Where are virtues?

Philosophical Studies - This paper argues that the question, ‘where are virtues?’ demands a response from virtue theorists. Despite the polarizing nature of debates about the relevance...     

Medical hermeneutics: Where is the “text” we are interpreting?

The present paper is a commentary on an article by Drew Leder [1]. Leder identifies a series of texts in the clinical encounter, emphasizes the central role of interpretation in making sense of each of these texts, and articulates ordering principles to guide the interpretive work.The metaphor of clinical work as textual explication, however, creates the expectation that there is a text somewhere to be found. Such an expectation invites doctors and patients to search for the text and runs the risk of conceptualizing patients as more static than they are. If one is to use the textual metaphor, one must appreciate the radical extent to which the clinical encounter is a mutually produced and shifting entity. The qualities of mutuality and indeterminacy are not those one usually associates with texts. One might ultimately be better served by a different metaphor based more directly on uncertainty.     

If “good managers” are masculine,what are “bad managers”?

Little research has been conducted on ineffective behavior or bad characteristics of managers as contrasted with effective behavior or good characteristics. This study examines the perceived characteristics of bad managers as well as good managers. In contrast to a stereotypical view of the good manager as masculine, bad managers were seen by business students as low in both masculinity and femininity, or in nonstereotypical terms. Results were not affected by the relative social desirability of masculine and feminine characteristics.This study was supported by a grant from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation. An earlier version of the article was presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the American Institute for Decision Sciences, New Orleans, November 1979.     

Where there is a way, is there a will? The effect of future choices on self-control

Choices often involve self-control conflicts such that options that are immediately appealing are less desirable in the long run. In the current research, the authors examine how viewing such a choice as one of a series of similar future choices rather than as an isolated decision decreases the preference for items requiring self-control. The authors show that (a) in a choice between a vice and a virtue, the share choosing vice increases when the decision is presented as one of a series of similar future choices versus when the same choice is viewed in isolation, and (b) the overall share choosing a vice increases when decisions are seen in connection with similar future choices. The findings contrast with the general wisdom that broader choice frames lead to the exercise of greater self-control. The authors propose that the context of similar future choices allows people to optimistically believe that they will choose a virtue in the future choice and hence provides them with a guilt-reducing justification to not exercise self-control in the present.     

How many hindsight biases are there?

The answer is three: questioning a conceptual default assumption in hindsight bias research, we argue that the hindsight bias is not a unitary phenomenon but consists of three separable and partially independent subphenomena or components, namely, memory distortions, impressions of foreseeability and impressions of necessity. Following a detailed conceptual analysis including a systematic survey of hindsight characterizations in the published literature, we investigated these hindsight components in the context of political elections. We present evidence from three empirical studies that impressions of foreseeability and memory distortions (1) show hindsight effects that typically differ in magnitude and sometimes even in direction, (2) are essentially uncorrelated, and (3) are differentially influenced by extraneous variables. A fourth study found similar dissociations between memory distortions and impressions of necessity. All four studies thus provide support for a separate components view of the hindsight bias. An important consequence of such a view is that apparent contradictions in research findings as well as in theoretical explanations (e.g., cognitive vs. social-motivational) might be alleviated by taking differences between components into account. We also suggest conditions under which the components diverge or converge.     

Why are there no objective values?

Using the mathematical frameworks of economic preference ranking, subjective probability, and rational learning through empirical evidence, the epistemological implications of teleological ethical intuitionism are pointed out to the extent to which the latter is based on cognitivist and objectivist concepts of value. The notions of objective value and objective norm are critically analysed with reference to epistemological criteria of intersubjectively shared valuative experience. It is concluded that one cannot meaningfully postulate general material theories of morality that could be tested, confirmed or refuted by intersubjective empirical evidence of preferences and values, however loosely the empirical evidence of values may be interpreted. This situation is explained with reference to the ways in which preceived values become systematically influenced by the concomitants of individual valuative experience, but which have nothing to do with contingent subjective interests.     

Structures and strategies: Where are we now?

Summary Psychological opinion tends to sway between a view that people are almost infinitely flexible and a view that there are definite and unchangeable fundamental mechanisms that always work in the same way and set limits of flexibility. A popular compromise has been to suppose that lower mechanisms are as determinate as typewriters, while higher ones are unanalysable, autonomous, and perhaps even beyond scientific enquiry. The point of view in this paper favours a different compromise; very early and elementary operations are thought to be done in different ways, depending on the goals and experience of the person. There is, however, a good deal of constraint, which allows laws and principles to be laid down. Yet, there is also a degree of strategic flexibility in the operations actually performed that goes further than would be allowed by theorists of a different persuasion. The selective operations of attention are not due to unalterable mechanisms, nor does there seem to be convincing evidence of universal and invariant computation of all aspects of the input. What is computed, briefly, is the minimum necessary to perform the task before the person.     

