Things fall apart. The cultural complex in contemporary times1

These extraordinary months due to COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, set as they are against a backdrop of the increasingly worrying climate emergency, have brought fear, anxiety and discord across the globe. But we have also experienced a deepening of our understanding of our connectedness, protests against injustice, expressions of social concern and a demand for change. The concept of the cultural complex as developed by Singer & Kimbles (2004) offers a helpful means of connecting the psychology of the individual psyche and the political phenomena of power relations. Using a small example to illustrate how it might operate at a local level, I suggest that a fundamental shift is taking place raising profound levels of anxiety as we move from the known to the unknown. The bipolar nature of these complexes means the extremes are surfacing bringing fears of the very real possibility of more entrenched attacks on democracy from the far right and the hunkering down behind armed borders. But there is also hope that different ways of living together may be developing from the ground up, ways that are rooted in our sense of interdependence – with each other and our planetary home.     

Maternal Emotion Socialization of Adolescent Girls Engaging in Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Non-suicidal self injury (NSSI) is a transdiagnostic maladaptive behavior that is highly prevalent in adolescence. A greater understanding of the...     

‘Believe in me,and I will too’: a study of how teachers’ expectations instilled confidence in Grade 10 students

Social Psychology of Education - Teacher expectation research has continued to establish an association between what teachers expect of their students and what students accomplish academically....     

The relation of prosocial behavior to the development of aggression and psychopathology

The development of prosocial behavior is traced from middle childhood to adulthood in a 22-year longitudinal study of 800 children first seen at age 8 and is compared to the development of aggression over the same period. Prosocial behavior and aggression seem to represent opposite ends of a single dimension of behavior since they are consistently negatively related to each other and relate in opposite ways to correlated variables both synchronously and over time. Both are stable forms of behavior with good predictability over the time span studied and both are related to the quality of the parent-child relationship. The most important deterrent to the development of antisocial behavior and the encouragement of prosocial behavior is probably a close identification between the child and his/her parents.     

The effects of gormone manipulations on aggressive target-biting in mice

Aggressive biting of an inanimate target by mice was studied. Males attacked the bite-target more frequently than females, but this difference disappeared after castration when the response rate of the males approached that of the females. Ovariectomizing the females had little effect on their bite-attack frequencies. Subsequent androgen injections restored the biting-attack frequency of the castrated males to preoperative levels but had little effect on the intact males. Estrogen had little effect on the response frequency of the females, whereas androgen produced a slight increase in their bite-attack frequency. Results indicate that androgen is critical for the maintenance of this aggressive response and that the single subject paradigm utilized in this study was a sensitive measure of aggressive tendencies in mice.     

论无产阶级的反讽

这个专栏的意图在于,通过几位作者、译者的努力,提醒人们对马克思与浪漫主义关系的重思,对古典反讽、浪漫反讽和马克思的反讽异同关系的重思。这个问题在国内学界很不受重视,或者被当作马克思不成熟的表现,把浪漫主义视为负面的、招致马克思思想不成熟的东西。维塞尔在《马克思、浪漫派的反讽、无产阶级》一书中力图纠正这种不符合历史事实的传统看法,陈开华特意节译了该书第五章,以凸现“反讽”在马克思思想中的重要地位。我也提供了小文一篇,力图阐明马克思试图扼制虚无主义时从浪漫主义处寻求的思想资源,并在告别了意识内在性之后仍保留和改造了另一种内在性:价值内在性;而它与浪漫派的反讽存在密切关系。罗晓颖的论文则针对马克思的博士论文为了理解哲学与现实的关系而对苏格拉底反讽广泛涉猎的事实,以《游叙弗伦》篇为例对苏格拉底的反讽作出自己的分析,这对理解马克思的反讽,理解古典反讽与现代反讽的关系与区别,会提供一个很好的基础,很值得阅读。     

From ABLE to TAPAS: A New Generation of Personality Tests to Support Military Selection and Classification Decisions

This article discusses 3 modern forced-choice personality tests developed for the U.S Armed Services to provide resistance to faking and other forms of response distortion: the Assessment of Individual Motivation, the Navy Computerized Adaptive Personality Scales, and the Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System. These tests represent the transition from Likert to forced-choice formats and from static to computerized adaptive item selection to meet the challenges of large-scale, high-stakes testing environments. For each test, we briefly describe the personality constructs that are assessed, the response format and scoring methods, and selected ongoing research and development efforts. We also highlight the potential of these tests for personnel selection, classification, and diagnostic screening purposes.