Doing What Comes Naturally: Recent Work on Thomas Aquinas and the New Natural Law Theory

John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, xxi+385 pp., $55.00 (hardback) ISBN 0 19 87808 42, $18.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 19 878085 0.

Robert P. George, In Defense of Natural Law. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, 343 pp., $65.00 (hardback) ISBN 0 19 82677 11, $19.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 19 92429 92     

Preliminary evidence for low openness to experience as a pre-clinical marker of incipient cognitive decline in older adults

The current study examined self-reported Openness to Experience as a marker of incipient cognitive decline among older adults. Seventy five cognitively-intact, community-dwelling adults ages 58–87 were assessed with the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO PI-R; (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale 2nd edition (DRS-2; (Mattis, Jurica, & Leitten, 1988) to examine association with incipient decline over approximately 1 year. Low Openness to Experience was associated with decline, controlling for baseline screening scores, age, education, and the other four personality factors. Examination of facet-level associations indicated that lower scores on the Values and Aesthetics facets of Openness primarily explained the association. Current findings build on prior research suggesting that exaggerated reaction to novelty may signal pre-clinical cognitive decline.     

Personal mastery predicts pain,stress, fatigue,and blood pressure in adults with rheumatoid arthritis

Among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), stress-associated disease flare can severely impact well-being. Psychological factors such as personal mastery may buffer an individual from the negative effects of those flares. We tested the hypothesis that a high sense of personal mastery would prospectively predict stress reactivity. Measures of pain, perceived stress, fatigue, and mean arterial pressure (MAP) were collected before, during, and after two interpersonal stressors conducted on 73 individuals with RA. Factor analysis of the personal mastery scale yielded two independent factors: a 5-item “fatalism” component and a 2-item “control” component. Individuals with high fatalism scores reported overall greater joint pain at baseline and those scoring high on control exhibited lower MAP, and reported less stress and fatigue at baseline. After controlling for baseline differences, those high in control exhibited greater MAP increase during stress, and less drop in pain when compared to those low in control. These results suggest that individuals high in control may be more susceptible to the effects of acute stress; however, the overall beneficial aspects of high control outweigh the acute negative effects. Personal mastery may play a role in the experience of pain, stress, and fatigue for people with RA.     

Understanding the impact of HIV diagnosis amongst gay men in Scotland: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Objectives: Although a wide literature details the psychological impact of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnosis, it predates the introduction of effective treatment for HIV (i.e. anti-retroviral therapies, ARTs). This article explores the psychological impact of HIV diagnosis in post-ART accounts. This is important, given the recent policy developments which focus upon increasing HIV testing and thus diagnoses.

Design: This study presents a qualitative exploration of the experiential accounts of HIV-positive gay men living in Scotland. A total of 14 HIV-positive gay men took part in open-ended interviews.

Methods: Interpretative phenomenological analysis was employed to identify recurrent themes across the interviews.

Results: Our analysis focuses upon the participants’ struggles in adjusting to their HIV status. Diagnosis was a deeply shocking and unexpected experience. Stigma and fear of prejudice dominated their accounts. HIV was understood, variously, as a shameful, fatal and life-changing condition. Overall, within these accounts there was little sense of HIV normalisation.

Conclusions: In Scotland, where HIV prevalence is low, and where no accessible HIV-positive sub-culture exists, there is on-going psychological distress and morbidity amongst gay men testing HIV positive. As HIV-related policy increasingly focuses on increasing rates of antibody testing, there is a need to reduce the psychosocial costs associated with HIV-positive diagnoses.     

PTSD Symptoms in College Students Exposed to Interparental Violence: Are they Comparable to those that Result from Child Physical and Sexual Abuse?

Undergraduate students completed the Trauma Symptom Inventory and a childhood history questionnaire that assessed their experience of three types of childhood traumatic events: physical abuse (CPA), sexual abuse (CSA), and interparental violence (CPV). Six posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) subscales previously found to be associated with these types of abuse (anxious arousal, anger/irritability, intrusive experiences, depression, tension reduction behaviors, and defensive avoidance) were examined through multiple regression analyses to determine the extent to which each type of trauma history was most predictive of elevated symptomatology. For several subscales, having exposure to interparental violence was the strongest predictor of elevated symptomatology, suggesting that CPV is at least as powerful as CPA or CSA in producing symptoms of PTSD in adulthood.     

Going the distance: Extra-symbolic contributions to the symbolic control of spatial attention

Over the past 30 years, researchers have used symbolic cues such as spatial words and arrows to direct observers' attention to the location of target objects that appear at a single, fixed distance in simple visual environments; however, they have done so by using symbolic cues that provide only partial—directional—information about the spatial location of target objects. Thus, it remains unclear whether observers can only shift their attention broadly in the cued direction in response to these cues or whether they can shift their attention to the specific location of the target by combining an expectation about direction (derived from apprehension of the directional cue) with an expectation about distance (derived from some extra-symbolic cue). The results of two experiments showed that observers do shift their attention to relatively coarse spatial locations by combining expectancies about direction and distance, and that the extent to which observers do so is modulated by the presence of visible markers and the expected distance of the target. These findings are important because they provide the first evidence that extra-symbolic information about distance contributes to the symbolic control of spatial attention.     

Engineering Ethics: Looking Back, Looking Forward

The eight pieces constituting this Meeting Report are summaries of presentations made during a panel session at the 2011 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting held between March 3rd and 6th in Cincinnati. Lisa Newton organized the session and served as chair. The panel of eight consisted both of pioneers in the field and more recent arrivals. It covered a range of topics from how the field has developed to where it should be going, from identification of issues needing further study to problems of training the next generation of engineers and engineering-ethics scholars.     

A China–New Zealand comparison of forgiveness

The present study examined the practice of forgiveness among participants from China (N = 172) and New Zealand (N = 91). We tested a theoretical model describing the relationships between collectivism, individualism, and forgiveness. Participants from China were more collectivistic and less individualistic than were participants from New Zealand. Overall, participants from New Zealand were more forgiving than were participants from China. Collectivism was positively related to decisional forgiveness in Chinese participants. Decisional forgiveness independently predicted conciliatory behaviour among participants from China, but this was not the case for participants from New Zealand. Thus, the hypothesized model received qualified support.