Losing to Terrorism: An American Work in Progress

Abstract: The evolution of the U.S. war on terrorism is on a path that poses a substantial probability of losing to it, although not necessarily of a victory by its declared targets. That conclusion follows from the definition presented of terrorism and thus central questions about the merits of responses justified by an objective of reducing it. Likely American responses to 9/11 are suggested by a review of well‐known policy‐making tendencies from past scholarship and experience, tendencies well‐established prior to 9/11 and by no means unique to the Bush II presidency. The expectations those tendencies suggest have been born out by what the United States has done and not done. Well‐established criteria and their implied rules of practice for security enhancing great‐power statecraft are presented, and the chosen U.S. program of action is found to be counter‐productive in their light.     

Empathy‐induced altruism in a prisoner's dilemma II: what if the target of empathy has defected?

What if participants in a one‐trial prisoner's dilemma know before making their decision that the other person has already defected? From the perspective of classic game theory, a dilemma no longer exists. It is clearly in their best interest to defect too. The empathy‐altruism hypothesis predicts, however, that if they feel empathy for the other, then a dilemma remains: self‐interest counsels defection; empathy‐induced altruism counsels not. This motivational conflict should lead at least some empathically aroused individuals not to defect. To test this prediction, we placed 60 undergraduate women in a one‐trial prisoner's dilemma in which they knew the other had already defected. Among those not induced to feel empathy, very few (0.05) did not defect in return. Among those induced to feel empathy for the other, almost half (0.45) did not defect. These results underscore the power of empathy‐induced altruism to affect responses in a prisoner's dilemma. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Geographic variation in empathy: A state-level analysis

Empathy is often studied at the individual level, but little is known about variation in empathy across geographic regions and how this variation is associated with important regional-level outcomes. The present study examined associations between state-level empathy, prosocial behavior, and antisocial behavior in the United States. Participants were 79,563 U.S. residential adults who completed measures of cognitive and emotional empathy (i.e., perspective taking and empathic concern). Information on prosocial and antisocial behavior was retrieved from publicly available government databases. All indices of empathy were related to lower rates of violent crime, aggravated assault, and robbery. Total empathy was associated with higher well-being and higher volunteer rates. Implications for geographic variation in empathy, prosocial behavior, and antisocial behavior are discussed.     

The gap between law and ethics in human embryonic stem cell research: Overcoming the effect of U.S. Federal policy on research advances and public benefit

Key ethical issues arise in association with the conduct of stem cell research by research institutions in the United States. These ethical issues, summarized in detail, receive no adequate translation into federal laws or regulations, also described in this article. U.S. Federal policy takes a passive approach to these ethical issues, translating them simply into limitations on taxpayer funding, and foregoes scientific and ethical leadership while protecting intellectual property interests through a laissez faire approach to stem cell patents and licenses. Those patents and licenses, far from being scientifically and ethically neutral in effect, virtually prohibit commercially sponsored research that could otherwise be a realistic alternative to the federal funding gap. The lack of federal funding and related data-sharing principles, combined with the effect of U.S. patent policy, the lack of key agency guidance, and the proliferation of divergent state laws arising from the lack of Federal leadership, significantly impede ethical stem cell research in the United States, without coherently supporting any consensus ethical vision. Research institutions must themselves implement steps, described in the article, to integrate addressing ethical review with the many legal compliance issues U.S. federal and state laws create. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and are not necessarily the opinions of others, including Children’s Hospital Boston. Portions of earlier versions of this article were previously published by the American Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association.     

Ethics, Cultural Competence, and the Changing Face of America

The population in the United States is increasingly multicultural. So, too, is the U.S. physician workforce. The combination of these diversity dynamics sets up the potential for various types of cultural conflict in the nation’s examining rooms, including the relationship between religion and medicine. To address the changing patient-physician landscape, we argue for a broad scale intervention: interdisciplinary bioethics training for physicians and other health professionals. This approach seeks to promote a common procedural expectation and language which can lead to an improved, patient-centered approach resulting in better patient-physician relationships that contribute to better health outcomes across the U.S. population. The authors illustrate their thesis and solution using a well-known case of cross-cultural dynamics taken from religion and medicine—Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down.     

