Ethics and the Science of Animal Minds

Ethicists have commonly appealed to science to bolster their arguments for elevating the moral status of nonhuman animals. I describe a framework within which I take many ethicists to be making such appeals. I focus on an apparent gap in this framework between those properties of animals that are part of the scientific consensus, and those to which ethicists typically appeal in their arguments. I will describe two different ways of diminishing the appearance of the gap, and argue that both of them present challenges to ethicists seeking a firm scientific basis for their claims about the moral status of animals. I argue that more clarity about the role of appeals to science by applied ethicists leads to questions about the effectiveness of such appeals, and that these questions might best be pursued empirically.     

Expectations of Counselling: A Comparison Between Evangelical Christians and Non-Evangelical Christians

A sample of 211 adults returned a questionnaire that was a modified version of Tinsley's (1982) Expectations about Counselling: Brief Form. The sample was recruited from an evangelical Anglican Church, an evangelical Anglican theological college, a doctor's surgery and a number of educational establishments. Analysis of the data compared subjects' choice of counselor between evangelical Christians and non-evangelical Christians. Results indicate that evangelical Christians do not have significantly lower expectations about counseling, in comparison with non-evangelical Christians, except in the Directiveness and Attractiveness sections. There was, though, a significantly higher expectation of the counselor with regard to Religious Behavior by evangelical Christians in contrast to non-evangelical Christians.     

The development of a multidimensional measure of job market cognitions: the Employment Opportunity Index (EOI)

The purpose of this research was to develop a multidimensional measure of job market perceptions based on a meta-analysis. Item sets were developed to operationally define the dimensions and were tested among 3 samples. Results of a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in 3 samples indicated that the 5 scales have satisfactory psychometric properties, construct, and criterion-related validity. The 5 dimensions accounted for significant and relatively large amounts of turnover variance, even after a number of standard turnover predictors had been taken into account. The results suggest the presence of job search microprocesses in the employee turnover process. These microprocesses are described and integrated into current thinking about the turnover process.     

Exploring the role of emotions in injustice perceptions and retaliation

Although organizational justice scholars often describe unfairness as an emotionally laden experience, the role of emotion is underresearched. In a study of individuals who experienced being laid off (N = 173), the authors found that outcome favorability interacts with both procedural and interactional justice to predict participants' emotions. The pattern of interaction differed for inward-focused (i.e., shame and guilt) and outward-focused (i.e., anger and hostility) negative emotions. Attributions of blame mediated the relationship between fairness perceptions and outward-focused negative emotion. Outward-focused emotion mediated the relationship between fairness perceptions and retaliation.     

The stability of vocational interests from early adolescence to middle adulthood: a quantitative review of longitudinal studies

The present meta-analysis examined the stability of vocational interests from early adolescence (age 12) to middle adulthood (age 40). Stability was represented by rank-order and profile correlations. Interest stability remained unchanged during much of adolescence and increased dramatically during the college years (age 18-21.9), where it remained for the next 2 decades. Analyses of potential moderators showed that retest time interval was negatively related to interest stability and that rank-order stability was less stable than profile stability. Although cohort standings did not moderate stability, interests of the 1940s birth cohort were less stable than those of other cohorts. Furthermore, interests reflecting hands-on physical activities and self-expressive/artistic activities were more stable than scientific, social, enterprising, and clerical interests. Vocational interests showed substantial continuity over time, as evidenced by their higher longitudinal stability when compared with rank-order stability of personality traits. The findings are discussed in the context of psychosocial development.     

Begging the Question in Arguments Based on Testimony

Summary This paper studies some classic cases of the fallacy of begging the question based on appeals to testimony containing circular reasoning. For example, suppose agents a, b and c vouch for d’s credentials, and agents b, d, and e vouch for a’s credentials. Such a sequence of reasoning is circular because a is offering testimony for d but d is offering testimony for a. The paper formulates and evaluates restrictions on the use of testimonial evidence that might be used to deal with such problematic arguments. One is called the Non-repeater Rule: in an extended sequence of argumentation based on testimony, once a source x has been appealed to at any given point in the sequence, that same source x must never be appealed to again at any next point in the same sequence.     

Corporate culture and the employment of persons with disabilities

This article addresses key questions arising from the economic and social disparities that individuals with disabilities experience in the United States. For instance, “What role does corporate culture play in the employment of people with disabilities?” “How does it facilitate or hinder their employment and promotional opportunities, and how can corporations develop supportive cultures that benefit people with disabilities, non‐disabled employees, and the organization as a whole?” Corporate culture can create attitudinal, behavioral, and physical barriers for workers and job applicants with disabilities. This research concludes that if the employment prospects of people with disabilities are to be improved significantly, attention must be paid to the ways in which corporate culture creates or reinforces obstacles to employees with disabilities, and how these obstacles can be removed or overcome. Ultimately, we will make the case that corporate culture and societal attitudes must change if people with disabilities are to be accepted and incorporated fully into the workplace. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory strength and recency judgments

Two experiments were done to examine the effect of memory strength on numerical judgment of recency (JOR). In one experiment, the strong versus weak manipulation was defined by stimulus type (pictures vs. names); and in the other, it was defined by long versus short study durations of pictures. Two hypotheses were contrasted: (1) that strong items seem more recent than weak items (theactivation hypothesis), and (2) that JORs are more accurate for strong items than for weak items (theaccuracy hypothesis). Results of both experiments supported the activation hypothesis. On the basis of these and previous results, it is argued that recency is inferred partly from a memory’s strength or activation and partly from some other time-related clue to the age of the memory.     

Panksepp's common sense view of affective neuroscience is not the commonsense view in large areas of neuroscience

Jaak Panksepp's article 'Affective Consciousness: Core Emotional Feelings in Animals and Humans' is a excellent review and summary by a leading empirical contributor whose work for many years has been running counter to reigning behavioristic premises in neuroscience. It may unfortunately be true that he could not get this review published in many neuroscience journals because it attacks too many sacred (behavioristic) cows. Panksepp has given readers of Consciousness and Cognition a nicely condensed summary of much of his classic 1998 textbook, Affective Neuroscience. I'm reasonably confident that future neuroscience students will look on that textbook as one of the seminal publications on the subject of emotion and the brain, much as we might now look back on Luria's Higher Cortical Functions in Man, or Paul MacLean's classic work, The Triune Brain. There is probably little that I can add to his elegant presentation of the basic affective neuroscience findings, but I would like to highlight a few key issues for the reader.     

Reinforcement in an in vitro analog of appetitive classical conditioning of feeding behavior in Aplysia: blockade by a dopamine antagonist

In a recently developed in vitro analog of appetitive classical conditioning of feeding in Aplysia, the unconditioned stimulus (US) was electrical stimulation of the esophageal nerve (En). This nerve is rich in dopamine (DA)-containing processes, which suggests that DA mediates reinforcement during appetitive conditioning. To test this possibility, methylergonovine was used to antagonize DA receptors. Methylergonovine (1 nM) blocked the pairing-specific increase in fictive feeding that is usually induced by in vitro classical conditioning. The present results and previous observation that methylergonovine also blocks the effects of contingent reinforcement in an in vitro analog of appetitive operant conditioning suggest that DA mediates reinforcement for appetitive associative conditioning of feeding in Aplysia.