Group Wrongs and Guilt Feelings

Can it ever be appropriate to feel guilt just because one's group has acted badly? Some say no, citing supposed features of guilt feelings as such. If one understands group action according to my plural subject account of groups, however, one can argue for the appropriateness of feeling guilt just because one's group has acted badly - a feeling that often occurs. In so arguing I sketch the plural subject account of groups, group intentions and group actions: for a group to intend (in the relevant sense) is for its members to be jointly committed to intend that such-and-such as a body. Individual group members need not be directly involved in the formation of the intention in order to participate in such a joint commitment. The core concept of joint commitment is in an important way holistic, not being reducible to a set of personal commitments over which each party holds sway. Parties to a group intention so understood can reasonably see the resulting action as "ours" as opposed to "theirs" and thus appropriately respond to the action's badness with a feeling of guilt, even when they themselves are morally innocent in the matter. I label the feeling in question a feeling of "membership guilt." A number of standard philosophical claims about the nature of guilt feelings are thrown into question by my argument.     

Associations Between Clinic-Referred Boys and Their Fathers on Childhood Inattention-Overactivity and Aggression Dimensions

The question asked in this study of 70 clinically referred 6- to 12-year-old boys with behavior problems was whether or not childhood inattention-overactivity and aggression are transmitted specifically from biological fathers to sons. Fathers' self-reported childhood inattention-overactivity on a retrospectively valid measure was exclusively associated with parents' ratings of their sons' current attention problems on the Mothers' Operational Measure for Sub-grouping (MOMS), the Revised Child Behavior Checklist (RCBCL), and an approximated DSM-IV inattention dimension. Fathers' self-reported childhood aggression was not associated with ratings of their sons' aggression on the MOMS or DADS (a parallel instrument for fathers), nor on DSM-III oppositional or conduct disorder dimensions, but it was exclusively associated with RCBCL ratings of sons' aggressive and delinquent behavior. None of the nonspecific correlations (father inattention-overactivity with son aggression or father aggression with son inattention-overactivity) was significant.     

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board's Survey of Sexual Harassment: The Fit of a Three-Factor Model

Research over the past decade and a half exploring the psychological dimensions of the definition of sexual harassment has converged on a three-factor model: gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion. The current study used confirmatory factor analysis to determine whether the most widely used sexual harassment survey, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (USMSPB; 1981) survey, measures this three-factor structure. Data from a sample of the USMSPB's 1988 survey of Federal employees (n= 1070) and from a midwestern university's survey of undergraduates (n= 572) and graduate students, faculty, and staff (n= 575) were analyzed. The three-factor model fit reasonably well in all samples, but two survey items, measuring sexual assault and sexual favors, were weakly related to their respective factors. This model, however, was only marginally stable across female and male subsamples, and gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention had low discriminant validity. Both practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

THE JOHN TEMPLETON FOUNDATION MODEL COURSES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. In 1994 the John Templeton Foundation Humility Theology Information Center launched a major initiative, the Science-Religion Course Program, to encourage the teaching of high-quality academic courses focusing on the relationship between science and religion. In the first phase of the program, six courses were selected—four from the United States, one from Canada, and one from New Zealand—to serve as models for other academics wishing to initiate their own classes on the science-religion interface. In particular these six model courses will serve as examples for the second phase of the Templeton Foundation program, which will provide financial support for up to 100 courses at universities, colleges, and seminaries around the world. This paper is a report on the pedagogical strategies and methodologies employed in each of the six selected model courses.     

Book Reviews

F ordham , M ichael . The Making of an Analyst: A Memoir
R edfearn , J oseph . The Exploding Self: The Creative and Destructive Nuckus of the Personality
G ordon , R osemary . Bridges: Metaphor for Psychic Processes
J ackson , M urray and W illiams , P aul . Unimaginable Storms: A Search for Meaning in Psychosis
S tevens , anthony . Jung
W eissman , J udith . Of Two Minds: Poets Who Hear Voices     

Decision strategies and visual-field asymmetries in same-different judgments of word meaning

The accuracy with which observers judged whether two words belonged to the same semantic category was determined from a detection-theoretic analysis ofsame-different judgments. In Experiment 1, one word was presented centrally and the other word in either the left visual field (LVF) or the right visual field (RVF); in Experiment 2, both words were presented to either the LVF or the RVF. In order to obtain receiver-operating characteristics (ROCs) of performance, observers were asked to rate their confidence that the two words belonged to the same semantic category. Two models of the decision strategy were fitted to the obtained characteristics: a differencing model, in which the decision variable was the difference between the two observations; and an optimal model, in which each observation was judged in relation to a criterion. In both experiments, the optimal model provided a better fit than the differencing model to the obtained characteristics. Maximum-likelihood estimates of both the criterion-free parameter,d′, and the area under the operating characteristic,p(A), were greater for words presented in the RVF than for those presented in the LVF.     

Patterns of mother-infant interaction and attachment: A cluster-analytic approach

This study examined stability and change in patterns of mother-infant interaction between 5 and 10 months and their relation to attachment security at 18 months. Cluster analysis was used to identify patterns of dyadic interaction. There was significant, but not substantial, stability in cluster membership from 5 to 10 months. For females, being in the most optimal cluster at 5 months related to subsequent attachment security, regardless of the 10-month pattern of interaction. For males, who were significantly more likely to be insecure than females, insecure attachment was predicted by negative change from 5 to 10 months (moving from a more optimal to a less optimal cluster).     

THE RELATIONSHIP OF GENDER AND ETHNICITY TO SELF-SILENCING AND DEPRESSION AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS

This study expands on the initial work with the Silencing the Self Scale (STSS; Jack, 1991) by presenting data using a more diverse, nonclinical sample. Included were both men and women ( n = 604) who were African American, Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic. It was expected that women would be more self-silencing than men, and that there would be ethnic differences. There were three principal findings: (a) men were more self-silencing than were women on the STSS; (b) there was a main effect for ethnicity on the STSS, with Asians expressing the highest levels of self-silencing; and (c) there was a positive correlation between self-silencing and depression for all ethnic/gender groups.     

DOUBLE DISSOCIATION BETWEEN MEMORY SYSTEMS UNDERLYING EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT MEMORY IN THE HUMAN BRAIN

Abstract— Amnesic patients have impaired explicit memory that is evident in poor recall and recognition of words, yet can have intact implicit memory for words as measured by repetition priming, the enhanced efficiency for reprocessing those word's. The dissociation between explicit and implicit memory for words is a fundamental characteristic of normal cognition that could reflect two different functional architectures of the human brain two separate processing systems or two levels of operation of a single system with implicit memory less demanding of that system. We present a patient who has a lesion in the right occipital lobe and who showed intact explicit and impaired implicit memory for words. The deficit was specific to visual priming. The double dissociation between explicit and implicit visual memory for words indicates that separate processing systems mediate these two forms of memory, and that a memory system in right occipital cortex mediates implicit visual memory for words.