Authority relationships between obedience and disobedience

Recent episodes of public dissent (such as the demonstrations against G8 policies) raise the issue of the psychological processes triggered in obeying and disobeying the authority. Even if obedience to authority is an important aspect of social life and it plays a key role in maintaining social order, the concept of obedience has been studied in social psychology mainly in terms of its destructive aspects. Besides, most of the studies have overlooked the role of disobedience in the authority relationship. Disobedience may be conceived of as a protest that undermines the legitimacy of the authority or it can represent an instrument for controlling the legitimacy of the authority's demands, becoming a factor protecting against authoritarianism. In this article, a new perspective on the study of the relationship between the individual and the authority is put forward, considering obedience and disobedience as parallel concepts, each having constructive and destructive aspects.     

Music in dreams and the emergence of the self

Abstract :  This paper deals with the presence and possible 'meaning' of music in dreams. The author explores a possible meaning of music as the most fundamental human symbolic experience, which directly points to the emergence of the Self from the primal union mystique with the Great Mother. The relationships between acoustic and visual experiences are taken into account as two basic human forms of coming into existence, although wholly different from each other. The role of music in dreams seems to be that of the most direct representation of the emerging Self in its pure, pre-representational form. Therefore, when music appears in dreams, providing there is the activation of an emotional tone, all other elements—visual and verbal—should be considered as the expression of the sense to which the music is pointing. A clinical example is described in order to better express the author's opinions.     

Stress-induced salivary cortisol secretion during hypobaric hypoxia challenge and in vivo urinary thromboxane production in healthy male subjects

Few studies have assessed the effects of stress on in vivo platelet activation. In the present study, hypobaric hypoxia induced by rapid decompression during high-altitude simulated flight in a hypobaric chamber was used to evaluate the effects of environmental stress on salivary cortisol and urinary thromboxane metabolite (TXM) excretion, a noninvasive marker of in vivo platelet function. Twenty-one male aviators (mean ± SD age = 36 ± 7 years) experiencing hypoxia by removing their oxygen mask for 4-5 min during a simulated flight to 25,000 ft (7,620 m; pO(2) = 59.17 mmHg) and a matched control group of thirteen flying instructors wearing oxygen masks during the challenge, were studied. Hypobaric hypoxia induced a transient significant increase (P < 0.001) in the aviators' salivary cortisol concentration; the overall pattern of diurnal cortisol fluctuation was maintained in both groups. Urinary TXM showed a significant ～30% reduction (P < 0.01) after the chamber session in aviators exposed to hypobaric hypoxia, but not in controls. A significant inverse correlation was found between salivary cortisol and urinary TXM in aviators (r = - 0.64, P = 0.0015). Salivary cortisol was a significant predictor (P < 0.001) for urinary TXM concentrations in aviators. In conclusion, here we observed that an acute stress-induced salivary cortisol increase was associated with reduced urinary thromboxane biosynthesis, providing the first indirect evidence for an inhibitory effect of acute stress on in vivo platelet function.     

Development Projects and Life Satisfaction: An Impact Study on Fair Trade Handicraft Producers

Is there a correspondence between subjective and objective wellbeing indicators in development programs? We investigate this question by evaluating the impact of Fair Trade affiliation on the subjective wellbeing of a sample of Peruvian (treatment and control) producers from two different Fair Trade projects in two socioeconomic environments, one relatively poorer (Juliaca) and the other relatively more affluent (Chulucanas). We find a direct and an indirect effect. The direct effect acts positively via affiliation years in the poorer project and via trade diversification in both projects. The indirect effect acts through the reduction of poverty and relative income. Consistently with the concave income-happiness assumption, the variables generating the indirect effect have a much weaker impact for producers living in the relatively better-off socioeconomic environment, net of the lower FT economic impact in this area.     

The Bootstrap Discovery Behaviour (BDB): a new outlook on usability evaluation

The value of λ is one of the main issues debated in international usability studies. The debate is centred on the deficiencies of the mathematical return on investment model (ROI model) of Nielsen and Landauer (1993). The ROI model is discussed in order to identify the base of another model that, respecting Nielsen and Landauer’s one, tries to consider a large number of variables for the estimation of the number of evaluators needed for an interface. Using the bootstrap model (Efron 1979), we can take into account: (a) the interface properties, as the properties at zero condition of evaluation and (b) the probability that the population discovery behaviour is represented by all the possible discovery behaviours of a sample. Our alternative model, named Bootstrap Discovery Behaviour (BDB), provides an alternative estimation of the number of experts and users needed for a usability evaluation. Two experimental groups of users and experts are involved in the evaluation of a website (). Applying the BDB model to the problems identified by the two groups, we found that 13 experts and 20 users are needed to identify 80% of usability problems, instead of 6 experts and 7 users required according to the estimation of the discovery likelihood provided by the ROI model. The consequence of the difference between the results of those models is that in following the BDB the costs of usability evaluation increase, although this is justified considering that the results obtained have the best probability of representing the entire population of experts and users.