这种改变往往意味着价值观的改变。因而改变过程中必然会出现文化及规范、咨询者价值取向及来访者已有的价值观三者间的冲突和矛盾。心理咨询中的价值之争实为价值冲突所致。对心理咨询中的价值问题的处理应该遵循普遍性原则,采取多种形式的价值介入。     

The Human Dark Side: Evolutionary Psychology and Original Sin

Human nature has a dark side, something important to religions. Evolutionary psychology has been used to illuminate the human shadow side, although as a discipline it has attracted criticism. This article seeks to examine the evolutionary psychology’s understanding of human nature and to propose an unexpected dialog with an enduring account of human evil known as original sin. Two cases are briefly considered: murder and rape. To further the exchange, numerous theoretical and methodological criticisms and replies of evolutionary psychology are explored jointly with original sin. Evolutionary psychology can partner with original sin since they share some theoretical likenesses and together they offer insights into the nature of what it means to be human.     

The Character of Temptation: Towards a More Plausible Kantian Moral Psychology

Kant maintained that dutiful action can have the fullest measure of moral worth even if chosen in the face of powerful inclinations to act immorally, and indeed that opposing inclinations only highlight the worth of the action. I argue that this conclusion rests on an implausibly mechanistic account of desires, and that many desires are constituted by tendencies to see certain features of one's circumstances as reasons to perform one or another action. I try to show that inclinations to violate moral requirements sometimes manifest a morally objectionable half-heartedness in one's commitment to those very requirements, and - by extension - to the values that undergird these requirements.     

进化发展心理学：发展中的人类本性

进化发展心理学研究社会能力与认知能力发展背后的基因与环境机制,以及基因与环境机制在特定社会文化中的表现。进化发展心理学探讨的主要问题与设计到的主要概念包括：（1）自然选择在毕生发展的早期阶段发挥作用;（2）进化发展心理学特别重视适应在婴儿期及儿童期发展中的作用;（3）儿童期的延长有助于儿童学习人类社会的复杂性;（4）发展背景的方法可以用来理解成人外显行为的进化起源;（5）基因与环境因素相互影响约束个体发展;（6）认知能力与行为活动敏感于早期环境,但二者发展也具有可塑性     

The Self in Pain: The Paradox of Memory. The Paradox of Testimony

Using the 7-year psychotherapy of a Holocaust survivor, this paper explores the sometimes contradictory aspects of approaches to trauma. Conceptualizing a “self in pain” as an alternative to contemporary conceptualizations of the traumatized person as having a damaged, dissociated or collapsed self leads to a corresponding alternative clinical approach. The paradoxes of traumatic memory and testimony necessitate an adaptational emphasis and the emergence of a “doubled” in contrast to a dissociated self. The decision to respect this “doubled” self involves a privileging of “reality” over “psychic reality” which then, paradoxically enables this patient to develop a phantasy life.     

Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships by Eric Berne

A dialectical therapeutic approach has been used in treating individuals and families. Its application in group therapy is described with the aid of several anecdotal examples.     

Comparison Theory in Economic Psychology Regarding the Easterlin Paradox and Decreasing Marginal Utility: a Critique

This paper challenges the assumption within Economics that the relationship between money and subjective wellbeing is determined by processes of cognitive comparison. An alternative explanation for such well known phenomena as the Easterlin Paradox and Decreasing Marginal Utility are provided through a consideration of affect. The theoretical basis for such explanations relies on theory from Psychology usually overlooked by Economists, such as affect heuristics and Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis. The presented evidence for this alternative source of explanation melds psychological theory with empirical data. It is concluded that affective processes offer a coherent alternative explanation for the phenomena under discussion.     

The Adult Self: Process and Paradox

This paper defines the adult self as an identity-in-a-mutuality-of-relating, a reality that is at once a process and a paradox. As an identity-in-a-mutuality-of-relating this self has 5 characteristics, each of which is also a process and a paradox: it is a body-self; it is rooted and disclosed in feeling; it is a felt sense of depth; it has its own clear boundaries and exists in intimacy; and it is its own responsible process of experiencing. The fullness of the adult self lies in self-actualization and self-reflection, and here this self is most a process and most a paradox.     

The No-No Paradox Is a Paradox

The No-No Paradox consists of a pair of statements, each of which ‘says’ the other is false. Roy Sorensen claims that the No-No Paradox provides an example of a true statement that has no truthmaker: Given the relevant instances of the T-schema, one of the two statements comprising the ‘paradox’ must be true (and the other false), but symmetry constraints prevent us from determining which, and thus prevent there being a truthmaker grounding the relevant assignment of truth values. Sorensen's view is mistaken: situated within an appropriate background theory of truth, the statements comprising the No-No Paradox are genuinely paradoxical in the same sense as is the Liar (and thus, on Sorensen's view, must fail to have truth values). This result has consequences beyond Sorensen's semantic framework. In particular, the No-No Paradox, properly understood, is not only a new paradox, but also provides us with a new type of paradox, one which depends upon a general background theory of the truth predicate in a way that the Liar Paradox and similar constructions do not.