Must Skepticism Remain Refuted? Inheriting Skepticism with Cavell and Levinas

Topoi - This article defends Cavell and Levinas’ view that anti-skeptical arguments cannot attain universal assent. In the first half of the article, I argue that Conant’s reading of...     

Rice-farming areas report more anxiety across two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in China

Cultures responded to the COVID-19 pandemic differently. We investigated cultural differences in mental health during the pandemic. We found regional differences in people's reports of anxiety in China over two years from 2020 to 2021 (N = 1186). People in areas with a history of rice farming reported more anxiety than people in wheat-farming areas. Next, we explored more proximal mechanisms that could help link the distal, historical factor of rice farming to people's modern experience of anxiety. Rice areas scored higher on collectivism and tight social norms than wheat areas, and collectivism, rather than norm tightness, mediated the rice-anxiety relationship. These findings advance our understanding of the distal sources of cultural differences, the proximal mechanisms, and mental health problems during the pandemics.     

Stop the blame game: An analysis of blaming on Weibo during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in rice and wheat areas in China

In the pandemic era, social media has provided the public with a platform to make their voice heard. One of the most important public opinions online during a pandemic is blame. Blame can lead to stigma towards patients as well as potential patients and decrease social cooperation, which might impede prevention and control measures during epidemics. Thus, studying online blame during the early days of COVID-19 can facilitate the management and control of future pandemics. By analyzing 3791 posts from one of the most popular social media sites in China (Weibo) over the 10 days immediately after COVID-19 was declared to be a communicable disease, we found that there were four main agents blamed online: Individuals, corporations, institutions, and the media. Most of the blame targeted individual agents. We also found that there were regional-cultural differences in the detailed types of blamed individual agents, that is, between rice- and wheat-farming areas in China. After controlling influence of distance from the epicenter of Wuhan, there were still stable differences between regions: people in wheat areas had a higher probability of blaming agentic, harmful individuals, and people in rice areas had a higher probability of blaming individuals with low awareness of social norms for preventive health behavior. Findings have implications for preventing and predicting blame across cultures in future pandemics.     

Remembering complex sentences

Recall of complex sentences at two retention intervals was examined, using sentences which varied simultaneously in three ways, being either active or passive, of low or high Yngve depth, and predictable or unpredictable. Recall of any particular sentence was cued with either the logical subject, logical object, verb or adverbial phrase noun. In general, unpredictable sentences were recollected better than predictable ones, low Yngve depth sentences were recalled better than high Yngve depth ones, and passive sentences were retained better than active ones. The most effective cue was the object, followed in turn by the subject and the adverbial phrase noun, with the verb being least effective. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

The impact of short-term counselling on general health questionnaire scores

An evaluation was conducted of short-term counselling in a higher education setting. The main objective was to measure client scores on a shortened version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) pre- and post- counselling. Forty-five matched pairs of GHQ-12 scores were compared. There was a highly significant reduction in scores post-counselling. The evidence suggests that the 'great pretender' evaluation can be challenged using standard quantitative measures such as the GHQ-12. It is concluded that counselling in higher education may be addressing long-standing distress in members of the student population.