Why you don't have a “perfect right” to anything

This paper demonstrates why the kind of rights usually presumed in assertive training most probably do not exist and why acting as if such rights do exist proves problematic. It contrasts these improbable rights with legal rights which do exist for some people in some societies. It concludes by suggesting an alternative scheme, The Picnic Mentality, for dealing with problems others have attempted to address using the concept of rights.Hank Robb is Executive Director for the Pacific Institute for RET and Training Coordinator for the Counseling Psychology Program, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon.I wish to thank four anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.     

The ethical judgment of animal research

One hundred sixty subjects acted as members of a hypothetical Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and evaluated five proposals in which animals were to be used for research or educational purposes. They were asked to approve or reject the proposals and to indicate what factors were important in reaching their ethical decisions. Gender and differences in personal moral philosophy were related to approval decisions. The reasons given for the decisions fell into three main categories: metacognitive statements, factors related to the animal, and factors related to the design of the experiment.     

Improvement in line orientation discrimination is retinally local but dependent on cognitive set

The ability of human observers to discriminate the orientation of a pair of straight lines differing by 3° improved with practice. The improvement did not transfer across hemifield or across quadrants within the same hemifield. The practice effect occurred whether or not observers were given feedback. However, orientation discrimination did not improve when observers attended to brightness rather than orientation of the lines. This suggests that cognitive set affects tuning in retinally local orientation channels (perhaps by guiding some form of unsupervised learning mechanism) and that retinotopic feature extraction may not be wholly preattentive.     

Parafraud in biology

The concept of parafraud is described as “illogical or improper behaviour towards other peoples’ views or publications,” and 19 different kinds of common practices coming under this heading are listed. Ways of combating it are suggested. Dr. Hillman was the Reader in Physiology at the University of Surrey from 1968 to 1995 and Director of the Unity Laboratory of Applied Neurobiology from 1970 to date.     

Inference of object use from pantomimed actions by aphasics and patients with right hemisphere lesions

Twenty-four aphasic and fifteen right brain-damaged subjects were compared on their ability to identify the objects whose use was depicted in a series of twenty videotaped pantomimes. Aphasics were inferior to right brain-damaged patients in inferring object use. Success was correlated with Performance IQ, but not with language measures. Analysis of movement features contributing to subjects' choices reveal speed of movement and object weight to be the most robust and hand shape and size to be the most fragile.This study was supported in part by the grants from the National Institute of Health (RO1 EY07861) and McDonnell Pew Foundation (T89-01245-017) to LMV and by the USPHS grant NS06209 to H.G. and L.M.V. The authors are indebted to the staff of the Neuropsychology and Communication Disorders Departments at the New England Rehabilitation Hospital for making available the test records of the patients included in this study. All the patients included in the study have signed the informed consent forms according to the regulations of the Human Subjects Committee at New England Rehabilitation Hospital.     

Honest research

The origins of research projects, the duties of supervisors and research workers, the subjective elements in research and the difficulties of publication are reviewed, as a guide to the complexities of executing an honest research project. It is assumed that research carried out with maximal intellectual integrity will result in real advances.     

Gender Differences in Perceptions of How Others Are Affected by Self-Disclosure of Achievement

Three experiments were conducted at two east coast Universities with primarily Caucasian students participating. In experiment one, college students disclosed that they scored in the 91st percentile or in the top half on an intelligence-related test to a female student who had scored either in the 42nd percentile (low-achieving) or the 92nd percentile (high-achieving) on the same test. Women who disclosed modestly (top half) judged that the low-achieving other felt better than women who disclosed immodestly (91st percentile). Also, women who disclosed modestly judged that the other liked them more than women who disclosed immodestly. These effects did not occur with men. In experiment two, college students disclosed that they scored in the 91st percentile or in the top half on an intelligence-related test to either a male or a female student who had scored in the 42nd percentile on the same test. Women who disclosed modestly judged that a female peer liked them more and felt more intelligent and confident than did women who disclosed immodestly. In contrast, men who disclosed immodestly judged that a female peer liked them more than did men who disclosed modestly. Regardless of the peer's gender, women judged that peers felt worse about themselves, were less happy and more upset when subjects had disclosed immodestly. In contrast, men judged that the peer felt better about himself or herself, was happier and less upset when the subjects had disclosed immodestly. In Experiment 3, male and female participants rated the intelligence-related test as equally difficult and rated doing well on them as equally important. Participants also indicated that doing well was equally important to males and females. Thus, ego-involvement is ruled out as an alternative explanation. These findings support the interpretation of previous research that women may choose to disclose modestly in an effort to be better liked or to protect the other's feelings.     

Reliability for the law of comparative judgment

A variance-components analysis is presented for paired comparisons in terms of three components:s, the scale value of the stimuli;d, a deviation from the linear model specified by the law of comparative judgment; andb, a binomial error component. Estimates are given for each of the three variances, _s ² , _d ² , and _b ² . Several coefficients, analogous to reliability coefficients, based on these three variances are indicated. The techniques are illustrated in a replicated comparison of handwriting specimens.This research was jointly supported in part by Princeton University, the Office of Naval Research under contract Nonr-1858(15), and the National Science Foundation under grant NSF G-642, and in part by Educational Testing Service. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government.Thanks are due to Ledyard Tucker and Frederic Lord for valuable suggestions on the development presented here.