Cognitive strategies in coping with expedition stress

Expeditions provide a valuable opportunity for studying processes of coping with a stressful situation. An expedition to India organized by the British Schools Exploring Society has already been reported as being accompanied by positive changes on self-report personality scales. This paper is concerned with detailed cognitive coping measures completed throughout the 6 weeks of the expedition. It needs to be noted that the results relate to young adults and to those who provided detailed coping information; the generalizability of the result is a matter for future research. The expedition presented a mixture of physical and social stresses. Men enjoyed the physical experience more than women, but women enjoyed the social experience more than men. There was generally greater reliance on personal resources than on social support in coping with stress. This was particularly true for men in coping with physical stress and women in coping with social stress. In general, the physical stresses had been better anticipated than the social ones. Positive reformulations were much more widely used as coping strategies than avoidance/resignation strategies, especially so for physical stresses. However, use of avoidance/resignation strategies was the better predictor of outcome, with those who used them being least likely to show positive personality change as a result of the expedition. The results are related to current research on stress and coping.     

Multicriteria approval: application of approval voting concepts to MCDM problems

Multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods generally require information that is difficult and expensive to obtain. It is shown in this paper that given an ordering of criteria by importance, and whether each alternative is above the average evaluation of the alternatives for each criterion, considerable information can be extracted concerning the overall rankings of the alternatives. This is done by recognizing the similarity between criteria in MCDM, and voters in social choice theory. Multicriteria approval, proposed in this paper, is an MCDM adaptation of approval voting which can be used to classify decisions into one of several categories, depending on whether, and the manner in which, a superior alternative can be identified. An exhaustive examination of all possible decision situations of tractable size is made to measure the applicability of multicriteria approval, and the approach is demonstrated in an industrial procurement case. In addition to requiring minimal information from a decision maker, multicriteria approval satisfies several desirable criteria for MCDM techniques. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An automated food delivery system for behavioral and neurophysiological studies of learning and memory in freely moving monkeys

We describe a custom-built feeder based on stepping motor technology controlled by a laboratory computer. The feeder dispenses a wide range of foods: any fruit, vegetable, or nut. The feeder allows the investigator to reward monkeys with different foods within a single experimental day. The monkey’s motivation to perform tasks is high and does not rely upon food regulation. The avoidance of regulation, as well as the palatability and variety of the rewards dispensed by our device, distinguishes it from commercially available products. We also describe the use of the feeder in the context of novel behavioral and neurophysiological studies in freely moving monkeys.     

Religion and Partisanship in Canada

Using a survey of three thousand Canadian adults conducted by the Angus Reid Group in the autumn of 1996, we examine the continuing role of religion in shaping partisan preferences. We find that traditional religious alignments still have some impact, but are being reshaped by both religious and political developments. We find that Evangelical Protestants are drawn toward the new Reform Party, Mainline Protestants still tend toward the Progressive Conservatives, and Catholics—both English‐and French‐speaking—remain the bulwark of the Liberal Party. The New Democratic Party, however, finds its greatest resonance among secular Canadians, and the Bloc Quebecois is strongest among nominal, rather than practicing, French‐speaking Catholics. In multivariate analysis, these religious variables stand up well against other influences in explaining partisan preferences.     

The Limitations of Ritual Propriety: Ritual and Language in Xúnzǐ and Zhuāngzǐ

This essay examines the theory of ritual propriety presented in the Xúnz?? and criticisms of Xunzi-like views found in the classical Daoist anthology Zhu??ngz??. To highlight the respects in which the Zhu??ngz?? can be read as posing a critical response to a Xunzian view of ritual propriety, the essay juxtaposes the two texts' views of language, since Xunzi's theory of ritual propriety is intertwined with his theory of language. I argue that a Zhuangist critique of the presuppositions of Xunzi's stance on language also undermines his stance on ritual propriety. Xunzi contends that state promulgation of anelaborate code of ritual propriety is a key to good social order (zhi) and that state regulation of language is a key to smooth communication and thus also good order. The Zhu??ngz?? provides grounds for doubting both contentions. Claiming that ritual propriety causally produces social order is analogous to claiming that grammar causally produces smooth linguistic communication, when in fact it is more likely our ability to communicate that allows us to develop shared rules of grammar. Humans have fundamental social and communicative capacities that undergird our abilities to speak a language or engage in shared ritual performances. It is these more fundamental capacities, not their manifestation in a particular system of grammar or ritual norms, that provide the root explanation of our ability to communicate or to live together harmoniously. The Xunzi-Zhuangzi dialectic suggests that ritual is indispensable, but normatively justified rituals will be less rigid, less comprehensive, less fastidious, and more spontaneous than a Xunzian theorist would allow.     

The role of sincere amends and perceived partner responsiveness in forgiveness

In a sample of 188 people currently in a romantic relationship, the authors examined the extent to which perceiving a partner as responsive and sincere in making amends relates to participants' forgiveness of a partner after a real‐life hurtful event. Specifically, it was predicted that sincere amends would be associated with greater forgiveness because it conveys that one's partner has understood and validated one's experience of the hurtful event. Results supported this mediational model. Further, exploratory analyses suggested that this meditational model is moderated by event severity and relationship satisfaction. Discussion focuses on understanding how this work might help to inform the dynamic process of forgiveness in couples.     

EMBODIED COGNITION AND RELIGION

It is argued that there are good scientific grounds for accepting that cognition functions in a way that reflects embodiment. This represents a more holistic, systemic way of thinking about human beings, and contributes to the coordination of scientific assumptions about mind and body with those of the faith traditions, moving us beyond sterile debates about reductionism. It has been claimed by Francisco Varela and others that there is an affinity between Buddhism and embodied cognition, though it is argued here that they are less closely aligned than is sometimes assumed. Embodied cognition also accords well with the holistic strand of thinking about human nature in Judeo‐Christian thinking. While accepting the persuasiveness of the general case for cognition being embodied it is suggested here that some forms of cognition are more embodied than others, and that it may be one of the distinctive features of humans that they have developed a capacity for relatively nonembodied forms of cognition.     

Promoting social competence and preventing childhood aggression: A framework for applying social information processing theory in intervention research

Advances in social information processing (SIP) theory have contributed to the understanding of the ways in which cognitive operations lead to aggressive behavior in childhood. Despite these advances, applying SIP theory to the design of interventions to promote social competence and prevent aggressive behavior remains in a formative stage. Few programs have explicitly applied the SIP theory. Moreover, among the relatively few programs that have used SIP as a theoretical basis, the applications of the SIP theory vary widely. This article provides a general framework for applying the SIP theory to school-based interventions. We review key elements of the SIP model and distinguish SIP from the more general social problem-solving perspective. We discuss several methodological issues in conducting the SIP intervention research.