The Impact of Balanced Risk–Benefit Information and Initial Attitudes on Post‐Information Attitudes1

In a realistic social context, people are confronted with both positive and negative information, yet research on this topic is relatively scarce. We present 2 studies examining the role of initial attitudes on the impact of one‐sided vs. balanced positive and negative information on attitudes toward food production methods. The first experiment demonstrated that one‐sided information influenced post‐information attitudes congruent to the direction of the message content. The second experiment showed that the effect of balanced information on post‐information attitudes may depend on initial attitudes. These results demonstrate that negativity effects are dominant for people with initial positive attitudes, but change into positivity effects for people with initial negative attitudes. Implications for communicating both positive and negative information are discussed.     

I.C.E. World Information,Consciousness, Energy

There is underway a worldwide shift in society from an industrial‐based to an information‐based metaindustrial way of living and working. This will require innovative organization and management. Three factors are described as propellers of this industrial transformation: technological innovations, technology transfer, and global marketplace. Trends in post‐industrial organizations are mapped out, and a profile of metaindustrial organization culture is created.?     

Feminist Resources for Biomedical Research: Lessons from the HPV Vaccines

Several feminist philosophers of science have argued that social and political values are compatible with, and may even enhance, scientific objectivity. A variety of normative recommendations have emerged regarding how to identify, manage, and critically evaluate social values in science. In particular, several feminist theorists have argued that scientific communities ought to: 1) include researchers with diverse experiences, interests, and values, with equal opportunity and authority to scrutinize research; 2) investigate or “study up” scientific phenomena from the perspectives, interests, and conditions of marginalized stakeholders potentially affected by the research; and 3) make gender, ethnicity, class, and geographical location “visible,” or use them as categories of analysis when appropriate. Yet, more work is needed to determine what exactly these recommendations would require, and the benefits they would yield, in specific research contexts. Using the recent development of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, we examine how these three feminist recommendations would have applied. We argue that these principles would have yielded several epistemic and social benefits in the HPV case, as well as in biomedical research more generally. That is, biomedical research guided by these principles would not only be epistemically superior, but also more socially responsible.     

From mimesis to agency: Clinical steps in the work of psychic two‐ness1

In this paper, through the study of the clinical process of a girl starting treatment at the age of 3 years 10 months, who was thought of as a dummy by her family and who came for consultation when the assumed genetic aetiology was questioned, the authors build upon Tustin's contributions on the context of togetherness and the crisis of two‐ness, and upon Eugenio and Renata Gaddini's on the precursor object. The mimetic phenomena enacted with an older brother and at the kindergarten are found to result from cumulative trauma at her contacting a loving but mind–blind mother. After an initial stage of transference autism, enactment in the session of the traumatic situation was the first step in surmounting her autistic pseudo–stupidity. Mimetic transference dynamics took place principally at the level of the gaze, leading to the unfolding of the work of two–ness to a differentiation from the analyst as psychic breast, on the road to symbol formation and personal agency.     

Serendipity in the Theater: Maude Adams as James M. Barrie's American Muse

A special niche in theatre history is addressed to begin to fill a void in the contemporary creativity literature. The present essay focuses on Maude Adams and James M. Barrie in an attempt to demonstrate that, serendipitously, Adams initially impacted Barrie's creative process, and thereafter became his platonic source of inspiration for the plays he created for her, meriting the belated title of muse. Set change theory is underscored as a plausible cognitive explanation for Barrie's illumination. The psychoanalytic theory of transference is proposed as an underlying mechanism for facilitating the change of mental set during the incubation stage. A brief discussion on a selective theoretical integration from the fields of cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience is followed by conclusions.     

IS LIBERAL NATIONALISM INCOMPATIBLE WITH GLOBAL DEMOCRACY?

Abstract: To respond to globalization-related challenges, many contemporary political theorists have argued for forms of democracy beyond the level of the nation-state. Since the early 1990s, however, political theory has also witnessed a renewed normative defense of nationhood. Liberal nationalists have been influential in claiming that the state should protect and promote national identities, and that it is desirable that the boundaries of national and political units coincide. At first glance, both positions—global democracy and nationalism—seem to contradict each other. We do not share this oppositional picture. Developing a more harmonic picture of nationalist ideals and cosmopolitan visions is the aim of this essay.