Gender Differences in Being Thanked for Performing a Favor

We examined gender differences in how one responds to being thanked for a favor. Using experimental passages, we manipulated who requested the favor and the manner in which the favor is asked. Male and female participants received a set of scenarios in which social status, gender and directness of the request were orthogonally varied. Although male and female participants had very similar perceptions of whether the favor was a command or not, male but not female participants, generated more accommodating and fewer non-accommodating acknowledgments when thanked. The effect was strongest when the request was made by a boss (relative to a peer), especially if the boss was male, and made the request in a direct manner. These data are consistent with the notion that, for males, more than so for females, interactions that make salient one’s dominance status is relevant to gender-identity, and is linguistically reflected in a basic social exchange.     

Men Play,Women Break the Town: Gender and Intergenerational Asymmetry in Sexual and Reproductive Worldview Among the Ga of Ghana

A contemporary critique levelled against sexual and reproductive (SR) behavioral studies in Africa is the dominance of Western theories and perspectives, with the main language through which SR categories and concepts are developed and investigated being Western or colonial, which rarely correspond with local and ethnic conceptualizations. In this paper, we conduct an ethnolinguistic analysis of gender and intergenerational constructions of sexual and reproductive behaviors (SRB) among the Ga of Ghana. Ethnographic approaches were used to collect and analyze two data sources from seventy-two respondents; first, a lexicon of common words, phrases, terminologies and coinages on SR activities and relationships. Second, narratives on respondents’ major SR experiences, through a biography of respondents’ body methodological framework. Respondents reflected a high degree of conceptual baggage, underpinned by their own gendered SR experiences, in their selection and interpretation of the terminologies/words. Younger respondents were more likely to use flippant coinages for risky SRB, which resonate with their narratives on their casual and unrestrained SR behaviours. We discuss the SR health threats and opportunities of our findings.     

Developmental Levels of Conceptions of Compassion in the Ethical Decision-Making of Western Buddhist Practitioners

This study used Rawls’ social contract theory of right to examine the conceptions of compassion of Western Buddhist practitioners as they made ethical decisions. The study, which used a construction sample of 140 subjects in order to study the developmental levels of thinking among the Buddhist practitioners, identified five structural-developmental levels of conceptions of compassion along with a level of pre-compassionate thinking. Only a sparse amount of thinking at the level of ethical principles of compassion was found among the Buddhist practitioners. Buddhist practitioners gave priority to issues of karma over issues of rights in ethical decisions involving dilemmas related to life and death decisions. Scoring manuals were constructed for assessing ethical reasoning and justice-reasoning based on Rawls’ meta-ethical theory of justice and right. Different dilemmas seem to elicit different levels of conceptions of compassion, which supports the view of compassion as “levels of conceptions” rather than a singular state.

Bridging the Divide: Linking Basic Science to Applied Psychotherapeutic Interventions—A Relational Frame Theory Account of Cognitive Disputation in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

The importance of linking applied psychotherapeutic techniques and strategies to basic experimental science is discussed, both as an independent ideal and in light of non-specific factors research suggesting that atheoretical global factors are responsible for the vast majority of clinical change. As an example of how such basic-applied linkage can occur, principles from Relational Frame Theory and other relevant experimental data are used to analyze and explain the potential utility of two specific strategies often employed in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy to remediate “awfulizing” and low frustration tolerance, respectively. The preliminary nature of this analysis is highlighted to allow a realistic view of the tremendous task at hand for clinical psychologists seeking a stronger basic science foundation for applied technologies.     

Agreement between Two Independent Groups of Raters

We propose a coefficient of agreement to assess the degree of concordance between two independent groups of raters classifying items on a nominal scale. This coefficient, defined on a population-based model, extends the classical Cohen’s kappa coefficient for quantifying agreement between two raters. Weighted and intraclass versions of the coefficient are also given and their sampling variance is determined by the Jackknife method. The method is illustrated on medical education data which motivated the research.     

Comprehension of the representational mind in infancy

A broad array of infant studies are reviewed that appear to be consistent with the idea that belief understanding specifically, and mental attribution generally, emerge much earlier than previously acknowledged. We first examine existing false-belief research, which, while confirming that children under 4 years perform poorly on standard tests, suggests nevertheless that they have more implicit understanding of beliefs than they can express. After surveying theories that both favor and reject early development of theory of mind (TOM), we address two recent bodies of visual fixation research that provide support for the possibility of knowledge and belief attribution in infancy. The first indicates that infants of 13–15 months are sensitive to others’ false beliefs (and therefore have a representational TOM), the second, that by 12 months or younger infants have two antecedently related psychological understandings: (a) that when agents look they “see” and (b) that seeing plays a presumptive role in producing knowledge. This raises the broader question of whether “mentalism” might be part of core knowledge, which takes us to the earliest manifestation of psychological attribution, the construal of agentive behavior as intentional. Contrary to previous assumptions, recent studies indicate that infants of 3–9 months do not accord intentionality exclusively to humans or to self-propelled objects but rather to any entity that: (1) chooses flexibly among means and ends, (2) responds non-randomly to social overtures, and (3) reacts rationally to changing circumstances (i.e., that is not a mere automaton but is selectively and adaptively responsive to the environment). Other evidence is then examined which suggests that infants begin to construe these and other behaviors in mentalist rather than teleological terms much earlier than expected. Finally, the implications of this empirical record for domain-specific and domain-general theories of TOM are considered.     

Attention, emotion, and deactivation of default activity in inferior medial prefrontal cortex

Attention deactivates the inferior medial prefrontal cortex (IMPC), but it is uncertain if emotions can attenuate this deactivation. To test the extent to which common emotions interfere with attention, we measured changes of a blood flow index of brain activity in key areas of the IMPC with positron emission tomography (PET) of labeled water (H(15)2O) uptake in brain of 14 healthy subjects. The subjects performed either a less demanding or a more demanding task of attention while they watched neutral and emotive images of people in realistic indoor or outdoor situations. In the less demanding task, subjects used the index finger to press any key when a new image appeared. In the more demanding task, subjects chose the index or middle finger to press separate keys for outdoor and indoor scenes. Compared to the less demanding task, in a global search of all gray matter, the more demanding significantly lowered blood flow (rCBF) in left IMPC, left and right insula, and right amygdala, and significantly raised blood flow in motor cortex and right precuneus. Restricted searches of rCBF changes by emotion, at coordinates of significant effect in previous studies of the medial prefrontal and temporal cortices, revealed significant activation in the fusiform gyrus, independently of the task. In contrast, we found no effect of emotional content in the IMPC, where emotions failed to override the effect of the task. The results are consistent with a role of the IMPC in the selection among competitive inputs from multiple brain regions, as predicted by the theory of a default mode of brain function. The absent emotional interference with the deactivation of the default state suggests that the inferior prefrontal cortex continued to serve the attention rather than submit to the distraction.