Cultural issues in making and using the visual problem appraisal “Kerala’s Coast”

Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) is a complex multi-actor issue. Staff members of Cochin University (CUSAT) from India and colleagues from the Netherlands interpreted this issue as a challenge to initiate and enhance multi-stakeholder dialogue and action and the idea was born to produce a Visual Problem Appraisal (VPA). VPA is a film-based learning system that aims to induce social learning, to increase problem and policy analysis competencies, to reduce self-referentiality, to increase commitment for concerned stakeholders, and to enhance intersubjective consensus. In 2003 Indian and Dutch university staff members and Indian filmmakers produced two documentaries and 23 films portraying the Keralite stakeholders in their natural environment, exposing their engagement with, and different perspectives on, ICZM. Although produced for formal education, the notion emerged that the VPA might as well work in the reality of ICZM in Kerala. It was a fascinating conversion of questioning the nature of some events and frictions that occurred during the production process. As critical incidents were attributed to various cultural disparities such as local/foreign, male/female, higher/lower status, the hypothesis was formulated that if producing the VPA had already set a deep impact; how about using it directly with involved stakeholders? This hypothesis was tested in 2004 in workshops with publics, ranging from CUSAT students to local stakeholders of the Thycattussery Panchayat. The process of producing and testing the VPA Kerala’s Coast was a complex and intriguing multidisciplinary and multicultural project. We wondered what made the project a success. Framing the project as a space of cultural communication gave guidance to the questions that articulated our search to understand the process we had been immersed in. In this article we describe the events and analyze critical incidents that occurred during the production and the use of the VPA. The outcome leads to valuable recommendations for international and intercultural teams working on similar production and research projects.     

When Insurance Companies and Clinicians Pay Attention to Data,Everybody Wins: A Commentary on Koons,O’Rourke,Carter, and Erhardt (2013)

Insurance companies and clinicians may appear to be strange bedfellows, however, both have common objectives. This commentary describes how, using Koons, O’Rourke, Carter, and Erhardt (2013) as a model, CBT clinicians can learn to actively change the system to benefit both the providers and the clients. By doing so, we can increase the availability of evidence-based practices to a larger proportion of the population and not just individuals who can afford to pay out-of-network.     

Education and Psycho-Utopianism—Comenius,Skinner, and Beyond

In the history of ideas some researchers have recently coined the term psycho-utopianism, denoting the notion that the ideal society presupposes a “new man,” that is, the psychological nature of man must change before society can change. Cultural studies have noted this line of thinking also within the so-called New Age movement. However, the notion of a New Age is not really new; it occurred already at the beginning of the Modern Epoch; in seventeenth-century Europe. At that time, the educational philosopher J. A. Comenius was writing his canonical work Didactica Magna and other texts on education, science, and philosophy, with the ultimate aim of contributing to a new world order. Comenius was one of the first modern educators to argue for a general education of both boys and girls irrespective of social class. Three hundred years later, B. F. Skinner suggested psychological methods of education and upbringing, also with the ultimate aim to transform society. In this article I will look closer at the similarities and differences between these two thinkers regarding their psycho-utopian notions. I will conclude with similar reflections on psycho-utopian tendencies in present discourses on information and communication technology (ICT) and education.     

Technical clarification to Silbert and Thomas (2013): “Decisional separability,model identification,and statistical inference in the general recognition theory framework”

We offer a minor technical correction to the published proof of part (ii) of the main theorem in Silbert and Thomas (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 1–20, 2013) that somewhat limits the scope of the equivalence observed in that work. Specifically, in order for a mean shift integrality with decisional separability to be mimicked by a perceptually separable but nondecisionally separable configuration, one needs to assume stimulus invariance. This holds when all of the covariance matrices in the stimulus configuration are equal to each other. We note that part (i) of the theorem is unaffected by this modification; an empirical finding of perceptual separability and the failure of decisional separability can be mimicked by a perceptually nonseparable, decisionally separable configuration without restricting the covariance matrices to be equal. We also note that stimulus invariance is often assumed in simple designs (e.g., Macmillan & Ornstein in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, 1261–1285, 1998), due to the implausibility of different perceptual correlations being present within stimuli perched very closely in perceptual space.     

Representations of Sharia in Three Global Cities: Sydney,New York and Geneva 2008–2013

Drawing on methodologies used to analyse the negative portrayals of new religious movements in the press, this article analyses the way Sharia has been reported in key newspapers in Sydney, New York and Geneva from 2008 to 2013. It differentiates between perceptions of Islamic law as practised in these global cities, as well as in other countries, and examines the different levels of perception. The article also investigates portrayals and perceptions of ‘good’ Sharia (as in Islamic banking) as opposed to ‘bad’ Sharia (as in family and criminal law). It discovers that Sydney’s newspapers are more sympathetic than those in New York and Geneva towards Sharia-compliant finances. It then argues that the move towards a more Muslim consumer market in the media is not a homogenous process among Western global cities.     

Ethics,metaphysics, and psychoanalysis∗

An attempt is made to point out some of the moral presuppositions and implications of psychotherapy in theory and in practice. In the various forms of dynamically oriented psychotherapy, the setting of goals and decisions concerning maturation and health have value components. Even in psychoanalysis in its strict sense, decisions made in accepting or rejecting contracts and determination of the terminating point of analysis are value laden.

Finally, in the theorizing of Freud and others about psychotherapy moral positions are assumed.     

