Military service and moral obligation∗

The author investigates the view that there is a moral obligation to serve in the armed forces of the nation State of which one is a citizen resident (with special reference to young American men at the present time). It is conceded that under current law in this country there may be such a legal obligation, that many men may be obliged to render such service, and that under certain circumstances even a moral obligation to serve may also exist. What is denied is that any of the familiar theories of moral obligation is adequate in existing circumstances to establish this thesis in general. The result is either that a new theory of moral obligation must be developed to fit the current facts, or the present assessment of those facts must be fundamentally revised, or we must concede that draftees and men generally have no such moral obligation of service at all.     

“Tell Me Who Your Enemies Are”: Government Reports About the “Cult” Phenomenon in Israel

Between 1982 and 2011, four Israeli governmental reports addressing ostensible dangers from “cults” (new religious movements, or NRMs) were issued. The 1980s reports use a collectivist discourse, in which the state sees itself as defending the collective's borders from external threats and representing various sectors while seeking consensual values. The 1990s report marks an interim stage in which the state tries to balance individual liberties with sectoral interests. The 2011 report focuses solely on harm to individuals and is the harshest of the four. The reports reflect milestones in three processes of change that have taken place in Israeli society: from a collectivist‐hegemonic ethos to a multisectoral one; from a focus upon society to a focus on the individual; and from nationalistic values to universalistic ones. At every point in time, NRMs represented a different perceived threat to Israeli society. We explain how multisectoralism brings about both tolerance toward new religious phenomena and fierce anti‐cultic activity.     

Navigating conflict and power at work: the effects of power and interdependence asymmetries on conflict in organizations

Many of the most difficult conflicts people face at work are up and down; with bosses, supervisors, and important clients, or with direct reports, staff, or other employees who differ from them in terms of their power and interests. However, much of the research on power differences and conflict tends to be piecemeal, decontextualized, and focused on negative consequences. This paper presents 2 studies that investigated a new situated model of conflict and power at work. They build on classic areas of research on social conflict, power, and interdependence; and integrate them into a coherent framework for organizational conflict research. The study methods and findings are presented, and their implications for research on work conflict are discussed.     

Distractor Interference in Selective Reaching: Dissociating Distance and Grouping Effects

In the present experiment, the authors sought to differentiate between a distance and a grouping explanation for the symmetric versus asymmetric patterns of distractor interference in selective reaching. Participants (N = 16) pointed to a green target that appeared either with or without a red distractor. Target-distractor separation was manipulated within an array of 5 closely grouped stimulus boxes, and distractor interference (difference in performance between trials with and trials without a distractor) was measured in reaction time, movement time, percentage errors, and movement endpoints. Small distances (5 mm) between target and distractor yielded a symmetric pattern of interference, whereas large distances (20 mm) yielded an asymmetric pattern, with more interference from near than from far distractors. Those findings support the distance account of distractor interference and refute the grouping account.     

Does Feeling Empathy Lead to Compassion Fatigue or Compassion Satisfaction? The Role of Time Perspective

Research has shown that feeling empathy sometimes leads to compassion fatigue and sometimes to compassion satisfaction. In three studies, participants recalled an instance when they felt empathy in order to assess the role time perspective plays in how empathizers perceive the consequences of empathy. Study 1 revealed that college students perceive empathy as having more negative consequences in the short term, but more positive consequences in the long term. Study 2 showed that service industry professionals perceive the consequences of feeling empathy for customers who felt bad as less negative, and the consequences of feeling empathy for people who felt good as less positive, in the long as opposed to the short term. Because Studies 1 and 2 confounded time perspective with event specificity a third study was conducted in which event specificity was held constant across time perspectives. The same pattern of results emerged. The results of these studies indicate that perceptions of the effects of feeling empathy, whether positive or negative, become less extreme over time. These findings shed light on the relation between empathy and compassion fatigue and satisfaction by suggesting that situations that initially are experienced as stressful can over time make the empathizer stronger.     

Normative theories of argumentation: are some norms better than others?

Norms—that is, specifications of what we ought to do—play a critical role in the study of informal argumentation, as they do in studies of judgment, decision-making and reasoning more generally. Specifically, they guide a recurring theme: are people rational? Though rules and standards have been central to the study of reasoning, and behavior more generally, there has been little discussion within psychology about why (or indeed if) they should be considered normative despite the considerable philosophical literature that bears on this topic. In the current paper, we ask what makes something a norm, with consideration both of norms in general and a specific example: norms for informal argumentation. We conclude that it is both possible and desirable to invoke norms for rational argument, and that a Bayesian approach provides solid normative principles with which to do so.     

Dissolving an epistemological puzzle of time perception

Robin Le Poidevin (2007) claims that we do form perceptual beliefs regarding order and duration based on our perception of events, but neither order nor duration are by themselves objects of perception. Temporal properties are discernible only when one first perceives their bearers, and temporal relations are discernible only when one first perceives their relata. The epistemic issue remains as to whether or not our perceptual beliefs about order and duration are formed on the causal basis of an event’s objective order and duration. Le Poidevin raises this issue in the form of an epistemological puzzle of time perception, from which he derives the claim that the order and duration of events do not causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them. Since his view is motivated by a causal truthmaker principle for grounding knowledge, it also holds that perceptual beliefs about temporal features must be caused by the features themselves in order to count as knowledge. Given these theoretical commitments, there is a puzzle concerning how such perceptual beliefs could constitute knowledge of temporal properties. In response to Le Poidevin, I argue for an account according to which order and duration are objects of perception, causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them, and such beliefs are capable of counting as knowledge. I conclude by showing that, on my alternative account, the epistemological puzzle dissolves and his own solution to it fails.     

Structural awareness mitigates the effect of delay in human causal learning

Many studies have demonstrated that reinforcement delays exert a detrimental influence on human judgments of causality. In a free-operant procedure, the trial structure is usually only implicit, and delays are typically manipulated via trial duration, with longer trials tending to produce both longer experienced delays and also lower objective contingencies. If, however, a learner can become aware of this trial structure, this may mitigate the effects of delay on causal judgments. Here we tested this “structural-awareness” hypothesis by manipulating whether response–outcome contingencies were clearly identifiable as such, providing structural information in real time using an auditory tone to delineate consecutive trials. A first experiment demonstrated that providing cues to indicate trial structure, but without an explicit indication of their meaning, significantly increased the accuracy of causal judgments in the presence of delays. This effect was not mediated by changes in response frequency or timing, and a second experiment demonstrated that it cannot be attributed to the alternative explanation of enhanced outcome salience. In a third experiment, making trial structure explicit and unambiguous, by telling participants that the tones indicated trial structure, completely abolished the effect of delays. We concluded that, with sufficient information, a continuous stream of causes and effects can be perceived as a series of discrete trials, the contingency nature of the input may be exploited, and the effects of delay may be eliminated. These results have important implications for human contingency learning and in the characterization of temporal influences on causal inference.