THE CONFESSING ANIMAL IN FOUCAULT AND WITTGENSTEIN

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault maintains that “Western man has become a confessing animal” (1990, 59), thus implying that “man” was not always such a creature. On a related point, Wittgenstein suggests that “man is a ceremonial animal” (1996, 67); here the suggestion is that human beings are, by their very nature, ritualistically inclined. In this paper I examine this crucial difference in emphasis, first by reconstructing Foucault's “genealogy” of confession, and subsequently by exploring relevant facets of Wittgenstein's later thinking. While there are significant correlations between Foucault and Wittgenstein, an important disparity emerges in relation to the question of the “natural.” By critically analyzing this, I show how Wittgenstein's minimal naturalism provides an important corrective to Foucault's more extravagant claims. By implication, we see why any radical relativist, historicist, and/or constructivist position becomes untenable on Wittgensteinian grounds, even though Wittgenstein himself is often read as promoting such views.     

Legal responsibilities for educational psychologists

This paper considers the legal responsibilities of educational psychologists which fall mainly in relation to pupils with special educational needs. The first section introduces the work of educational psychologists, with some discussion of the professional and ethical difficulties posed by many aspects of their practice. An outline of the legal framework for their work in the England and Wales is provided, as an example of the application of those professional and ethical issues in practice, followed by and outline of potential areas of legal challenge and their implications. Reference is finally made to problems being experienced in policy, principle and practice arising from the tensions and dilemmas inherent in the legislation.     

Facial attractiveness and personal-social development

The relationship between physical attractiveness and personal-social development was examined. The entire third, fourth, and fifth grade school population (N=440) was administered a self-concept and peer acceptance measure. School pictures of these children were then rated into attractive and unattractive groups (N = 84). Three separate three-factor (sex X attractiveness X grade) analyses of variance indicated attractive children were more socially accepted than their unattractive peers and had higher self-concepts.     

Perceptions of a University Environment by Social-Political Action Leaders

Leaders of campus social-political action groups were compared with the leaders of four other categories of student leaders on the basis of perceptions of the prevailing campus environmental press as measured by the College and University Environment Scales. Significant differences among the five categories of group leaders were observed on four scales of the inventory. Three of the scales, Community, Awareness, and Scholarship, appeared to differentiate social-political activists from leaders of other types of campus groups. Significant differences between liberal and conservative leaders of social-political action groups were also observed on three scales of the CUES and between male and female leaders across all group categories on four scales.     

Negative valence can evoke a liberal response bias in syllogistic reasoning

Recently, studies have demonstrated that negative valence reduces the magnitude of the belief-bias effect in syllogistic reasoning. This effect has been localized in the reasoning stage, in the form of increased deliberation on trials where validity and conclusion believability are incongruent. Here, using signal detection theory, we show that the attenuation of belief bias observed when valence was negative can also be evoked by a liberal response bias at the decision stage. Indeed, when valence was negative participants adopted a more liberal criterion for judging syllogisms as “valid,” and were overconfident in their judgments. They also displayed less sensitivity in distinguishing between valid and invalid syllogisms. Our findings dovetail with recent evidence from memory research suggesting that negative valence can evoke a liberal response bias without improving performance. Our novel contribution is the demonstration that the attenuating effect of negative valence on belief bias can take multiples routes—by influencing the decision stage as was the case here, the reasoning stage as has been demonstrated elsewhere, and potentially both stages.     

When fit fosters favoring: The role of private self-focus

The present research extends work on the ‘the value from fit’ principle by showing that regulatory fit effects on persuasion and behavioral compliance are stronger for people high, as opposed to low, in private self-focus. Previous research has shown that people high in private self-focus are strongly affected by external information. In the current work, we demonstrated that people high (vs. low) in private self-focus are more persuaded by information that matches (vs. mismatches) activated self-knowledge.