Unresolved questions in nudging research: Putting the psychology back in nudging

Nudging interventions are broadly defined as a rearrangement of a choice context that gently suggests a specific choice. Their increasing popularity has attracted attention and discussion from researchers, policy makers, and practitioners alike. After some applications to domains such as health, environmental issues, and retirement savings, the next step in nudging is to understand the psychological boundary conditions when applied to varied domains of daily life. It is yet unclear for example to what extent nudging interventions can be transparent without losing effectiveness, or how permanent the effects are. These unresolved questions may have contributed to heated political and scientific discussions, on for example the ethics of using nudges in the public health domain, due to the missing scientific evidence. Indeed, this popularity may have led to forget how nudging harnesses insights from decades of research in psychology to change people's behavior. The aim of this paper is to shift the focus back to the psychological premises nudges were built upon. It summarizes several outstanding questions that future research in the psychology of nudging should address. Advancing research in nudging will help to improve our understanding of applied nudging interventions and provide clarity to debates such as ethical appropriateness, effectiveness, and public approval.     

PREVENTING ABORTION AS A TEST CASE FOR THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF VIOLENCE

This paper explores the rationale for violence and coercion aimed at preventing abortion conceived as the killing of an innocent person. Some important arguments for personhood at conception are examined, and in the light of the examination the paper considers whether they warrant concluding that a free and democratic society should pass laws recognizing personhood at conception. The wider concern is what principles such a society should use as a basis for legal coercion and what principles conscientious individuals should use insofar as they judge that self-defense or, especially, protection of the innocent, requires violence.     

The Freedom-based Account of Solidarity and Basic Income

Real-libertarianism, as it is expressed in Philippe Van Parijs' recent monograph Real Freedom for All is characteristically committed to both self-ownership and 'solidarity’ with the infirm or handicapped. In this article it is argued that the conception of (real) freedom that is used to endorse self-ownership is inconsistent with the conception of (social) freedom or opportunity that is used to justify transfer payments to those with no or low earning capacity. The problem turns around the question whether one's freedom consists in the access one has to a share of the social product or in the measure of economic self-sufficiency one enjoys. Accordingly the role of private property in external resources as a condition for freedom is unclear: is it the basis of people's capacity for self-determination or is it the basis of people's bargaining power? Van Parijs' commitment to self-ownership suggests the former, his commitment to solidarity suggests the latter. A similar ambivalence is pointed out in his argument for a universal basic income, for which Real Freedom for All is so well-known.     

Once More into the Breach of Self-Ownership: Reply to Narveson and Brenkert

In reply to Narveson, I distinguish his no-proviso argument from his liberty argument, and I show that both fail. I also argue that interference lacks the strategic status he assigns to it, because it cannot be appropriately distinguished, conceptually and morally, from prevention; that natural resources do enjoy the importance he denies they have; that laissez-faire economies lack the superiority he attributes to them; that ownership can indeed be a reflexive relation; that anti-paternalism does not entail libertarianism; and that he misrepresents the doctrines of a number of philosophers, including John Locke, Ronald Dworkin, and myself. In reply to Brenkert, I show that he seriously misconstrues my view of the nature of freedom, and of its relationship to self-ownership. I then refute his criticisms of my treatment of the contrasts between self-ownership, on the one hand, and autonomy and non-slavery, on the other. I also show that his attempt to exorcize the demon of self-ownership is multiply flawed.     

马克思的自由观及其当代意义

马克思的哲学中,艺术活动始终是人类自由生存的典范状态。在其早期思想中,由于视生产劳动本质上是一种类似于艺术的活动,马克思认为消除了异化的生产实践便是人的自由的实现?而在其晚年思想中,由于认识到物质生产领域始终是一个必然性王国,自由王国便被置于这一必然王国的彼岸,自由的实现也便只能存在于艺术活动之中,但这一自由王国的繁荣又依赖于必然王国借助生产率的提高所提供的自由时间的增长。马克思的这一自由观对于当代人类的自我理解仍有重要的意义。     

Inter-limb coordination and control in boys with and without DCD in ball catching

