Introduction

The article argues that the debate between Derrida and Marion about the impossibility of gift is in fact a debate about the proper method of phenomenology. In order to analyse the giving of gifts it must not be understood as a particular case of ‘giving’ but as a social practice in its own right. The gift constitutes its addressee in a purely passive way, and this passivity is the most significant aspect of the giving of gifts both in everyday life and in religion. Various religious and philosophical symbolisations of this passivity are explored and criticised. The human passivity brought out by gifts is not lack but enrichment. This is a decisive insight of the Christian view of human passivity.     

Response Latency to Computer-Administered Inventory Items as an Indicator of Emotional Arousal

The response latencies of college students to computer-displayed emotionally arousing or emotionally neutral self-report statement were investigated. Arousing and neutral statements were matched for word and character length to control for reading time. Subjects responded to statements by pressing T (for true), F (for false), or the space bar (for cannot say) keys on the keyboard, and the computer recorded the elapsed time from the onset of each statement's display until the subject's response. Results indicated that response latencies were significantly longer for the arousing items. The findings suggest that the recording of response latencies in computerized personality inventories may help identify item content areas that individuals find emotionally arousing. Other possible clinical and research uses for response latencies in computerized inventories are discussed.     

The Mental Changes Due to Frontal Lobe Damage

The literature suggests association between arousal, general activation, and anxiety on the one hand, and time judgments on the other hand, implying that reported differences in time judgment between nosological groups may be confounded by group differences in arousal-anxiety.

Self-report measures of anxiety, as well as magnitude estimates and magnitude productions of standards ranging from 500 to 2000 msec in 250 msec steps and presented in 10 randomized blocks, were obtained from 16 male normals and from 16 male hospitalized patients with a tentative diagnosis of chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia. Only 10 of the 16 patients were later found to have the same confirmed diagnosis. Data from nine normals and from seven chronic undifferentiated schizophrenics met a criterion of linearity of response functions for both time judgment methods and were further analyzed.

Magnitude estimates and magnitude productions showed underestimation of elapsed time, both types of judgment exhibited satisfactory reliability, estimates showed “shortening,” and productions showed “lengthening” over blocks of trials.

Intercepts of the response × standards functions were not generally equal to zero, were more negative in estimation than in production, had marginal reliability or were unreliable, did not correlate significantly between methods, and did not show significant trends over blocks of trials.

Following a model by Carlson and Feinberg, slopes of response × standard functions were used as estimates of the rate of the “internal clock.” (In estimation, the rate is equal to the slope; in production, it is equal to the reciprocal of the slope.) Average rates of the internal clock did not differ between methods for normals, but were higher in production than in estimation for the seven patients. Clock rates did not differ significantly between groups, were reliable, and exhibited positive correlation between methods. Clock rates exhibited trends over blocks of trials: arctan equivalents of clock rates were linearly related to ordinal numbers of blocks of trials and showed decreases, or “slowing” of the internal clock, in both methods.

Differences in mean anxiety between groups were not significant. In each group, anxiety scores showed positive average correlations with magnitude estimates and negative average correlations with magnitude productions, failed to correlate significantly with intercepts, but showed positive correlations with clock rates.

The data also suggest that anxiety and intrasubject variability may be interrelated.

To conclude: Reported differences in time judgments between nosological groups may not solely be due to nosological differences per se, but instead may be due to group differences in anxiety.     

Strain,Emotion, and Suicide Among American Indian Youth

In this article, we test the utility of Agnew's general strain theory to explain suicidal behaviors among American Indian youth. Data from 721 American Indian adolescents from the Midwest and Canada were collected in partnership with participating reservations/reserves and a research team. We investigate the effects of strains/stressors on suicide, including tests of mediating effects of negative emotions on relationships between stressors and suicidality. We found that several strains/stressors were related to suicidality, including coercive parenting, caretaker rejection, negative school attitudes, and perceived discrimination. We also found that depressive symptoms and anger mediated the effects of several key predictors of suicidality. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our work for the general strain theory and for American Indian suicide in general.     

Repairing trust with individuals vs. groups

This study incorporates insights from research on group decision-making and trust repair to investigate the differences that arise when alleged transgressors attempt to regain the trust of groups as compared to individuals. Results indicate that repairing trust is generally more difficult with groups than individuals, and both groups and individuals were less trusting when trustees denied culpability (rather than apologized) for a competence-based violation or apologized (rather than denied culpability) for an integrity-based violation. However, the interaction of violation-type and violation-response also ultimately affected the relative difficulty of repairing trust with groups vs. individuals, with the greater harshness of groups dissipating when the transgressors’ responses were effectively matched with the type of violation. Persuasive argumentation rather than normative pressure, furthermore, mediated these differences. Thus, the sequencing of individual vs. group assessments mattered, such that subsequent group assessments affected initial individual assessments but not the reverse.     

A Cyclical Model of Motivational Constructs in Web-Based Courses

The current study investigates antecedents and outcomes of motivation to learn across nine Web-based courses. The results supported a cyclical model of motivational processes across courses in a training curriculum. Trainees' course expectations had a positive effect on motivation to learn, motivation to learn had a positive effect on trainee reactions, and trainee reactions predicted expectations for subsequent courses in the curriculum. In addition, motivation to learn decreased across the nine courses such that the average level of motivation was 0.30 points lower (on a 5-point scale) for the ninth than the first course. Agreeableness predicted changes in motivation to learn such that motivation decreased at a steeper rate for highly agreeable trainees across courses. The results suggest that there is a dynamic interplay among motivational constructs over time, and motivation should be examined from a systems perspective to understand carryover effects across training courses.     

Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality

Mind perception entails ascribing mental capacities to other entities, whereas moral judgment entails labeling entities as good or bad or actions as right or wrong. We suggest that mind perception is the essence of moral judgment. In particular, we suggest that moral judgment is rooted in a cognitive template of two perceived minds—a moral dyad of an intentional agent and a suffering moral patient. Diverse lines of research support dyadic morality. First, perceptions of mind are linked to moral judgments: dimensions of mind perception (agency and experience) map onto moral types (agents and patients), and deficits of mind perception correspond to difficulties with moral judgment. Second, not only are moral judgments sensitive to perceived agency and experience, but all moral transgressions are fundamentally understood as agency plus experienced suffering—that is, interpersonal harm—even ostensibly harmless acts such as purity violations. Third, dyadic morality uniquely accounts for the phenomena of dyadic completion (seeing agents in response to patients, and vice versa), and moral typecasting (characterizing others as either moral agents or moral patients). Discussion also explores how mind perception can unify morality across explanatory levels, how a dyadic template of morality may be developmentally acquired, and future directions.