Does content matter? The effect of remorseful tone on length of prison sentence

The expression of remorse by offenders has been found to affect jurors' determination of length of prison sentences. This study explores this phenomenon by contrasting the impact of exercising remorse solely in words or through emotional tone. Remorse consists of guilt, shame and sorrow. This study examines the contribution of each of these emotions to judgements about prison sentences, which is an area seldom explored in the literature. It is shown that regardless of the gender of the offender, participants censured a significantly more severe punishment for the offender who expressed a sense of remorse using words rather than tone. In addition, only shame was a significant predictor of the severity of punishment. These findings are consistent with previous studies and further differentiate the influence of displaying remorse at the content and tonal levels.     

Individual and Collective Intentionality: Elaborating the Fundamentality-Question

This is a contribution to the controversy which of individual or collective intentionality is more fundamental. I call it the fundamentality-question. In a first step, I argue that it is really two questions. One is about sense and one about reference. The first is: Can one grasp or understand the concept individual intentionality and, correspondingly, individuality, on the one hand, without grasping or understanding the concept collective intentionality and, correspondingly, collectivity, on the other? The second is: Can the concept individual intentionality and corresponding concept of individuality, on the one hand, refer to something without the concept of collective intentionality and corresponding concept of collectivity referring to something, on the other? Simplifying somewhat, this elaborated fundamentality-question admits of nine answers. In a second step, I pursue a tentative answer to the elaborated fundamentality-question. Given a disambiguation of individuality and, correspondingly, individual intentionality, the answer is the combination of claims that individuality and individual intentionality in one sense is fundamental in reference-dependence but that collectivity and collective intentionality is fundamental in reference-dependence in the other sense of individuality, while collectivity and collective intentionality is in both cases fundamental in sense-dependence.

     

Factors Related to Use of Mental Health Services by Immigrant Children

Journal of Child and Family Studies - This study examined factors in immigrant children’s use of mental health services. Employed data described 4873 immigrant parents and children...     

Don’t worry,be happy! Positive affect at work,greater balance at home. A daily diary study on work-family balance

IntroductionThe dynamics pertaining to work-family interface such as conflict, enrichment, etc. have received considerable scholarly attention in social sciences. However, the daily processes that are involved have been examined to a lesser extent, least of all including the role played by emotions.ObjectiveThis study aimed at examining, consistently with the Affective Events Theory, if positive and negative affect experienced during the working day played a mediational role in the associations between daily levels of work-family conflict and work-family enrichment on one side, and work-family balance on the other. Moreover, the moderating cross-level role of trait emotional stability was examined.MethodThe study included a convenience sample of 104 Italian employees who completed a diary-book over five consecutive working days.ResultsMultilevel-modelling results highlighted, controlling for emotional stability, a mediational role of only daily positive affect in the relationships between both work-family conflict and enrichment on the one side and work-family balance on the other side.ConclusionThis study contributed to the literature emphasizing the role of positive affective states experienced at the workplace and their connections with the private life. Limitations and implications for research and practice are described.     

Role resources and work–family enrichment: The role of work engagement

This article proposes a theoretical model of work-family enrichment and tests the mediating role of work engagement. The inclusion of work engagement extends prior research on work-family interface, and allows for examination of the effects of role resources (job resources, family support) on work-family enrichment. A two-wave survey was conducted among a matched sample of 786 employees in China. The model was tested with structural equation modeling techniques. The results showed that work engagement was the most proximal predictor of work-family enrichment. Work engagement fully mediated the relationship between family-friendly organizational policies and work-family enrichment, and also between job autonomy and family-work enrichment. Further, work engagement partially mediated the relationships between two job resources (supervisor support, job autonomy) and work-family enrichment, and also between family support and family-work enrichment. No difference was found in gender and marital status in the proposed model. Implications for future research and practices are discussed.     

Evidential diversity and premise probability in young children's inductive judgment

A familiar adage in the philosophy of science is that general hypotheses are better supported by varied evidence than by uniform evidence. Several studies suggest that young children do not respect this principle, and thus suffer from a defect in their inductive methodology. We argue that the diversity principle does not have the normative status that psychologists attribute to it, and should be replaced by a simple rule of probability. We then report experiments designed to detect conformity to the latter rule in children's inductive judgment. The results suggest that young children in both the United States and Taiwan are sensitive to the constraints imposed by the rule on judgments of probability and evidential strength. We conclude with a suggested reinterpretation of the thesis that children's inductive methodology qualifies them as “little scientists.”     

THE ART OF WAR CORPUS AND CHINESE JUST WAR ETHICS PAST AND PRESENT

The idea of “just war” is not alien to Chinese thought. The term “yi zhan” (usually translated as “just war” or “righteous war” in English) is used in Mencius, was renewed by Mao Zedong, and is still being used in China today (zhengyi zhanzheng). The best place to start exploring this Chinese idea is in the enormous Art of War corpus in premodern China, of which the Seven Military Classics is the best representative. This set of treatises served as the military bible in imperial China from 1078 CE. Ideas analogous to ius ad bellum and ius in bello can be found in these texts. These norms are present in these military texts, elaborated in subsequent commentaries, understood as a matter of fact in Chinese political history, and recently and briefly acknowledged by a few Chinese military scholars in the mainland and in Taiwan. This Chinese just war ethics has its distinctiveness vis‐à‐vis James Turner Johnson's articulation of the Western classic view. It differs from Johnson's claims that military lethal violence is intrinsically morally neutral and that last resort is not a primary consideration in deciding for war. Contemporary Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) military publications show that the PLA understands the general idea of just war, but they acknowledge only the ad bellum part, not the in bello components.