GLOBAL BIOETHICS: TRANSNATIONAL EXPERIENCES AND ISLAMIC BIOETHICS

In the 1970s “bioethics” emerged as a new interdisciplinary discourse on medicine, health care, and medical technologies, primarily in Western, developed countries. The main focus was on how individual patients could be empowered to cope with the challenges of science and technology. Since the 1990s, the main source of bioethical problems is the process of globalization, particularly neo‐liberal market ideology. Faced with new challenges such as poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, hunger, pandemics, and organ trafficking the bioethical discourse of empowering individuals is no longer sufficient. Global bioethics nowadays is concerned with applying and implementing a universal ethical framework. Islamic bioethics has contributed to creating such framework (exemplified in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights) while at the same time it is continuously articulating and interpreting this framework in specific settings and contexts.     

Spinoza's Definition Of Attribute: An Interpretation

Since it has generally been accepted that to Spinoza attributes are real features of substance, the interpretation of his attribute definition has become a notorious problem. The reason is that interpreters have failed to see that the definition formulates a purely epistemological account of the state of affairs. The article presents and justifies such an interpretation. It will be shown that the definition in spite of its epistemological character implies a real ontological definition, which specifies the critical features of an attribute. As to the reason why Spinoza has stated the definition in an ‘indirect way’, it is shown that it is likely that he has done so in order to have a more efficient, a more unambiguous and a more elegant definition. The relevance of the new interpretation is not only that it provides us with an interpretable, transparent attribute definition, but it also contributes to the establishment of a coherent picture of Spinoza’s metaphysics around this definition.     

Effects of nutritional supplements on aggression,rule‐breaking,and psychopathology among young adult prisoners

Objective: In an earlier study, improvement of dietary status with food supplements led to a reduction in antisocial behavior among prisoners. Based on these earlier findings, a study of the effects of food supplements on aggression, rule‐breaking, and psychopathology was conducted among young Dutch prisoners. Methods: Two hundred and twenty‐one young adult prisoners (mean age=21.0, range 18–25 years) received nutritional supplements containing vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids or placebos, over a period of 1–3 months. Results: As in the earlier (British) study, reported incidents were significantly reduced (P=.017, one‐tailed) in the active condition (n=115), as compared with placebo (n=106). Other assessments, however, revealed no significant reductions in aggressiveness or psychiatric symptoms. Conclusion: As the incidents reported concerned aggressive and rule‐breaking behavior as observed by the prison staff, the results are considered to be promising. However, as no significant improvements were found in a number of other (self‐reported) outcome measures, the results should be interpreted with caution. Aggr. Behav. 36:117–126, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Motivational synchronicity: Priming motivational orientations with observations of others’ behaviors

Two experiments tested the motivational synchronicity hypothesis, according to which observation of a target person’s behavior implying an intrinsic or an extrinsic motivational orientation primes the observers’ corresponding motivational orientation. Experiment 1 revealed that participants exposed to a target person intrinsically motivated to perform a task, relative to those exposed to an extrinsically motivated target person, showed greater intrinsic motivation (free-choice persistence) for the same task. Experiment 2 extended this in two important ways: (1) different tasks were used for the target and participant in order to rule out an expectation-based interpretation of the results, and (2) performance on an activity known to be facilitated by intrinsic motivation was used as the dependent measure. It appears that simply observing others’ motivational orientations influences the accessibility of the observers’ corresponding motivational orientation.     

Cueing task goals and earning money: Relatively high monetary rewards reduce failures to act on goals in a Stroop task

We examined the role of monetary rewards in failures to act on goals in a Stroop task. Based on recent developments in theorizing on the interplay between rewards and cognitive control, we hypothesized that relatively high monetary rewards enhance the focus and stability of a cued task goal compared to low monetary rewards, and hence cause a reduction in failures to act on current task goals under circumstances that warrant top–down goal implementation. To test this, participants received a modified version of the Stroop task, in which they were either briefly cued with the goal of naming the color or meaning of targets on a trial-by-trial basis. After goal cuing, but before presenting the target, either a low or high reward cue was presented. Results showed that higher rewards produced a general speed-up. More importantly, Stroop interference on error rates was lower in the high reward condition compared to the low reward condition, revealing that the rewards enhanced focus and stability of the cued goal. These results provide support for theorizing that reward processing modulates utility assessment of current goals by affecting attention to facilitate goal-directed behavior.     