Where sex was, there shall gender be? The dialectics of psychoanalytic gender theory

Psychoanalytic theories of gender identity have come a long way since Freud. The author reviews two dialectics that have shaped psychoanalytic gender theory thus far: first, the tension between theories that emphasize biological versus sociocultural influences on gender, and second, the dialectic between nomothetic (i.e., universalizing) and idiographic (i.e., focusing on individual variation) approaches. The author argues that psychoanalytic gender theory could be further enriched with more attention to two additional dialectics. One involves the so-called gender binary and the relative focus on cultural versus developmental aspects of the binary; a second involves the relationship between gender identity and desire. Attention to these dialectics can help better integrate theoretical and clinical perspectives on gender identity.     

“Where there is a will, there is an A”: examining the roles of self-efficacy and self-concept in college students’ current educational attainment and career planning

As previous research indicates self-efficacy and self-concept have similar effects on achievement outcomes, the current study investigated the differential effects of both constructs on academic performance and career path certainty in college freshmen. Results indicated high school GPA was best predicted by general self-efficacy, whereas current GPA was most strongly related to self-efficacy for learning. However, academic competence did not moderate either self-efficacy or academic performance. Career path certainty was best explained by general self-efficacy and job competence, and scholastic competence best predicted current academic performance. Yet, no mediation effect was found for general self-efficacy amongst the variables of self-concept, academic performance, and career path certainty.     

Where are you,my beloved?: On absence,loss, and the enigma of telepathic dreams

The subject of dream telepathy (especially patients' telepathic dreams) and related phenomena in the psychoanalytic context has been a controversial, disturbing ‘foreign body’ ever since it was introduced into psychoanalysis by Freud in 1921. Telepathy ‐ suffering (or intense feeling) at a distance (Greek: pathos + tele)‐is the transfer or communication of thoughts, impressions and information over distance between two people without the normal operation of the recognized sense organs. The author offers a comprehensive historical review of the psychoanalytic literature on this controversial issue, beginning with Freud' years‐long struggles over the possibility of thoughttransference and dream telepathy. She then describes her own analytic encounter over the years with five patients' telepathic dreams' dreams involving precise details of the time, place, sensory impressions, and experiential states that the analyst was in at that time, which the patients could not have known through ordinary sensory perception and communication. The author's ensuing explanation combines contributory factors involving patient, archaic communication and analyst. Each of these patients, in early childhood, had a mother who was emotionally absent‐within‐absence, due to the absence of a significant figure in her own life. This primary traumatic loss was imprinted in their nascent selves and inchoate relating to others, with a fixation on a nonverbal, archaic mode of communication. The patient's telepathic dream is formed as a search engine when the analyst is suddenly emotionally absent, in order to find the analyst and thus halt the process of abandonment and prevent collapse into the despair of the early traumatization. Hence, the telepathic dream embodies an enigmatic ‘impossible’ extreme of patient‐analyst deep‐level interconnectedness and unconscious communication in the analytic process. This paper is part of the author's endeavour to grasp the true experiential scope and therapeutic significance of this dimension of fundamental patient‐analyst interconnectedness.     

Meeting Them “Where They're At”

Abstract

Child maltreatment is associated with serious psycho-social difficulties and enormous direct and indirect societal costs. As such, it is an area for which new and promising interventions are highly important. The purpose of this exploratory research is to examine intensive school-based psychodynamic therapy for severely maltreated children experiencing significant difficulties, by obtaining perceptions of therapeutic effectiveness by the children's parents, teachers and therapists. Themes include: therapists', parents', and teachers' perceptions of child's changes; parental perceptions of therapy and relationship with the therapist; therapists' perception of relationship with parents; school as the location of therapy; teacher-therapist relationship; and the child's academic status.     

“Where Is Everybody?” Fermi’s Paradox,Evolution, and Sin

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project has been scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life for almost half a century. So far, nothing. This raises the question physicist Enrico Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” The probability of intelligent life on another planet is high so why the silence? Technological civilizations may be short-lived. The mechanisms of evolution that lead to intelligent life and technological development also lead to propensities traditionally labeled as sin. These propensities make it difficult for technological civilizations to survive long enough to escape their home planet.     

Behavioral Gerontology Research: Where are the Male Participants?

It has been reported that females are underrepresented in several areas of psychological research, which may have significant clinical and theoretical implications. No one has reported, however, whether women are underrepresented in behavioral gerontology research. To make this determination we recorded the gender of participants in behavioral gerontology studies published in six journals. In 129 published studies that included older adults (i.e. people 55 or more years of age) there were a total of 3070 participants, and most (69%) were female. Underrepresentation of men is significant insofar as treatment effects are sometimes gender specific, making it inappropriate to generalize results from females to males (or vice versa). Moreover, underrepresentation of older men suggests that their behavioral needs may not be generating the attention they deserve. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.