Human Nature: What We Need to Know about Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century

The Western worldview that now dominates the planet embodies beliefs about human nature that are inconsistent with our evolutionarily evolved natures. Its "logic" at best ignores and at worst creates the symptoms of the modern world, which if uncorrected predict severe crises in coming centuries: population growth, environmental destruction, economic collapse, and increasing social violence. In contrast, there are numerous communities today creating alternative solutions based on different understandings of human nature and human needs: cooperation rather than competition; meaningful social identity; and respect for and trust in the autonomous behavior of all persons. There exist optimistic future models.     

Symbioses Can Transcend Particularisms: A Memoir of Friendship with Ralph Wendell Burhoe

Ralph Burho's paradigmatic scientific innovation is the extension of the concept of symbiosis to coadapted human genotypes and "culturetypes," centered on religion. Civilization also requires a coexistent secular arena, where religion's nearness may help prevent our natural synergistic instrumentalizations of each other from degrading to losses of respect for one another as responsible free agents. The mixed messages in the Bible's diverse stories help to preserve a richness of choices in memory as we navigate history. We science-and-religion theorists should expand our cademic base to include economics, politics, literature, and other areas, while emulating Ralph's wise and good-humored ways of drawing us together and affecting our lives.     

Sociobiology and Moral Discourse

In the intellectual lineage of sociobiology (understood as evolutionary social science), this article considers the place of moral discourse in the evolution of emergent systems for mediating behavior. Given that humans share molecular systems, reflex systems, drive systems, emotional systems, and cognitive systems with chimpanzees, why is it that human behavior is so radically different from chimpanzee behavior? The answer is that, unlike chimps, humans possess symbolic systems, empowering them to override chimplike default morality in favor of symbolically mediated moral codes. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the power of religious symbols to influence moral behavior by reprogramming emotional systems.     

Psychological Interventions and Genetic Testing: Facilitating Informed Decisions About BRCA1/2 Cancer Susceptibility

Genetic testing for inherited cancer susceptibility, based on the recently identified. BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, will soon be available on a large scale. However, at present, genetic test results do not lead to clearly indicated diagnostic or preventive measures, and the nature of the psychological impact of BRCA1/2 testing is still largely unknown. This uncertainty, combined with preliminary evidence suggesting significant individual differences in reactions to genetic susceptibility feedback, constitutes a unique challenge for any individual contemplating such testing. We outline the nature of this challenge and then propose an intervention strategy designed to help individuals make deeply processed and psychologically well-informed decisions with regard to their genetic susceptibility. The intervention is guided by recent research findings and theory on the cognitive–emotional processing of cancer-risk information. Specifically, the goal is to prepare the individual for genetic testing by (1) cognitively and emotionally activating, or preliving, the individual's potential reactions to testing feedback; (2) facilitating accurate appraisal of the individual's cognitive–emotional reactions; and (3) enabling the individual to process these reactions through the use of well-established clinical techniques.     

Positive Marginality: Antecedents and Consequences

This article presents evidence for the view that an important precursor to a feminist identity is a sense of one's own marginality plus a redefinition of what that marginality means. Choosing marginality appears to be a highly adaptive strategy for social activists who can pass as members of the dominant majority. Women leaders in psychology appear to be more likely to be Jewish and/or to be from working class backgrounds than one would expect by chance. An examination of their autobiographical narratives indicates that many of them have actively engaged their marginal identities and redefined them into a source of strength. This article also explores the historical and contextual factors that influence overt identification with some form of marginality. These factors include historical differences in the danger due to a particular stigmatizing social label, familial social activism, and the social power possessed by an individual woman. Finally, it is argued that positive marginality appears to promote an awareness that injustice is rooted in structural processes rather than personal inadequacy.     

