Logic, ethics, and rhetoric of research on rape: a reply to Mosher and Bond

Mosher and Bond (this issue) suggest experimental designs that are not appropriate for the research purposes they criticize. In defending their own research, they make contradictory statements about the realism of their guided imagery procedure for simulating rape. They present data that we believe provide evidence for the possibility that wrongful harm occurred in their previous research. We assert our right to study the ethics of research and object to specious charges of having threatened sexual freedom and being associated with ideologues of the right and left.     

Self‐affirmation,political value congruence,and support for refugees

This research tested the potential for self‐affirmation on left‐ and right‐wing political values to increase behavioral intentions to provide help and assistance to refugees. We present a pilot study defining left‐ and right‐wing values, and a main study in which participants completed either a self‐affirmation task, a group‐affirmation task, or participated in a control condition on values that were either congruent or incongruent with their own political views. Results show that left‐wing oriented participants showed more supportive intentions in the self‐affirmation condition compared to the group‐affirmation and control conditions, independent of values congruency. In contrast, right‐wing participants showed more supportive intentions in the self‐affirmation condition, but only when they affirmed on values that were congruent with their own political views.     

Material Objects,Constitution, and Mysterianism

It is sometimes claimed that ordinary objects, such as mountains and chairs, are not material in their own right, but only in virtue of the fact that they are constituted by matter. As Fine puts it, they are “only derivatively material” (2003, 211). In this paper I argue that invoking “constitution” to account for the materiality of things that are not material in their own right explains nothing and renders the admission that these objects are indeed material completely mysterious. Although there may be metaphysical contexts in which mysterianism can be accepted with equanimity, I further argue, the question of the materiality of quotidian objects is not one of them.     

Milgram, Method and Morality

In Milgram's experiments, subjects were induced to inflict what they believed to be electric shocks in obedience to a man in a white coat. This suggests that many can be persuaded to torture, and perhaps kill, another person simply on the say-so of an authority figure. But the experiments have been attacked on methodological, moral and methodologico-moral grounds. Patten argues that the subjects probably were not taken in by the charade; Bok argues that lies should not be used in research; and Patten insists that any excuse for Milgram's conduct can be adapted on behalf of his subjects. (Either he was wrong to conduct the experiments or they do not establish the phenomenon of immoral obedience). We argue that the subjects were indeed taken in, that lies (though usually wrong) were in this case legitimate, and that there were excuses available to Milgram which were not available to his subjects. So far from 'disrespecting'his subjects, Milgram enhanced their autonomy as rational agents. We concede however that it might be right to prohibit what it was right to do. [1]     

自主选择偏好：表现、机制与应用

自主选择偏好指当面临自主选择或委托他人选择时, 人们总是偏好自主选择, 即使为此付出代价也在所不惜。自主选择偏好可能有过度自信、控制幻觉和模糊厌恶的原因, 但更多可能源于自主选择本身承载了某种内在价值。奖赏系统(纹状体、内侧前额叶)的神经活动是其关键的神经基础, 同时自主选择也受认知调控系统的调节。未来研究应在社会情景下揭示自主选择偏好的作用机制和调控因素, 并探索它在群体间的平衡机制, 以增进个体幸福和群体利益。     

Gratitude,Rights, and Moral Standouts

Many maintain that if a beneficiary has a right to a benefit provided by his benefactor, then the former cannot owe the latter gratitude for that benefit. In this paper I argue against that view. I provide examples in which benefactors provide others with benefits to which they have a right even though most others are denying them that right. These benefactors are moral standouts; they do what is right when most similarly situated agents fail to do so. I then spell out some of the features of these benefactors’ actions that make them worthy of gratitude.     

Science, Democracy, and the Right to Research

Debates over the politicization of science have led some to claim that scientists have or should have a “right to research.” This article examines the political meaning and implications of the right to research with respect to different historical conceptions of rights. The more common “liberal” view sees rights as protections against social and political interference. The “republican” view, in contrast, conceives rights as claims to civic membership. Building on the republican view of rights, this article conceives the right to research as embedding science more firmly and explicitly within society, rather than sheltering science from society. From this perspective, all citizens should enjoy a general right to free inquiry, but this right to inquiry does not necessarily encompass all scientific research. Because rights are most reliably protected when embedded within democratic culture and institutions, claims for a right to research should be considered in light of how the research in question contributes to democracy. By putting both research and rights in a social context, this article shows that the claim for a right to research is best understood, not as a guarantee for public support of science, but as a way to initiate public deliberation and debate about which sorts of inquiry deserve public support.     

