Religious Values in Clinical Practice are Here to Stay

Research to date has shown that health professionals often practice according to personal values, including values based on faith, and that these values impact medicine in multiple ways. While some influence of personal values are inevitable, awareness of values is important so as to sustain beneficial practice without conflicting with the values of the patient. Detecting when own personal values, whether based on a theistic or atheistic worldview, are at work, is a daily challenge in clinical practice. Simultaneously ethical guidelines of tone-setting medical associations like American Medical Association, the British General Medical Council and Australian Medical Association have been updated to encompass physicians’ right to practice medicine in accord with deeply held beliefs. Framed by this context, we discuss the concept of value-neutrality and value-based medical practice of physicians from both a cultural and ethical perspective, and reach the conclusion that the concept of a completely value-neutral physician, free from influence of personal values and filtering out value-laden information when talking to patients, is simply an unrealistic ideal in light of existing evidence. Still we have no reason to suspect that personal values, whether religious, spiritual, atheistic or agnostic, should hinder physicians from delivering professional and patient-centered care.

     

Free Will and Mental Powers

In this paper, we investigate how contemporary metaphysics of powers can further an understanding of agent-causal theories of free will. The recent upsurge of such ontologies of powers and the understanding of causation it affords promises to demystify the notion of an agent-causal power. However, as we argue pace (Mumford and Anjum in Analysis 74:20–25, 2013; Am Philos Q 52:1–12, 2015a), the very ubiquity of powers also poses a challenge to understanding in what sense exercises of an agent’s power to act could still be free—neither determined by external circumstances, nor random, but self-determined. To overcome this challenge, we must understand what distinguishes the power to act from ordinary powers. We suggest this difference lies in its rational nature, and argue that existing agent-causal accounts (e.g., O’Connor in Libertarian views: dualist and agent-causal theories, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002; Lowe in Personal agency: the metaphysics of mind and action, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) fail to capture the sense in which the power to act is rational. A proper understanding, we argue, requires us to combine the recent idea that the power to act is a ‘two-way power’ (e.g., Steward in A metaphysics for freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012b; Lowe (in: Groff, Greco (eds) Powers and capacities in philosophy: the new aristotelianism, Routledge, New York, 2013) with the idea that it is intrinsically rational. We sketch the outlines of an original account that promises to do this. On this picture, what distinguishes the power to act is its special generality—the power to act, unlike ordinary powers, does not come with any one typical manifestation. We argue that this special generality can be understood to be a feature of the capacity to reason. Thus, we argue, an account of agent-causation that can further our understanding of free will requires us to recognize a specifically rational or mental variety of power.

     

Cold-blooded loneliness: social exclusion leads to lower skin temperatures

Being ostracized or excluded, even briefly and by strangers, is painful and threatens fundamental needs. Recent work by Zhong and Leonardelli (2008) found that excluded individuals perceive the room as cooler and that they desire warmer drinks. A perspective that many rely on in embodiment is the theoretical idea that people use metaphorical associations to understand social exclusion (see Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010). We suggest that people feel colder because they are colder. The results strongly support the idea that more complex metaphorical understandings of social relations are scaffolded onto literal changes in bodily temperature: Being excluded in an online ball tossing game leads to lower finger temperatures (Study 1), while the negative affect typically experienced after such social exclusion is alleviated after holding a cup of warm tea (Study 2). The authors discuss further implications for the interaction between body and social relations specifically, and for basic and cognitive systems in general.     

Appraisal patterns of envy and related emotions

Envy is a frustrating emotion that arises from upward social comparison. Two studies investigated the appraisals that distinguish benign envy (aimed at improving one's own situation) from malicious envy (aimed at pulling down the superior other). Study 1 found that appraisals of deservingness and control potential differentiated both types of envy. We manipulated these appraisals in Study 2 and found that while both did not influence the intensity of envy, they did determine the type of envy that resulted. The more a situation was appraised as undeserved, the more participants experienced malicious envy. Benign envy was experienced more when the situation was not undeserved, and the most when the situation was appraised as both deserved and controllable. The current research also clarifies how the types of envy differ from the related emotions admiration and resentment.     

