A Phenomenological Reading of Anomalous Monism

The essay discusses Donald Davidson’s concept of anomalous monism in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. It develops in four stages. Section 1 is devoted to a critical presentation of the argument for anomalous monism. Section 2 succinctly examines those Husserlian notions that best provide the ground for a discussion parallel to Davidson’s. In Sect. 3, the aporetic status of “mental causation” is analyzed by providing a genetic-phenomenological account of efficient causation. Section 4 draws some general conclusions concerning the kind of efficaciousness that must be attributed to consciousness and discusses the sense in which anomalous monism can be defended in a phenomenological framework, but not in a naturalistic one.     

Social consensus and the encoding of consistent and inconsistent information: when one's future audience orients information processing

The present study investigated whether and how social consensus affects the way perceivers encode information concerning a deviant member of a stereotyped group. Participants formed an impression of a gay person described by means of both positive and negative behaviours. Participants also learned that they had to communicate their impression to an unidentified audience whose stereotype about gays was unknown or to an ingroup audience which was presented to be either positive or negative about gays. Results indicated that participants who ignored the identity of the audience and its position towards gays devoted more time to examine the information than participants who had been informed about the audience and its opinion about gays. More importantly, participants spent less (more) time to encode information that was in line (at odds) with the stereotype of the audience. Results are discussed in terms of the interplay between cognitive and social factors in general, and of recent evidence about inconsistency‐resolution effect and consensual beliefs in particular. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children’s behavioral patterns, the Five-Factor model of personality, and risk behaviors

Although relations between children’s personality and health behaviors have been identified, previous research has relied primarily on survey assessments. The present study used behavioral observations to examine children’s (n = 94, mean age = 10.07 years) behavioral patterns in relation to their participation in risk behaviors 1 year later. Results contribute to previous reports linking specific personality traits to children’s likelihood of participation in risky behaviors. Specifically, girls’ participation in risky behavior was related to the expression of behavioral patterns associated with neuroticism, introversion, and disagreeableness, while boys participation in risk behaviors was related to behavioral patterns associated with extraversion and disagreeableness. Findings are discussed in terms of their potential for contributing to health promotion efforts aimed at identifying children most at risk for adopting unhealthy behaviors.     

Psychosocial Treatments for Major Depression and Dysthymia in Older Adults: A Review of the Research Literature

Older adults represent a growing segment of the population with the highest suicide rate and an increasing need of counseling services for major depression and dysthymia. The present study examined the literature with the purpose of identifying research addressing psychosocial treatments of depression in later life. A summary of treatments currently supported by research as being efficacious when treating older individuals experiencing depression or dysthymia is presented. Limitations of the findings are discussed.     

Priming pride promotes delay of gratification

Motivation and Emotion - Distinct positive emotions signal adherence to specific goals: pride signals the successful pursuit of long-term goals, while joy signals the successful pursuit of...     

We are All Bayesian,Everyone is Not a Bayesian

Medical research makes intensive use of statistics in order to support its claims. In this paper we make explicit an epistemological tension between the conduct of clinical trials and their interpretation: statistical evidence is sometimes discarded on the basis of an (often) underlined Bayesian reasoning. We suggest that acknowledging the potentiality of Bayesian statistics might contribute to clarify and improve comprehension of medical research. Nevertheless, despite Bayesianism may provide a better account for scientific inference with respect to the standard frequentist approach, Bayesian statistics is rarely adopted in clinical research. The main reason lies in the supposed subjective elements characterizing this perspective. Hence, we discuss this objection presenting the so-called Reference analysis, a formal method which has been developed in the context of objective Bayesian statistics in order to define priors which have a minimal or null impact on posterior probabilities. Furthermore, according to this method only available data are relevant sources of information, so that it resists the most common criticisms against Bayesianism.

     

Autobiographical memory and autobiographical narrative of a staged event: The influence of the listener

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of narration and listening conditions in autobiographical memory of a staged event. Eighty young adults were recruited for the present research. First, they were interviewed on current issues (staged event). Second, they were asked to complete a memory questionnaire about the content of the interview. Then, they were assigned to three retrieval conditions: narration to an empathic listener, narration to a detached listener, and retrieving thinking silently about the event. Finally, 1 week later, the participants were asked to complete the memory questionnaire again to assess the influence of narration and listening conditions on memory. The results show that the experimental conditions significantly influenced the memory trend for a staged event. The emphatic listening condition promoted memory significantly more than did the other two conditions. The authors interpret these results in terms of the theory of narrativization.     

Modelling the history of early modern natural philosophy: the fate of the art-nature distinction in the Dutch universities

The ‘model approach’ facilitates a quantitative-oriented study of conceptual changes in large corpora. This paper implements the ‘model approach’ to investigate the erosion of the traditional art-nature distinction in early modern natural philosophy. I argue that a condition for this transformation has to be located in the late scholastic conception of final causation. I design a conceptual model to capture the art-nature distinction and formulate a working hypothesis about its early modern fate. I test my hypothesis on a selected corpus of 25 works published in the Dutch academic milieu between 1607 and 1748. I analyse the corpus through a procedure based on concordancing of keywords associated with the model. I argue that the results obtained constitute a successful pilot study for the implementation of the model approach on larger scale research.     

Do egalitarians always help the disadvantaged more than the advantaged? Testing a value‐norm conflict hypothesis in Malaysia

Do egalitarians always express greater compassion toward the disadvantaged than toward the advantaged? A closer look at existing scholarship on the topic suggests that they likely do. Here, we investigated whether such tendency is also apparent within interdependent, high power distance cultures where the high‐status privilege prevails. Given the emphasis on harmony in social relations in interdependent cultures, we reasoned that egalitarians might experience a dissonance between their private equity values and a societal norm prescribing high‐status privilege, which we refer to as the value‐norm conflict. We therefore proposed and found evidence in Malaysia (N = 273) that egalitarians succumbed to the normative high‐status privilege in their culture: They displayed greater compassion towards higher than lower status victims, but only when the political cost of doing so was low. Interestingly, anti‐egalitarians displayed equitable levels of compassion for high‐ and low‐status victims, but only when the political cost for taking such action also was low. Hence, we show that even egalitarians can, at times, favor the privileged and that anti‐egalitarians can act equitably, so long as the political cost of doing so is trivial for them.     

Scientific Integrity Principles and Best Practices: Recommendations from a Scientific Integrity Consortium

Science and Engineering Ethics - A Scientific Integrity Consortium developed a set of recommended principles and best practices that can be used broadly across scientific disciplines as a mechanism...