Is this America? Unfinished business with the U.S. national imaginary,religion and violence

This article first proposes definitions and raises questions about what it means to be a nation. I then analyze the national imaginary of the United States, and suggest that at its deepest core we find “substitute ultimates” regarding America's sacrificial war‐culture. This cultural violence perpetuates destructive consequences, including the phenomena of “U.S. war‐culture,” and “moral injury” among military servicemembers and veterans. But widespread legitimation of the imaginary largely inhibits citizens from awareness about their own reality. Lastly, I inquire about the role of prophetic public theology to address nationalism, and engage in a thought experiment with an imagined community of diverse partners.     

Killing from a Distance: A Christian Ethical Evaluation of CIA Targeted Drone Killings

This article provides an ethical evaluation of the CIA's use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) to target so‐called terror suspects and insurgents. It utilises Christian informed deontological and virtue‐ethical criteria to assess this practise. These criteria include just intent, charity, proportionality, moral consistency, truthfulness, mercy, courage and prudence. The article concludes that the UAV target programme is morally problematic. The United States’ ‘kill not capture’ policy as exemplified in the use of ‘signature’ strikes defies the virtues at stake. By using UAV's as tools for preventive warfare, utilising armed UAV's that are weapons of war outside areas of armed conflict and disregarding the principles of transparency, last resort and proportionality, the United States is employing UAV's in a morally illegitimate and imprudent way, and is setting precedents that might have dire consequences for global peace and the security of future generations.     

Religion in Public Health‐Care Institutions: U.S. and U.K. Perspectives

In this article, we consider the role that religion plays in the health‐care institutions of the United States and the United Kingdom. Religion has played a significant role in the development of health‐care institutions in both countries and continues to be present in them in important ways. To capture the range of involvement of religious groups in various sectors of the health‐care institution, we propose a continuum for their relationship, from completely merged identities at one end (“faith‐saturated”) to entirely separate ones at the other (“faith‐secular partnerships”). Versions of this scheme have appeared in both U.S. and U.K. reports that describe the faith component of faith‐based organizations that work in global contexts. We apply this framework to identify specific U.S. and U.K. exemplars, finding that examples of all types exist in both societies, despite the more secular nature of the United Kingdom. Accurately characterizing the relationship between religion and public health‐care institutions can inform future policy and research.     

Linking Emotion to the Conflict Face‐Negotiation Theory: A U.S.–China Investigation of the Mediating Effects of Anger,Compassion, and Guilt in Interpersonal Conflict

This study linked emotion to the theoretical assumptions of the face‐negotiation theory and probed the critical role of anger, compassion, and guilt in understanding the complex pathways of their relationships with self‐construal, face concerns, and conflict styles in U.S. and Chinese cultures. Results showed that anger was associated positively with independent self‐construal, self‐face concern, and the competing style, and compassion was associated positively with interdependent self‐construal, other‐face concern, and the integrating, compromising, and obliging styles. Guilt was related positively with interdependent self‐construal and the obliging style in the United States, and with interdependent self‐construal and the avoiding style in China. Overall, emotion mediated the effects of self‐construal and face concerns on conflict styles in both cultures, but cultural differences also emerged.     

Immigrant Acculturation and Transnationalism: Israelis in the United States and Europe Compared

This article examines relations between social integration into host societies, religio‐ethnic acculturation into group belonging, and ties to home country among Israeli émigrés in the United States and Europe. I use data from a 2009–2010 Internet survey into which I incorporated country‐contextual characteristics. The results of multivariate analyses show that a social integration combining duration of residence abroad and local citizenship enhances religio‐ethnic identification. Another measure of integration, social networks, deters group behaviors. All measures of general integration inhibit attachment to the home country, whereas religio‐ethnic acculturation is largely insignificant for transnationalism. The religiosity of the new country does not influence immigrants’ religio‐ethnic patterns or homeland attachment. Insofar as group size is a significant determinant of particularistic behaviors, it weakens them. The more policy‐based opportunities newcomers receive, the more they dissociate from group behaviors and homeland ties. Irrespective of individual and contextual factors, living in the United States encourages group affiliation more than living in Europe does. The results are discussed in reference to four working hypotheses—marginalization, integration, assimilation, and separation—and from a U.S.‐European comparative perspective.     

