Hedonic Tone,Perceived Arousal,and Item Desirability: Three Components of Self-reported Mood

Self-reports of mood are the most frequently used measure of subjective emotional experience in studies of human emotion. The present study evaluated the degree to which self-reports of mood reflect the social desirability of an affective state, rather than the hedonic tone and the level of arousal associated with such states. The study produced three main findings. First, the desirability of a mood and the hedonic quality of a mood are related, but not identical entities. Secondly, the desirability of a mood is also related to the level of arousal the mood denotes. Thirdly, desirability components are related to the self-report ratings of mood, but the ratings also reflect the hedonic tone and level of arousal describing the internal state of the respondents. Social desirability does affect the self-report ratings that are often used in emotion research, but such ratings also reflect something about the internal state of the respondents.     

On Ignorance: A Reply to Peels

Rik Peels has ingeniously argued that ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In this response, I defend the ??Standard View of Ignorance?? according to which they are equivalent. In the course of doing so, some important lessons will emerge concerning the nature of ignorance and its relationship to knowledge.     

On Some Counter-Examples to the Guise of the Good-Thesis: Intelligibility without Desirability

This paper argues that there are cases, which various guise of the good-theses concerning desires, intentions and actions would not allow. In these cases the agent acts for considerations that the agent does not regard as good reasons. The considerations render the actions intelligible but not desirable (where desirability and intelligibility can be objective or subjective). These cases are atypical, but nonetheless show that those guise of the good-theses which do not allow them, should be revised. In typical cases the intelligibility of desires, intentions and actions co-varies with their desirability: there are both unintelligible cases without suitable desirability characteristics and cases where desirability characteristics make the desire, intention and action intelligible. The claim here is that there are further more atypical and puzzling, but equally possible cases, where intelligibility and desirability come apart. The paper first introduces the Guise of the Good - debates about desires, intentions, and actions, and suggests distinguishing the category of “acting for a reason” from “acting for a consideration not taken to be a reason”. It then argues that while desirability entails intelligibility, and lack of intelligibility entails lack of desirability, these two cases leave conceptual room for a third category, which is that of intelligibility without desirability. This is so, whether we examine objective or subjective intelligibility and desirability. The claim is meant to apply mutatis mutandis to characteristics of desires, intentions and actions. The paper then provides possible cases of intelligibility without desirability, and defends the view against some objections.     

On Disability and Illness. A Reply to Edwards

This paper is a reply to an article by Steven Edwards in a previous issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. In this paper Edwards discusses two types of problems which he finds to be inherent in my theory of disability, mainly as presented in my On the Nature of Health, Kluwer 1995. First, Edwards discerns a tension in my basic definition of health, a tension between my “subjectivistic” and my “objectivistic” aspirations in the definition. Second, he finds that my theory of disability does not allow for a distinction between disability due to illness or injury and disability which has no such (at least not immediate) background. In my answer to Edwards's arguments I claim that his first criticism must be due to a misunderstanding of my intentions. I find his second criticism to be more to the point. It raises important issues in the theory of health which partly concern our interpretation of the notion of illness. Edwards introduces the notion of capacity in order to separate between disability due to illness or injury and disability without such a background. In the last part of my paper I argue that this distinction, however, will not fulfil its purpose. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

On the two-dimensional nature of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale

Ramanaiah, Schill, and Leung (1977) reported empirical evidence supporting Millham's (1974) hypothesis that attribution and denial are two separate components of the MC-SD scale. This paper presents the results of two studies conducted to test the hypothesis that the results obtained by Ramanaiah et al. (1977) may be attributed to method variance caused by the keying direction in the MC-SD attribution and denial subscales. The first study was concerned with the development of balanced attribution and denial scales, while the second study investigated whether the results from Ramanaiah et al., which used the original unbalanced attribution and denial scales, could be replicated with the balanced scales developed in Study I. The results strongly supported the tested hypothesis, indicating that the two subscales are measuring essentially the same construct.     

On Not Changing the Problem: A Reply to Howson

Howson's critique of my essay on Hume's problem of induction levels two main charges. First, Howson claims that I have attributed to him an error that he never made, and in fact which he warned against in the very text that I cite. Secondly, Howson argues that my proposed solution to Hume's problem is flawed on technical and philosophical grounds. In response to the first charge, I explain how Howson's text justifies attributing to him the claim that the principle of induction is shown to be inconsistent by Goodman's riddle. In regards to the second, I show that Howson's objections rest on misunderstandings of formal learning theory and on conflating the problem of induction with the problem of unconceived alternatives.     