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: The Medicalization of Misbehavior

During the past decade, there has been an increase in the diagnosis and treatment of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This syndrome, typically diagnosed in childhood, is characterized by inattention, hyperactive motor behavior, and distractibility. Current prevalence rates obtained in various countries generally exceed the 3–5% reported by DSM-IV. Reasons for increased ADHD prevalence include changes in diagnostic standards, overlap between ADHD and other externalizing disorders, nonspecific behavioral criteria, and the rapid effects of stimulant medication on cognitive functioning. However, social, cultural, and economic factors may also contribute to increased diagnosis. ADHD has become a common topic in the lay media. Popular discussions of ADHD may serve as a metaphoric expression of social anxieties, particularly with respect to children. At the same time, ADHD has rapidly become incorporated into a medical model, with emphasis on pharmacological treatment. Reductions in mental health and educational services, as well as economic pressures of managed care, may also contribute to medicalization of behavioral problems. Collaboration between psychologists and primary care physicians can lead to more accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment of ADHD and related disorders.     

Psychometric Properties of the Family Support Scale with Head Start Families

Social support systems can have either a beneficial or adverse effect when a family faces stress. Hence, support perceived by family members is an important construct. We studied the psychometric properties of the Family Support Scale (FSS) with a sample of 244 low-income families of children in a Head Start program, and we conducted an exploratory factor analysis with the scale. We obtained a 5-factor solution for the FSS when assessing the family support of low-income families. The internal consistency and test-retest reliability were moderately high for the 5 proposed subscales. The factor structure obtained may prove more valid for Head Start families than structures from previous studies, although there is still a need for further psychometric study of the FSS.     

When worlds collide: Engineering students encounter social aspects of production

To design effective and socially sensitive systems, engineers must be able to integrate a technology-based approach to engineering problems with concerns for social impact and the context of use. The conventional approach to engineering education is largely technology-based, and even when additional courses with a social orientation are added, engineering graduates are often not well prepared to design user- and context-sensitive systems. Using data from interviews with three engineering students who had significant exposure to a socially-oriented perspective on production systems design, this paper argues that engineering students may have difficulty integrating in their own practice the technology-based and the socially-oriented perspectives on production. To enhance engineering students' ability to create systems that integrate both perspectives, and to relieve the intense cognitive and emotional pain that can be experienced by students exposed to both perspectives but unable to reconcile them, this paper reinforces the importance of teaching students the meta skill, design. A design perspective can help students integrate varied, sometimes conflicting, perspectives, and reach beyond customer-defined constraints to consider workplace and social impact.     

Political Animals: Luck, Love and Dignity

Human beings are both needy and dignified. How should we think about the relationship between our neediness and our worth? Card argues well that our vulnerability to luck is intertwined in the very conditions of moral agency. We can see the merit of her approach even more clearly by turning to some difficulties the Stoics have in preserving dignity while removing vulnerability. Stoicism does, however, help us to sort through the difficulties involved as we try to combine love of particular people with respect for all human life. Richardson is correct to suggest that love itself can animate the concern for all humanity; I also agree with him that institutions must play a major role in any solution to problems of inequality between nations. Although the “capabilities approach” offers an attractive account of one part of the goal of just political institutions, combining, as Moody-Adams suggests, respect for difference with a commitment to universal norms, I now believe that the capabilities account should be combined with a form of Rawlsian political liberalism that protects spaces within which citizens may pursue the good as they understand it.     

Far Away Now: Time and Distance Revisited

Einstein claimed that we do not know what it means to say that events distant from one another are simultaneous, because there is no way to determine this operationally. Reichenbach and Grunbaum claimed that determinate time relations just do not exist among events not connectible by a causal signal and that, therefore, such relations can, within certain limits, be stipulated by convention. But I argue that the independent existence of such relations is demonstrated by asking and answering a series of questions based on the intelligibility, though not the existence, of faster-than-light signals. I further argue that (1) only by demonstrating the unintelligibility of such questions and their answers can the conventionality thesis be maintained; (2) none of the available arguments to show such unintelligibility works; and (3) the conventionality thesis is therefore false.