Following the law because it’s the law: obedience,bootstrapping, and practical reason

Voluntarists in the early modern period speak of an agent’s following the law because she was ordered to do so or because it’s the law. Contemporary philosophers tend either to ignore or to dismiss the possibility of justified obedience of this sort – that is, they ignore or dismiss the possibility that something’s being the law could in itself constitute a good reason to act. In this paper, I suggest that this view isn’t taken seriously because of certain widespread beliefs about practical reason – in particular, it’s due to the belief that it’s impossible for reasons to be “bootstrapped” into existence. I argue, though, that a plausible account of practical reasoning should allow that reasons can be bootstrapped into existence, and so there’s no reason to be suspicious about the possibility of a person’s being justified in following the law because it’s the law. I end by suggesting that this conclusion opens up important new avenues of inquiry for philosophers working on topics related to legal obedience.     

The neural correlates of alcohol-related aggression

Alcohol intoxication is implicated in approximately half of all violent crimes. Over the past several decades, numerous theories have been proposed to account for the influence of alcohol on aggression. Nearly all of these theories imply that altered functioning in the prefrontal cortex is a proximal cause. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, 50 healthy young men consumed either a low dose of alcohol or a placebo and completed an aggression paradigm against provocative and nonprovocative opponents. Provocation did not affect neural responses. However, relative to sober participants, during acts of aggression, intoxicated participants showed decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, caudate, and ventral striatum, but heightened activation in the hippocampus. Among intoxicated participants, but not among sober participants, aggressive behavior was positively correlated with activation in the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results support theories that posit a role for prefrontal cortical dysfunction as an important factor in intoxicated aggression.     

What does second-order vision see in an image?

The human visual system is sensitive to both first-order variations in luminance and second-order variations in local contrast and texture. Although there is some debate about the nature of second-order vision and its relationship to first-order processing, there is now a body of results showing that they are processed separately. However, the amount, and nature, of second-order structure present in the natural environment is unclear. This is an important question because, if natural scenes contain little second-order structure in addition to first-order signals, the notion of a separate second-order system would lack ecological validity. Two models of second-order vision were applied to a number of well-calibrated natural images. Both models consisted of a first stage of oriented spatial filters followed by a rectifying nonlinearity and then a second set of filters. The models differed in terms of the connectivity between first-stage and second-stage filters. Output images taken from the models indicate that natural images do contain useful second-order structure. Specifically, the models reveal variations in texture and features defined by such variations. Areas of high contrast (but not necessarily high luminance) are also highlighted by the models. Second-order structure--as revealed by the models--did not correlate with the first-order profile of the images, suggesting that the two types of image 'content' may be statistically independent.     

Issue Salience, Perceived Efficacy and Perceived Risk: A Study of the Origins of Anti-Nuclear War Activity

One hundred eleven college students participated in this two-session experiment designed to explore the origins of anti-nuclear war activism. In Session 1 participants completed questionnaires assessing a number of background characteristics and attitudes, the most important of which for this study's purpose was a measure of perceived political efficacy in the nuclear realm. One week later both the salience of the nuclear weapons issue and participants' sense of personalized risk were experimentally manipulated in a 2 × 2 × 2 (salience × risk × measured efficacy) design. Dependent measures were a behavioral intentions questionnaire and an actual opportunity to sign a petition which participants did not recognize as part of the experiment. High salience significantly increased both anti-nuclear war behavioral intentions and actual behavior as predicted. Individuals who felt highly efficacious were also significantly more likely to take action than others as predicted. A similar relation between efficacy and behavioral intentions was not found, although a salience by efficacy interaction was. Personalized risk influenced only behavioral intentions. Finally, the relative impact of these three variables and of other background and attitudinal variables measured in the first session was explored using regression techniques.     

Compulsive buying behavior: Re‐evaluating its dimensions and screening

Despite the significant research in the consumer behavior literature on compulsive buying behavior (CBB), there is still no general agreement about the dimensionality or diagnostic screening of the disorder. Previous studies have identified two principal dimensions: compulsivity and impulsivity, although more recent strands of theory characterize CBB with reference to loss of self‐control and behavioral addiction. This study challenges the impulsive–compulsive paradigm by validating a new model with compulsive and self‐control impaired spending dimensions. The model more closely reflects the disorder's ego‐dystonic character, routed in an anxiety‐based reactive mechanism with uncontrollable buying and an inability to rationalize the behavior and its consequences. The study also develops and cross‐validates a new seven‐item CBB screening tool, using a comparative analysis with three existing screeners and an independent sample. The findings indicate that compulsive buying results from both compulsive and self‐control impaired impulsive elements, which are characteristic of behavioral addiction.     

Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: A new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model

Virtual reality technology is argued to be suitable to the simulation study of mass evacuation behavior, because of the practical and ethical constraints in researching this field. This article describes three studies in which a new virtual reality paradigm was used, in which participants had to escape from a burning underground rail station. Study 1 was carried out in an immersion laboratory and demonstrated that collective identification in the crowd was enhanced by the (shared) threat embodied in emergency itself. In Study 2, high-identification participants were more helpful and pushed less than did low-identification participants. In Study 3, identification and group size were experimentally manipulated, and similar results were obtained. These results support a hypothesis according to which (emergent) collective identity motivates solidarity with strangers. It is concluded that the virtual reality technology developed here represents a promising start, although more can be done to embed it in a traditional psychology laboratory setting.     

Predicting Early Sexual Activity with Behavior Problems Exhibited at School Entry and in Early Adolescence

Youth who initiate sexual intercourse in early adolescence (age 11–14) experience multiple risks, including concurrent adjustment problems and unsafe sexual practices. The current study tested two models describing the links between childhood precursors, early adolescent risk factors, and adolescent sexual activity: a cumulative model and a meditational model. A longitudinal sample of 694 boys and girls from four geographical locations was utilized, with data collected from kindergarten through high school. Structural equation models revealed that, irrespective of gender or race, high rates of aggressive disruptive behaviors and attention problems at school entry increased risk for a constellation of problem behaviors in middle school (school maladjustment, antisocial activity, and substance use) which, in turn, promoted the early initiation of sexual activity. Implications are discussed for developmental models of early sexual activity and for prevention programming.

School desegregation and social science research

Research on the effects of school desegregation, once quite common in psychology and related fields, has declined considerably since the mid-1980s. Factors contributing to changes in the quantity and focus of such research since the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision are discussed, with an emphasis on those related to the decline of this research in the last 2 decades. These factors include the nation's retreat from the policy of school desegregation and the associated decline in research funding. Changing perspectives regarding desegregation, the outcomes of desegregation that merit study, and the desirable composition of research teams studying desegregation have also played a role. Demographic changes in our society and its schools that have made salient other research topics and the development of effective research paradigms for studying intergroup relations in the laboratory have also contributed to this decline. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oscillatory motion induces change blindness

Change blindness is the relative inability of normally sighted observers to detect large changes in scenes when the low-level signals associated with those changes are either masked or of extremely low magnitude. Change detection can be inhibited by saccadic eye movements, artificial saccades or blinks, and 'mud splashes'. We now show that change detection is also inhibited by whole image motion in the form of sinusoidal oscillations. The degree of disruption depends upon the frequency of oscillation, which at 3 Hz is equivalent to that produced by artificial blinks. Image motion causes the retinal image to be blurred and this is known to affect object recognition. However, our results are inconsistent with good change detection followed by a delay due to poor recognition of the changing object. Oscillatory motion can induce eye movements that potentially mask or inhibit the low-level signals related to changes in the scene, but we show that eye movements promote rather than inhibit change detection when the image is moving.     

Activation of MAPK is necessary for long-term memory consolidation following food-reward conditioning

Although an important role for the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) has been established for memory consolidation in a variety of learning paradigms, it is not known if this pathway is also involved in appetitive classical conditioning. We address this question by using a single-trial food-reward conditioning paradigm in the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis. This learning paradigm induces protein synthesis-dependent long-term memory formation. Inhibition of MAPK phosphorylation blocked long-term memory consolidation without affecting the sensory and motor abilities of the snails. Thirty minutes after conditioning, levels of MAPK phosphorylation were increased in extracts from the buccal and cerebral ganglia. These ganglia are involved in the generation, modulation, and plasticity of the feeding behavior. We also detected an increase in levels of MAPK phosphorylation in the peripheral tissue around the mouth of the snails where chemoreceptors are located. Although an increase in MAPK phosphorylation was shown to be essential for food-reward conditioning, it was also detected in snails that were exposed to the conditioned stimulus (CS) or the unconditioned stimulus (US) alone, suggesting that phosphorylation of MAPK is necessary but not sufficient for learning to occur.