Gentle Nazarene or Failure?

This paper argues through three case studies that representations of Jesus by practitioners of other religious traditions, in this case Buddhists, are conditioned by historical and social factors. The first two cases, David Hewavitarne/Anagārika Dharmapāla (1864–1933) and Allan Bennett/Ananda Metteyya (1872–1923), demonstrate that negative experience of Christian theology and practice broadly resulted in the judgment that Jesus was a failure. The more conciliatory and exploratory approach of my third case study, convert to Buddhism Maurice O’Connell Walshe (1911–1998), illustrates the factors that have led to (1) socially engaged cooperation between Buddhists and Christians and (2) the respectful dialogue on Jesus and the Buddha in the 21st century.     

Attending to objects: costs or benefits?

The single-object advantage is said to occur when performance is faster and/or more accurate when the two targets to be compared appear on one object than when they appear on two different objects. The single-object advantage has been interpreted to suggest that attention can select objects rather than unparsed regions of visual space. In five experiments we explored whether directing attention to one object rather than two objects produces a benefit or a minor cost. Participants were required to compare two target features that belonged to one object, to two objects, or did not belong to any object. In addition, we varied the relevance to the task of object-related global information, such as symmetry of the object and perceptual cluttering of the background. Results showed that attending to one object in comparison to attending to no object produced a benefit only when object-related global information was relevant to the task. In contrast, when object-related global information was irrelevant to the task, attending to one object produced a cost. Thus, it can be concluded that attending to an object does not produce an absolute benefit, but rather produces a smaller cost than attending to two objects.     

Casuistry: an alternative or complement to principles?

Casuistry is a traditional method of interpreting and resolving moral problems. It focuses on the circumstances of particular cases rather than on the application of ethical theories and principles. After a brief history of casuistry, the method is explained and its relation to theory and principles is discussed.     

The instinct to teach: Altruism or aggression?

In this paper, the term ‘teaching’ means activities which induce a specific change in the behavior of a member of the same species, and are adapted until the pupil reaches a certain standard of performance. Teaching in this sense is confined to man, with one group of exceptions. Other forms of social learning are observed among the mammals and even the buds. The most important is imitation, or learning by observation. Teaching by other species always involves punishment, and always leads to the separation or spacing out of individuals. It occurs 1) at weaning, 2) in maintaining status within a group, and 3) in territorial behavior. In each case an animal is punished for approaching another. Man is distinguished by using punishment not only as a deterrent but also in the teaching of skills. Such conduct is sometimes called aggressive. To give it this name is to put teaching (by punishment) in the same class as socially undesirable acts. Such a usage obscures questions that can profitably be asked. Children learn much by imitation, and are encouraged to do so. But teaching of skills (usually not by punishment) and of customs seems to be universal in human communities, both primitive and advanced. To say that there is an instinct or drive to teach adds, however, nothing to this statement. Some teaching, especially the formal process in schools, is by adults and is confined to particular societies. But, in addition, children teach younger children, sometimes evidently without prompting by elders. This is one aspect of the nurturant behavior which is perhaps a feature of all societies. Some traditions seem to be maintained solely by children. Such conduct is probably at times altruistic in the traditional sense of the term. “Altruism” in biological writings today has, however, a different meaning, and is therefore becoming a source of confusion. In many communities, both primitive and advanced, nurturant behavior and the teaching of young children by older children are reported to be more prominent among girls than among boys. Teaching, considered as a type of behavior, has been neglected as a subject of study. It would repay multidisciplinary investigation, especially as it appears in the conduct of children.     

Coping and Defense Mechanisms: What's the Difference?

Defense mechanisms and coping strategies are discussed as two different types of adaptational processes. They may be clearly differentiated on the basis of the psychological processes involved, but not on the basis of their relation to outcome measures. Criteria that critically differentiate between defense and coping processes include the conscious/unconscious status and the intentional/nonintentional nature of the processes. Criteria based on the dispositional or situational status of the process, and on the conceptualization of the processes as hierarchical, are found to be more a matter of emphasis than of critical difference. A criterion that attempts to differentiate between defense and coping processes on the basis of their relation to psychological or physical health is found to be without support once the bias in self-report outcome measures is recognized.     

Transition to Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality?

