Four tasks for forward-looking global ethics

Our challenge for the twenty-first century consists in showing how to construct a global ethics and in trying to discover a rational foundation for it, which may be used as guidance for action and as a norm for the criticism of specific situations. I argue that four tasks must be accomplished to construct a global ethics: (1) Construct that global governance or that world government that makes cosmopolitan citizenship possible. (2) Foster the joint work of bioethics, economic and business ethics, and development ethics – areas of applied ethics, each one of which on its own has reached the global level. (3) Discover a rational basis for a global ethics, which has a universal normative force, but assumes cultural differences. (4) Develop and promote a dilaogical ethics of cordial reason, which renders one capable of compassion and care.     

Stress, hope, and loneliness in young adolescents

A sample of 134 young adolescents attending a middle school responded to the Perceived Stress Scale, the Hopefulness Scale for Adolescents, and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale. Correlational analyses indicated that higher scores on stress were significantly associated with lower scores on hope (r = -.55) and higher scores on loneliness (r = .52). Unlike an earlier study with predominately ethnic minority adolescents, the present findings with predominately Euro-American adolescents supported the relationship proposed between stress and hope; the relationship proposed between stress and loneliness was supported.     

Social anxiety and interpersonal stress generation: the moderating role of interpersonal distress

Background and Objectives: Existing models of social anxiety scarcely account for interpersonal stress generation. These models also seldom include interpersonal factors that compound the effects of social anxiety. Given recent findings that two forms of interpersonal distress, perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, intensify social anxiety and cause interpersonal stress generation, these two constructs may be especially relevant to examining social anxiety and interpersonal stress generation together.

Design: The current study extended prior research by examining the role of social anxiety in the occurrence of negative and positive interpersonal events and evaluated whether interpersonal distress moderated these associations.

Methods: Undergraduate students (N?=?243; M?=?20.46 years; 83% female) completed self-report measures of social anxiety, perceived burdensomeness, and thwarted belongingness, as well as a self-report measure and clinician-rated interview assessing negative and positive interpersonal events that occurred over the past six weeks.

Results: Higher levels of social anxiety were associated only with a higher occurrence of negative interpersonal dependent events, after controlling for depressive symptoms. This relationship was stronger among individuals who also reported higher levels of perceived burdensomeness, but not thwarted belongingness.

Conclusions: It may be important to more strongly consider interpersonal stress generation in models of social anxiety.     

Relations of low frustration tolerance beliefs with stress, depression, and anxiety in young adolescents

Young adolescents (N=144; 66 boys, 78 girls), ages 12 to 14 years (M=12.2, SD=.8), who reported lower scores on the Low Frustration Tolerance Beliefs Instrument had higher scores on the Perceived Stress Scale and the Profile of Mood States Subscales of Depression and Anxiety.     

Contemporary art and Hanna Segal's thinking on aesthetics

From the point of view of the history of ideas in psychoanalysis, a major shift may be described from Freud's starting point considering art as sublimation of sexual desires on a largely objectal level to later developments emphasizing the presence in art of destructiveness and narcissistic conflicts. Segal's contribution represents a watershed in this evolution. Following Klein, Hanna Segal suggests considering art in relation to depressive anxieties and reparation in such a way that artistic activity may be seen as an attempt 'to restore and re-create the loved object outside and inside the ego' which implies a successful work of mourning accompanied by symbol formation. For Segal, these reparative processes are conveyed through formal beauty which represents the victory of reparation over destruction. Nevertheless, contemporary art demands that we consider the intervention, in art, of more raw and less symbolized/sublimated processes, including acting-out in often primitive, psychotic or perverse ways. Thus this paper unfolds in two directions: on the one hand, it examines the differences and continuities between Freud's and Segal's thinking whilst, on the other, the author presents some alternative ideas which stress the search for truth and new thinking in contemporary art.     

Social support,self-esteem,and positive health practices of early adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of social support and self-esteem to positive health practices in early adolescents. A sample of 148 early adolescents (70 boys and 78 girls), aged 12 to 14 years, attending an urban middle school, responded to The Revised Personal Lifestyle Questionnaire, the Personal Resource Questionnaire 85-Part II, and the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale in classrooms. A correlation of .59 (p<.05) was found between scores on social support and scores for positive health practices, and a correlation of .44 (p<.05) between scores on the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale and scores for positive health practices.     

FILM REVIEW: Dogville: A parable on perversion1

The authors approach Lars Von Trier's fi lm Dogville in the light of contemporary psychoanalytic concepts on perversion. The perverse functioning appears at three levels in the fi lm. First of all in the content of the story: a seemingly masochistic victim stirs up the sadism of the people around her before the scenario turns full circle. As for the formal aspects, the producer subtly hides some data with the result that our perception of reality is distorted. Finally, the viewer is led fi rst to identify with a moral position before becoming, through identifi cation, an accomplice of the sadistic triumph of the so‐called victim.     

Individual Well-Being,Geographical Heterogeneity and Social Capital

This paper argues the relevance of analysing the origins of contextual effects to explain subjective well-being (SWB). Using the 2012 European Social Survey, the study applies social capital indicators to distinguish between-context and between-individual heterogeneity in three multilevel models of happiness and life satisfaction. Five indicators of social capital at individual and regional level are used to measure the trust, networks and norms dimensions of social capital. Random intercept and random slope hierarchical models are used to control for unexplained regional variability. The possibility of aggregated subjective perceptions conditioning, or interacting with, the effects of individual perceptions is also examined. The results show that the regional means of the social capital indicators are useful in explaining not only average levels of SWB (between-context heterogeneity) but also differences in the importance individuals attribute to their social capital (between-individual heterogeneity). The paper also proposes a research agenda to expand the frontier on contextual effects in the new science of well-being.