Threats to Moral Identity: Testing the Effects of Incentives and Consequences of One's Actions on Moral Cleansing

Individuals engage in moral cleansing, a compensatory process to reaffirm one's moral identity, when one's moral self-concept is threatened. However, too much moral cleansing can license individuals to engage in future unethical acts. This study examined the effects of incentives and consequences of one's actions on cheating behavior and moral cleansing. Results found that incentives and consequences interacted such that unethical thoughts were especially threatening, resulting in more moral cleansing, when large incentives to cheat were present and cheating explicitly harmed others. Implications are discussed in terms of ethics training, using incentives as motivators, and the depersonalized norms of science.     

Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Cheating: The Influence of Direct Knowledge and Attitudes on Academic Dishonesty

What effect does witnessing other students cheat have on one's own cheating behavior? What roles do moral attitudes and neutralizing attitudes (justifications for behavior) play when deciding to cheat? The present research proposes a model of academic dishonesty which takes into account each of these variables. Findings from experimental (vignette) and survey methods determined that seeing others cheat increases cheating behavior by causing students to judge the behavior less morally reprehensible, not by making rationalization easier. Witnessing cheating also has unique effects, controlling for other variables.     

Ethical Challenges in the Treatment of Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities

The effective provision of psychotherapy services to individuals with intellectual disability requires consideration of ethical issues related to clinical competence, access to services, obligations to multiple parties, guardianship, and appropriate assessment practices. This article provides an overview of major ethical considerations with guidance for clarifying and resolving common ethical concerns. Psychologists are encouraged to expand access to psychotherapy services for this population while maintaining awareness of potential modifications, training needs, and boundaries of professional competence. The authors provide recommendations and resources for effective and ethical treatment of psychotherapy clients with intellectual disabilities.     

Breaks are Better: A Tier II Social Behavior Intervention

Multi-tiered systems of social behavioral support in schools provide varying levels of intervention matched to student need. Tier I (primary or universal) systems are for all students and are designed to promote pro-social behavior. Tier III (tertiary or intensive) supports are for students who engage in serious challenging behavior that has not responded to other efforts. In between Tier I and Tier III are Tier II (secondary or targeted interventions), for students at risk for developing more serious problematic behavior. The purpose of this study was to evaluate Breaks are Better, a Tier II intervention designed for students who engage in problem behavior maintained by avoidance of instructional activities. Breaks are Better builds on an evidence-based Tier II intervention, Check-in/Check-out, but includes key components to enhance its effectiveness for students who avoid instruction. Working with three typically developing elementary school students, we documented changes in problem behavior during academic instruction following the implementation of Breaks are Better. Further, students and teachers rated the intervention as both feasible and valuable.     

Does John Henry Newman Have a Theo‐Drama?

The essay surveys Newman's work in literary drama, from an early essay on Aristotle's Poetics to his adaptation of Roman comedies for production at the Oratory School, in order to approach his affinities with Hans Urs von Balthasar's theological dramatic theory. Newman does not find a Balthasarian theo‐drama via literary drama – perhaps because he was not properly exposed to medieval religious drama – but scattered dramatic analogies in his history writing suggest that he undertakes a theo‐drama in that genre. Von Balthasar and Newman employ dramatic analogies to reject chiliastic apocalyptic and foster ‘keromatic’ apocalyptic.     

The ontology of words: a structural approach

Words form a fundamental basis for our understanding of linguistic practice. However, the precise ontology of words has eluded many philosophers and linguists. A persistent difficulty for most accounts of words is the type-token distinction [Bromberger, S. 1989. “Types and Tokens in Linguistics.” In Reflections on Chomsky, edited by A. George, 58–90. Basil Blackwell; Kaplan, D. 1990. “Words.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume LXIV: 93–119]. In this paper, I present a novel account of words which differs from the atomistic and platonistic conceptions of previous accounts which I argue fall prey to this problem. Specifically, I proffer a structuralist account of linguistic items, along the lines of structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics [Shapiro, S. 1997. Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology. Oxford University Press], in which words are defined in part as positions in larger linguistic structures. I then follow Szabò [1999. “Expressions and Their Representations.” The Philosophical Quarterly 49 (195): 145–163] and Parsons [1990. “The Structuralist View of Mathematical Objects.” Synthese 84: 303–346] in further defining words as quasi-concrete objects according to a representation relation. This view aims for general correspondence with contemporary generative linguistic approaches to the study of language.     

Network Hubs and Opportunity for Complex Thinking Among Young British Muslims

This study examines whether individuals in a network esteem peers who think in integratively complex ways about religious issues in the context of a small‐group educational course comprised of young British Muslims. Integrative complexity (IC) measures the degree to which an individual's information processing is characterized by (a) rigid, black‐and‐white thinking or (b) ability to recognize the validity of, and integrate, multiple perspectives. A novel measurement procedure was developed for this research called the Social Field Generator. Results from seven groups (n = 55) showed that (a) participants with levels of IC were described by their peers with more positive sentiment than their low‐IC counterparts; (b) the higher the IC scores of participants, the closer peers felt toward them; and (c) the highest IC individuals were consistently selected as sources of advice, whereas the lowest IC individuals were not viewed as sources of advice. This research shows that within an educational environment aimed at promoting complex thinking, group processes and grassroots religious leadership can encourage higher levels of IC as a group norm.     

Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression in Australian Adolescents: Comparisons with Worldwide Data

Data from two Australian studies were combined so that the prevalence of anxiety and depression in a large, normative sample of Australian adolescents could be investigated. The combined sample comprised 1,299 adolescents randomly selected from metropolitan and country schools in Melbourne, a large Australian city. The data were examined in order to ascertain the percentages of adolescents who scored above the clinical cut-off on two self-report instruments-the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (C. R. Reynolds & B. 0. Richmond, 1985) and the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (W. M. Reynolds, 1986). The results of these analyses were then compared with previously reported prevalence rates from studies worldwide. This comparison revealed striking differences in the prevalence of anxiety and depression across different countries and cultures. Limitations attributable to different self-report measures and imposed-etic approaches are discussed. Issues pertaining to social and political climate are also raised.     

Psychophysics of Kinesthesis

A horizontal straight-arm movement was used to determine the relationship between the physical stimulus continuum and the psychological continuum of kinesthetic extent of arm movement. A power function with an exponent of 1.075 best described this relationship. In addition, to classify extent of movement as belonging to either a prothetic or metathetic continuum, the category scale was derived. According to the functional criteria described by Stevens (1957), extent of movement was subserved by a metathetic process which would indicate that, for the present task, judgments were made through the use of positional cues rather than amplitude cues.     

Abuse and aggression in courting couples

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the commercialization of an alternative youth subculture. Sociologists have typically focused on the ways that authorities have attempted to repress and censor youthful rebellion, but less attention has been given to their appropriation by mass media and consumer markets. In fact, I argue that condemnation by authorities has often made deviance more alluring for some young people, while commercialization appears to dilute the adversarial qualities of youth culture. I use the concept “subcultural capital” to explain both the economic value of youthful rebellion and the process of co-optation that occurs when it is absorbed into the consumer culture. While labeling and other disciplinary forms of societal reaction have attempted to enforce the boundary between deviance and normality, commercialization can have the opposite effect of conflating these boundaries.