This article substantiates the thesis that the outlines of the future and present can be made visible and comprehensible by applying a new methodology for cognition of regularities in the human community development. This methodology made it possible to define that there have been and are only two paradigms of the human system development in the entire multicentury course of the human community development. Cycles, crises, chaos, and all negative phenomena are nothing else but natural products of the second, indirect paradigm of development. The new model of life organization at each local level is at the same time the former, first development paradigm, based on the direct interconnection between production and consumption of specific human beings, but raised onto the new high-tech level. Practical realization of this model is the only feasible precondition for the transition to sustainable and crisis-free development.     

Failure to detect function word repetitions and omissions in reading: Are eye movements to blame?

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - We tested whether failure to notice repetitions of function words during reading (e.g., Amanda jumped off the the swing and landed on her feet.) is due to the...     

Dependence: A means or an impediment to growth?

Dependence is generally viewed negatively, and in therapeutic situations it is often considered to be 'unhealthy'. In object relations theory and attachment theory, however, it is acknowledged that dependent or care-seeking behaviour is activated even in 'healthy' adults in times of distress. This suggests that dependency is likely to be an issue for all professionals whose work involves a counselling element. In order to investigate views of dependency in the therapeutic relationship, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted with three focus groups. The resulting data indicate considerable concern relating to issues of dependency, and a need for more rigorous research into the management of client dependency.     

Learning lyrics: To sing or not to sing?

According to common practice and oral tradition, learning verbal materials through song should facilitate word recall. In the present study, we provide evidence against this belief. In Experiment 1, 36 university students, half of them musicians, learned an unfamiliar song in three conditions. In the sung-sung condition, the song to be learned was sung, and the response was sung too. In the sung-spoken condition, the response was spoken. In the divided-spoken condition, the presented lyrics (accompanied by music) and the response were both spoken. Superior word recall in the sung-sung condition was predicted. However, fewer words were recalled when singing than when speaking. Furthermore, the mode of presentation, whether sung or spoken, had no influence on lyric recall, in either short- or long-term recall. In Experiment 2, singing was assessed with and without words. Altogether, the results indicate that the text and the melody of a song have separate representations in memory, making singing a dual task to perform, at least in the first steps of learning. Interestingly, musical training had little impact on performance, suggesting that vocal learning is a basic and widespread skill.     

Social dreaming:competition or complementation to individual dreaming?

Social dreaming is presented as a method to explore the unconscious dimension of the social world. The theoretical position of social dreaming and its historical development is described. Two examples are given for the practical application of social dreaming, a professional meeting of psychotherapists and an experiential workshop dealing with the aftermath of trauma. It is suggested that social dreaming is complementary to individual dreaming and offers insights and explanations, as well as guidance on various levels for applications in clinical, organizational, institutional and social settings.     

Surrendering personal control to automation: Appalling or appealing?

There has been a growing interest in Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology worldwide over the last decade. Nevertheless, various studies have noted some potential socio-psychological challenges to AV use and ownership. These challenges can be mitigated by designing AV that accounts for users’ personalities, such as their perceived control and power. The complex relationship between personal control and automation, two concepts that intuitively sound contradictory to each other, is less explored. In this study, two dimensions of personal control, the desire for control and the driver locus of control, were hypothesized to influence the attitude toward AV. The relationships were moderated by power distance, a cultural factor related to one’s sense of control. The hypotheses were tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach via the Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software. As many as 457 respondents from two sample groups, Hungarian and Indonesian drivers were gathered via an online questionnaire and compared. The results reveal that 1) the higher the desire for control, the more negative the attitude toward AV 2) the higher the external driver locus of control, the more positive the attitude toward AV 3) the more positive the attitude toward AV, the higher the intention to use AV and 4) power distance moderates the relationship between the desire for control and the attitude toward AV, such that the negative effect of the desire for control is strengthened in high power distance orientation. This study also provides theoretical contributions and managerial implications, especially to AV designers.     

The Shield of Defense or the Sword of Prosecution?How Self‐Regulatory Focus Relates to Responses to Crime

People can strive to attain goals in one of two ways: They can be tolerant of risk and focus on attaining successes, or they can be intolerant of risk and focus on avoiding pitfalls and failures. These differences, termed promotion focus and prevention focus, respectively, have been related to differences in how personal goals are understood, but not yet applied to policy issues. Two studies examine the implications of chronic (Study 1) and experimentally induced (Study 2) promotion vs. prevention goals for a law‐and‐order mind set. Participants high in promotion focus assigned more punishment to a criminal (Study 1). Compared to prevention‐focused participants, experimentally induced promotion focus increased the likelihood of arresting a suspect and justifying this choice (Study 2).