“Put a Little Love in Your Heart”: Acceptance of Paternalistic and Ally Political Discourses Both Predict Pro-Roma Solidarity Intentions Through Moral Inclusion

The way politicians talk about minorities institutes the normative context of intergroup relations. We investigated how endorsement of different political discourses predicts donation and collective action intentions by majority members toward the Roma in five European countries. The survey was conducted online using samples demographically similar to the populations of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, France, and Ireland (N = 5,054). First, results showed that accepting paternalistic discourse versus discourse promoting allyship were not distinguishable; both promoted higher moral inclusion which in turn predicted higher prosocial intentions. Second, donations (i.e., immediate relief) and collective action (i.e., social change action) were driven by identical factors. Third, acceptance of openly hostile political discourse neither predicted moral exclusion, nor lower prosocial intentions. In summary, our research provides important evidence that when it comes to Roma—non-Roma relations, the previously established distinction between solidarity intentions that aim to solidify status relations versus bring about social change is completely blurred, presumably because of the social context in which any positive message communicates moral inclusion challenging the hostile status quo.     

Worldviews about change: Their structure and their implications for understanding responses to sustainability,technology, and political change

People hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these “worldviews” about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general “lens” people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change.     

Disentangling Critical Questions from Argument Schemes

Critical questions have been understood in the framework of argument schemes from their conception. This understanding has influenced the process of evaluating arguments and the development of classifications. This paper argues that relating these two notions is detrimental to research on argument schemes and critical questions, and that it is possible to have critical questions without relying on argument schemes. Two objections are raised against the classical understanding of critical questions based on theoretical and analytical grounds. The theoretical objection presents the assumptions that are embedded in the idea of argument schemes delivering questions to evaluate arguments. The analytical objection, on the other hand, exposes the shortcomings of the theory when critical questions are used to evaluate real-life argumentation. After presenting these criticisms, a new theory of critical questions is sketched. This theory takes into account the dynamics of dialectical discussions to describe the function of critical questions and their implications for evaluating arguments.

     

The organization of motivated and conditional reflex processes

Recent observations on the plasticity of brain and behavior relationships indicate that the temporary connections between environmental and neuroanatomical substrates have tremendous specificity but at the same time are very plastic. Establishment of a conditional reflex by stimulation of the hippocampal pyramidal layer and/or the mesencephalic reticular formation did not interfere with the differential stimulation of very near points in the same structures. These correlations between brain and behavior confirmed the earlier belief that the development of temporary connections between environment and brain is an elementary process of the central nervous system. Complex behavioral functions are organized through both neuronal and humoral afferentation. Data accumulated recently indicate that the descending forebrain influence is inhibitory in the brain stem and diencephalon and controls the sensory input in a somatomotor-specific and situation-specific manner. Humoral factors affecting thresholds can change the dynamic equilibrium existing between ascending excitatory and descending inhibitory systems; these alterations always follow the rule of situation and somatomotor specificity.     

Psychotherapy with families of psychosomatic patients

Paradigmatic complexes in family psychotherapy have been indicating a revolutionary change and the creation of new paradigms for the past thirty years. Starting with the application of the general systems theory and the development of those concepts that have been emerging regarding psychosomatic illnesses we discuss the epistemological confusion created, the methodological problems and the dissociation between theory and practice. We suggest a double process of investigation of the family structure using a knowledge of the basic attitudes and the development of a psychotherapy programme within the family of the psychosomatic patient.     

Effects of Level of Processing on Implicit and Explicit Memory in Depressed Mood

Recently, several studies have addressed the question of whether depression affects priming in implicit memory tasks. The main aim of this experiment was to assess the presence of a bias for negative information in explicit memory (free recall) and implicit memory (word-stem completion) tasks among subclinically depressed subjects compared to nondepressed subjects, using the typical levels of processing manipulation. The results of this study show the existence of a mood-congruent memory bias for both implicit and explicit memory in depressed subjects. The theoretical implications of these findings for implicit and explicit memory biases associated with depressed mood are discussed.     

Implicit learning: Below the subjective threshold

In this review, we consider three possible criteria by which knowledge might be regarded as implicit or inaccessible: It might be implicit only in the sense that it is difficult to articulate freely, or it might be implicit according to either an objective threshold or a subjective threshold. We evaluate evidence for these criteria in relation to artificial grammar learning, the control of complex systems, and sequence learning, respectively. We argue that the convincing evidence is not yet in, but construing the implicit nature of implicit learning in terms of a subjective threshold is most likely to prove fruitful for future research. Furthermore, the subjective threshold criterion may demarcate qualitatively different types of knowledge. We argue that (1) implicit, rather than explicit, knowledge is often relatively inflexible in transfer to different domains, (2) implicit, rather than explicit, learning occurs when attention is focused on specific items and not underlying rules, and (3) implicit learning and the resulting knowledge are often relatively robust.     

Fuzzy Logic and Arithmetical Hierarchy,II

A very simple many-valued predicate calculus is presented; a completeness theorem is proved and the arithmetical complexity of some notions concerning provability is determined.