Naked narrative: Real research?

A multi‐layered narrative is presented as a way of inviting discussion about narrative as research in the talking therapies and social sciences. The core issue under consideration is the challenge of researching lived experience and how this is distorted or eliminated by many traditional approaches to research. The paper contains an account of a first experience of presenting a narrative about ethical decision‐making to a national research conference by someone more accustomed to writing and researching in traditional propositional discourses. The aim of this narrative is to focus attention on the lived experience of generating new understanding and practice and to raise questions for discussion about the role of narrative in research, especially research directed towards developing insight into lived experience.     

What Is ‘Real’ in Probabilism?

This paper defends two related claims about belief: first, the claim that, unlike numerical degrees of belief, comparative beliefs are primitive and psychologically real; and, second, the claim that the fundamental norm of Probabilism is not that numerical degrees of belief should satisfy the probability axioms, but rather that comparative beliefs should satisfy certain constraints.     

How Digital Computer Simulations Explain Real‐World Processes

Scientists of many disciplines use theoretical models to explain and predict the dynamics of the world. They often have to rely on digital computer simulations to draw predictions fromthe model. But to deliver phenomenologically adequate results, simulations deviate from the assumptions of the theoretical model. Therefore the role of simulations in scientific explanation demands itself an explanation. This paper analyzes the relation between real‐world system, theoretical model, and simulation. It is argued that simulations do not explain processes in the real world directly. The way in which simulations help explaining real‐world processes is conceived as indirect, mediated by the theoretical model. Simulacra are characterized further, and turn out to be a priori measurable. This gives a clue to a better understanding of the epistemic role of computer simulations in scientific research.     

The Real World: What Good Is It?

Any experimental science runs the risk of implosion. The tasks that were created as surrogates for complicated real-world situations can take on lives of their own. When that happens, scientists become fascinated with the nuances of variations within that little world. Their theoretical accounts end up with little place for phenomena that could not be observed there. Extrapolations to other settings may require large doses of conjecture (or leaps of faith). This essay examines some possibilities for understanding the world of the lab by grappling with applied problems in the world outside and perhaps doing a little good along the way.     

Radical embodied cognitive science and “Real Cognition”

A persistent criticism of radical embodied cognitive science is that it will be impossible to explain “real cognition” without invoking mental representations. This paper provides an account of explicit, real-time thinking of the kind we engage in when we imagine counter-factual situations, remember the past, and plan for the future. We first present a very general non-representational account of explicit thinking, based on pragmatist philosophy of science. We then present a more detailed instantiation of this general account drawing on nonlinear dynamics and ecological psychology.

     

Will the Real Moral Judgment Please Stand Up?

The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgments. However, we suggest that the empirical literature indicates a complex interplay between automatic and deliberative mental processes in moral judgment formation, with the latter constraining the expression and influence of moral intuitions. We therefore conclude that the psychological literature supports a normative conception of agency.

Real or imagined incomplete lateralization of function in females?

Visual field effects for 30 normal familial right-handed females were investigated with 4-point random forms known to be recognized more accurately in the right visual field by normal familial right-handed males, and the relationship between spatial ability and various performance patterns was examined. The forms were presented 2 deg in the left or right visual field. After a 10-sec delay, the subject decided whether or not a form exposed in central vision was the same as the stimulus. Incomplete lateralization of function appeared to be supported by the finding of no field differences. An alternative explanation was discussed since visual field superiority was significantly correlated with WAIS Block Design scores scaled for age, females with relatively low scores showing a right visual field superiority and females with relatively high scores showing a left visual field superiority. The experiment was repeated with 30 familial right-handed males. A significant right visual field superiority was obtained, but visual field superiorities were not correlated with measures of visuo-spatial or verbal ability.     

Testosterone intake and aggressiveness: Real effect or anticipation?

In a double-blind experiment, human males (n = 27) were given either testosterone (40 mg/day), placebo, or no treatment, over a one week period. Subjective and observer assessed mood estimations were conducted before and after treatment. Testosterone levels in saliva were measured with radioimmunoassay. The results revealed a significant placebo effect [c. f. Medicine and Science in Sports 4: 124–126]: After treatment, the placebo group scored higher than both the testosterone and the control group on self-estimated anger, irritation, impulsivity, and frustration. Observer-estimated mood yielded similar results. The lack of a placebo effect in the testosterone group is intriguing, and may be due to secondary effects caused by suppression of the body's own testosterone production, since recorded non-protein bound testosterone did not significantly rise due to treatment. The resultss suggest that androgen usage causes expectations, rather than an actual increase of aggressiveness. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Real Relationship: The “Something More” of Psychotherapy

Although it often operates silently, the personal relationship is a part of everything that transpires between therapist and client. Following the psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson's (1967) early lead, the term Real Relationship is used to capture this personal aspect of psychotherapy. It is divided into two elements, realism and genuineness; and both these elements are further divided into magnitude and valence aspects. Research on the real relationship is almost nonexistent, and to an important extent this is due to the lack of a reliable, valid, and convenient measure. The author is involved in a research project aimed at developing such measures from both the client and therapist perspective. Examples of items are provided.     

