Developing the Good Physician: Spirituality affects the development of virtues and moral intuitions in medical students

The Project on the Good Physician is a national longitudinal study of moral and professional formation of American physicians over the course of medical training. The purpose of this paper is to examine the processes by which spirituality influences the development of three virtues (mindfulness, empathic compassion, and generosity) in medical students as mediated by the moral intuition to care/harm, as well as make predictions as to how this type of study could be generalizable to other populations. Study participants were 563 medical students recruited by the University of Chicago from 24 medical schools across the U.S. (54.7% male, 57% white) who completed measures assessing virtue formation 9 months apart. Path analysis of a cascade model showed that spirituality (but not religiousness) was directly and indirectly related to change in the virtue empathic compassion, and also indirectly related to change in the virtue generosity. Moreover, the moral intuition to care/harm partially mediated the association between spirituality and the virtues of empathic compassion and generosity (but not mindfulness).     

Manipulating informational constraints shapes movement reorganization in interceptive actions

Movement organization of cricket batters' actions was analyzed under three distinct experimental task constraints: a representative condition of a practice context in which the batters batted against a "live" bowler, a ball projection machine, and a near life-size video simulation of a bowler. Results showed that each distinct set of task constraints led to significant variations in the patterns of movement control. Removal of advanced information sources from a bowler's actions when the batters faced the ball projection machine caused significant delays in movement initiation, resulting in reduced peak bat swing velocities and a reduction in the quality of bat-ball contact, when compared with batting against a "live" bowler. When responding to a two-dimensional video simulation, batters were able to use information from the bowlers' action, enabling fidelity of initial behavioral responses consistent with the task of batting against a "live" bowler. However, without interceptive task requirements or actual ball flight information, significant variations in downswing initiation timing and peak bat velocities were demonstrated. Findings stress the need for representative experimental and learning designs in fast ball sports for developing performers.     

Effect of drugs on the cardiac conditioned response of dogs

Dogs were conditioned to an anxiety response characterized by an increase in heart rate upon presentation of a musical tone. Meprobamate, chlordiazepoxide and diazepam effectively prevented the cardiac conditioned response. Phenobarbital and chlorpromazine were less effective. Amphetamine, 1.5 orally, also blocked the cardiac conditioned response. Atropine, meperidine, caffeine, imipramine and -methyl-dopa had no effect on the cardiac conditioned response. Morphine and methyl phenidate were clearly active only in doses producing marked side effects. Ethanol in relatively small doses was mildly effective.     

The effects of category use on learned categories

Frequently, people learn to classify instances of a concept and later learn additional information about the concept. What is the effect of this later learning on the original classification? In five experiments, this issue was investigated with a common classification paradigm in which symptom sets were classified into disease categories. After learning to classify these sets, the subjects learned to use the category to decide what treatment should be given for a symptom set. The symptoms that were important for the treatments were later classified by disease more accurately and were generated earlier from the disease name. However, this effect occurred only if the category representation was activated during the learning of the treatments. Thus, later learning about a particular use of the concept can sometimes affect the original classification.     

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: self-esteem differences in the experience and anticipation of success

Successes--defined broadly as meeting important standards or receiving positive evaluations--are widely assumed to be enjoyed equally by people with high self-esteem (HSEs) and low self-esteem (LSEs). Three studies examined the contradictory hypothesis that HSEs react more favorably to success than do LSEs and that success brings about certain unfavorable consequences for LSEs. Undergraduate participants reacted to a laboratory-manipulated success (Studies 1 and 2) or imagined highly positive events in the future (Study 3). Self-esteem differences emerged in anxiety, thoughts about the self, and (in Study 3) thoughts about non-self-related aspects of the event. LSEs were more anxious than HSEs after succeeding, success improved HSEs' self-relevant thoughts but not LSEs', and LSEs focused more on success's negative aspects.     

Peering into the bias blind spot: people's assessments of bias in themselves and others

People tend to believe that their own judgments are less prone to bias than those of others, in part because they tend to rely on introspection for evidence of bias in themselves but on their lay theories in assessing bias in others. Two empirical consequences of this asymmetry are explored. Studies 1 and 2 document that people are more inclined to think they are guilty of bias in the abstract than in any specific instance. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that people tend to believe that their own personal connection to a given issue is a source of accuracy and enlightenment but that such personal connections in the case of others who hold different views are a source of bias. The implications of this asymmetry in assessing objectivity and bias in the self versus others are discussed.     

Attitude importance as a moderator of the relationship between implicit and explicit attitude measures

The authors examined attitude importance as a moderator of the relationship between the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and explicit attitude measures. In Study 1 (N = 194), as ratings of attitude importance regarding the 2000 presidential election increased, the strength of the relationship between a Bush-Gore IAT and explicit attitude measures also increased. Study 2 provided a conceptual replication of these results using attitudes toward Coke and Pepsi (N = 112). In addition, across both studies, explicit attitude measures were better predictors of deliberative behaviors than IAT scores. In Study 3 (N = 77), the authors examined the role of elaboration as a mechanism by which attitude importance may moderate IAT-explicit attitude correlations. As predicted, increased elaboration resulted in stronger IAT-explicit attitude correlations. Other possible mechanisms by which attitude importance may moderate the IAT-explicit attitude relationship also are discussed.