Aquinas and the Virtues of Hope: Theological and Democratic

A prominent political historian has recently identified unwarranted optimism and unwarranted pessimism as democracy's “dual dangers.” While this historical analysis highlights the difficulties that accompany democratic hope, our prevailing conceptual vocabulary obscures the resources needed to address them. This essay attempts to recover these resources by excavating insights from Thomas Aquinas, who supplies one of the most systematic accounts of hope in the history of religious and political thought. By appropriating the conceptual structure of Thomas's theological virtue of hope, this essay reconstructs a democratic virtue that perfects acts of hoping in fellow citizens to achieve democratic goods and thereby enables citizens to respond properly to difficulties that tempt presumption and despair.     

The KKK won't let me play: ostracism even by a despised outgroup hurts

Previous research has shown that ostracism even by outgroup members is aversive. In this study we examined whether ostracism by a particular type of outgroup, a despised outgroup, was sufficient to inflict emotional distress. We manipulated ostracism using Cyberball, an on-line ball toss game. Ostracized participants reported lower levels of belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence, and more negative mood, than included participants. Moreover, ostracism by despised outgroup members was no less aversive than ostracism by rival outgroup or ingroup members. Participants differentiated between the groups, however; ostracized individuals reported greater outgroup negativity than included participants only when their co-players were members of the despised outgroup. We interpret these results as evidence for the powerful impact of ostracism and the potential importance of distinguishing between qualitatively different outgroups. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An update on the search for symmetry in nonhumans

Sidman et al.'s (1982) failure to find evidence for symmetry (bidirectional associations between stimuli) in monkeys and baboons set the stage for decades of work on emergent relations in nonhumans. They attributed the failure to the use of procedures that did not (1) promote stimulus control based on the relation between the sample and correct comparison and (2) reduce control by irrelevant stimulus features. Previous reviews of symmetry in nonhumans indicated that multiple exemplar training and successive matching might encourage appropriate stimulus control. This review examined 16 studies that investigated symmetry in 94 subjects, including pigeons, rats, capuchin monkeys, and baboons. Several studies used alternative training procedures to minimize sources of irrelevant stimulus control, and many combined multiple exemplar training with other procedural modifications. Symmetry was observed in approximately 30% of subjects. Studies that reported the strongest evidence for symmetry used successive matching-to-sample procedures that included training on both symbolic and identity relations, and studies finding mixed evidence employed alternative methods. These studies highlight the challenge in creating training procedures that promote symmetry and the need to assess the underlying sources of control on positive demonstrations.     

Book Review: Deborah G. Johnson (2020), Engineering Ethics: Contemporary and Eduring Debates,Yale University Press,New Haven and London, 2020, 189 + index,ISBN: 978-0-300-20924-2

Science and Engineering Ethics - This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper...     

Aggressive Children and Effective Communication

Testing a component of a theoretical model which postulates that low levels of communication effectiveness accompany the social and affective problems presented by aggressive children, the study compared the communication skills of a group of aggressive (n = 49) and nonaggressive (n = 49) elementary school children (selected on the basis of teacher ratings) in a structured and cooperative communication task. Based on direct observational measures of communication effectiveness and aggression, and on teacher, peer, and self-rating measures of peer rejection and depressive symptoms, results showed that (a) aggressive children exhibited less effective communication skills and more disruptive communication skills than nonaggressive peers; (b) aggressive children experienced higher levels of peer rejection and depressive symptoms than nonaggressive peers; and (c) group differences in communication effectiveness could not be accounted for by differences in observed aggression and remained significant, even after controlling for differences in peer status and affective functioning. These findings highlight the role that ineffective communication may play in the development and maintenance of aggression and have important theoretical and applied implications, which are briefly discussed. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups

This research experimentally examined the effects of exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories on prejudice and discrimination. Study 1 (N = 166) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories concerning immigrants to Britain from the European Union (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) exacerbated prejudice towards this group. Study 2 (N = 173) found the same effect in a different intergroup context – exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) increased prejudice towards this group and reduced participants’ willingness to vote for a Jewish political candidate. Finally, Study 3 (N = 114) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people not only increased prejudice towards this group but was indirectly associated with increased prejudice towards a number of secondary outgroups (e.g., Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians). The current research suggests that conspiracy theories may have potentially damaging and widespread consequences for intergroup relations.