Narrative and persistence

Many philosophers say that the nature of personal identity has to do with narratives: the stories we tell about ourselves. While different narrativists address different questions of personal identity, some propose narrativist accounts of personal identity over time. The paper argues that such accounts have troubling consequences about the beginning and end of our lives, lead to inconsistencies, and involve backwards causation. The problems can be solved, but only by modifying the accounts in ways that deprive them of their appeal.     

Finding Motivation to Learn: Exploring Achievement Goals in California Community College CalWORKs Students

This study investigated the achievement goals and motivations of California Community College CalWORKs students in an effort to better support student success and persistence. This study was guided by three research questions: (1) What type of achievement goals do CalWORKs students enter with? (2) What are their rationales for these types of achievement goals? (3) How malleable are these achievement goals? Interviews with 48 participants focused on better understanding the relationship between achievement goal type and motivation changes while in college. Findings indicate that CalWORKs students enter college with a range of goal types, but formany changes in goal type led to more intrinsic motivation and ultimately persistence toward graduation and career goals. Findings from this study also reveal thatexperiences highlighting students' ability to be competent as learners while balancing other roles helped catalyze change in achievement goal type and/or rationale. The results of this study emphasize that CalWORKs students' achievement goals are malleable, and particular college experiences can facilitate students' movement toward more academically focused goals. More specifically, placing more focus on additional student support programs that can foster peer networking, faculty interactions, and additional career exploration opportunities can lead to change in academic persistence.     

‘If I only had a little humility,I would be perfect’: Children’s and adults’ perceptions of intellectually arrogant,humble, and diffident people

Abstract

Intellectual humility is usually regarded as a virtue. In this paper, we conceptualized intellectual humility along two dimensions: (1) placing an adequate level of confidence in one’s own beliefs; (2) being willing to consider other people’s beliefs. We tested whether children (ages 4 to 11 years) and adults perceived intellectual humility as positive and how these perceptions changed across development. To do so, we asked participants to evaluate an intellectually humble person as compared to an intellectually arrogant person, who readily dismissed other people’s beliefs, or to an intellectually diffident person, who was unsure of a well-supported belief. Young children did not favor the intellectually humble person over the others, but older children and adults liked this person better and tended to consider her nicer than the arrogant one and smarter than the diffident one. These findings suggest that the virtuousness of intellectual humility in others is recognized from mid-childhood on.     

Comparing Self-Regulation-Associated Event Related Potentials in Preschool Children with and without High Levels of Disruptive Behavior

Deficient self-regulation plays a key role in the etiology of early onset disruptive behavior disorders and signals risk for chronic psychopathology. However, to date, there has been no research comparing preschool children with and without high levels of disruptive behavior using Event Related Potentials (ERPs) associated with specific self-regulation sub-processes. We examined 15 preschool children with high levels of disruptive behavior (35 % female) and 20 peers with low disruptive behavior (50 % female) who completed a Go/No-go task that provided emotionally valenced feedback. We tested whether 4 ERP components: the Error Related Negativity, the Error Positivity, the Feedback Related Negativity, and the No-go N2, differed in preschool children with and without high levels of disruptive behavior. Preschoolers with high levels of disruptive behavior showed less differentiation between the Error Positivity and corresponding waveforms following correct responses at posterior sites. Preschoolers with high and low disruptive behavior also showed differences in Go/No-go N2 waveform amplitudes across electrodes. These findings suggest that preschool children with high levels of disruptive behavior may show abnormal brain activity during certain self-regulation sub-processes, informing potential advances in conceptualizing and treating early disruptive behavior.     

Interrogating the ethics of operational psychology

Commissioned amidst allegations of collusion between American Psychological Association officials and Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense officials involved in the enhanced interrogation programme, the July 2015 Hoffman Report documented a decade of collusion between American Psychological Association and Department of Defense officials in unethical national security interrogations. However, interrogation support is but one of numerous areas where psychologists are directly aiding military and intelligence operations, an area known as operational psychology. The ethical issues posed by the larger field of operational psychology have received little public discussion apart from apologia by operational psychologists themselves. To stimulate public review of operational psychology, leaders of the movement to remove psychologists from national security interrogations convened, in September 2015, a group of experts to work towards a consensus set of principles to guide future discussion. Participants included psychologists, physicians, and social scientists; military and intelligence professionals; and attorneys, ethicists, and human rights advocates. The discussion also drew upon years of dialogue between participants and military health and intelligence professionals. The workshop produced “The Brookline Principles on the Ethical Practice of Operational Psychology,” with implications for the profession of psychology and for civil society.     