The purpose of the study was to examine the nature of inter-limb coordination and control, exhibited by ten boys with (M = 10.5 years, SD = 1.0) and without Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), in a ball catching task across different ball speeds. In line with the predictions of coordinated structure theory boys who were typically developing preserved strong and effective temporal relations when catching balls in baseline and fast conditions. Boys with DCD exhibited temporal symmetry in baseline but not in fast attempts, where the decoupling was uniformed across the group, coinciding with failures on ≥ 50% of the attempts. In terms of stability, no differences in intra-individual variability were observed between the groups. The analysis of spatial and temporal adaptations showed that boys who were typically developing, in essence, covered the same “ground” by decreasing their movement time. The opposite was true for boys with DCD who contacted the ball closer to the body, while failing to adapt the velocity of their hands. Taken together, both groups exhibited strong and stable coordinative relations, in a steady-state but not in a fast condition, where all boys with DCD failed to preserve the desired symmetry. This decoupling also coincided with different and less effective spatio-temporal adaptations at the effector level. Thus, it appears that movement control, hence flexibility of their synergistic relations, represents a movement limiter for boys with DCD who exhibit specific balls skills issues, at inter-limb level of organization. It should be noted, however, that large intra-group variance observed across some variables warrants caution when interpreting the aggregate data.     

The President’s New Freedom Commission: Capitalizing on Opportunities to Advance School-Based Mental Health Services

The report from President George W. Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFC), Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America(2003), proposes goals and recommendations for improving mental health services. This report has significant implications for the delivery of mental health services through the schools. A focused discussion of the potential opportunities and challenges of implementing NFC recommendations related to school-based mental health is presented. Strategies for addressing five key areas at the intersection of school mental health and the Commission’s recommendations include: stigma reduction, suicide prevention, expansion and improvement of school mental health, and screening and treatment of co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders.     

Power,Freedom, and Individuality: Foucault and Sexual Difference

This paper offers a detailed account of Foucaults ethical and political notion of individuality as presented in his late work, and discusses its relationship to the feminist project of the theory of sexual difference. I argue that Foucaults elaboration of the classical ethos of care for the self opens the way for regarding the I-woman as an ethical, political and aesthetic self-creation. However, it has significant limitations that cannot be ignored. I elaborate on two aspects of Foucaults avoidance of sexual difference as a relevant category for an account of political and ethical individuality, which thus implicitly associates individual agency with men. I argue that Foucault implicitly assumes the existence of an ontological desire to become engaged in political self-creation. However, the ethical position of self-knowledge and desire should be understood as a contingent option that depends on material and historical conditions for its realization. Hence, I argue that a feminist reworking of Foucaults notion of political individuality should add a substantial ethical condition to the imperative of self-knowledge and self-creation – making possible the desiring woman subject.     

The ethics of earthquake prediction

Scientists’ responsibility to inform the public about their results may conflict with their responsibility not to cause social disturbance by the communication of these results. A study of the well-known Brady-Spence and Iben Browning earthquake predictions illustrates this conflict in the publication of scientifically unwarranted predictions. Furthermore, a public policy that considers public sensitivity caused by such publications as an opportunity to promote public awareness is ethically problematic from (i) a refined consequentialist point of view that any means cannot be justified by any ends, and (ii) a rights view according to which individuals should never be treated as a mere means to ends. The Parkfield experiment, the so-called paradigm case of cooperation between natural and social scientists and the political authorities in hazard management and risk communication, is also open to similar ethical criticism. For the people in the Parkfield area were not informed that the whole experiment was based on a contested seismological paradigm.     

Guard dogs of perception: the corporate takeover of science

The belief that science is "a driver of growth in the knowledge economy" has led in recent decades to increasing encouragement by government of the involvement of industry and of commerce in the sponsorship and direction of research in universities, and to the increasing influence of industrial representatives on advisory panels associated with the publicly funded scientific research councils. By extending the doctrine of commercial confidentiality into university laboratories, inconvenient findings have been suppressed, and both free endeavour and free speech undermined. This has narrowed our scientific horizons and compromised government advisors. It is argued that scientific freedom is a guarantor of our wider liberties. Science, which tells us who we are and how we can live better, is being distorted so twisting our understanding of the ways in which we might progress, shutting off alternatives to existing models of development. Business now stands as a guard dog at the gates of perception. Only the inquiries which suit its needs are allowed to pass.