From Biology to Consciousness to Morality

Abstract. Social animals are provisioned with prosocial orientations that operate to transcend self‐interest. Morality, as used here, describes human versions of such orientations. We explore the evolutionary antecedents of morality in the context of emergentism, giving considerable attention to the biological traits that undergird awareness and our emergent human forms of mind. We suggest that our moral frames of mind emerge from our primate prosocial capacities, transfigured and valenced by our symbolic languages, cultures, and religions.     

What elicits third-party anger? The effects of moral violation and others’ outcome on anger and compassion

People often get angry when they perceive an injustice that affects others but not themselves. In two studies, we investigated the elicitation of third-party anger by varying moral violation and others’ outcome presented in newspaper articles. We found that anger was highly contingent on the moral violation. Others’ outcome, although relevant for compassion, were not significantly relevant for anger (Study 1 and Study 2a) or less relevant for anger than for compassion (Study 2b). This indicates that people can be morally outraged: anger can be elicited by a perceived violation of moral values alone, independent of the harm done. A severe negative consequence for others is not necessary to elicit anger.     

Treating the Child or Syndrome: Does Context Matter for Treatment Decisions for Antisocially Behaving Youth?

Using a between-subject 3 × 3 design of an experimentally manipulated realistic case vignette of Black, White, and Hispanic youth in a survey mailed to 1540 experienced psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers, the authors examined if clinicians alter their judgments about treatment for antisocially behaving youth based on the symptom’s social context (e.g., life circumstances) and the youth’s race or ethnicity, even among youth who are otherwise identical in terms of behavioral symptoms. Vignettes describe behaviors meeting DSM-IV criteria for conduct disorder, but contain contextual information suggesting either internal dysfunction (ID) or a normal response to a difficult environment [i.e., environmental-reaction (ER)]. Comparison was symptom-only (SO). Judgments of effectiveness of 14 treatments for youth exhibiting antisocial behavior were examined. Frequencies and median scores of perceived effectiveness level (1–9, Likert) were compared in bivariate analyses, stratifying context and youth’s race or ethnicity. The context of the behavior was associated significantly with differences in effectiveness judgments in 13 of 14 treatments. Within ID and ER contexts, clinicians judged three different treatments as effective (median ≥ 7 of 9). In the SO condition, clinicians were less selective, judging six as effective. In the ID context, psychiatric medications, systems oriented family therapy, and residential care were judged more effective for White than for Black or Hispanic youth. Evidence-based practice research may be hampered by inattention to the social context of behavioral symptoms. Context may activate implicit racial assumptions about treatment effectiveness. Implications are for clinical training to improve service delivery, and future clinical research.     

Do corporations have minds of their own?

Corporations have often been taken to be the paradigm of an organization whose agency is autonomous from that of the successive waves of people who occupy the pattern of roles that define its structure, which licenses saying that the corporation has attitudes, interests, goals, and beliefs which are not those of the role occupants. In this essay, I sketch a deflationary account of agency-discourse about corporations. I identify institutional roles with a special type of status function, a status role, in which the collectively accepted function is expressed in part through its occupier’s intentional expression of her agency in that role (where the occupier is part of the group whose collective acceptance underwrites her having the relevant function in social transactions). I identify institutions as systems of status roles and show how this is compatible with seeing the agency of institutions generally, even over time periods in which there is complete change in role occupiers, as a matter of the contributions only of individual agents. I explain how the reduction of the institution to its members is compatible with its potentially having had a completely different membership. I show in the case of the corporation in particular that, once we see its origins and function, the surface features of legal discourse about corporate agency are misleading and are compatible with a deflationary account of corporate agency. I show in connection with this that the corporation is to be identified with its shareholders, and that where a corporation separates ownership and control, its managers and employees are proxy agents of the shareholders doing business under the corporate form. Finally, I canvass the legitimate ways of construing ordinary talk about corporate intention, belief, and so on, in light of this, none of which support the attribution of genuine agency or intentionality to any group per se associated with the corporation.     

