Academic goals and learning strategies in secondary education Spanish students with social anxiety / Metas académicas y estrategias de aprendizaje en estudiantes españoles de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria con ansiedad social

The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between high social anxiety, academic goals and learning strategies in a sample of 2,022 (51.1% male) Spanish adolescents aged 12–16. The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI), Achievement Goal Tendencies Questionnaire (AGTQ) and Learning and Studies Skills Strategies Inventory — High School Version (LASSI-HS) were used to assess the variables. The results showed no statistically significant differences in goal orientations between students with and without high social anxiety. However, students with high social anxiety used learning strategies significantly less. In addition, the logistic regression results indicated that high social anxiety acts as a significant predictor for setting social reinforcement goals and learning and study strategies.     

Epistemological transformation for a sustainable and transdisciplinary university: The experience at the university of veracruz

This article presents a brief history of the development of the Western university and the individuation of disciplines. It discusses the phenomenal specialization that has occurred since the 19th century, and the lack of correlative synthesis of the disparate fields of knowledge, which increasingly has come under critique. We explore the transdisciplinary experience that has been developing over the last few years in the University of Veracruz, in particular with regards to the Program for Transdisciplinarity, Dialogue of Knowing Styles and Sustainability, a co-construction of a set of actions that foster a transformation of university academics by means of deep dialogue and a transdisciplinary re-learning process.     

Reading the Lives of Others: Biography as Political Thought in Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir

In this essay, I focus on two biographical works by Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir that I read as political texts: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (Arendt 1957 ) and “Must We Burn Sade?” (Beauvoir 2012 ). Reading Arendt's Varnhagen and Beauvoir's “Sade” side by side illuminates their shared preoccupation with lived experience and their common political premises: the antagonism between freedom and sovereignty, and the centrality of action and constructive relations with others. My argument is that these texts constitute an original style of political thinking, which I call politico‐biographical hermeneutics, or reading the life of others as exercises in political theory. Politico‐biographical hermeneutics, as I take it, is not a systematic methodology, but an approach to interpreting sociopolitical forces as they come to bear and are embodied and inscribed in the lived experiences, struggles, and works of representative or exemplary individuals. This approach identifies the political lessons of lived experience and supports one of the central claims of feminist philosophy, namely, that the personal and the political are not antithetical, but relational.     

The role of retributive justice and the use of international criminal tribunals in post‐conflict reconciliation

Four experiments examined people's responses to intergroup violence either committed or suffered by their own group. Experiment 1 demonstrated that Serbs who strongly glorified Serbia were more supportive of future violence against, and less willing to reconcile with, Bosniaks after reading about Serbian victimization by Bosniaks rather than Serbian transgressions against Bosniaks. Replicating these effects with Americans in the context of American–Iranian tensions, Experiment 2 further showed that demands for retributive justice explained why high glorifiers showed asymmetrical reactions to ingroup victimization vs. perpetration. Again in the Serb and the American context, respectively, Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that post‐conflict international criminal tribunals can help satisfy victim group members' desire for retributive justice, and thereby reduce their support for future violence and increase their willingness to reconcile with the perpetrator group. The role of retributive justice and the use of international criminal justice in intergroup conflict (reduction) are discussed.     

“It’s Sort of My Calling”: The Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility of Latino Immigrant-Origin Young Adults

The aim of this study was to describe civic patterns of engagement of Latino first- and secondgeneration (immigrant-origin) young adults and to provide insights into what differentiates these patterns. Based on 58 in-depth interviews with 18- to 25-year-olds of Dominican, Mexican, and Central American origin, the authors first established variations in different levels of civic engagement profiles. The authors then analyzed the characteristics that distinguish these civic profiles, considering demographic variables (generation, gender, education level, and undocumented status) as well as motivations for civic engagement. Two thirds of first- and second-generation participants were actively engaged, though variations in patterns emerged across civic profiles; undocumented status appeared a particularly salient driver of engagement. The authors found that rather than being instrumentally and individually motivated, Latino immigrant-origin young adults were primarily motivated to be civically engaged by social responsibility as well as by social (in)justices.     

Assessing Stimulus Control in a Discrimination Task with Compound Stimuli: Evaluating Testing Procedures and Tracking Eye Fixations

The Psychological Record - Experiments with pigeons have suggested that the way stimuli are arranged in tests affects the demonstration of the stimulus control established during training. The...     

The Last Dictator Game? Dominance,Reactivity, and the Methodological Artefact in Experimental Economics

The Dictator Game (DG), one of the best-known designs in experimental social science, has been extensively criticized, and declared by some to be defunct, on the grounds that its results are the product of a research artefact. Critics of the DG argue that the behaviour observed in the game (where agents frequently decide to share their money with strangers) is not the outcome of genuine pro-social preferences but must, instead, be interpreted as a response to the cues given by the experimental design, where these cues signal that the game is about ‘sharing’ (i.e. about altruism or pro-social behaviour). Despite this criticism, the DG continues to be extensively used, and some have defended its validity as an instrument capable of measuring the role of social pressure and social norms against economic motivations. This article examines the assumptions implicit in the claim that the DG results are artefactual and spells out the conditions under which the game can be used to test hypotheses about pro-social behaviour. To conclude we show how the DG debate helps to illuminate the pitfalls embedded in the abandonment of the dominance principle, and argue that this is crucial to the expanding agenda of experimental economics.     

Individual Differences in Diving: Intelligence,Personality, and Underwater Adaptation

Diving is an activity that is carried out in an extreme environment with extraordinary psychophysical demands. It requires the divers to undergo an adaptive process in order to survive, to be able to take advantage of their capabilities, and to achieve an efficient performance. In this ex post facto study, data from a sample of military personnel participating in scuba diving courses (N = 649) were analyzed. Our aim was to verify the role of individual differences in the adaptation to an extreme and hostile environment. The results indicate the existence of psychological variables that differentiate between divers and the general population, those who pass or fail the diving course, and between groups of divers who obtain differential levels of performance in underwater tasks. These findings support that dispositional characteristics have utility for the identification of suitable personnel for professional diving.     

Money talks in attention bias modification: Reward in a dot-probe task affects attentional biases

Attention bias modification (ABM) aimed at correcting dysfunctional biases in anxiety patients has met with only mild success. Inspired by recent studies showing large effects of financial reward upon attention shifts, we contrasted effects of traditional dot-probe ABM and reward upon attention biases in a between-subject 2 × 2 design. Twenty-seven participants in group cognitive behavioural therapy (GCBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD) were randomly assigned to undergo six sessions of a dot-probe task consisting of ABM or placebo ABM along with random or high reward following neutral stimuli. There was no influence of ABM on participants' attention bias over and above the influence of GCBT. Reward, however, had a strong influence on attention bias. Neither ABM nor reward reduced SAD symptoms over and above the effects of GCBT. The results add to the growing evidence that benefits of ABM through dot-probe training are unreliable but suggest on the other hand that rewarding attention may strongly influence dysfunctional attention biases.