Diagnostic Classification Models: Recent Developments,Practical Issues,and Prospects

More than three decades after their introduction, diagnostic classification models (DCM) do not seem to have been implemented in educational systems for the purposes they were devised. Most DCM research is either methodological for model development and refinement or retrofitting to existing nondiagnostic tests and, in the latter case, basically for model demonstration or constructs identification. DCMs have rarely been used to develop diagnostic assessment right from the start with the purpose of identifying individuals’ strengths and weaknesses (referred to as true applications in this study). In this article, we give an introduction to DCMs and their latest developments along with guidelines on how to proceed to employ DCMs to develop a diagnostic test or retrofit to a nondiagnostic assessment. Finally, we enumerate the reasons why we believe DCMs have not become fully operational in educational systems and suggest some advice to make their advent smooth and quick.     

Democracy, Individual Rights and the Regulation of Science

Whether the US Constitution guarantees a right to conduct scientific research is a question that has never been squarely addressed by the United States Supreme Court. Similarly, the extent to which the First Amendment protects the right to communicate the results of scientific research is an issue about which there is scant judicial authority. This article suggests that a crucial guidepost for exploring both these uncharted areas of constitutional law should be whether restrictions on scientific research or communication truly implicate fundamental individual rights or instead primarily concern issues of general social welfare—issues that in a democracy are properly decided by the representative branches of government or their delegates, not by the judiciary.     

Locomotion, assessment, and regulatory fit: Value transfer from “how” to “what”

Regulatory fit is experienced when people pursue a goal in a manner that sustains their regulatory orientation. Previous research on promotion and prevention orientations has found that regulatory fit increases people’s perception that a decision they made was “right,” which in turn transfers value to the decision outcome, including being willing to pay more for a product than those who chose the same product without regulatory fit (Higgins, 2000; Higgins et al., in press). We predicted that the effect of regulatory fit on monetary value could be generalized to locomotion and assessment orientations. Participants were willing to pay over 40% more for the same book-light when it was chosen with a strategy that fit their regulatory orientation (assessment/“full evaluation”; locomotion/“progressive elimination”) than when it was chosen with a non-fit strategy.     

Hand dominance, attention, and the choice between responses

Thirty pairs of matched right- and left-handed subjects carried out a serial C.RT task involving reaches between 2.4 cm square contact grids set at 2.4 cm intervals in a horizontal line. In one condition they responded with the right hand alone, in a second with the left and in a third they had to choose between hands on each trial responding to left side grids with the left hand and to right side grids with the right.

All subjects took longer to respond when they had to choose between hands than when they used either hand alone. In the one-hand conditions neither group showed any effect of hand dominance. When choices had to be made between hands both groups responded faster with their dominant than with their nondominant hands.

Analysis of the results was undertaken in terms of two hypothetical systems of instructions which might control machines designed to carry out similar tasks. It is concluded that in some tasks hand dominance can be described in terms of an attentional bias towards the field of operation of one effector rather than another. In the present task the effects of such possible attentional biases were shown not to interact with other effects, such as the facilitation of successive responses by repeated use of the same limb. These latter effects seem to depend on processes underlying execution of responses rather than choices between responding limbs.     

A State to Call Their Own: Insurrection, Intervention, and the Communal Integrity Thesis

Many reasons have been given as to why humanitarian intervention might not be justified even where rebellion with similar aims would be a morally legitimate option. One of them is that intervention involves the imposition of alien values on the target society. Michael Walzer formulates this objection in terms of a people's right to a state that 'expresses their inherited culture' and that they can truly 'call their own'. I argue that this right can plausibly be said to extend sovereignty to at least some illiberal governments, and therefore to impose at least some moral constraints on humanitarian intervention. The problem for Walzer is that this right cannot form the basis of a constraint that applies to foreign intervention exclusively. Once the details of Walzer's argument are teased out, it becomes apparent that civil war and revolution must be equally restricted by this right. Hence a people's prerogative to be governed in accordance with familiar traditions cannot coherently be invoked to show that intervention is impermissible in cases where insurrection is taken to be justified.     

Rotten,Vile, and Depraved! Depictions of Criminality in Superhero Cartoons

The literature argues that media depictions of crime present messages that conform to and promote the dominant ideology about the causes of crime and the nature of criminality. Most research focuses on television news and adult programs, but little research examines messages about criminality present in children's shows. To fill this gap, a content analysis of children's cartoons was conducted, using episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, Spider-Man, and Justice League Unlimited. Three central themes emerged. First, much criminal activity centers on greed. Second, criminals are aware of right and wrong but pursue crime to meet their own self-interests. Third, criminals are different from law-abiding people. Even if they are flawed or evil, criminals are rational and therefore culpable actors. These shows provide messages about criminality consistent with the dominant ideology.     

