Nonassertive Moral Abolitionism

Proponents of moral abolitionism, like Richard Garner, qualify their view as an “assertive” version of the position. They counsel moral realists and anti‐realists alike to accept moral error theory, abolish morality, and encourage others to abolish morality. In response, this paper argues that moral error theorists should abolish morality, but become quiet about such abolition. It offers a quietist or nonassertive version of moral abolitionism. It does so by first clarifying and addressing the arguments for and against assertive moral abolitionism. Second, it develops novel criticisms of assertive moral abolitionism and offers nonassertive moral abolitionism in response. Third, it discusses how various metaethical views might respond to nonassertive moral abolitionism. Its basic claim is that nonassertive moral abolitionism provides superior therapeutic benefits over assertive moral abolitionism and other conserving and reforming approaches to moral discourse.     

Black Reltrad: Measuring Religious Diversity and Commonality Among African Americans

The Black Church has remained an important topic of scholarly interest for more than a century, but less attention has been devoted to the consequences of contrasting denominational affiliations within the African‐American Protestant religious tradition. We advance a new coding scheme that allows researchers to measure and test black affiliates across a range of denominations with roots inside and outside of the greater Black Church. Findings from the 1972 to 2014 General Social Surveys indicate that our “Black Reltrad” syntax more meticulously captures similarities and differences among African Americans with respect to religious sensibilities, religious‐related social attitudes, and engagement in black politics than extant coding schemes. Consequently, although the legacy of racial discrimination and inequality binds blacks together, scholars must also recognize differences within the African‐American Protestant religious tradition.     

What Will the Boss Think? The Impression Management Implications of Supportive Relationships With Star and Project Peers

Although impression management scholars have identified a number of tactics for influencing supervisor evaluations, most of those tactics represent supervisor‐targeted behaviors. This study examines the degree to which employees form supportive relationships with peers for impression management purposes. In so doing, we explore this intriguing question: Will employees gain more from forming supportive relationships with “stars” (i.e., top performers who are “on the fast track” in the organization) or “projects” (i.e., “works in progress” who need help and refinement to perform well)? We examined this question in 2 field studies. Study 1 included 4 sources and 2 time periods; Study 2 included 2 sources and 3 time periods. The results showed that supportive relationships with both stars and projects seemed to represent impression management opportunities, insofar as they predicted supervisor positive affect and perceptions of employee promotability. Impression management motives only predicted supportive relationships with stars, however, not projects. Relationships with projects were driven by prosocial motives not concerns about managing images. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of our results for the managing of impressions and peer relationships.     

Limits on efficient human mindreading: Convergence across Chinese adults and Semai children

We tested Apperly and Butterfill's (2009, Psychological Review, 116, 753) theory that humans have two mindreading systems whereby the efficient‐system guiding anticipatory glances displays signature limits that do not apply to the flexible system guiding verbal predictions. Experiments 1 and 2 tested urban Mainland‐Chinese adults (n = 64) and Experiment 3 tested Semai children living in the rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia (3‐ to 4‐year‐olds, n = 60). Participants – across different ages, groups and methods – anticipated others’ false‐beliefs about object‐location but not object‐identity. Convergence in signature limits signalled that the early‐developing efficient system involved minimal theory‐of‐mind. Chinese adults and older Semai children showed flexibility in their direct predictions. The flexible mindreading system in ascribing others’ beliefs as such was task‐sensitive and implicated maturational and cultural contributions.     

Pilot Testing of an Online Training for Criminal Justice Professionals on Medication‐Assisted Treatment

There is widespread misunderstanding about medication‐assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid addiction. Although most MAT trainings target providers, criminal justice program staff and treatment referrers often determine offender placement. This article supports the efficacy of an online MAT training for criminal justice stakeholders.     

Separating value from selection frequency in rapid reaching biases to visual targets

Stimuli associated with positive rewards in one task often receive preferential processing in a subsequent task, even when those associations are no longer relevant. Here we use a rapid reaching task to investigate these biases. In Experiment 1 we first replicated the learning procedure of Raymond and O'Brien (2009), for a set of arbitrary shapes that varied in value (positive, negative) and probability (20%, 80%). In a subsequent task, participants rapidly reached toward one of two shapes, except now the previously learned associations were irrelevant. As in the previous studies, we found significant reach biases toward shapes previously associated with a high probable, positive outcome. Unexpectedly, we also found a bias toward shapes previously associated with a low probable, negative outcome. Closer inspection of the learning task revealed a potential second factor that might account for these results; since a low probable negative shape was always paired with a high probable negative shape, it was selected with disproportionate frequency. To assess how selection frequency and reward value might both contribute to reaching biases we performed a second experiment. The results of this experiment at a group level replicated the reach-bias toward positively rewarding stimuli, but also revealed a separate bias toward stimuli that had been more frequently selected. At the level of individual participants, we observed a variety of preference profiles, with some participants biased primarily by reward value, others by frequency, and a few actually biased away from both highly rewarding and high frequency targets. These findings highlight that: (1) rapid reaching provides a sensitive readout of preferential processing; (2) target reward value and target selection frequency are separate sources of bias; and (3) group-level analyses in complex decision-making tasks can obscure important and varied individual differences in preference profiles.