Cultural influences on cognitive representations of conflict: interpretations of conflict episodes in the United States and Japan.

This article integrates theory from the cognitive tradition in negotiation with theory on culture and examines cultural influences on cognitive representations of conflict. The authors predicted that although there may be universal (etic) dimensions of conflict construals, there also may be culture-specific (emic) representations of conflict in the United States and Japan. Results of multidimensional scaling analyses of U.S. and Japanese conflict episodes supported this view. Japanese and Americans construed conflicts through a compromise versus win frame (R. L. Pinkley, 1990), providing evidence of a universal dimension of conflict construal. As the authors predicted, Japanese perceived conflicts to be more compromise-focused, as compared with Americans. There were also unique dimensions of construal among Americans and Japanese (infringements to self and giri violations, respectively), suggesting that identical conflict episodes are perceived differently across cultures.     

Empathy or objectivity: The forensic examiner's dilemma?

Examiners are ethically bound to manage personal biases that may infect their expert opinions. Empathy‐related issues that lead to bias in forensic assessment of adjudicative competence arise in evaluation interactions with defendants (therapeutic empathy) and from examiners' personal views of issues that these assessments address (empathy‐bias). This article first summarizes flexible adjudicative competence legal standards that invite bias by forensic experts. Then, after reviewing the therapeutic empathy issue, the article examines empathy‐bias and its effects on the development of expert opinions. The authors assert that, properly managed, the often assumed dilemma between empathy and objectivity is a false one. Using case law, research psychology, and professional guidelines, the authors first emphasize that examiners must actively generate plausible alternative explanations of evaluation data as they form their opinions, not afterwards. Then the authors present a practical model to help experts develop opinions that best explain the data while minimizing empathy‐bias. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Terrorists and Democrats: Individual Reactions to International Attacks

Three experiments conducted in 1997 and 1998 explored individual responses to reported fictitious international conflict involving the United States and other nations. Participants escalated the conflictual level of their responses to repeated attacks. In Experiment 1, escalation of conflict was greater in response to terrorist attacks than to military ones. In Experiment 2, after the initial attacks, men were more conflictual in responding to terrorist attacks by a democratic nation than by a nondemocratic nation, whereas the opposite pattern was found for women. In Experiment 3, participants responded with a higher level of conflict to terrorist attacks on military targets than to attacks on cultural/educational targets. Participants with greater personality dominance showed steeper escalation of conflict in their responses across successive attacks. These results are interpreted within the framework of an image theory of international relations and an expansion of the democratic peace hypothesis.     

When the “U” is not Inverted: Trajectories of Expressed Emotional Arousal Predict Relationship Satisfaction

Maladaptive emotional reactivity and dysfunctional communication during couple conflict are both destructive to couple functioning, and observational research has elucidated how conflict escalates. However, much of the evidence is based on measures that combine content (i.e., what was said) and the emotion with which it was said, which are then examined using sequential analyses. Despite the general presumptions about underlying emotional reactivity and escalation in negative emotions as part of relationship distress and deterioration, little empirical data are available that directly examine these continuous shifts in emotions. The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between relationship satisfaction and trajectories of change in vocally expressed emotional arousal during couple conflict in 62 couples who participated in a relationship education program. Contrary to expectations and patterns found in distressed couples, trajectories followed a U‐shape rather than an inverted U‐shape curve, with steeper and more persistent decreases in emotional arousal predicting more stable relationship satisfaction over time. In addition, there were within‐couple effects. These results suggest that early signs for relationship deterioration may be less in the form of overt escalation as would be seen in distressed couples. Instead, couples who subsequently deteriorate more are less effective in calming emotional arousal. They also are less able to remain at lower emotional arousal. It is possible that the more pronounced escalation toward the end of the conversation in more at‐risk couples is a precursor of the greater escalation patterns seen in distressed couples; this should be examined empirically. Limitations and implications are discussed.     