Creative ways to well-being: Reappraisal inventiveness in the context of anger-evoking situations

Neuroscientific studies in the field of creativity mainly focused on tasks drawing on basic verbal divergent thinking demands. This study took a step further by investigating brain mechanisms in response to other types of creative behavior, involving more “real-life” creativity demands in the context of emotion regulation and well-being. Specifically, functional patterns of EEG alpha activity were investigated while participants were required to generate as many and as different ways as possible to reappraise presented anger-eliciting situations in a manner that reduces their anger. Cognitive reappraisal involves some of the same cognitive processes as in conventional verbal creativity tasks, inasmuch as it requires an individual to inhibit or disengage from an emotional event, to shift attention between different perspectives, and to flexibly adopt new solutions. To examine whether alpha oscillations during cognitive reappraisal are different from those during conventional creative ideation, the EEG was also assessed during performance of the Alternative Uses task, requiring individuals to generate as many and as original uses of an object as possible. While cognitive reappraisal was associated with a similar pattern of alpha power as observed in conventional verbal creative ideation, the former yielded significantly stronger alpha power increases at prefrontal sites, along with lower alpha increases at more posterior cortical sites, indicating higher cognitive control and less spontaneous imaginative thought processes in the generation of effective strategies to regulate an ongoing negative emotional state.     

Abnormalities in early visual processes are linked to hypersociability and atypical evaluation of facial trustworthiness: An ERP study with Williams syndrome

Accurate assessment of trustworthiness is fundamental to successful and adaptive social behavior. Initially, people assess trustworthiness from facial appearance alone. These assessments then inform critical approach or avoid decisions. Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) exhibit a heightened social drive, especially toward strangers. This study investigated the temporal dynamics of facial trustworthiness evaluation in neurotypic adults (TD) and individuals with WS. We examined whether differences in neural activity during trustworthiness evaluation may explain increased approach motivation in WS compared to TD individuals. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants appraised faces previously rated as trustworthy or untrustworthy. TD participants showed increased sensitivity to untrustworthy faces within the first 65–90 ms, indexed by the negative-going rise of the P1 onset (oP1). The amplitude of the oP1 difference to untrustworthy minus trustworthy faces was correlated with lower approachability scores. In contrast, participants with WS showed increased N170 amplitudes to trustworthy faces. The N170 difference to low–high-trust faces was correlated with low approachability in TD and high approachability in WS. The findings suggest that hypersociability associated with WS may arise from abnormalities in the timing and organization of early visual brain activity during trustworthiness evaluation. More generally, the study provides support for the hypothesis that impairments in low-level perceptual processes can have a cascading effect on social cognition.     

False memories

Problems in the context of so-called “false memories” and their topological classification and recommendations for their therapeutic handling are discussed. False memories are defined as constructs, rooted in the “transitional space” and containing partial realities, added fantasies as well as fantasmic transformations of reality. They thus contain a message about the inner state of the patient and a demand to the therapist. Narcissistic monadic forms of false memories are different. These forms serve to support the patient’s narcissistic balance, for example memories of incest, which apparently never took place. Furthermore, phenomena of actively generated false memories are discussed, which mainly arose in the USA, where therapists specialised in recovering incest memories, created them by direct or indirect suggestions in their patients. In many cases then, archaic images occurred, for example memories of having been captured by aliens or about ritual abuse in a sect. The potential psychodynamic background is discussed. These exciting and fascinating scenes form a temptation for the therapist to leave the ground of reality together with the patient and thus give up therapeutic neutrality.     

Does ‘Wanting the Best’ create more stress? The link between baby sign classes and maternal anxiety

This study investigated whether gesturing classes (baby sign) affected parental frustration and stress, as advertised by many commercial products. The participants were 178 mother–infant dyads, divided into a gesture group (n=89) and a non‐gesture group (n=89), based on whether they had attended baby sign classes or not. Mothers completed a background demographics questionnaire and the Parenting Stress Index. Gesturing mothers had higher total stress scores, with higher scores on the child domain, despite having similar backgrounds to non‐gesturing mothers. There was no relationship between the frequency or duration of gesture use and stress scores. It is suggested that gesturing mothers had higher pre‐existing stress and were attracted to gesture classes because of the promoted benefits, which include stress reduction, although class attendance did not alleviate their stress. The possibility that attending gesturing classes made mothers view their infant in a more negative way, due to their heightened expectations not being met, is also discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.