On Future Ontology: A Reply to Longenecker

Axiomathes - The supporters of Indeterminate Futurism Theory [IFT] suggest three different reasons for preferring their view over Growing Block Theory [GBT]. If compared to GBT, IFT offers a better...     

On Empty Bathtubs: A Reply to Meehl

In the present state of ambiguity, negative studies of the validity of psychodiagnostic tests can easily be generated. But such studies throw little light upon the capacities of the tests and are confounded by the utilization of clinical interpretations. It would be most advisable to deal first with the central problems: the need for an integrated theory delineating tests in terms of the areas of optimum assessment and levels tapped; and, the development of realistic expectations on the part of clinicians. The studies frequently cited as throwing question upon the validity of projective tools are rejected on three grounds: the unrealistic wording of the hypotheses (i.e., are these tests valid or invalid, rather than under what circumstances and in what areas are the tests valid); the failure to consider the populations and the background experience of the clinician; and the methodological weaknesses in the designs of the studies. While the author admits that in the long run Meehl may turn out to be correct in suggesting that projective techniques have little value, at the present time Meehl's case for such a conclusion seems weak and should not serve as a deterrent for further investigations and proper utilization of projective techniques.     

On the Nature of Auditory Neglect: A Reply to Hugdahl and Wester

We respond to the points raised by Hugdahl and Wester (1994) and argue that a definition of auditory neglect must be based not on consideration of lesion location and extension but on a theoretical understanding of the mechanisms held to underlie neglect in the auditory modality. A first requirement is to describe the phenomenon that has to be explained. An ear extinction effect in dichotic listening, even considered along with the site of brain damage, does not provide sufficient justification for the effect to be attributed to "neglect."     

On Finitism and the Beginning of the Universe: A Reply to Stephen Puryear

Stephen Puryear argues that William Lane Craig's view, that time as duration is logically prior to the potentially infinite divisions that we make of it, involves the idea that time is prior to any parts we conceive within it (Priority of the Whole with respect to Time: PWT). He objects that PWT entails the Priority of the Whole with respect to Events (PWE), and that it subverts the argument, used by proponents of the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) such as Craig, against an eternal past based on the impossibility of traversing an actual infinite sequence of events. I argue that proponents of KCA can affirm that time is not discrete, nor is it continuous with actual infinite number of parts or points, but rather that it is a continuum with various parts yet without an actual infinite number of parts or points. I defend this view, and I reply to Puryear's other objections.     

On Making the Same Choice Eternally: A Reply to Davis

In this brief reply to Stephen Davis, I argue that Davis’s separationist position, wherein those who remain eternally apart from God do so by choice, is internally contradictory in that it leads to universalism.     

Masculinity, Femininity, and Androgyny: Relations to Self-Esteem and Social Desirability

ABSTRACT The present investigation is a reanalysis of data from Antill and Cunningham (1979,1980) consisting of responses to five Masculinity-Femininity (MF) instruments, two self-esteem instruments, and two social desirability instruments The present study examined recently developed models of the MF/ esteem relation and the influence of social desirability on this relation The unique contribution of Masculinity (M) to esteem was consistently more positive than that of Femininity (F) which was either ml or negative, did not vary with sex as posited by sex-typed models, and did not interact with F as posited by interactive androgyny models Partialing out the effects of social desirability failed to alter the general pattern of results In contrast to esteem, social desirability was more correlated with F than M, and these findings were consistent with the observation that esteem items may reflect stereotypically masculine characteristics whereas social desirability items reflect stereotypically feminine characteristics The findings of the present study, and those of previous research, were examined in relation to important methodological issues that have been largely ignored by previous research in this area     

Buffers items, insight, and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale

Summary: The influence of buffer items on response to the MarloweCrowne Social Desirability Scale (MC) was examined. Thirty-four college student subjects received MC questionnaires with intermixed extraversion and neuroticism items, while 35 others received separate MC and extraversion-neuroticism questionnaires. MC means under the two conditions differed nonsignificantly, and confidence interval estimation spoke against the likelihood of any appreciable buffer item effect. Little insight into the purpose of MC was exhibited-less than half that previously reported by Shrauger (1972)-nor was it related to the buffer item manipulation.