What’s in a Purse? Maybe a Woman’s Reputation

Does a woman’s reputation suffer when others discover condoms in her possession? Fifty-two male and female predominantly white undergraduates from a small, private, Catholic university in the northeast USA examined the contents of a purse to formulate an impression of its owner. Unflattering inferences were drawn about the character of the target when her purse contained condoms. A follow-up study with 55 comparable participants confirmed that these inferences were indeed uncomplimentary. The results are discussed in terms of the multi-dimensional price women pay when assuming responsibility for their sexual health.     

‘More than a swineherd’

Abstract

This article suggests that alongside the strongly biblical defence of the royal supremacy, which was common in Elizabethan England, there can be found a distinctive line of argument; it stresses the roots of the magistrate’s ‘cura religionis’ in natural and human law, rather than simply divine law. This argument is often identified with Richard Hooker, who is taken to be innovative at this point. This study argues, however, that many of the same philosophical and theological points can be found in Peter Martyr Vermigli, who may have influenced Hooker. Elements of Vermigli’s Aristotelian political theory are traceable on a reading of his Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the application of these concepts in his biblical commentaries is noticeable.     

Collectives’ and individuals’ obligations: a parity argument

Individuals have various kinds of obligations: keep promises, don’t cause harm, return benefits received from injustices, be partial to loved ones, help the needy and so on. How does this work for group agents? There are two questions here. The first is whether groups can bear the same kinds of obligations as individuals. The second is whether groups’ pro tanto obligations plug into what they all-things-considered ought to do to the same degree that individuals’ pro tanto obligations plug into what they all-things-considered ought to do. We argue for parity on both counts.     

Peirce’s ‘Prescision’ as a Transcendental Method

Abstract

In this Paper I interpret Charles S. Peirce’s method of prescision as a transcendental method. In order to do so, I argue that Peirce’s pragmatism can be interpreted in a transcendental light only if we use a non‐justificatory understanding of transcendental philosophy. I show how Peirce’s prescision is similar to some abstracting procedure that Immanuel Kant used in his Critique of Pure Reason. Prescision abstracts from experience and thought in general those elements without which such experience and thought would be unaccountable. Similarly, in the Aesthetics, Kant isolated the a priori forms of intuition by showing how they could be abstracted from experience in general, while experience in general cannot be thought without them. However, if Peirce’s and Kant’s methods are similar in this respect, they reached very different conclusions.     

Fourteen-month-olds’ imitation is influenced more strongly by a model’s competence than by a model’s certainty

Research has shown that infants are more likely to learn from certain and competent models than from uncertain and incompetent models. However, it is unknown which of these cues to a model’s reliability infants consider more important. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether 14-month-old infants (n = 35) imitate and adopt tool choices selectively from an uncertain but competent compared to a certain but incompetent model. Infants watched videos in which an adult expressed either uncertainty but acted competently or expressed certainty but acted incompetently with familiar objects. In tool-choice tasks, the adult then chose one of two objects to operate an apparatus, and in imitation tasks, the adult then demonstrated a novel action. Infants did not adopt the model’s choice in the tool-choice tasks but they imitated the uncertain but competent model more often than the certain but incompetent model in the imitation tasks. In Experiment 2, 14-month-olds (n = 33) watched videos in which an adult expressed only either certainty or uncertainty in order to test whether infants at this age are sensitive to a model’s certainty. Infants imitated and adopted the tool choice from a certain model more than from an uncertain model. These results suggest that 14-month-olds acknowledge both a model’s competence and certainty when learning novel actions. However, they rely more on a model’s competence than on his certainty when both cues are in conflict. The ability to detect reliable models when learning how to handle cultural artifacts helps infants to become well-integrated members of their culture.     

‘It’s not a diet,it’s a lifestyle’: a longitudinal,data-prompted interview study of weight loss maintenance

Objective: To advance understanding of the individual and environmental factors underpinning weight loss maintenance. Design: Semi-structured, data-prompted interviews were conducted with twelve overweight adult participants (three men, nine women) who had lost over 5% of their body weight in the year before baseline. Participants gathered daily data through wireless scales, activity monitors (Fitbit?), ecological momentary assessment and experience sampling (taking photographs, writing notes). They were interviewed at 3- and 6-months post baseline. Interview stimuli included personal data of weight and activity graphs, correlations of psychological factors, and self-generated notes and photographs. Interview data were analysed using the Framework Method, applying pre-specified maintenance-relevant theoretical themes. Results: The theoretical Framework provided a good fit for the narratives, with five main themes underpinning successful weight loss maintenance: sustained motivation, effective self-regulation, plentiful resources, habit formation and a supportive environment. Additionally, participants reported an identity shift from being a dieter to accepting a new healthy lifestyle. Goal prioritising and allowing for occasional controlled lapses enhanced weight loss maintenance. Conclusions: This study successfully used the novel method of data-prompted interviews to explore weight loss maintenance experiences with new explanations emerging from the data. Future research should further develop behaviour change maintenance theory and data-prompted interview method.     