The Power of Pictures: Vertical Picture Angles in Power Pictures

Conventional wisdom suggests that variations in vertical picture angle cause the subject to appear more powerful when depicted from below and less powerful when depicted from above. However, do the media actually use such associations to represent individual differences in power? We argue that the diverse perspectives of evolutionary, social learning, and embodiment theories all suggest that the association between verticality and power is relatively automatic and should, therefore, be visible in the portrayal of powerful and powerless individuals in the media. Four archival studies (with six samples) provide empirical evidence for this hypothesis and indicate that a salience power context reinforces this effect. In addition, two experimental studies confirm these effects for individuals producing media content. We discuss potential implications of this effect.     

Auditory habituation in the fetus and neonate: an fMEG study

Habituation – the most basic form of learning – is used to evaluate central nervous system (CNS) maturation and to detect abnormalities in fetal brain development. In the current study, habituation, stimulus specificity and dishabituation of auditory evoked responses were measured in fetuses and newborns using fetal magnetoencephalography (fMEG). An auditory habituation paradigm consisting of 100 trains of five 500 Hz tones, one 750 Hz tone (dishabituator) and two more 500 Hz tones, respectively, were presented to 41 fetuses (gestational age 30–39 weeks) and 22 newborns or babies (age 6–89 days). A response decrement between the first and fifth tones (habituation), an increment between the fifth tone and the dishabituator (stimulus specificity) and an increment between the fifth (last tone before the dishabituator) and seventh tones (first tone after the dishabituator) (dishabituation) were expected. Fetuses showed weak responses to the first tone. However, a significant response decrement between the second and fifth tones (habituation) and a significant increment between the fifth tone and the dishabituator (stimulus specificity) were found. No significant difference was found for dishabituation nor was a developmental trend found at the group level. From the neonatal data, significant values for stimulus specificity were found. Sensory fatigue or adaptation was ruled out as a reason for the response decrement due to the strong reactions to the dishabituator. Taken together, the current study used fMEG to directly show fetal habituation and provides evidence of fetal learning in the last trimester of pregnancy.     

Approaching the religious patient in forensic psychiatry,with special focus on ethnic minority patients

ABSTRACT

Ethnic minority patients are overrepresented in Danish forensic psychiatry and knowledge is needed on how these patients are approached in relation to religious and cultural issues. The aim of this study was to investigate how psychiatrists in Danish forensic psychiatry approach religious ethnic minority patients. The study revealed positive approach towards religious ethnic minority patients. However, unless religion features as part of the illness, the tendency is to not incorporate the patients’ religiosity in treatment. The study finds that the hospital chaplain is regarded by the psychiatrists as an important part of the ward and expressed the desire for a more formal cooperation with religious specialists to be developed. Finally, the study finds that religious practices such as Ramadan, common prayer, and Islamic edicts on food and unlawful touch are areas where more knowledge is needed, especially in relation to anxiety, potential stress, and conflict situations.     

How Islam Influences Women’s Paid Non-farm Employment: Evidence from 26 Indonesian and 37 Nigerian Provinces

Studies on women’s employment in Muslim countries often mention Islam, but its influence is undertheorized and tests simply compare ‘Muslim’ women and areas to ‘non-Muslim’ women and areas. Here, multilevel analyses of Indonesia and Nigeria show this focus is not tenable: non-farm employment of Muslim women is not consistently lower than that of non-Muslim women, nor is it lower in Muslim-dominated provinces than in other provinces. A new theoretical frame conceptualizes religion’s influence in terms message and messenger. It is shown how different manifestations of Islam influence women’s non-farm employment, inside and outside the home. Empirically, the ideological strand of Islam is more important than differences between Islam and Christianity. In addition, when a conservative Islam is codified through Shari’a-based law women’s employment outside the home seems to be lower, but the presence of Islamic political parties seems to foster women’s access to the labor market through their focus on support for the poor.     

Meanings of “the existential” in a Secular Country: A Survey Study

“The existential” is a concept that many people use albeit associated with different meanings. In order to increase research-based insight into the meaning of “the existential,” we conducted a questionnaire study in Denmark in 2018 in which we asked 1.106 Danes of various age, gender, educational and geographical background about personal associations linked to “the existential.” Factor analysis of the answers resulted in three different groups of meaning: (1) essential meanings of life, (2) spirituality/religiosity and (3) existential thinking. The findings show that “the existential” serves well as an overarching construct potentially including secular, spiritual and religious meaning domains, at least within the European context.