Do emotions play an essential role in moral judgments?

The past few decades of moral psychology research have yielded empirical anomalies for rationalist theories of moral judgments. An increasing number of psychologists and philosophers argue that these anomalies are explained well by sentimentalism, the thesis that the presence of an emotion is necessary for the formation of a sincere moral judgment. The present review reveals that while emotions and moral judgments indeed often co-occur, there is scant evidence that emotions directly cause or constitute moral judgments. Research on disgust, anger, sympathy, and guilt indicates that people only reliably experience emotions when judging conduct that is relevant to the welfare of the self and valued others. Moreover, many recent studies have either failed to replicate or exposed crucial confounds in the most cited evidence in support of sentimentalism. Moral psychologists should jettison sentimentalism, and focus instead on how considerations of harm and welfare—the core concepts of rationalist theories— interact with empirical beliefs to shape moral judgments.     

Starting with the "right" foot minimizes sprint start time

Although asymmetries in hand and foot performance have been examined using a variety of movement tasks that require the fine control of the timing and amplitude of force generation, foot asymmetries in a functional gross motor movement task, such as the track and field sprint start, have yet to be examined. Twenty individuals (10 experienced, 10 inexperienced) were assessed for pedal asymmetries using the track and field sprint start. Each participant performed 48 starts (24 right foot starts and 24 left foot starts). The pattern of pedal asymmetries was consistent with that of manual asymmetries in that a left foot (i.e., left foot in rear position) reaction time advantage was found while there was a right foot (i.e., right foot in rear position) advantage for movement time and total response time (time from stimulus presentation until the end of the movement). These results are consistent with a right hemisphere specialization for spatio-temporal and attentional processes, and a left hemisphere specialization for movement execution.     

Perceptual Ambiguity, Gender, and Target Intoxication: Assessing the Effects of Factors That Moderate Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Subjects read a passage which described an interaction between a man and a woman at an office party. The woman was either sober or intoxicated, and eventually the man engaged in 1 of 3 behaviors which involved varying degrees of sexual innuendo and/or aggression: (a) verbal comment, (b) verbal request, and (c) nonverbal physical display. The results indicated that perceptions did not vary as a function of target person's intoxication in the nonverbal-display condition. On the other hand, in the verbal-comment and verbal-request conditions, subjects in the intoxicated-target-person condition perceived the initiator more favorably than subjects in the sober-target-person condition. In addition, they indicated that perceptions did not vary as a function of target-person intoxication level in the nonverbal-display condition. On the other hand, in the verbal-comment and verbal-request conditions, male subjects were more favorable toward the initiator than toward female subjects.     

Engagement and the Therapeutic Relationship in Systemic Therapy

This paper is about the therapeutic relationship in systemic therapy and, more specifically, about engagement as a process. Beginning with some practice examples, a critique is made of the way in which both the therapeutic relationship and engagement have been under-theorized in systemic therapy. Two different sets of ideas are used to develop some thinking about the process of engagement: the notion of the 'good-enough' engagement as the environment or frame of therapy is developed, and the systemic concept of sequences is held alongside the psychoanalytic ideas of transference, countertransference and projective identification. This theory discussion is used to reflect on the original practice examples.     

Trait-anxiety and sense of coherence: a longitudinal study

A study of trait-anxiety and sense of coherence on a group of medical students over 18 mo. shows that, although both characteristics are rather stable over time, the measure of sense of coherence is more sensitive to stressors than A-trait and is better predicted by A-trait than the opposite.     

Toward a Constructivist and Developmental Identity for the Counseling Profession: The Context-Phase-Stage-Style Model

The constructivist and developmental metatheories offer foundations for prevention- and health-oriented counseling approaches that target the whole population. In the assessment model proposed here, the counselor is directed toward 4 specific dimensions of human construction and development. They are the following: social context, life phase, constructive stage, and personality style. It is proposed that such assessment be infused into everyday counseling practice in schools, mental health settings, and colleges while also being a ground for the counselor education curriculum.     

Consumer information processing strategies in middle and late adulthood

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which performance of a complex cognitive task of a type resembling that encountered in everyday life is maintained through adulthood. A total of 80 subjects participated; 20 in their thirties, 20 in their fifties, 20 in their sixties, and 20 in their seventies. Subjects were asked to make preference judgments with respect to 32 pocket-size notebooks of a sort they might encounter as consumers in a stationery or variety store. Independently, they were also asked to express their preferences with respect to each of the four dimensions on which the notebooks varied. With only minor differences across age groups, most subjects demonstrated the ability to integrate their individual dimension preferences into a complex preference judgment of an object embodying those dimensions, in a logically consistent manner.     

Effects of search mode and intertrial priming on singleton search

There is no consensus as to what information guides search for a singleton target. Does the most salient display element capture attention, regardless of the observer's attentional set? Do observers adopt a default salience-based search mode? Does knowledge of the target's defining featural property (when available) affect search? Finally, can intertrial contingencies account for the disparate results in the literature? We investigated search for a shape singleton when (1) the target and nontarget shapes switched unpredictably from trial to trial, (2) the target feature remained fixed, and (3) the target was a singleton on only one third of the trials. We examined overall reaction times, search slopes, errors, and the magnitude of the slowing caused by a cross-dimensional singleton distractor. Our results argue against the idea that search is guided solely by stimulus-driven factors or that subjects adopt a singleton detection mode that is blind to feature information. They show also that intertrial contingencies, although potent, cannot account for the variety of results in the literature.