Conscious thought beats deliberation without attention in diagnostic decision-making: at least when you are an expert

Contrary to what common sense makes us believe, deliberation without attention has recently been suggested to produce better decisions in complex situations than deliberation with attention. Based on differences between cognitive processes of experts and novices, we hypothesized that experts make in fact better decisions after consciously thinking about complex problems whereas novices may benefit from deliberation-without-attention. These hypotheses were confirmed in a study among doctors and medical students. They diagnosed complex and routine problems under three conditions, an immediate-decision condition and two delayed conditions: conscious thought and deliberation-without-attention. Doctors did better with conscious deliberation when problems were complex, whereas reasoning mode did not matter in simple problems. In contrast, deliberation-without-attention improved novices’ decisions, but only in simple problems. Experts benefit from consciously thinking about complex problems; for novices thinking does not help in those cases.     

Reflecting on the action or its outcome: Behavior representation level modulates high level outcome priming effects on self-agency experiences

Recent research suggests that one can have the feeling of being the cause of an action’s outcome, even in the absence of a prior intention to act. That is, experienced self-agency over behavior increases when outcome representations are primed outside of awareness, prior to executing the action and observing the resulting outcome. Based on the notion that behavior can be represented at different levels, we propose that priming outcome representations is more likely to augment self-agency experiences when the primed representation corresponds with a person’s behavior representation level. Three experiments, using different priming and self-agency tasks, both measuring and manipulating the level of behavior representation, confirmed this idea. Priming high level outcome representations enhanced experienced self-agency over behavior more strongly when behavior was represented at a higher level, rather than a lower level. Thus, priming effects on self-agency experiences critically depend on behavior representation level.     

Beyond priming effects: The role of positive affect and discrepancies in implicit processes of motivation and goal pursuit

Recent research demonstrates that goal pursuit can be instigated without conscious interventions when the mental accessibility of goal representations is enhanced by environmental cues. However, the mechanisms producing this non-conscious, motivational, goal-directed activity are not clearly addressed in the literature. In this chapter we present a framework within which the non-conscious activation of goal-directed behaviour can be understood. The framework departs from the idea that a goal is represented as a desired state and identifies three characteristics of this representation that render non-conscious goal pursuit more likely to occur: its mental accessibility, the discrepancy of the represented state with the actual state, and its association with positive affect. We present findings, largely established in our own labs, that demonstrate the crucial role of these three factors. We will close the chapter by showing how the framework can help to address some of the pressing issues in the research on non-conscious goal pursuit.     

The Effect of Individual Differences in Factor Loadings on the Standard Factor Model

It is shown that the population-covariance matrix of a heterogeneous factor model may be indistinguishable from that of a standard factor model and that the standard likelihood-ratio goodness-of-fit statistic has but little power in detecting loading heterogeneity. The relation between loading heterogeneity and factor score reliability is studied and it is recommended that non-normality of the test-score distributions be tested to use factor scores with more confidence. Substantive justifications for the model assumptions and model-based methods to test specific hypotheses about the loading distribution, are discussed.     

Romaphobia among Serbian and Dutch adolescents: The role of perceived threat,nationalistic feelings,and integrative orientations

This study examines the relationships between nationalism and integration attitudes on one hand, and anti‐Roma prejudice on the other. Using Stephan and Stephan's threat theory, the study analyzes whether and to what extent these relationships are mediated by perceived economic and symbolic threats. Data were collected among 16‐ and 17‐year‐old students in Serbia and The Netherlands. A path analysis shows that perceived economic and symbolic threats mediate the relationships between nationalism and integration on one hand, and Romaphobia on the other. Moreover, the findings show that these relationships are comparable between Serbian and Dutch youth. Levels of threat and Romaphobia differ between countries. Youth in the Netherlands, who barely have contact opportunities with Roma, are characterized by higher threat and Romaphobia scores than Serbian youth, who have proportionally more contact opportunities. Explanations are discussed as well as implications for theory and prejudice reduction in diverse intercultural settings.