Morally disengaged and unempathic: do cyberbullies fit these definitions? An exploratory study

In recent years, the phenomenon of cyberbullying has been gaining scholars' growing interest under various aspects, including its overlap with face-to-face bullying. Nevertheless, its relationships with cognitive and affective empathy, proactive and reactive aggression, and moral disengagement, constructs that proved to be crucial in distinguishing aggressive subjects from their targets and nonaggressive peers in traditional bullying, still represent, to some extent, an unexplored domain. The main purpose of the present exploratory study was to investigate the associations between cyberbullying and the mentioned constructs among Italian adolescents. 819 high-school students (mean age 16.08) were administered a battery of standardized tools, along with Cyberties, a new instrument created to assess the prevalence of (and the type of involvement in) different forms of electronic assaults. Analyses of variance were conducted to compare four roles ("pure" bullies, "pure" victims, bully victims, and noninvolved subjects). Participants who identified themselves as cyberbullies or cyberbully victims showed significantly higher levels of overall moral disengagement and of both types of aggression. Cyberbullies also displayed a lack of affective empathy. Our findings are in line with the ones in extant literature about correlates of traditional and electronic forms of bullying. Implications for prevention strategies are discussed.     

The Sources of Political Normativity: the Case for Instrumental and Epistemic Normativity in Political Realism

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - This article argues that political realists have at least two strategies to provide distinctively political normative judgements that have nothing to do with...     

Editorial ‘Political Normativity. Critical Essays on the Autonomy of the Political’

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

The Dark Night of the Soul: spiritual distress and its psychiatric implications

The Dark Night of the Soul is an expression describing phases in a person's spiritual life associated with a crisis of faith or spiritual concerns about the relationship with God, and which has intrinsic aspects of spiritual growth. This paper is concerned with the way in which those going through periods of angst and disillusionment do not see them as pathological phenomena. On the contrary, through a process of attribution of religious meaning they view them as opportunities for reflecting on their lives and as agents for beneficial change. Similarities and differences between the Dark Night and a depressive episode are discussed and illustrated using the accounts of five important religious figures. Their narratives have been constructed using original texts and their biographies. The Dark Night has clinical implications owing to the risk of its being pathologised, serving as a reminder of the importance of incorporating existential issues into clinical practice.     

Rethinking Knowledge

The view that the subject matter of epistemology is the concept of knowledge is faced with the problem that all attempts so far to define that concept are subject to counterexamples. As an alternative, this article argues that the subject matter of epistemology is knowledge itself rather than the concept of knowledge. Moreover, knowledge is not merely a state of mind but rather a certain kind of response to the environment that is essential for survival. In this perspective, the article outlines an answer to four basic questions about knowledge: What is the role of knowledge in human life? What is the relation between knowledge and reality? How is knowledge acquired? Is there any a priori knowledge?     

Object-centred orienting of attention

Abstract

In the present study two experiments are reported in which the subjects were presented on a computer screen with a two-dimensional line drawing that is perceived as a three-dimensionalobject (i.e. a cube). The cube could be seen as stationary, as rotating about the y-axis (Experiment 1A), or as rotating about the x-axis (Experiment 1B). The subject's attention was directed by a visual precue to a vertex of the cube. As the cube rotated, the precued location moved in viewer-centred co-ordinatesm, but the local feature of the cube that had been precued (i.e. a given vertex) did not move in object-centred co-ordinates. The imperative stimulus was presented at the precued location (valid trials) or at an uncued location (invalid trials). Precued and uncued locations were determined in object-centred coordinates. The subjects were required to signal detection of the imperative stimulus by pressing the space bar on the computer keyboard. There were also control conditions in which the procedure was identical, but the cube was not visible. When the cube was visible, valid trials were faster than invalid trials, regardless of whether it was seen as stationary or rotating. It was concluded that the subjects could allocate spatial attention in object-centred co-ordinates. There wer also indications that responses for invalid trials were faster when the imperative stimulus was presented on the same face as the precue than when it was presented on the opposite face.     

the "death row community": a community psychology perspective

The extant literature on the death row process and its relationship to inmate execution is limited. One way to interpret the association is to examine those groups constituting the death row community. In this study, we argue for the existence of an execution community composed of several related membership groups: the prisoner awaiting death, the inmate's family, the correctional personnel working the unit, and the victim and the victim's loved ones. In order to assess whether, and to what extent, a death row community in fact exists, we rely on several principles found in community psychology. By grafting a "sense of community" model onto the behavior of those membership groups identified, we demonstrate how the death row community phenomenon cohesively operates. We conclude by tentatively exploring the implications of our analysis for purposes of future research on the execution experience and life on death row.     

Hemispheric prevalence in acoustical attention

Two experiments were conducted in which monaural clicks were presented to the right or left ear preceded by biaural verbal (Experiment 1) and musical (Experiment 2) warnings. After the “neutral” warnings, the clicks could be presented to the right or left ear equally often (50%); after the warnings which directed the attention to the left or right ear, the clicks could be presented to either the “expected” (67%) or to the “unexpected” (33%) ear. In Experiment 1 there was a cost effect for the “unexpected” ear and reaction times were significantly faster when the clicks were presented to the right ear. In Experiment 2, the musical warnings brought about a cost effect while no significant ear advantage was observed.