Parents’ and Children’s ADHD in a Family System

ADHD symptoms “run in families”. However, relatively little is known about the ways in which parents’ symptoms might additively and interactively work with the parenting environment, to influence (and be influenced by) the developmental trajectory of symptoms in children and adolescents. In this commentary on the special section addressing this gap in knowledge, emphasis is placed on the importance of replicating and extending family-wide studies of ADHD symptoms and etiology. The current papers exemplify the leading-edge of such efforts, demonstrating the feasibility and rigor with which studies are being conducted, utilizing longitudinal and experimental designs. Families and parenting environments operate as a system in which individuals influence each other’s symptoms and functioning. In so doing, parents produce tremendous variability within (as well as between) each family in individuals’ ADHD symptoms from childhood through adulthood, via gene-environment transactions that may even begin during prenatal development.     

Parents’ Positive Interpersonal Coping After a Child’s Death

Despite the challenging context of grieving for the death of a child, evidence shows that it is possible for parents to manage and preserve their relationship. The aim of this study was to examine parents’ perceptions of positive interpersonal coping processes that helped their relationship after the death of their child. Individual semi-structured interviews with 17 bereaved maritally committed parents were conducted. The interview guide included questions covering themes such as parents’ coping together, relationship strengths and mutual support. Data were analyzed through constructivist grounded theory methods. Three main themes were identified: search for meaning (reframing of partners’ different coping processes and the changes/difficulties in the relationship, and development of shared beliefs); communication with the partner (direct and indirect feedback, and mutual learning); and care-in-relation (caring for the partner and the relationship). Dyad-level interventions should aim at promoting mutual empathy, development of shared appraisals, and the identification and consideration of each other’s boundaries.     

Haack’s foundherentism is a foundationalism

Susan Haack has always maintained that her unquestionably important foundherentist theory of epistemic justification is not a foundationalism. In a 1997 Synthese exchange, Laurence BonJour questioned her right to this claim, and she dug in and defended it. What was at stake is of timeless importance to epistemology: it goes directly to the question, “What is foundationalism?” I inquire with greater care than either Haack or BonJour took in 1997, and I find decisively in favor of the view that foundherentism is a foundationalism. In the process, I explore the outer limits of foundationalism: I examine just how far a foundationalism can go in allowing the relevance of coherence to epistemic justification.     

Why I’m still a proportionalist

Mark Schroeder has, rather famously, defended a powerful Humean Theory of Reasons. In doing so, he abandons what many take to be the default Humean view of weighting reasons—namely, proportionalism . On Schroeder’s view, the pressure that Humeans feel to adopt proportionalism is illusory, and proportionalism is unable to make sense of the fact that the weight of reasons is a normative matter. He thus offers his own ‘Recursive View’, which directly explains how it is that the weight of reasons is a normative matter. In this paper, I argue against Schroeder that a Humean ought to be a proportionalist. On my view, proportionalism is clearly an intuitive theory of weighting for a Humean, so we should resist it only if Schroeder can demonstrate either that there is a serious problem with the view, or that there is a better alternative. I then further argue that Schroeder fails to deliver on either condition. As a result, I conclude that there are good intuitive reasons for a Humean to be a proportionalist, and no good reason not to be.     

A child’s loss becomes a young man’s violence

Abstract

This paper describes the contribution of earlier traumatic loss to the later violent eruptions, with fatal consequences, of two young men, one who killed his mother and one who killed an unknown woman. Their developing personalities became disordered during their disturbed childhoods and the link between these developing personality disorders and psychoses is referred to. The need for long-term treatments is emphasised, as well as the importance of communication between therapist and clinical team.     

Taking a children’s rights perspective on children’s spirituality

Abstract

The right to spiritual development has had little attention in public educational policy. This is more challenging, considering the fact of increasing religious diversity and the focus on spirituality and religion in that context, as well as the way the spiritual is mentioned in documents on children’s rights. This article traces the development from the first documents on the rights of the child and responses to these documents. It is argued that educational policy and practice should pay more attention to the way children’s spirituality is included in the documents. This is an issue of general education as well as of moral philosophy. The article concludes with a claim: spiritual development is a matter of survival and flourishing as human beings, and considering this in the framework of children’s rights could mean exploring spiritual sources in one’s own faith as well as in other faiths.     

