Documentation: The challenges facing Christian‐Muslim dialogue

During his visit to Cairo in early October 1995, Dr George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave a lecture at Al‐Azhar University, the oldest and one of the most prestigious Islamic universities. Given on 4 October, the lecture was widely reported in both the Egyptian and British press. Following is the full text of the lecture as delivered, reproduced by the kind permission of Dr Carey.     

Sociology and psychology within the scope of scientific dishonesty

A survey is undertaken based on qualitative analyses of the cases of scientific misconduct from the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty’s first five years of collecting data, with additional information from selected international sources, in which underlying psychological motivations can be judged. An carlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium, Scientific Misconduct. An International Perspective, organised by The Medical University of Warsay, 16 November, 1998.     

Evolutionary autonomous agents and the naturalization of phenomenology

The phenomenological goal of grounding the content of conceptual thought in the background understanding of everyday, skillful coping was approached using evolutionary autonomous agent (EAA) methodology. The behavior of an EAA evolved to perform a specified motor task was identified with skillful coping. Changes in the dynamics of the EAA controller occurred when the EAA encountered an unexpected obstacle with loss of longer time scale components in its hierarchical temporal organization. These temporal changes are consistent with the phenomenological changes which we experience with breakdown during equipment use with our adoption of a more immediate, determinate stance. Since this latter experience is the basis of conceptual thought, the EAA paradigm goes some way in providing a naturalized explanation for the grounding of the content of conceptual thought in everyday, skillful coping in a manner that is physiologically plausible and phenomenologically accurate.     

Data acquisition software for high data rate experiments

A computerized perceptual laboratory operates a variety of stimulus devices, including static and dynamic graphics displays, and records both discrete and analog data in a diverse and complex set of experimental paradigms. The software requirement to accommodate this variety of paradigms and high input and output data rates has been met by a single multitasked acquisition program that interprets unitary event commands to display graphics or nongraphics stimuli, record responses, control timing, or provide appropriate feedback. Event lists are created and modified with a text editor, then assembled into binary experiment definition files by dialogue with a parsing program. Graphics stimuli are referenced by a file name that contains stimulus attributes for later data extraction. All protocols and stimulus files are loaded prior to the block of trials, so no disk accesses that would delay events are required during a block. The resulting data file contains a record of all variable stimulus and timing information, as well as the discrete and analog responses, in a uniform format which facilitates data extraction.     

Using robots at work during the COVID-19 crisis evokes passion decay: Evidence from field and experimental studies

The growing trend of introducing robots into employees' work lives has become increasingly salient during the global COVID-19 pandemic. In light of this pandemic, it is likely that organisational decision-makers are seeing value in coupling employees with robots for both efficiency- and health-related reasons. An unintended consequence of this coupling, however, may be an increased level of work routinisation and standardisation. We draw primarily from the model of passion decay from the relationship and clinical psychology literature to develop theory and test a model arguing that passion decays as employees increasingly interact with robots for their work activities. We demonstrate that this passion decay leads to an increase of withdrawal behaviour from both the domains of work and family. Drawing further from the model of passion decay, we reveal that employees higher in openness to experience are less likely to suffer from passion decay upon more frequent interactions with robots in the course of work. Across a multi-source, multi-wave field study conducted in Hong Kong (Study 1) and a simulation-based experiment conducted in the United States (Study 2), our hypotheses received support. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.