The flesh of all that is: Merleau-Ponty, Irigaray, and Julian’s ‘showings’

Julian of Norwich (b. 1342) anticipated the ontological and epistemological work on sexed embodiment pioneered in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the 20th century. Her epistemology of sensual ‘showings’ helped reconfigure women’s embodiment and speech acts (‘bodytalk’): by recognizing cognitive emotions and the knowledge-producing body; and by envisioning the intertwining of human flesh with All That Is. The paper next examines Merleau-Ponty’s somatic discourse on the chiasmic flesh, which leads to a discussion of Irigaray’s work on poetic mimesis.     

Construct validity and generalizability of the Carver–White behavioural inhibition system/behavioural activation system scales

The factorial structure and invariance of the BIS/BAS scales of Carver and White were assessed across three samples from the USA, UK, and Italy. Previous validation studies of the BIS/BAS scales relied on individual samples drawn from English‐speaking populations only and failed to formally assess generalizability. The current study shows that the four‐factor structure proposed by Carver and White—i.e. one BIS and three BAS facets—achieved satisfactory psychometric properties in all three samples and that measurement invariance was obtained across countries. Latent mean differences due to gender and country were also investigated. Theoretical issues concerning the validity of the BIS/BAS scales are addressed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quotation Revisited

Philosophical Studies -     

Political Psychology as Discipline and Resource

Around the 1960s, political psychology was developed as a field of knowledge that attempted to interrelate scientific psychology and political phenomena. However, social and academic conditions are very different today. More and more, political psychology is becoming a protagonist, as much in the internal context of psychology as in the external context of its relations with the social world. Thus, political psychology can now be seen as a resource relating psychological knowledge to social practice, and relating psychological processes to social action. Political psychology is the interface that puts psychology and society in contact. The development of political psychology in Spain provides an example of this alternative view of the field.     

The Conception of Synthetic Entities from a Personalist Perspective

Science and Engineering Ethics - Synthetic biology opens up the possibility of producing new entities not found in nature, whose classification as organisms or machines has been debated. In this...     

Successive positive contrast in one-way avoidance learning

The main finding of these experiments was a positive contrast effect in one-way avoidance learning. Experiment 1 showed that increasing safety time during one-way avoidance training led to improved performance, surpassing that of a control group that had received the high reward (safe time) from the beginning of training. Experiment 2 showed that a similar positive contrast effect occurred when the time spent in the danger compartment before the onset of the warning signal was shortened. These results suggest that time spent in a safe context acts as a reinforcer of the avoidance response; however, its incentive value depends not only on its duration, but also on the length of the time spent in the danger compartment before the onset of the signal. Overall, results also suggest that the avoidance response is a mixture of flight (motivated by fear) and approach (to a safe place) behaviour. The specific weight of the flight or approach component may be a function of the time and the amount of activation of each emotional state (fear or relief) due to opponent homeostatic compensatory processes that occur in the danger and safe compartments during one-way avoidance learning.     

Regulatory Focus in Materialists and Its Consequences for Their Well-Being

Journal of Happiness Studies - The article concentrates on regulatory focus (promotion and prevention) as a factor involved in the relationships between materialism and well-being alongside two...