Perceptions of Stress,Coping, and Intervention Preferences among Caregivers of Disadvantaged Children with Asthma

Asthma remains the most prevalent chronic illness among children. Despite the substantial body of literature examining children with asthma, few studies have examined parents’ perspectives of the condition and experiences of caregiver stress. Parents of children with chronic illnesses experience elevated stress and may have limited opportunities to cope with complex emotions while caring for children with asthma. Drawing from focus groups and interviews with African American and Hispanic parents of children with asthma, this qualitative study was conducted as part of a patient-centered engagement process to inform the refinement of an intervention aimed at reducing stress among parents of children with asthma. All data were transcribed and underwent three waves of inductive analysis. The content analysis indicated that the unpredictable nature of asthma and the caregiving burden associated with managing children’s asthma contributed to parents’ stress, and external contexts compounded the impact of these stressors. Parents also reported having difficulty identifying how they coped with stress and employed approaches to coping with stress that they applied intermittently but encountered several barriers to enacting known or available coping strategies. Analyses also revealed that parents desired a multimodal stress reduction intervention that emphasized building relationships, allowed for flexibility, and encouraged staff-parent communication. Whereas African American and Hispanic parents’ experiences of stress and coping strategies were similar, their preferences differed in regards to incorporating technology into the intervention, the credentials of facilitators, and the salience of language preferences. Understanding the complexities of stressors facing caregivers is important for developing interventions to support parents and children coping with asthma, and in particular when working with families from diverse backgrounds.     

Rumination and dysphoria: The buffering role of adaptive forms of humor

The current study examines the effects of rumination and humor on individuals’ dysphoria level. Measures of humor (affiliative and self-enhancing), rumination, and depressive symptoms were completed by 303 undergraduate students. Consistent with our hypothesis, both affiliative humor and rumination independently accounted for variance in dysphoria levels. In addition, self-enhancing humor and rumination were independently associated with dysphoria. Moreover, significant interactions between affiliative humor and rumination, and self-enhancing humor and rumination, on dysphoria also emerged. Results indicated that among individuals with high rumination, those with high affiliative and/or self-enhancing humor had significantly lower levels of dysphoria than individuals with low affiliative and/or self-enhancing humor. The combination of low affiliative and/or self-enhancing humor and high rumination led to substantially higher levels of dysphoria than any other combination. Implications for psychotherapy and research in this area are discussed.     

Intrinsicalism and Conditionalism about Final Value

The paper distinguishes between two rival views about the nature of final value (i.e. the value something has for its own sake) — intrinsicalism and conditionalism. The former view (which is the one adopted by G.E. Moore and several later writers) holds that the final value of any F supervenes solely on features intrinsic to F, while the latter view allows that the final value of F may supervene on features non-intrinsic to F. Conditionalism thus allows the final value of F to vary according to the context in which F appears. Given the plausible assumption that there is an intimate tie between final values and appropriate attitudinal responses, it appears that conditionalism is the better approach for mainly the following three reasons: First, intrinsicalism is too indiscriminate, which makes it subject to what I call ‘location problems’ of final value. I illustrate this problem by discussing alleged examples of Moorean organic unities. Second, intrinsicalism evokes symptoms of ‘evaluative schizophrenia’. Third, considerations of theoretical economy tell in favour of conditionalism. Thereafter I respond to some recent challenges to conditionalism. An appendix surveys some meritorious implications that conditionalism offers for various substantial versions of such structurally different views about value as monism, pluralism, and particularism.     

A Friend in Creed: Does the Religious Composition of Geographic Areas Affect the Religious Composition of a Person's Close Friends?

Numerous theories of religion rest on the assumption that the religious composition of local populations influences the religious identities of a person's close friends, but there have been few empirical tests of this assumption. Using a combination of data on the religious identity of close friends (from the 1988 and 1998 General Social Survey) and information on the religious composition of counties (from the U.S. Religious Congregations and Membership Study) we find that despite tendencies toward religious homogeneity, the religious composition of the surrounding population has an effect on the proportion of a respondent’s same‐religion friends and on the proportion of friends belonging to specific other religious groups. Local population characteristics are unrelated to the proportion of respondents’ friends known in congregational settings. Results have implications for a broad range of sociological theories of religion as well as research examining the impact of same‐congregation and same‐religion friends (e.g., health and well‐being).