Rawls’s Principle of Justice as Fairness and Its Application to the Issue of Same-Sex Marriage

Abstract

This essay applies the principle of justice as fairness to the issue of same-sex marriage. I will outline Rawls’s theory of justice, including the original position and the veil of ignorance as the means by which choosers craft a just state. In considering whether same-sex marriage should be permissible, I argue that a just society, formulated in the Rawlsian context of justice as fairness, should allow them. I assert that gays and lesbians do count as equal citizens because they possess the minimum requirements of the capacity for a sense of justice, a conception of the good, and the ability to be cooperating members of society. Furthermore, within the original position gays and lesbians will be represented because choosers do not know their sexual orientation because it is one of the individual characteristics that are withheld behind the veil. Since the choosers do not know their sexual orientation, they will be unable to use that information in their construction of what counts as a just state comprised of free and equal citizens. Because the family, and the institution of marriage as a primary manifestation of the family, is one of the major social institutions within the basic structure, limitations must be carefully scrutinized.     

The role of ethnicity,gender, emotional content,and contextual differences in physiological,expressive, and self-reported emotional responses to imagery

Cardiovascular responses, skin conductance, corrugator ("frown"), and zygomaticus ("smile") electromyographic activity, and self-reported emotional responses were examined in response to scenarios that varied in emotional content and whether they involved interacting with a Black or White person. Black (33 women, 25 men) and White (28 women, 26 men) students imagined joy, neutral, fear, and anger situations. Emotional contents replicated patterns of physiological and self-reported emotion found in other studies, although gender differences in emotion found in other studies were evident only in White participants. Blacks exhibited more positive facial expressions, while Whites were more negatively expressive. Blacks, and particularly Black men, exhibited greater blood pressure reactivity to the emotional contexts. For both White and Black participants, imagined interactions with Blacks increased both positive and negative facial expression. Results suggest that, compared to Whites, Blacks are both more autonomically reactive to emotional interactions and may be responded to more emotionally. The results are discussed in terms of the need to study specific contextual factors rather than broad cross-cultural characterisations.     

Negative cognitive response to a sad mood induction: Associations with polymorphisms of the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) gene

Increased negative thinking in response to sad mood states has been identified as a marker of depression risk. The present study examined whether polymorphisms of the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) gene were associated with the tendency to endorse negative cognition after sad or neutral mood inductions in a healthy college student sample. Non-depressed participants were genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR and then viewed films designed to elicit a sad mood (n=30) or a neutral mood (n=23). Analyses indicated that individuals homozygous for the short 5-HTTLPR allele endorsed more negative cognition following a sad mood induction than individuals homozygous for the long 5-HTTLPR allele. Negative cognition did not vary as a function of 5-HTTLPR genetic status in the neutral mood condition. These preliminary results suggest that genetic variation of the serotonin transporter may contribute to depression vulnerability via a tendency to think more negatively in response to events that elicit sad mood.     

Modelling the Direct and Indirect Effects of Positive Emotional and Cognitive Traits and States on Social Judgements

It was hypothesised that positive affective states and situational information-processing demands would differentially influence the favourability of social judgements of a target social group. These hypothesised direct effects on social judgements were subsequently incorporated into a broader statetrait model of the social judgement process, whereby direct and indirect effects of personality and cognitive traits, along with positive affective states and information-processing demands (i.e. cognitive state), were also hypothesised to influence social judgements. Three hundred and eight subjects reported their trait levels of introversion-extraversion and need for cognition, and were subsequently induced into an affective state (content, happy, surprise, or neutral) and a cognitive state (heuristic or substantive information processing). Results indicated that study participants who were manipulated into either a content or a happy affect state made more positive judgements about the target group than study participants who were manipulated into either a surprised or a neutral state. Moreover, when the cognitive demands of the situation were low, a cognitive trait (need for cognition) and the affective state directly influenced the social judgement. H owever, when the cognitive demands of the situation were high, only an indirect effect of affective state through a cognitive state influenced the social judgement. Discussion focused on the components of the state-trait model of the social judgement process as it applies to positive affective states.     

Emotional dimensions as determinants of self-focused attention

Negative emotions, and particularly sadness, have been found to induce self-focused attention among both depressed and normal individuals. However, positive emotion, such as happiness, is sometimes found to have a similar effect. The present study examines the effect of emotion on self-focus induction by looking separately at the emotional dimensions of valence and arousal. It postulates that arousal would be even more potent than valence in increasing self-focus, since it increases the salience of the self. Results of Experiment 1 showed that emotions that are both intense and negative, such as fear, induce the most self-focus, but pleasant relaxation also resulted in increased self-focusing. Experiment 2, using a similar design, replicated the arousal effect, and showed that fear and joy, the two most arousing emotions resulted in the most self-focus.     

Testing the limits of testing effects using completion tests

Recent work on testing effects has shown that retrieval practice can facilitate memory even for complex prose materials (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a, 2006b). In three experiments the current study explores the effectiveness of retrieval practice on fill-in-the-blank (FITB) tests requiring the recall of specific words or phrases from a text. Final tests included both repeated items that were directly taken from initial tests, and related items. In Experiment 1, with a 2-day delay between initial and final tests, FITB testing benefited performance only on repeated items. In Experiment 2 a 7-day delay between testing sessions led to more robust effects on repeated items. However, once again no benefits were seen for related items. In Experiment 3 the scope of retrieval was varied by comparing FITB tests to paragraph recall tests requiring retrieval of all sentences following a topic sentence. Only the more open-ended recall practice demonstrated improvements in transfer to novel questions. The results suggest that scope or type of processing required during retrieval practice is likely a critical factor in whether testing will have specific or robust benefits.     

Searching for the sequential line-up advantage: A distinctiveness explanation

Signal Detection models as well as the Two-High-Threshold model (2HTM) have been used successfully as measurement models in recognition tasks to disentangle memory performance and response biases. A popular method in recognition memory is to elicit confidence judgements about the presumed old/new status of an item, allowing for the easy construction of ROCs. Since the 2HTM assumes fewer latent memory states than response options are available in confidence ratings, the 2HTM has to be extended by a mapping function which models individual rating scale usage. Unpublished data from 2 experiments in Bröder and Schütz (2009) validate the core memory parameters of the model, and 3 new experiments show that the response mapping parameters are selectively affected by manipulations intended to affect rating scale use, and this is independent of overall old/new bias. Comparisons with SDT show that both models behave similarly, a case that highlights the notion that both modelling approaches can be valuable (and complementary) elements in a researcher's toolbox.     

Testing the Impact of a Computer Guide on Visitor Learning Behaviors at an Interactive Exhibit

ABSTRACT

There is a recognized need to rigorously examine the efficacy of approaches to supporting informal learning. In this study, we used a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design to test the impact of a computer guide on 3 proximal measures of visitor learning at an interactive math exhibit. In total, 128 families were systematically assigned to engage with the exhibit either with or without access to a supplementary computer kiosk. Visitor groups with access to the computer spent longer, on average, at the exhibit and engaged in more mathematical behaviors compared to other groups. However, based on interviews, visitors with access to the computer were less likely to fully articulate the mathematical relations in the exhibit. These results suggest that although computer guides are a promising approach to supporting visitor engagement, they may, unless carefully designed, undermine other learning outcomes.