THE TRUTH-DECEPTION ATTRIBUTION: EFFECTS OF FAMILIARITY ON THE ABILITY OF OBSERVERS TO DETECT DECEPTION

This study investigated the relationship between an observer's familiarity with the normal, truthful communicative behavior of an individual, and the observer's ability to detect deception on the part of that individual. Specifically, an attempt was made to provide an experimental test of the degree of linearity between familiarity and judgmental accuracy in detecting deception. After exposure to varying amounts of a communicator's normal, truthful behavior (baseline segment), observers made judgments of a communicator's veracity following observation of truthful or lying behavior (test segment). The results indicate a significant deviation from linearity in the relationship between familiarity and judgmental accuracy, and that the relationship is better described by an inverted parabolic curve (quadratic function). The possibility of information overload, the possibility of communicator-specific characteristics which provide clues to deception, and the possibility of observer fatigue were proposed as possible explanations of these results.     

Different Voices, Still Lives: Problems in the Ethics of Care

ABSTRACT Recent writings in feminist ethics have urged that the activity of caring is more central to women's lives than are considerations of justice and equality. This paper argues that an ethics of care, so understood, is difficult to extend beyond the local and familiar, and is therefore of limited use in addressing the political problems of the modern world. However, the ethics of care does contain an important insight: if references to care are understood not as claims about women's nature, but as reflections on the extent to which moral obligations are both unchosen and conflicting, then an ethics of care can supplement an ethics of justice, and can also provide a more realistic account of both men's and women's moral life.     

Self-defence and Forcing the Choice between Lives

ABSTRACT In the standard case of justifiable killing in self-defence one agent without provocation tries to kill a second agent and the second agent's only way to avoid death is to kill his attacker. It is widely accepted that such killings in self-defence are morally justifiable, but it has proved difficult to show why this is so. Recently, Montague has put forward an account in terms of forcing a choice between lives, and Teichman has propounded a quasi-Hobbesian rights-based account of self-defence. I argue that neither Montague nor Teichman has succeeded in providing an adequate justification for killing in self-defence.