Explaining Jury Verdicts: Is Leniency Bias for Real?

Laboratory research suggests juries that begin deliberation with a strong majority (i.e., 2/3 or more) usually end up choosing the verdict favored by this majority, whereas those without a strong majority generally acquit or hang. We tested the robustness of these findings in the field by examining trial and deliberation correlates of jury verdicts using data from 79 criminal jury trials held in Indiana. As expected, several trial characteristics and the first-vote preference distribution were related to jury verdicts. However, there was no evidence of leniency bias—75% of those juries without a 2/3 majority on the first deliberation vote ended up convicting. Contributions of the study, limitations, and alternative explanations for the observed severity bias are discussed.     

Slavoj Žižek and the Real Subject of Politics

Slavoj ?i?ek's refusal to sketch an alternative to the global liberal-capitalist order, combined with his claim that there is an urgent need for a repolitization of, most of all, the economy, raises the question of the possibility of radical political thought and action. Considering fundamentalisms and politically correct multiculturalism not as oppositional, but as correlative to the “depolitization” of post-modern societies, ?i?ek invokes the emancipatory legacy of Europe in an attempt to reinvent Marxism in a way similar to what Lenin, thrown into an open situation, had to do in 1917 between the revolutions. A single question confronts political philosophy today: is liberal-capitalist democracy the ultimate horizon of our political practice, or is it possible to open up the space for another political articulation? The key to a repolitization is to identify with the “symptom” of the existing global order's false claim to Universality, with the excluded “part of no part” who politicizes it's predicament by claiming to stand for the real universal. In order not to discard political struggle as “unrealistic”, today's cynical “realist” consensus must be broken. Taking things as they “really are” has become the dominant ideological mode that keeps people from thinking about alternatives. The remedy is to show that things never are “really” as they are.

     

Is It Real or Is It Fiction? Children's Bias Toward Reality

Children aged 3 to 8 years old and adults were tested on a reality–fantasy distinction task. They had to judge whether particular entities were real or fantastical, and response times were collected. We further manipulated whether the entity is a specific character or a generic fantastical entity. The results indicate that children, unlike adults, show a tendency to err by judging fantastical entities as real (response bias toward reality). All children were significantly slower when categorizing fantastical stimuli compared with real stimuli. We conclude that the process of classifying items into real versus fantastical categories develops at least until children are 7 to 8 years old.     

Personality Assessment for Employee Development: Ivory Tower or Real World?

The acceptance and popularity of personality assessments in organizational contexts has grown enormously over the last 40 years. Although these are used across many applications, such as executive coaching, team building, and hiring and promotion decisions, the focus of most published research on the use of personality assessments at work is biased toward assessment for employee selection. Reviews have therefore tended to use criteria that are appropriate for selection, neglecting the additional and different criteria that are important in relation to employee development. An illustration of the often-discussed scientist–practitioner divide is that the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is the most widely known and used personality assessment in organizations, despite harsh criticism by the academic community. This article reviews this debate, and draws implications for the appropriate choice of personality assessments for use in individual and team development, and a new direction for scientific research.     

Does a Real Albert Nolan Need Don Cupitt? A Response to Ronald Nicolson

In this paper, in response to Nicolson's claim that South African liberation theology is non-realist – or at least is non-realist in its language – I suggest that Albert Nolan's important book God in South Africa is not based on such an "exotic" philosophical basis but is a reflection using the populist Marxism of the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1980s. The clue here is Nolan's use of the Colonialism of a Special Type thesis, an integral part of ANC and Communist Party discourse since the 1960s. Nolan himself has described his work as "historical materialist" in its philosophical language. Such a position seems far removed from non-realism, although they certainly sound similar in Nolan's God-language.
I then examine non-realist theologian Don Cupitt's model of "militant religious humanism" (from his Life-Lines ) and conclude that a non-realist liberation or political theology along these lines suffers too much from a sense of relativism or absurdity for it to be of use to those who use liberation theology. From this I try to suggest how a non-realist liberation theology might be developed. In the end, however, I conclude that though such a theology could be constructed, it would probably not be effective: liberation theology requires a real God who really sides with the poor.