Persuasive Paradoxes in Cicero's Speeches

The paper first presents a short survey of ancient and modern logical, rhetorical and argumentative approaches (e.g. Aristotle, Quintilian, Quine, Anscombre and Ducrot) studying the properties of paradoxical utterances. This survey is followed by a tentative definition of paradoxes as seemingly contradictory utterances triggering conversational implicatures in the sense of Grice. A specific group of paradoxes, namely, persuasive paradoxes, is further characterized by the specific implicatures which they trigger: the implicatures of persuasive paradoxes serve the interest of the (political) speaker because they either convey a sharp criticism of the political opponent(s) or praise the political activities of the speaker in a highly effective way.The second part of the paper takes a corpus of about 80 paradoxical utterances from Cicero's speeches to show how they are used 1. for a devastating criticism of Cicero's political enemies, 2. a milder form of criticism in the case of his friends, when their political activities have failed, 3. a praise of successful policies of Cicero and his political friends and 4. a defense of unsuccessful activities started by Cicero and his friends.     

Gewaltprävention statt Präventivschlag

Die Psychotherapie -     

Dimensions of Relationship Quality

Four studies examined the dimensions of relationship quality. In Study 1, based on a principal components analysis, four dimensions underlying the prototype of relationship quality were identified: intimacy, agreement, independence, and sexuality. The four–factorial structure was replicated both with a German sample (Study 2) and a Canadian sample (Study 3). Study 4 tested the validity of scales based on the four–factorial structure of relationship quality with German and Canadian samples. Relationship satisfaction was predicted well by the four scales, with intimacy contributing most, and sexuality least, to overall relationship satisfaction. The four scales correlated as predicted with other constructs relevant to close relationships, such as commitment, trust, love, and the like. Consequences for the measurement of relationship quality are discussed.     

Designing Mobile Systems in Highly Dynamic Scenarios: The WORKPAD Methodology

The design of interactive systems to be used in mobile and pervasive scenarios, such as emergency management, requires novel methodologies which combine user-centred design approaches and software engineering approaches tailored for distributed architectures. In this paper, the methodology adopted in a successful research project is presented together with a case study.

Rezension

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Prototypical Behaviour Patterns of Social Intelligence: An Intercultural Comparison between Chinese and German Subjects

By using the Act Frequency Approach (Buss & Craik, 1980), Chinese subjects (N = 31) generated a list of acts (specific behaviours) considered to represent social intelligence. These acts were rated by Chinese subjects (N = 39) and German subjects (N = 29) for prototypicality. A comparison of results showed that the construct of social intelligence is culture dependent. For the Chinese, social intelligent behaviours seem to reflect the classical traditions and ideals of Confucianism. Acts that received the highest scores were those that described conforming to and fulfilling expected roles, and acts in which the wellbeing of the entire society was described as being more important that the desires of an individual. This was especially true for older subjects and for women. Items controlling for socially desirable behaviour and social engagement showed clear differences between the two cultures; as expected, the German subjects rated these items lower, whereas the Chinese subjects found both items to be high prototypical of social intelligence.     

Studien über Psychotherapeutinnen und Psychotherapeuten

Zusammenfassung Psychotherapie ist in den industrialisierten L?ndern ein fester Bestandteil der modernen Heilkunst geworden. In diesen Gesellschaften übernehmen die Psychotherapeutinnen und Psychotherapeuten wichtige soziale und kulturelle Aufgaben. Zun?chst wird deshalb der Kontext dargestellt, in dem das Wissen über Psychotherapie als Methode akkumuliert wurde. Eine Betrachtung der impliziten, jedoch widersprüchlichen, Perspektiven, die offenbar die Forscher über Psychotherapeuten zu haben scheinen, ist zun?chst notwendig, um die Art und Weise der Fragestellungen in den Studien zu beleuchten. Nach einer Reflexion der gesellschaftspolitischen Aufgaben der Psychotherapie geht es dann in diesem übersichtsartikel darum, die unterschiedlichen Studien über die Psychotherapeutinnen und Psychotherapeuten und ihren Einflu? auf die Behandlung des Patienten zusammenzufassen. Der rote Faden ergibt sich aus der Fragestellung, welches forschungsbasierte Wissen über Psychotherapeuten auf welche Weise klinisch genutzt werden kann.      

The judgement of behaviour as aggressive and sanctionable

The influence of the factors norm deviation, intent, and injury, on the judgement of a critical act as aggressive and sanctionable was tested using a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design. Scenarios depicting aggressive interactions represented the experimental conditions. 859 school children rated these scenarios on bipolar rating scales. The results show that norm deviation, intent, and injury, are important criteria for the interpretation of aggressive behaviour. Judging an action as sanctionable proved to be more sensitive for the variation of factors than the interpretation of behaviour as aggressive. In addition, an analysis of how the scenarios representing the experimental conditions were subjectively interpreted by the subjects was carried out. This showed that all combinations of the three definition criteria are psychologically meaningful. However, preferences were observed for specific interpretation patterns.