Aggressor and victim perspective-related differences in perceived legitimacy of aggression in soccer

The purpose of this role-playing study was to explore the perceived legitimacy of aggression in soccer as a function of perspective-related differences (aggressor vs victim) and type of aggression (instrumental vs hostile). 120 soccer players watched videotaped aggressive interactions in soccer and took the perspective of the actors (aggressor then victim or the reverse). Then they rated the legitimacy of each aggressive behavior depending on its ultimate goal (instrumental then hostile or the reverse). When participants adopted the aggressor perspective, they perceived instrumental aggression as more legitimate than hostile aggression. In contrast, when participants took the perspective of the victim, no significant difference was found regardless of the type of aggression. The discussion focussed on implications and consequences of such divergences in aggressive sport situations.     

Wundt's laboratory at Leipzig in 1891

This article describes Wundt's laboratory at Leipzig in 1891 as viewed by a Belgian psychologist, J.J. Van Biervliet (1859-1945). Although few French-speaking psychologists worked in Wundt's laboratory, several of those who did reports wrote on how students were trained there. Van Biervliet decided to visit Wundt's laboratory at Leipzig in order to strengthen the foundation of his own laboratory at the University of Ghent and to become familiar with Wundt's experimental techniques. A translation of J.J. Van Biervliet's (1892) article "Experimental Psychology. Wundt's Institute at Leipzig" is presented here as one of the first and most complete articles in French describing the functioning of Wundt's laboratory.     

Semantically induced memories of love and helping behavior

This study tested the effect of semantically induced thoughts of love on helping behavior. In a natural setting, 253 participants were interviewed and asked to retrieve the memory of a love episode or, in the control condition, a piece of music they loved. They then met another confederate who asked for money. Analysis showed that inducing the idea of love had a significant positive effect on compliance to a request by a male passerby who was asked for help by a female confederate, but not by a female passerby. Theoretical explanations are presented, based on a gender-role expectation hypothesis.     

The small improvement argument

It is commonly assumed that moral deliberation requires that the alternatives available in a choice situation are evaluatively comparable. This comparability assumption is threatened by claims of incomparability, which is often established by means of the small improvement argument (SIA). In this paper I argue that SIA does not establish incomparability in a stricter sense. The reason is that it fails to distinguish incomparability from a kind of evaluative indeterminacy which may arise due to the vagueness of the evaluative comparatives ‘better than,’ ‘worse than,’ and ‘equally as good as.’