A tempest, a birth, and death: Freud, Jung, and Shakespeare’sPericles

This essay applies a Freudian psychoanalytic and Jungian archetypal narrative analysis to Shakespeare’s first and oft-criticized romance. The author argues that key structural and thematic elements ofPericles are best illuminated when viewed through a psychological interpretative lens, and that the play is best comprehended when examined in the context of its associative, rather than linear, richness. Masculinity and femininity, central themes of the narrative, are explored both in relation to the Oedipal complex and psychological individuation.Pericles also provides an excellent basis to examine key differences between Freud’s and Jung’s approach, particularly Jung’s widening of the primarily sexual psychoanalytic approach to encompass broader archetypal meaning.     

Passionate hockey fans: Appraisals of,coping with,and attention paid to the 2012–2013 National Hockey League lockout

ObjectivesWe examined if harmonious and obsessive passion for watching hockey were differentially related to stress experiences during the 2012–2013 National Hockey League (NHL) lockout.DesignCross-sectional data were collected from 256 undergraduate hockey fans.MethodParticipants completed questionnaires that measured passion types, stress appraisals, coping, and how they attended to lockout-related information.ResultsObsessive passion was positively associated with stress appraisals, most types of coping, and with avoiding information about the lockout. Harmonious passion was unrelated to stress appraisals, showed few relationships with coping, and was positively related with monitoring lockout-related information. Structural equation modelling supported a model whereby threat appraisal mediated the relationship between obsessive passion and disengagement-oriented coping.ConclusionsAppraising, coping with, and paying attention to the NHL lockout among hockey fans varied to the extent that their passion for hockey was more harmonious or obsessive.     

新年新希望——感恩2012,畅想2013

告别已经沉落的往事用心声唤醒旧日的记忆。走出没有脚印的过去,踏上未知晓的人生旅途。寻觅人世间温馨的爱,用亮丽挥洒的青春年华。向未来花枝招展的世界,谱写一幅色彩斑斓的画卷!     

School Counselors’ General Self-Efficacy,Ethical and Legal Self-Efficacy,and Ethical and Legal Knowledge

School counselors encounter ethical and legal situations that necessitate the knowledge and confidence to apply decision-making skills. We report the findings from a correlational investigation that examines practicing school counselors’ (N = 287) ethical and legal self-efficacy, ethical and legal knowledge, and general self-efficacy. Higher ethical and legal self-efficacy was associated with higher general self-efficacy and ethical and legal knowledge. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Self-Consciousness,Self-presentation,and Performance Under Pressure: Who Chokes,and When?

Choking under pressure by persons low and high in self-consciousness was examined as a function of two sources of performance pressure: audience and performance feedback. Subjects competed with an alleged opponent on a psychomotor task while alone, before a supportive (same team) audience, or a nonsupportive (opposing team) audience. Before the critical trial, subjects learned that their team was either somewhat ahead of or somewhat behind the opposing team. Self-consciousness, audience, and feedback interacted to affect performance during the critical trial. When disappointing the audience was likely, subjects low in self-consciousness choked. Subjects high in self-consciousness tended to choke when they were told that their team had fallen behind. It is suggested that persons who are low and high in self-consciousness experience different types of performance pressure due to disparate self-presentational motives.     

Reply to Kurth,Crosby, and Basse’s review of Emotions,Values, and Agency

In this reply, I argue that the worries raised by Kurth and this coauthors are not fatal for the perceptual theory of emotions. A first point to keep in mind in discussing the analogy argument in favor of that account is that what counts is the overall balance of similarities and differences, given their respective weight. In any case, I argue that none of the alleged differences between sensory perceptual experiences and emotions are such as to rule out that emotions are a kind of perceptual experience which can confer epistemic justification of our evaluative beliefs. Finally, I suggest that the perceptual theory is in a position to nicely capture what happens when we disagree about evaluative issues.     

Difference and presence: Derrida and Husserl’s phenomenology of language,time, history,and scientific rationality

Continental Philosophy Review - This article seeks to reconstruct and critically extend Jacques Derrida’s critique of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Derrida’s...     

Separation—Individuation,Self-Concept,and Object Relations in Fraternal Twins,Identical Twins,and Singletons

Identical twins, fraternal twins, and singletons (n = 30 in each group) were compared on objective measures of separation–individuation, object relations, and self-esteem. No significant differences were found. The data did not support the popular notion that twins face special problems with respect to personality development or the idea that twins have more difficulty than others in establishing and maintaining close relationships. Twins and nontwins did not differ significantly with respect to marital status, number of years married, whether married before, number of previous marriages, number of years divorced, or living arrangements if single. The majority of twins had been raised in a way that encouraged at least some individual differences.     

Christ,Country, and Conspiracies? Christian Nationalism,Biblical Literalism,and Belief in Conspiracy Theories

When misinformation is rampant, “fake news” is rising, and conspiracy theories are widespread, social scientists have a vested interest in understanding who is most susceptible to these false narratives and why. Recent research suggests Christians are especially susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories in the United States, but scholars have yet to ascertain the role of religiopolitical identities and epistomological approaches, specifically Christian nationalism and biblical literalism, in generalized conspiracy thinking. Because Christian nationalists sense that the nation is under cultural threat and biblical literalism provides an alternative (often anti-elite) source of information, we predict that both will amplify conspiracy thinking. We find that Christian nationalism and biblical literalism independently predict conspiracy thinking, but that the effect of Christian nationalism increases with literalism. Our results point to the contingent effects of Christian nationalism and the need for the religious variables in understanding conspiracy thinking.