Drivers’ gaze fixations during judgements about a bicyclist’s intentions

An experiment tracked drivers’ gaze patterns as they made judgements about the manoeuvring intentions of a bicyclist at a T-junction. The stimuli involved a factorial manipulation of the bicyclist’s arm-signals and gaze cues, as well as whether the participant viewed the bicyclist from the major road or the minor road. When making their decisions, there was a strong tendency for participants to direct their gaze, and so presumably their attention, to the bicyclist’s face before any other relevant area, including the arm when it was used for signalling. Moreover, participants not only spent longer looking at the face than any of the other aspects of the bicyclist that were considered, but this effect was particularly pronounced in situations where the bicyclist was effectively making eye-contact with the participant. These findings support the idea that encountering a bicyclist is a fundamentally social interaction and suggest that drivers exhibit an attentional bias, such that they are particularly likely to seek out the face upon seeing a vulnerable road user. In light of the substantial literature on reflexive processing that seems to occur when faces are viewed, this bias may help explain slow driver decision responses to bicyclists seen in previous studies.     

What does a person in a “TOT” state know that a person in a “don’t know” state doesn’t know

The purpose of this study was to examine the significance of Brown and McNeill’s (1966) findings regarding the “tip of the tongue” (TOT) phenomenon, A modified version of their procedure was used with 56 Ss. Although their findings that Ss in a TOT state can detect parts and properties of the missing word were generally replicated, a division of the TOT state into a variety of substates showed correct detection rate to vary greatly, depending on the substate involved. In addition, correct detection of partial information was demonstrated even when S declared he had no knowledge of the selected word (don’t know). It was suggested that a distinction be made between information detection based on knowledge of the characteristics common to the class of items of which the target is a member (“class detection”) and detection based on knowledge of characteristics specific to the target in question (“differential detection”). Both class and differential detection were found to obtain in TOT states as well as in the don’t know state. Some theoretical and methodological implications were suggested     

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Gender Stereotype!: Longitudinal Associations Between Superhero Viewing and Gender Stereotyped Play

Although content analyses have found that superhero programs in the media portray strong gender stereotypes of masculinity, little research has examined the effects of viewing such programs. In the current study, 134 mothers of preschool children (from the Western and Northwestern United States) reported their child’s superhero exposure in the media, male-stereotyped play, weapon play, and parental active mediation of the media at two time points (1 year apart). Results revealed that boys viewed superhero programs more frequently than girls, with nearly a quarter of boys viewing superhero programs at least weekly. Analyses revealed that superhero exposure was related to higher levels of male-stereotyped play for boys and higher levels of weapon play for both boys and girls from Time 1 to Time 2, even after controlling for initial levels. Parental active mediation did not negate these effects, and even served to strengthen one finding for girls. Specifically, among girls with high superhero exposure, weapon play was highest for girls who received frequent active mediation. Implications of the results are discussed with a focus on whether such programs are developmentally appropriate for preschool children.     

Against Levinas’ messianic politics: a polemic

Blamelessly, most commentators attempt to deduce the political theory of Levinas from his interhuman philosophy. In contrast to the perceived state of ethical life in contemporary politics, the attractiveness of the asymmetric obligations owed by the ego to the Other make the deductive project seem urgent. But an inductive analysis of Levinas’ philosophy yields troubling prerequisites, including rigorous theocracy and a form of sociability in which no epistemological clarity is permitted that could determine in situ interpersonal duties. Such unfamiliar politics enable the celebrated ethical relation of self for the Other. Designed as a polemic with the presumption that politics not ethics is first philosophy, the insights of the inductive analysis of Levinas’ thought will come as no surprise to observers who worry that power and sovereignty cannot be summarily excluded from social or even ethical relations.     

Parkinson’s Disease as a Disconnection Syndrome

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a major neurodegenerative disorder that is usually considered in terms of midbrain and basal ganglia dysfunction. Regarding PD instead as a disconnection syndrome may prove beneficial to understanding aspects of cognition, perception, and other neuropsychological domains in the disease. PD is usually of unilateral onset, providing evidence of intrahemispheric dissociations and an imbalance in the usual relative strengths of the right and left hemispheres. Hence, in order to appreciate the neuropsychology of PD, it is important to apply to this disease our understanding of hemispheric lateralization effects and within-hemisphere circuitry from brainstem to higher-order association cortex. The focus of this review is on the relevance of PD-related disconnections among subcortical and cortical structures to cognition, perception, emotion, and associated brainstem-based domains such as sleep and mood disturbance. Besides providing information on disease characteristics, regarding PD as a disconnection syndrome allows us to more completely understand normal brain-behavior relations in general.