A Peaceful Clash: The U.S. And China: Which Model Holds Out Promise For The Future?

This article analyzes some prospects for the economic and political development of the United States and China. The first part of the article is devoted to the consideration of strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. model and of the Chinese one. The second part of the article considers the most probable scenarios of the future struggle for world leadership. The first scenario suggests that China will continue developing at a faster rate in the several coming decades and will be gradually catching up with the United States in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) production. However, after several crises in 2008–2020 the United States will likely regain a number of advantages over China as a result of assimilation of the newest technologies. The second scenario suggests that the United States will come across a whole range of internal social and political problems related to internal political splits. In this case, the United States will have to share its global leadership with China. The article attempts to answer the following questions: What scenario is more probable? Will the old world order change? What are the main conclusions for the European Union and for Russia?     

The Role of Moral Emotions in Predicting Support for Political Actions in Post-War Iraq

A web-based study of 393 undergraduates at a public university in the United States was conducted to examine the relationship between moral emotions (i.e., emotions that motivate prosocial tendencies) and support for political actions to assist Iraqi citizens after the Second Gulf War (2003–2004). Previous work on emotions and prosocial tendencies has focused on empathy. In the context of post-war Iraq, we found that while empathy predicted support for a number of different political actions that have the potential to advance the welfare of the Iraqi people (humanitarian action in particular), guilt over the U.S. invasion was an important predictor of support for reparative actions (i.e., restoring damage created by the U.S. military), and moral outrage toward Saddam Hussein and his regime was the best predictor of support for political actions to prevent future harm to the Iraqi people and to punish the perpetrators. Our findings demonstrate the utility of an emotion-specific framework for understanding why and what type of political actions individuals will support. And in contrast to the traditional view that emotions are an impediment to rationality, our findings suggest that they can serve as a potentially powerful vehicle for motivating political engagement among the citizenry.     

Empathy‐induced altruism in a prisoner's dilemma

Can empathy‐induced altruism motivate a person to cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma? To answer this question, 60 undergraduate women were placed in a one‐trial prisoner's dilemma, and empathy for the other person was manipulated. Regardless of whether the dilemma was framed as a social exchange or as a business transaction, cooperation was significantly higher among those women led to feel empathy for the other than among those not led to feel empathy. Among those not led to feel empathy, the business frame reduced cooperation, lending support to the idea of an exemption on moral motivation in business transactions. Lack of a business exemption on empathy‐induced altruism supported the suggestion that altruism is not simply a type of moral motivation, but is a distinct form of prosocial motivation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Deterrent Effects of Punishments for Noncompliance and Rewards for Compliance: A Comparison of Hospital Employees in Japan and the United States

We integrate social learning theory into Grasmick’s extended model of deterrence to propose that rational actors, in their decision of workplace deviance, consider not only possible costs of noncompliance but possible rewards of compliance. A review of the literature on cultural differences between Japan and the United States leads to the hypotheses that although perceived costs of noncompliance and rewards of compliance operate as deterrents across the two cultures, the deterrent effects of the costs and rewards are stronger and weaker, respectively, in Japan than the U.S. Analysis of survey data from hospital employees provides mixed support for our arguments.     

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: a basis for jus cogens prohibition of juvenile capital punishment in the United States

This article supports the position that the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) articulates a prohibition of capital punishment of juveniles that now must be considered a norm of jus cogens. The article provides statistics and trends regarding juveniles who commit capital crimes and describes how the U.S. justice system handles such juveniles, including Eighth Amendment analyses of juvenile executions under the U.S. Constitution. The article also discusses community consensus regarding evolving standards of decency, describes international law on the capital punishment of juveniles, and outlines worldwide trends in juvenile executions. It then defines and describes the concepts of customary international law and jus cogens, applying these concepts to the problem of the execution of juveniles in the United States. The article concludes by suggesting that there is a moral imperative for universal prohibition of juvenile capital punishment and by speculating about the domestic effects of applying such a jus cogens norm in the United States.