Theistic or secular grounding of human rights?

The philosophical debate on human rights and their core notion of “human dignity” is marked by controversy, not least regarding the relevance of a religious perspective. This article addresses two markedly different approaches to human rights: Nicholas Wolterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs (2008) and George Kateb's Human Dignity (2011). While Wolterstorff argues for a theistic grounding of human rights, Kateb is highly critical towards theology and sets out to achieve a strictly secular account of what makes a human being unique. After two sections outlining their respective positions, the article moves into a comparative discussion and concludes that instead of the rigid alternative “theistic” or “secular” what we need in order to understand and defend human dignity and human rights may be a more open and broad-minded perspective on religion.     

Reciprocal Associations Between Depressive Symptoms and Disordered Eating Among Adolescent Girls and Boys: A Multiwave,Prospective Study

Symptoms of depression and eating disorders increase during adolescence, particularly among girls, and they tend to co-occur. Despite this evidence, there is meager research on whether depression increases the risk of future eating pathology, or vice versa, and we do not know whether these processes are different for adolescent girls and boys. Accordingly, this study explored the prospective reciprocal associations between depressive symptoms and disordered eating at different time points from preadolescence to mid-adolescence and tested the moderator effect of gender on these associations. A community-based sample of Spanish youth (N?=?942, 49 % female) was assessed at ages of approximately 10-11 (T1), 12-13 (T2), 14-15 (T3), and 16-17 (T4) years. The bidirectional relationships between depressive symptoms and disordered eating were estimated in an autoregressive cross-lagged model with latent variables. A unidirectional, age-specific association between depressive symptoms at T1 and disordered eating at T2 was found. No other significant cross-lagged effect emerged, but the stability of the constructs was considerable. Gender did not moderate any of the links examined. Regardless of gender, the transition from childhood to adolescence appears to be a key period when depressive symptoms foster the development of disordered eating. These findings suggest that early prevention and treatment of depression targeting both girls and boys may result in lower levels of depressive symptoms and disordered eating in adolescence.     

The Passenger Effect: Risky Driving is a Function of the Driver‐Passenger Emotional Relationship

This research focused on the influence of imaginary passengers on drivers' estimation of the probability of having an accident in traffic situations. Participants had to imagine riding a motorcycle with either a son or a workmate as a passenger. Their task was to assess the risk of accident in a set of traffic scenarios. Risk perception was a function of sex and type of passenger. Women perceived higher risk when the passenger was a son than when a workmate. In contrast, men's estimations were rather the same for both passengers. The emotional significance of the consequences of the accident (losing a son vs. losing a workmate) modulate the perception of probability of having an accident. Finally, these results could help in designing more effective campaigns promoting road safety. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Scientific Controversies and the Ethics of Arguing and Belief in the Face of Rational Disagreement

Our main aim is to discuss the topic of scientific controversies in the context of a recent issue that has been the centre of attention of many epistemologists though not of argumentation theorists or philosophers of science, namely the ethics of belief in face of rational disagreement. We think that the consideration of scientific examples may be of help in the epistemological debate on rational disagreement, making clear some of the deficiencies of the discussion as it has been produced until now. Another central claim of our paper is that the common view according to which beliefs (and changes of beliefs) may exhibit and commonly exhibit a deontic status can be clarified in the light of Brandom’s approach to normative pragmatics and the pragmatic theories of argumentation that also have a normative character (here our example is van Eemeren’s pragma-dialectics). Our article highlights the similarities between both projects, similarities that to our knowledge were not noticed before. Finally, an important point of the article is that we need to take contextual elements into account in order to develop an adequate theory of disagreement.     

To switch or not to switch: Inviting bilingual clients to switch languages in psychotherapy

In the present study, we used an audio-analog design to test whether exposing bilingual participants to a therapist who invited a bilingual client to switch languages in a psychotherapy session would have a positive effect on participants’ perceptions of the therapist. We also explored whether participants’ sense of belonging to their ethnic group and to the larger US culture would enhance or attenuate this effect. Sixty-three bilingual Latino/a university students listened to one of two recordings of a simulated psychotherapy session with a bilingual Latina therapist and client. In one recording, the therapist invited the client to switch from English to Spanish when the client had trouble expressing complicated feelings; in the other, the therapist did not invite the client to switch. When listening, participants were asked to imagine themselves in the role of client and to rate the credibility and multicultural competence of the therapist, and the emotional bond they would anticipate with her. Contrary to expectation, only participants who expressed a greater sense of belonging to US culture rated the therapist who invited the client to switch as being more multiculturally competent. We discuss how these findings contribute to the literature on language switching and bilingualism in psychotherapy.     

Do Economic Reforms Alleviate Subjective Well-Being Losses of Economic Crises?

Major economic crises tend to be followed by crises in subjective well-being. Following the financial and debt crises, politicians and social scientists have engaged in heated discussions of ways to alleviate such losses. In particular, should governments intervene more or less? This paper explores whether liberalizing economic institutions, a type of reform favoured by some economists, is likely to alleviate such loses. Estimating the effects of crises across European states 1975–2011 suggest that countries with relatively easy market regulations suffered smaller well-being losses.     

Social Interactions and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from Latin America

In this paper, we seek to examine the effect of social comparisons and of social capital on life satisfaction over a sample of Latin American countries. We test if, through social influence and exposure, social capital is either an enhancer or appeaser of the effect of social comparisons of material conditions in life satisfaction. Using the Latinobarómetro Survey (2007) we find, contrary to the existing literature that, the better others perform in the material dimension, the happier the individual is. We also find that social capital is among the strongest correlates of individuals’ life satisfaction. Our findings suggest that social contacts may enhance the effect of social comparisons, which is more intense for those who perform worse in their reference group.     

Long Sickness Absence Differences Between Natives and Immigrant Workers: The Role of Differences in Self-reported Health

The limited empirical evidence on sickness absence among immigrants indicates that non-Western immigrants have a higher incidence of sickness-related absence than natives. The purpose of this article is to examine whether health is a contributing factor to the immigrant-native sickness absence gap. The present article makes use of two data sources: register data (FD-trygd) with labour market and long-term sickness absence information linked to a cross-section questionnaire survey on health: The Oslo Health Study, which was conducted in 2000–2001 (N?=?14,114). The findings in this article show that non-Western immigrants have a higher incidence of long-term sickness absence than natives. For both women and men, the differences in long-term sickness absence between non-Western immigrants and natives can be explained by poorer self-reported health among immigrants.