Virtues,Skills, and Right Action

According to Rosalind Hursthouse’s virtue based account of right action, an act is right if it is what a fully virtuous person would do in that situation. Robert Johnson has criticized the account on the grounds that the actions a non-virtuous person should take are often uncharacteristic of the virtuous person, and thus Hursthouse’s account of right action is too narrow. The non-virtuous need to take steps to improve themselves morally, and the fully virtuous person need not take these steps. So Johnson argues that any virtue based account of right action will have to find a way to ground a moral obligation to improve oneself. This paper argues that there is an account of virtue that can offer a partial solution to Johnson’s challenge, an account where virtue is a type of practical skill and in which the virtuous person is seen as having expertise. The paper references the account of skill acquisition developed by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus. Their research demonstrates that novices in a skill have to employ different strategies to act well than the strategies used by the experts, and so the ‘virtue as skill’ thesis provides support for Johnson’s claim that the actions of the non-virtuous will differ from the virtuous. On the other hand, their research suggests that there is no separating the commitment to improve yourself from the possession of expertise, and so the ‘virtue as skill’ thesis has the resources for grounding the obligation to improve oneself in an account of virtue.     

Ethics, deception, and 'Those Milgram experiments'

Critics who allege that deception in psychology experiments is unjustified frequently cite Stanley Milgram's 'obedience experiments' as evidence. These critics say that arguments for justification tend to downplay the risks involved and overstate the benefits from such research. Milgram, they add, committed both sins. Critics are right to point out that research oversight is often susceptible to self-serving abuse. But stating a priori how beneficial a given experiment will be is a tall order for psychologists, or anyone else. At the same time, critics themselves have difficulty in showing what is wrong with deception, and how subjects in these experiments suffer. Hence, it becomes unclear what the psychologists, including Milgram, are prone to downplay. There is also room to wonder how the Milgram studies can illuminate the debate over deception. Although Milgram probably exaggerated the scientific significance of his own work, critics who exaggerate its moral and historical significance do little to clarify the status of deception.     

Overt attempts to change hand preference: a study of group and individual characteristics

Previous work by Porac, Coren, and Searleman (1986) looked at overt attempts to change hand preference from the left to the right side. We extended this research by studying individuals who shifted their handedness from the left to the right side as well as a group who attempted a shift in the opposite direction (right to left). Comparisons of the two shift attempts revealed that the timing, method, and agent of change differed significantly for right versus left shifts. More right than left shifts were successful. Overall, most shift attempts were rated as unsuccessful because they did not result in a handedness classification consistent with the direction of the shift. Individuals classified as successful shifters, whether in the right or left direction, displayed a more ambihanded behavioural pattern than either unsuccessful shifters or the no shift control group. Evidence suggested that left-shift attempts were promoted by original ambihanded tendencies but that ambihandedness in successful right shifts stemmed from the partial success of the switch attempt.     

Immigration,the University and the Welcoming Second Tier City

This paper connects the growing interest in immigrant settlement outside of gateway cities, and the noted shift in international student policies from ‘red card to red carpet’, by exploring what role the higher education sector plays in the attraction and retention of immigrants to second tier cities (STCs). Using the case of Kitchener–Waterloo in Ontario, the qualitative research offers four findings. Firstly, higher education institutions act as the very locus of change in STCs in terms of introducing greater ethnic and cultural diversity; secondly, they act as important attractors and retainers of talent in their own right and in terms of the linkages and connections they create in the local economy; thirdly, international students and immigrants perceive the university as providing a socio-spatial buffer against wider discriminatory behaviours; and lastly, the ‘red card to red carpet’ policy shift that is underway will only intensify the role higher educational institutions play in international migration.     

Mirror image arm used in monocular, binocular, and blindfolded pointing

Observers were instructed to point with their right arm to a mirror image of their left shoulder. Instead of pointing to the target with their real arm, they occluded the target with their mirror-imaged finger, and their real finger pointed off to the left side of the target, facts that came as a surprise to them in debriefing. The occlusion by a mirror image finger was not done to avoid double images, since it occurred in monocular conditions. That it is due to planning before pointing can be inferred from the fact that it occurred in blindfolded conditions.     

Patient Motivation, Satisfaction, and Coping in Genetic Counseling and Testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2

Women with a strong family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer can now have genetic testing, that may identify mutations associated with increased cancer predisposition. Within the context of a clinical trial evaluating printed educational materials, we examined motivation, satisfaction, coping, and perceptions of genetic counseling and testing among 159 women who underwent pretest counseling and made a testing decision. Ninety-six percent of the participants elected to have BRCA1/2 testing. When making a decision about genetic testing, study participants were concerned less about the potential negative effects that could result from testing than the potential benefits. After counseling, participants said that they felt better able to make decisions that were right for them and that their questions and concerns were adequately addressed during the session. Ninety-five percent of the women were satisfied with their test decision. Participants used a range of strategies to cope with thoughts and feelings about cancer and/or genetic testing immediately following test decision. Results suggest that the genetic counseling session helped women make decisions about testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, even in the setting of a trial in which all women also received detailed educational materials. Further, the results indicate that future research focusing on perceptions of risks and benefits of testing and of coping strategies immediately following test decision may be warranted.